Firstly, I’m sorry for the emotions, my childhood turning point evokes. The pic is an example of mine. I wasn’t going to include it, but I feel like it gives a good visceral example of deep messages in movies (of course actual philosophy, and non emotionally devastating examples apply, too). I just watched a clip on a study on some elderly men, taken to a time warp hotel, and asked to pretend it was that time, and it had huge positive effects on their physical capabilities and mental capacity. And it reminded me of the power of hope, it’s not just embedded in the happy ending, where everything works out ok. Or the promise of it. Hope is also the core of resilience, necessary for driving each step that carries you along the yellow brick road.
I’ll share mine here, so you get an idea what I’m asking. I was devastated watching the scene above, as a kid. But also, I saw Atreus ability to keep going, not only not giving up, and therefore not sinking in a place that takes you if you do, but then also carrying the weight of the grief of his life companion. And he was now alone, realising his mortality and facing, what he is told, are impossible odds. He still keeps going. I think, to child me, there was so much power in seeing something is possible. I believed I, too, could survive anything. And even if I were alone, I could still survive anything, because that power came from inside me, no one can take that from you. “Don’t let the darkness take you” the darkness is an external force. It wants to creep in and convince you to buy it’s snake oils.
There is so much power in convincing people the “darkness” is inevitable, there is nothing else. I see it all around me, embedded in the propaganda, convincing us not to resist, that resistance is futile. Half of the battle is in our own heads, and the brainwashing swamps we wade through, now.
What are your tools of resilience, your keys for undoing the fight or flight, all the horrifying videos around us are designed, to evoke, to keep our thinking brains detached, and only our “run hide” brains active, so we can’t think, so we can’t plan, so we just sink in and accept?
What’s helped you get back up, when you have fallen? From whatever sources, I just feel like, maybe now is a time, it’s important to share a shoulder to cope on. Or even just moved you, to an extent it changed your perspective or way of thinking?
CoCo fundamentally changed the way I think about death and the value of memory. I went into it knowing almost nothing about Día de los Muertos, so I wasn’t expecting it to affect me as deeply as it did.
The idea that someone can disappear forever only when they are no longer remembered hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. It was such a sad thought, but strangely comforting too. Sad because it means there is a kind of “second loss” that can come with time, but comforting because it suggests that the people we love are never truly gone as long as we carry them with us, speak their names, and keep their stories alive.
That idea stayed with me long after the movie ended. It made death feel less like a hard ending and more like a responsibility of love through memory.
Plus, the music is amazing.
It’s about grief and depression. Oh and having a shitty dad. The depression part hit too hard when I was a kid and didn’t understand how bad my depression was.
That Japanese one from the Ghibli movies.
So whimsical!
The Kara No Kyoukai anthology influenced my imagination and how I view my inner world of art.
The perfect blend between minimalist, simple yet elegant design that is set in an urban setting.
South Park S3E10, Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery.
The whole episode is a Scooby-Doo parody, and it’s alright. But the joke that got me thinking was this:
Jonathan Davis: All right gang, we have to split up and look for clues!
Stan Marsh: How should we split up?
Jonathan Davis: I know! Let’s have everyone who enjoys having obstacles in their life which they can overcome go this way, and everyone whose insecurity sabotage their potential to overcome those obstacles go that way.
[Everyone says “OK!”, then splits up into two roughly equal groups]
Kyle Broflovski: Wow! That was easy!
They just all knew which group they were in immediately. Got me thinking about which group I was in.
Artax and Atreyu, this scene always made me cry. Luckly enough there is a Falkor
Heathers taught me something. Maybe that smoking is cool? No no that’s not right… Something about bombs… Or… Hmmm.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape gave me a good perspective on caring for my loved ones, especially ones who have a hard time caring for themselves.
The Groundhog Day taught be a lot about acceptance and trying to make the best of whatever situation I’m in.
Two come to mjnd:
Star Trek 2 - The Wrath of Khan.
Spock gives his life to save his friends, willingly and without pause. And his best friend has to say goodbye to him.
Of course, the first time I saw it I didn’t know what was coming next, so to me it was final, and devastating.
It prepared me well for things that happened IRL later on.
Secondly, because I don’t want to be 100% on a downer, the finale of Labyrinth. “You have no power over me” nudged me towards the idea that many people who profess to be in charge of you only have that power because they say they do. And you can take that back for yourself.
Threads and The Day After taught me that there are people out there that would rather be right, than alive.
The final scene of Threads really fucked me up, I already had birth trauma and that scene gave me proper wake-up-screaming nightmares for months.
Threads and Where the wind blows taught me that there is no living after a nuclear war. Just a excruciating decline and collapse
For this if we can add TV shows I’d say quite a few scenes from Andor, the excellent speeches, when Keeno Lot wasn’t able to swim, the whole show is filled with scenes like this.
For me it was the unalterable cyclic time travel in 12 monkeys, coupled with the rebellious themes. That movie hit hard and made me think when i was young (probs like 10?). Hands down favorite movie, and i credit it with a lot of my philosophical view of the universe. I believe everything is deterministic, and if you were to know all the information about every atom in the universe at any slice of time, you could entirely predict the future. Its completely untestable, of course, but it makes sense to me. After all, everything is physics.
If you haven’t seen it I’ll recommend you give Devs a watch. It’s a compelling take on a similar theme.
But then there’s quantum physics
Thats fine, if you have the power to know where every atom in the universe is at a given time, as well as its trajectory and momentum, it would still be knowable. You’d need to have some pretty damned advanced knowledge for that anyway, so from a practical standpoint it doesn’t matter that we couldn’t reconcile it with our present models. They could be completely wrong, for all we know.
Darlin’, forever is a long, long time. And time has a way of changin’ things.
The Fox and the Hound
Artax? Really? Fuck you!
You didn’t have to post this shit but you chose violence. Fuck you for making me cry in a holidayYeah fuck that shit. I was on a good stretch of not thinking about Artax death for I don’t know 1 or 2 years and this post comes from nowhere like sucker punch. This is like the twisted version of The game. Dammit.
