Profane Exegesis section on Channel Four double-bill, Waking Life, and A

Ma Soer,

Robert K. Hogg

…The end of history as we know it would be the end of the ego’s rule – a
reversal of the subconscious orientation in fear.(to a conscious orientation in love –
Ken Carey – The Third Millennium). This why you’ll find such a simplistic dismissal
of any of these ideas. It also serves to cover their own literalism though attributing it
to others. Holy doublethink, Batman. Because of the need to present themselves as
“professional” and “grown-up,” and as a group, they reflect society’s taboo on
displaying overt anger, instead, displacing and expressing it through indirect
aggression, distortion, obfuscation, omission etc. But being on such a higher level
than the rest of us, they needn’t concern themselves with such trivialities.

To the ego, the ego is God, and guiltless must be interpreted as the final guilt
that justifies murder.

The Guiltless World/Chapter 13. ACIM

Whispering Bob Harris

Meanwhile back in the real world... A film called Waking Life is on (2001). It’s
by Richard Linklater. I didn’t recognise the name at first, but the fact it’s initially shot
live than transferred to CGI reminded me of his A Scanner Darkly, based on Dick’s
novel. That and that it’s about “a dreaming man as he attempts to discern the
difference between waking life and the dreamworld.” As a cartoon. You’d think that
might be the first clue. The theme is very PKD of course, not to mention ACIM. It’s
going to take my full attention I see, Must remember to catch Regina Spektor on
Jonathan Ross. I forgot yesterday; it’s repeated. This is a Phildickian-like discussion
on philosophy. And Terence MacKenna-like. And Peter Russell. And Eddie Izzard.
Not really. Unless you include a bit of lateral thinking. He’s on Ross. He was voted
one of the top five funniest men in the world. T. really likes him. I used to, until I
realized he’s only quite funny. The funniest was and most likely is, Sadowitz; Gerry.
Jerry I mean. I was almost helpless when I saw him at the Playhouse years back.
He’s brilliant. Woody Allen is still brilliant I think. The most gifted and inspired
overall. This film is more interesting than my remarks here.

That was quite a double bill. on Channel Four and now I’m too tired. PKD
came up in the film. Trust my video to pack up for good. But it was all there. How
he believed time was an illusion, but also that we we're still living in 50 AD, in
Roman times. But he’d said 70 AD in Radio Free Albemuth, his posthumously
published novel. The character in the film went on to say that Dick believed that
there is only now – and this is where I really perked up - and God offers us the “holy
instant;” a means to become one with eternity, but we say no thank you, and as it’s
repeatedly offered, from moment to moment we continue to say no thank you. (I’d
just say we refuse it). I’ve been saying this for years as it’s a central theme of the
Course. It also comes up in the section, A Moment of Quantum Awakening in Carey’s
Third Millennium, published almost 20 years ago. It's what it's all about.

The film on after Waking Life, was A Ma Soer, also 2001, about a 14 year old
French girl who is seduced by an older Italian student, and her relationship with her
plump and less attractive sister, who is relatively shapeless by comparison, though we
do get to see her chubby little tits for some reason; maybe that was the reason. The
review says she’s traumatized by her sister’s affair, though I saw little evidence of
that. She was quite matter of fact about it, and it explored their relationship and how
it affected them. Interesting to see the director is a woman: Catherine Breillat. I
couldn’t imagine it being made by a man, or perhaps I could, but his motives would
be questioned.
The seducer intent on taking her virginity was as emotionally manipulative a
mediocrity as you might expect, with his clichés about how it will prove she really
loves him etc. It shifts laterto her protests at her mother saying her father intends to
involve the Vice Squad and press charges. I’d lost track of where they were driving
to, but they sleep outside in the car late at night, and due to the tenor of the film I felt
very uneasy at what might be coming, what with their attractive chain-smoking
mother and younger sis wearing a short dress which came up to the tops of her thighs.
I sensed it again when the slim older sister is walking back to the car from the service
station in her tight t-shirt and nice figure and she looks slight and vulnerable. This is
still in the daytime. Later she and her mother discuss what happened and the 14 year
old says she still can’t stop thinking about him, and her mother tells her he’s already
forgotten her. The daughter calls her a bitch, but without bitterness,
Earlier, there was an ominous moment when a lorry driver looks out his window
at the youngest, sitting inertly in the back seat as he passes and she sees it. Later,
they’re sleeping or the mother is when the windscreen is shattered and the mother
knocked out or killed in one swift movement and the bloke is in the car and throttling
the older daughter who has no defence against him while the other watches quietly
from the back seat. When she’s dead, the younger daughter gets out of the car and is
backing off while the homicidal maniac is moving towards her slowly and
menacingly. I think she runs and and he catches up just inside a wood. The scene
shifts to the following morning and forensics and the police have taken over the
scene. Then the girl is being led from the woods by a couple of plain clothes
detectives, and one says she says she wasn’t raped. She goes on to protest, “Well I
wasn’t! Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.” The film ends.

The oldest daughter, along with sis, met the Italian at a café, when as there’s
nowhere else to sit, he suggests they share his table. He's sucking on a cigarette the
whole time. The conversation seems innocuous enough, then he takes her hand and
holds it while kissing and virtually sucking it. I expect them both to laugh and the
older girl to snatch it back and ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, but no such
thing.
I’m not sure what the purpose of such an ending was; what the director or writer
was trying to say. On top of being seduced – basically conned in order to get access
to her body, and snatch her virginity, she’s also murdered for the sake of sex in a blitz
attack by a kind of “fiend” who doesn’t bother with the niceties of seduction. And as
he doesn’t rape her – unless he came back and fucked her corpse after finishing with
the sister, we can only assume his goal was to get rid of the rest as quickly as possible
in order to have the younger girl to himself.

Earlier in the film, her attitude to sex is portrayed as unsentimental and

pragmatic. She doesn’t care about “being in love” with the person she gives up her
virginity to, unlike her older sister, who is still enamoured of the serial seducer she’s
involved with. So when she says later, that she wasn’t raped, this seems to be a
statement of independence, emotionally; denial more like. One can safely assume this
is not what she had in mind. Yet, it would be the right use of denial. Why should she
see the degenerate as having had any effect on her if she doesn’t want to?
There’s no reaction portrayed as to the violent death of her sister and her mother,
though we can assume she isn’t overjoyed about it. Cheerful stuff, huh? And in the
portrayal of such a malignant destiny or fate, such dire events, it’s as if the director is
demonstrating the sheer selfishness and otherness of the sexual impulse or the drive
for sex, as well as, inevitably, the same of certain men – and women – and that they
are very much like each other; the only difference is in the way they choose to go
about it.
Or at least the portrayal of murder tends to have that effect on me. It’s
interesting Channel Four showed these films one after the other; a double bill of sorts.
That was the “sacred and profane” right there. Carlyle’s “Eternal Yes, or Eternal No.”
Eternal innocence or eternal guilt. Some of the ego’s most powerful symbols of guilt
– the most powerful some might say, in the corruption and murder of 'innocence'.
And before that, a film which centres on the possibility of the world being a kind of
waking dream, which it is of course, as well as invoking the writings and thoughts of
PKD as its symbol of a possible way out of it, through God’s “holy instant;” the self
expanding to eternity/experiencing itself as eternity and real Self in the Mind of God.
I missed Regina Spektor again on Jonathan Ross.