Anderson, Master, IV,

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 30, 2014, at 8:56 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> Good thoughts and counters Mark. I am not really arguing for the legitimacy of my own reaction, just trying to state it and maybe bring another POV to a complex set of artists and a powerfully provocative work.  I agree with the difficulty of Phoenix's role and as a collaborative effort with Anderson maybe I put too much on him when really he is just freighted with too much attention in what was realistically a more complicated social dynamic.  Maybe drama calls for a simplification that undermines the complex peculiarities of the cultic phenomena. Just to push the conversation a bit- is it such a stretch to consider CIA/Political actions and media messages in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador...  as a kind of cultic message of liberation, in this case through mass violence. 
> 
>   There is an argument that there is no they. That fools imagine central planning where really it is more like momentum and aligning with that momentum, political market forces etc.  The problem is the history of planned mass exterminations, the problem is the assassination of world leaders who are resistors to that  militaristic momentum,  the problem is false flag operations,  Banks laundering drug money, banks setting up ponzi schemes, Secret Police, international death squads trained in Georgia. Cointelpro. Institutional racism.   All of that makes scientology and Moonies and  mormonism and even the Christian right look innocent. But they all structure lives toward compliance with authorities, they are part of missionary efforts across the globe. The messages meld and blend. Endless rivers of advertising for shit that doesn't exist. The mind yearns for personal moral meaning, private pleasure, the importance of great art, natural harmonies. Anything but the obvious. Fascism is alive and winning on all fronts.
>   Fool! There is no they. Another century of freedom lies ahead.   
> 
> 
> On Nov 30, 2014, at 5:47 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 
>> I think you have a major essay/ book to write re P's Calif ( and 2nd NY ) novels and the rise of the Right... And other things as well. right on, I say, tripal entendre intended. 
>> 
>> I, too, think Phoenix (for the part he had written for him) was the weakest in THE MASTER, not because he wasn't good but that, to me, he had the biggest boatload of meaning to carry in that movie. He was postwar American Everyman, orphaned, not too smart, war-wounded---I think we cannot overlook that---lacking self-knowledge, even the way to self knowledge ( another theme in the movie) ---which is what so many of the best tell us the 50s were...( I maintain I came of age in the sixties that was still the 50s in my parochial burg and with my parochial education) and it is SOO damn hard to act so much " stupidity" when it is to stand for so much. 
>> 
>> His final break with Hoffman, dramatically done well, is still abrupt given all we have gone through with him..then that he is now "free" in his last scene with his lover..??
>> 
>> Humbert Humbert's awareness of what he " stole" from Lolita is pretty abrupt too and---crazy or insightful, I am reminded. 
>> 
>> Hoffman is charismatic in every scene and we first see him in media res.....so, since we see
>> He is NOTHING but charisma, I did not think any more history of him was necessary. He is what Phoenix fell into....clearly ( to me) ..... You need space in your work of art for the Huey Long character from All the King's Men ' cause he had much real substance; Malcolm X-like character in Invisible Man, etc.......
>> 
>> I mean Jesus Christ himself comes to us as Charisma with little backstory in the New Testament. 
>> 
>> [re Phoenix]: Bridges as THE DUDE in Big L. doesn't have to grow and change and is perfect therefore it seems to me. 
>> 
>> I am confident Phoenix can be an even better Sportello, but that's my bias. 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On Nov 30, 2014, at 2:50 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I was not bowled over by the Master as drama,  but it seems to me to be asking important questions about the origins of religion and particularly American religious figures. It does so with enough depth and sympathy for an unlikeable character to have inspired in many 
>>> serious thought and attention to the story and the theme.  The story has cultural weight. A great many truly powerful leaders in almost every human arena are projectors of a kind of religious truth, depicting their ideas as tools/weapons of liberating warfare against darkness, while profiting handily from the true believers. So the theme is worthy of serious effort. It seems to me that what The Master failed to do was show the magical appeal of the leader or his message.  We know he is a skilled psychological manipulator, but where is the group charisma, how did he make this enterprise work?
>>> Maybe that is some of the point and we are asked to consider that power structures are key to an enduring religion more than the leader. Joseph Smith was a kind of sci fi writer as much as Hubbard(visiting angels,  magic glasses and invented tribes of the Americas) and the power structure of the Mormons is similar in being layered with serious earthly rewards for the inner circle. Thomas Jefferson connected himself to the myth of the independent , self reliant, self taught yeoman farmer. Don't think about african slaves 
>>> I think one of the failures of the Master was hanging so much on  Joaquin Phoenix who I think is over-rated in terms of his range as a performer, and who created a character that provided a very limited view of the religion being born.  I feel like the only American who is seriously underwhelmed by Phoenix. I will be very surprised if he really conveys anything of the lively craziness of Doc Sportello in IV. He seems to me utterly wrong for the part. On the other hand I think Anderson is a good choice to make this movie in many ways. I hope it is enjoyable and takes on some of weird paranoia and cultural cross currents proper to the book.  
>>> I have come to feel that if you think of Lot 49, IV, Vineland, and Bleeding Edge as Pynchon's  contemporary fiction there is a profound consistency of theme and a powerful tracking of the rise of the new right and the ineffectualness despite some real heroism of substantive resistance.  The rest is song and dance. 
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>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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