EQUUS, After the Fall, communists and horses
SO I read a few interesting (not thrilling) books. A memoir: AFTER THE FALL by Jana Hensel and a play, EQUUS (ardent life in a lifeless world) by Peter Shaffer. They have nothing in common other than being hardbacks.
Usually I pick books from reviews or word of mouth, not research into a movie. But
AFTER THE FALL was a result research into the movie THE EDUKATORS (German movie, see previous rantings the épater le bourgeois Movie ). The term ‘ostalgia’ -a longing for things (pickles to lifestyles) from before the fall of the Berlin wall. Its a memoir of a teen girl in German in the 1990s. How East Berliners came to be part of (if not fit into) the West. (THE WEST makes it sound great, that is not my intent).
One interesting thing was the collective German Past, the WEST GERMANS were rather aware of the role of HITLER, to the point of guilt. THE EAST felt he was a fascist and they had defeated his evil forces – no guilt there. I had taken collective German Guilt for granted…… just from what I had read…
There are the expected comments on shallow western consumerism, mind numbing tv, and social anonymity. And little insights: the East Germans were not super social, dropping in and greeting guests with genuine joy, ‘glad you are here.’ They did not have telephones so they had to DROP IN unannounced, and it was only polite to be sociable – COMRADELY! Will Cell phones do away with friendship??
And the (to me) most horrible aspect: Adults in their 40s lost jobs – state industry supported plants vanished and the workers who had been ‘set’ had to start as 20s something’s in stores and stuff. (OH, you WORK FOR FORD??) And the parents also lost their children, if not physically emotionally: it was a new world, their world was gone (like Chrissie y Hynde’s ohio City was gone – both Chrissie Hynde and Jana lost their train stations, Leipzig and Akron . . . (the LEIPZIG OF OHIO!)
Even Chrssie’s song can summarize AFTER THE FALL: MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES SLOWLY SWIRLED PAST
(NOW I WONDER IF LENIN WALKED ON WATER????)
++++
OH, EQUUS. One of those things I had heard about but never looked into. Now its making a big theater splash with a former wizard as the star.
The play is the story a kid who blinds horses (he has cared for with great affection ) –violently blinded them with a sharp object, then is sent to therapy in the hopes of avoiding prison (not necessarily his hopes as much as the hopes of a benevolent magistrate). The boy’s father is an atheist (with secrets); his mother a devout religious soul – a wonderful homelife. The shrink unfullfilled.
It’s the story of the kid and the shrink, the kid confused, the shrink frustrated . . . a question raised: do shrinks have the god given right to change people, if they do change people are they playing god? Have they destroyed an ‘individual’ to make society safer . . . then the big cutting observation . . . that has something for everyone, to keep you feeling good/rotten/lazy/ about yourself:
Dystart (the Psychiatrist) to Hesther Salomon (a magistrate, like the name?)
As well as:
SEEING THE BOY who has ‘galloped’ i.e. LIVED the shrink realizes his life is suffering a fullfillment crisis….
PUT THAT IN YOUR BRAIN AND SMOKE IT……….
Usually I pick books from reviews or word of mouth, not research into a movie. But
AFTER THE FALL was a result research into the movie THE EDUKATORS (German movie, see previous rantings the épater le bourgeois Movie ). The term ‘ostalgia’ -a longing for things (pickles to lifestyles) from before the fall of the Berlin wall. Its a memoir of a teen girl in German in the 1990s. How East Berliners came to be part of (if not fit into) the West. (THE WEST makes it sound great, that is not my intent).
One interesting thing was the collective German Past, the WEST GERMANS were rather aware of the role of HITLER, to the point of guilt. THE EAST felt he was a fascist and they had defeated his evil forces – no guilt there. I had taken collective German Guilt for granted…… just from what I had read…
There are the expected comments on shallow western consumerism, mind numbing tv, and social anonymity. And little insights: the East Germans were not super social, dropping in and greeting guests with genuine joy, ‘glad you are here.’ They did not have telephones so they had to DROP IN unannounced, and it was only polite to be sociable – COMRADELY! Will Cell phones do away with friendship??
And the (to me) most horrible aspect: Adults in their 40s lost jobs – state industry supported plants vanished and the workers who had been ‘set’ had to start as 20s something’s in stores and stuff. (OH, you WORK FOR FORD??) And the parents also lost their children, if not physically emotionally: it was a new world, their world was gone (like Chrissie y Hynde’s ohio City was gone – both Chrissie Hynde and Jana lost their train stations, Leipzig and Akron . . . (the LEIPZIG OF OHIO!)
Even Chrssie’s song can summarize AFTER THE FALL: MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES SLOWLY SWIRLED PAST
(NOW I WONDER IF LENIN WALKED ON WATER????)
++++
OH, EQUUS. One of those things I had heard about but never looked into. Now its making a big theater splash with a former wizard as the star.
The play is the story a kid who blinds horses (he has cared for with great affection ) –violently blinded them with a sharp object, then is sent to therapy in the hopes of avoiding prison (not necessarily his hopes as much as the hopes of a benevolent magistrate). The boy’s father is an atheist (with secrets); his mother a devout religious soul – a wonderful homelife. The shrink unfullfilled.
It’s the story of the kid and the shrink, the kid confused, the shrink frustrated . . . a question raised: do shrinks have the god given right to change people, if they do change people are they playing god? Have they destroyed an ‘individual’ to make society safer . . . then the big cutting observation . . . that has something for everyone, to keep you feeling good/rotten/lazy/ about yourself:
Dystart (the Psychiatrist) to Hesther Salomon (a magistrate, like the name?)
I go on about my wife. Have you thought about the husband, the finicky, critical
husband with his art books on mythical Greece? What worship has he
ever known? Without worship, you shrink I shrank my own
life. No one can do it for you. I settle for being pallid and
provincial out of my own eternal timidity, the old story of bluster and do
bugger all. I didn't even dare to have children, didn't dare to bring children
into a house, a marriage, as cold as mine. I tell everyone "Margaret's the
puritan, I'm the pagan." Some pagan! Such wild returns I make to the
womb of civilisation. Three weeks a year in the Mediterranean, bed booked
in advance, meals paid for. Cautious jaunts in hired cars, suitcase crammed with
Kaopectate. What a fantastic surrender to the primitive. "Primitive." I use the
word endlessly. "Ah, the primitive world," I say. "What instinctual
truths were lost with it." And while I sit there baiting that poor,
unimaginative woman with the word, that freaky boy is trying to conjure
the reality. I look at pages of centaurs trampling the soil of Argos, and
that boy is trying to become one in a Hampshire field! I sit there
watching that woman knitting, a woman I haven't kissed in six years
And he stands for an hour in the dark, sucking the sweat off his god's
hairy cheek. Then in the morning I put away my books on the cultural
shelf, close up my Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus, touch my reproduction
statue of Dionysus for luck, and go off to the hospital to
treat him for insanity. Now do you see?
As well as:
All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear. . .but that boy has known a
passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. . .that's what
his stare has been saying to me all the time, 'at least I galloped! When did
you?'. . .
--- Dr. Martin Dysar
SEEING THE BOY who has ‘galloped’ i.e. LIVED the shrink realizes his life is suffering a fullfillment crisis….
PUT THAT IN YOUR BRAIN AND SMOKE IT……….
