141 words / 76:09
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In the fall of 2000, I taught an adult education class entitled Philosophy on Film, where we discussed The Matrix, American Beauty, Ground Hog Day, Network, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Gattaca, and Crimes and Misdemeanors.
The Pulp Fiction lecture from October 18, 2000, is presented here. It was recorded on a cassette player, so the sound quality is not great. But I thought it worth sharing anyway. There are some abrupt transitions in the last thirty minutes especially, due to the fact that I edited out questions from the audience. I have tapes of all the classes except the one on Fight Club.
This is the original source of my Trevor Lynch essay on Pulp Fiction, which you can read here.
14 Comments
That was great
Can you put the rest of them up?
I wish I could have had Dr. Johnson for a professor back at Uni instead of the… well, you know.
joe hackenstuff sez:
Fact #51
If you play the film in chronological order, you have to change the name of it to “Marcellus Wallace Has a Very Bad Day”
First, he cuts the back of his head while shaving. Then his briefcase is taken by some punks. Then Marvin gets shot and he has to call in the Wolf to clean up the mess. Then, his briefcase almost gets stolen again by a pair of idiots robbing a diner. Then he parts with Butch’s payoff money, never to see it again. Then his best henchman, Jules, quits. Then his wife accidentally OD’s on heroin and nearly dies. Then Butch double crosses him and kills his fighter, burning him for a million dollars. Then his other henchman, Vincent, is blown away. Then he gets run over. There go the goddamn donuts. Then Butch kicks his ass. Finally he’s raped by a bunch of hillbilly freaks.
So it was a pretty bad day…
(But he does get his briefcase back)
I really enjoy these. I’m surprised you haven’t started a once a week show on gumroad, for example. Other people in our circles have shows for around $5 to $10 a month and do pretty well. It could just be a movie review show so it’s not removed.
I’m sure you’ve thought of this but I thought I’d just throw it out there.
I would definitely like to hear your take on Gattaca.
Another Hudson Hawk fan!
Criminally underrated movie. Not the best thing ever but people used to joke about how bad of a movie it was and it really was not that bad at all.
I couldn’t sleep last night and was very grateful to have this brilliant discussion to listen to! Except that … it was so stimulating it didn’t put me to sleep.
OT I heard a meanie republic bashing our economic skills. We may resemble his remarks, but it’s never too late to improve and surpass these people altogether. I find that certain popular books have helped to grasp, “grok” certain subjects better than the college courses I took. A good heuristic understanding of Econ can be had from Heillbrun’s Worldly Philosophers, and perhaps even better New Ideas From Dead Economists, which is more modern and has a better discussion of the law of comparative advantages. They recount the historical development of the subject by means of colorful biographies. Keynes’s sexual habits are described. Hidden Order was one I read in college which I think was good, but the other two first.
I never understood math in it’s greater structure until I read Journey Through Genius by Dunham. Cheesy title but great book. The sequel is good too. It would really speak to philosophers.
Brief History of Time is good for physics. Some people have complained that they didn’t understand it. Maybe you need to have studied calculus, although there’s none in it.
We shoild have a monthly reading group at this website.
That was a great talk. I think you do best with things you like.
You should take care to view and review lots of things you really enjoy, not for a selfish motive but because it leads to good work.
If you liked this talk you’ll also like this one: https://www.bitchute.com/video/SLM5WW9x2aA/
CC team, I think this development would make good content for an article or podcast.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/03/27/protests-greet-repulsive-painting-by-italian-catholic-artist-depicting-antisemitic-blood-libel/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/prominent-italian-painter-unveils-a-work-depicting-anti-semitic-blood-libel/
The Art world.
Regards
Greg, please post your “Crimes” lecture. Most criticisms of Woody Allen are probably true, but “Crimes” is a profound film.
That was really good. I would like to hear more of these movie discussions, if they exist. One gets the impression that the author was already significantly red pilled at the time of the recording.
I once heard, second hand through a friend, that in the early days of the internet Tarantino himself was on a discussion thread, and he said that the contents of the briefcase represented Marcellus Wallace’s soul. The scar in the back of his head was where the soul was extracted. Supposedly this was based on Arabian mythology, wherein there is a sort of evil spirit that can filch the soul from an individual in such a manner. There was a lot more to the discussion, but I don’t remember.
Pulp fiction is full of degenerative propaganda