A very interesting article in the LA Times about how Supreme Court justice John Stevens was clerking for SCJ Wiley Rutledge when the court had to decide on the legality of the trial against Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita. The court ruled 6-2 in favor, but Rutledge wrote an impassionate discent about how what what differentiates us from our opponents was the rule of law. Apparently Stevens took that to heart, and it was a major reason why he led the court to find that the US was bound (imagine that) by the Geneva Conventions.
Author: marga (Page 119 of 158)
Note: This note contains spoilers
I don’t know what to make of The Descent, the new horror movie that’s getting greating reviews online. As a horror movie I didn’t think it was that great. It relied on jolts and thrills – a monster appearing out of nowhere – which got boring after a while (though I still screamed when I saw them).
I was also disturbed by the movies allegorical meaning – but this was ’cause I couldn’t find a concrete story behind the story. At its most evident, this was a story about a woman who is fighting her demons from the accident that took her husband’s and daughter’s life. But there are many other symbols in the movie that are not as easy to explain. For one, there are lots of phallic symbols: the sticks that killed her family, the logs on the truck at the end of the movie, the weapons they manufacture and use to kill the monsters and those cone-shaped mineral deposits so common in caves whose name for the life of me I can’t remember. There are also several female symbols, of which the hole they climb down to the cave is only the first and most evident one.
Then there is birth. At one point all the women pass through the birth canal, or rather a small opening in the rocks filled with water. They do this head first, struggling to pass until Sara, the protagonist, gets stuck. “Breathe, breathe” says her friend, as she squirms and panics and can’t get out. Once out the rocks fall down and they can’t get back in. Imagine that.
Then there is the struggle to find their way, lost as they are in the big cave. Then one of them falls and injures herself, and then the monsters appear. The monsters are very similar to gollem from Lord of the Rings, but also to fetuses. The monsters eat the women until they kill them, though the women fight them.
But what does it mean? Are the monsters the women’s demons? The women’s subconcious? In the struggle for life, are we all willing to eat one another? Or is it our children who are eating us alive?
Can’t really tell. Finally all the women die save for two, the protagonist and the Tombraider type who had been having an affair with the protagonist (Sarah)’s husband. Sara kills her – kills her hold over her? just expresses her anger? And later on, after she’s reborn again (coming out of the cave, breathing, breathing) and escapes, she finds her seating besides her car. A new demon to fight, this one is not well dead.
So no, I’m not sure that it actually means something beyond some cool symbols the director thought to put together but especulating about it is more fun than waiting for each golem to jump up at you.
Well, I’m really tired, so much so taht I’m typing with my eyes closed (let’s hope I have my fingers on the right keys). Time to go to sleep.
Am I the last to hear about the earthquakes in Tajikistan? Here is the UN press release. They are providing all of $20K to assist 9,000 people.
This news about a child rape in Zimbabwe is, of course, nothing new. Throughout southern Africa men have been raping young children, including babies (who are often killed in the process), under the idea that that will cure them of AIDS.
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