Re: [FairfieldLife] "Enlightened" and FFL, continued
Since making fun of men as being feminine and/or gay seems to be in vogue now I feel compelled to share my experiences since my awakening which has made me definitely more feminine - though one of the girls I flirted with disagreed, quite unequivocally by remarking that I was quite masculine - thanks Jenny but you are too young for me - a whole Jupiter cycle ~ 12 years. Consequently in the past 2 years I have been hit upon by gay men and I have handled it with aplomb - thanking them and quoting.. If I was gay I would have loved too... It also gave an understanding of a woman's perspective and how they handle men, hitting on them, with such grace. I have conversely used gay jokes with men, good to use with Indian men since there are since they are very bigoted with respect to homosexuality. In fact I in jest walked up to an Asian man on the street and remarked that I and a friend of mine were not gay. I had an Indian friend of mine who called me gay at my reunion. He thought he could make fun of me but I turned the tables on him. I said I could turn just gay for him, soon made fun of him calling him a bi and asked for his wife's number. After we danced I told other friends that he was trying to molest me because he was mad at me for rejecting his advances..LOL. Needless to say he would have avoided trying to insult someone as a gay for a while :-) Then there was the more serious case of an older guy, not gay but more of a pervert who tried to hit on me. I was full of love and just could not but talk very lovingly to him - this was right after my awakening. But the existence bailed me out. I was out smoking with my friend Car and when the pervert saw us I unconsciously moved towards Car, put a hand on his shoulder and introduced him to the pervert. He figured Car was my partner and that was the end of him trying to pursue any further..LOL..
Re: [FairfieldLife] "Enlightened" and FFL, continued
I probably look at the show a little differently than you though they
are definitely lampooning zealousness. Dern would have her experience
from TM and probably Lynch's zealousness while Mike White has a whole
different angle. His dad was a closet gay writer for people like Pat
Robertson and so probably had Jayzuz thrust down his throat. Then there
is the lampooning of corporate America. Even the kayaking thing is a bit
lampooning and the MC Gainey ("Lost") character as a former TV show
writer ripping Hollywood. And of course corporate America is or was
very into these kayaking things as "team building" events. Never
participated in one though the company would have some. It would have
been a good way to kill myself. ;-)
And definitely Amy's mom and ex have issues so it is fair to delve into
those too. Not to mention her co-workers.
Problem is that it is not a "ha-ha" funny show. That may limit it to
one season. OTOH, "Hung" usually delivers some yucks and this last
episode had some good ones.
As for much of anyone seeing these series outside of an HBO subscription
or an illegal torrent they have to wait until dumb ass Time-Warner
releases them to disc or preferably streaming. Today there is an
article about declining revenue at Time-Warner's home video division at
News.com:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20128929-261/time-warners-home-video-revenue-plunges
For some reason their execs overvalue their products. When Hollywood
Video was still around he told me that Warner did not allow them to sell
the HBO series at the end of a rental run but had to send them back.
I'm even sure they were allowed to sell Warner DVDs due to the revenue
sharing agreement. Fact is a lot of other studios don't bother with
such nonsense.
Earlier this year when the 1930's film "Gabriel Over the White House"
was mentioned on Roger Ebert's "At the Movies" it was not available from
Netflix or anywhere for that matter. I was available for $20 as a
one-off DVD from Warner Classics. They have WMV streaming version for
$15 which you "own" in that you can play it any time you want. But I
couldn't play it on my BD player so opted for the DVD instead. I really
wasn't interested in buying the disc but just watching it. A Netflix
streaming version would have been just fine or second to that a DVD
rental. But this title never was mass produced on DVD, just VHS.
Pricing content is a high art form and something I think that MBA
schooled execs are clueless about. Even my client I have done some game
ports for when I asked how some of the titles were selling because IMO
he has them priced too high told me he perceived their value at that.
Problem is the public doesn't. And that's who you need to please to
sell anything. That doesn't mean you have to give it away either.
On 11/02/2011 02:41 AM, turquoiseb wrote:
> To some extent, I've been less charmed by the latest two episodes of
> HBO's "Enlightened" while watching it, but in retrospect I've realized
> that Mike White and Laura Dern *are* still dealing with material that is
> relevant to FFL and to the cult of spiritual narcissism; it's just more
> subtle than in the first 2 episodes.
>
> It's now been a week since Amy has returned from her idyllic (although
> enforced) retreat in Hawaii. Her epiphany -- whatever it was -- had
> faded in significance, and now she's focused on trying to still "live an
> enlightened life" out in the real world. In Ep4, confronted with her
> first weekend, she has to figure out what to do with it.
>
> She first decides to spend it meditating, which gives us a classic (and
> hilarious) opportunity to listen to her inner thoughts" in pretty much
> the classic TMer meditation. That is, all thoughts, no silence, all
> trivia and self-involvement. Her first thoughts are about being 40 and
> having wrinkles. Then she "comes back to the mantra" and tries to
> visualize something more positive, and lapses into thoughts of a happier
> time. But then, inspired by visions of that happy time, she sets out to
> recreate this fantasy happier time. And that's where the trouble begins.
>
> She phones her ex-husband in the middle of the night, waking him, and
> tells him that he's just got to go off river rafting with her. At 7:00
> AM the next morning. And here's where the connection to TM and to
> cultism comes in; she doesn't *ask* him whether he wants to go, she
> tells him that he needs to, and makes the reservations herself. Being
> essentially a nice guy, he thinks she's crazy, but agrees to go anyway.
> They get there, are out on the river, and for a few minutes both are
> feeling a little of the fantasy happiness she was seeking.
>
> But then reality intrudes. She finds that he brought along a bag full of
> drugs and, offended in the way that only a New Age twif can be offended,
> throws them away. He goes ballistic, and storms away, her following. As
> he finds a new stash and gets high, she harangues h
[FairfieldLife] "Enlightened" and FFL, continued
To some extent, I've been less charmed by the latest two episodes of HBO's "Enlightened" while watching it, but in retrospect I've realized that Mike White and Laura Dern *are* still dealing with material that is relevant to FFL and to the cult of spiritual narcissism; it's just more subtle than in the first 2 episodes. It's now been a week since Amy has returned from her idyllic (although enforced) retreat in Hawaii. Her epiphany -- whatever it was -- had faded in significance, and now she's focused on trying to still "live an enlightened life" out in the real world. In Ep4, confronted with her first weekend, she has to figure out what to do with it. She first decides to spend it meditating, which gives us a classic (and hilarious) opportunity to listen to her inner thoughts" in pretty much the classic TMer meditation. That is, all thoughts, no silence, all trivia and self-involvement. Her first thoughts are about being 40 and having wrinkles. Then she "comes back to the mantra" and tries to visualize something more positive, and lapses into thoughts of a happier time. But then, inspired by visions of that happy time, she sets out to recreate this fantasy happier time. And that's where the trouble begins. She phones her ex-husband in the middle of the night, waking him, and tells him that he's just got to go off river rafting with her. At 7:00 AM the next morning. And here's where the connection to TM and to cultism comes in; she doesn't *ask* him whether he wants to go, she tells him that he needs to, and makes the reservations herself. Being essentially a nice guy, he thinks she's crazy, but agrees to go anyway. They get there, are out on the river, and for a few minutes both are feeling a little of the fantasy happiness she was seeking. But then reality intrudes. She finds that he brought along a bag full of drugs and, offended in the way that only a New Age twif can be offended, throws them away. He goes ballistic, and storms away, her following. As he finds a new stash and gets high, she harangues him with what a low-life he is, continually insisting that she's doing it for his own good, trying to get him to become the person he could be. Problem is, it's not the person he wants to be. From his POV (and, by this time, the audience's), *she* is the one living in a delusional world, and worse, she's consistently treating not only him but *everyone* around her as if they're lesser than she is. The *only* way she can imagine interfacing with these "lesser" people is to try to convert them, to infect them with her hypomania and make them more like her. Fortunately Levi (Luke Wilson) finally has it up to here with her condescending, superior BS and tells her to fuck off and leave him alone. He tells her something she has never realized, that the way she sees him makes him feel like shit, because she sees him *as* shit, compared to her and her new fantasy lifestyle. That's where I think the real connection to FFL -- especially recently -- comes in. This place has been a hotbed of people asserting that they not only have the right to try to change people they don't like, they've been asserting that it's some kind of ethical or moral duty, and that anyone who *doesn't* "do as they do" and try to impose their view of how things should be on others is ethically deficient. Bzt. As Curtis has pointed out so well, this just does not compute. The only environment in which such a 'tude *does* compute is a cult, especially one that has a history of treating its members like children who "need" to be corrected by their betters. In other words, the TM movement. Such a sense of entitlement has no place on a forum composed of adults. Adults don't really need anyone to "stand up for them" when someone says something about them that they might not agree with. Adults suck it up and realize that the other person's view of them is just as valid as their own. They don't go around trying to impose their values on other people; they just do what adults do, try to do their best to live up to their own values, and allow others to do the same. Groups can't become cults if the people in them act like adults. They can only become cults if most of them act like children, and as if the gurus and the fellow cultists around them trying to make them "more like them" are right. Me, in this rap and in any of my others, I'm not trying to change any of you and make you more like anything, much less me. All I do occasionally is point out that there are many on this forum who ARE trying to change you and make you more like them. If you like that, and like being treated like children by those who feel that they are entitled to treat you that way, go for it. I'm going to -- as Curtis suggests -- focus more on ignoring the "entitled" and hanging out with folks who are a little more like adults.
[FairfieldLife] "Enlightened" and FFL, continued
Since my first posts about this new HBO series seem to have generated a veritable firestorm of overreaction and hysteria, I might as well continue talking about it. :-) The more I see the overreaction to what I wrote here on FFL (most of it from people who haven't even seen the series themselves), the more respect I have for Mike White and Laura Dern, creators of the series. They *could* have taken the low road, and tried to create only a parody of the New Age and all things spiritual. Lord knows they need to be parodied and made fun of, for their own good, but still that's just so easy to pull off there is no challenge in it. What they did instead is to create the character of Amy and make her more multi-dimensional, more real. Yes, she's nuttier than a fruitcake. "Before enlight- enment, scream like a madwoman and act crazy; after enlightenment, scream like a madwoman and act crazy." But she may have ALSO had a realization experience of some kind while in that Hawaiian Woo Woo ashram. The questions that thus might be dealt with in the series (I've only seen one episode, after all, and can only speculate about the rest) are big ones: * Does having had a realization experience or having become enlightened actually MATTER? * Will or should anyone treat you differently if/when you become enlightened? So far in the series, the answers to both questions are "No." Amy is as insufferable enlightened as she was unenlightened. Having read reviews that reveal a bit of next week's episode, when she arrives at work expecting her bit of blackmail to have worked and be put into a management position, she's going to be shown to a dark, dingy basement and given a job in data entry. So how is one of the "enlightened" going to react to being treated just like everyone else, and be required to do repetitive, unrewarding work, just like everyone else? My bet is...uh...not well. Should be funny. But when you think about it, isn't this really a strong parallel to what we've seen on FFL many times? People show up here claiming to be enlightened, and expecting to be treated the way that they believe the enlightened "should" be treated. That is, with rapt awe and respect, and as if every word they write is precious knowledge conferred on us by our betters. And that doesn't happen. Instead, the world looks at these pompous enlightenment pretenders and judges them the same way they'd judge anyone else -- by their actual behavior and what they actually say and do. What the "enlightened" CLAIM about their inner experiences or their own state of consciousness doesn't mean shit; on FFL only what they actually DO matters. Same in "Enlightened," the TV series. Amy can believe she's enlightened all she wants to, but the world is going to treat her the way it winds up treating her. She doesn't get any special breaks for having had some nifty subjective experience. It should be interesting to watch how she deals with this. One thing is sure -- Amy simply CANNOT POSSIBLY react to others disbelieving in her enlightenment any worse than her fellow enlightenment pretenders on FFL have -- in the past and in the present. The parallels should make watching -- and continuing to report on -- this TV series really fun.
