19th century philosophy

Author: TASEEN MAHMOOD

Forlorn hope of a sad clown :(

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrdKi1wOb4A&ab_channel=CowboyBebopHD”

The clip I choose to talk about is from the 2002 anime “Cowboy Bebop”, in the show the protagonist Spike Spiegel, a bounty hunter, and his crew are in a futuristic space setting with sci-fi and Western elements. Specifically, I wanted to discuss the initial sequence from the twentieth episode “Pierrot le fou”. The reason I chose this clip is because it shows how we can come to know about an idea, being fearful; of evil in this instance, through the immersive medium of art as Schopenhauer suggested. This is achieved by reaching oneness between the object and through art which can help us get out of thinking by means solely of sufficient reason*.

 it achieves this oneness with the object in a way that is still beholden to sufficient reason but allows it to get beyond it through art. Schopenhauer says”. It therefore pauses at this particular thing; the course of time stops; the relations vanish for it; only the essential, the Idea, is its object.” (Schopenhauer WWR, bk.3, §36)

The visual of the red eye is a perfect example of what Schopenhauer is discussing, we only get quick frames of it and in that sense time stops and vanishes. But more importantly, the visual of the eye represents sight, vision, and one’s perspective and this combined with the earlier mentioned camera movement indicates that we are literally seeing Pierrot’s perspective literally and metaphorically. To read further into this, the exaggerated nature of the shot and the red color of the eye combined with the harsh eerie screeches of the music signal that this is not a normal perspective, it’s a foreboding one.

Another example of this is the last part of this sequence where our protagonist Spike, is staring down the barrel of Pierrot’s cane gun. The scene seems to slow time down as we switch from seeing Spike’s perspective of staring down the gun of a barrel/to the features he notes about Pierrot and also Pierrot’s perspective of Spike in this vulnerable position. Showing spikes perspective forces us to feel the way he does (as much as art can) and in this way we are becoming one with the object, ie Spike. Moreover This scene acts as a meditation on death/fear of death, as the viewer is forced to view the barrel of a gun for an uncomfortably long time, but it also shows how helpless Spike ultimately is in the situation. In addition the helpless feeling spike is feeling is paralleled by the viewer who feels helpless under this uncomfortable visual of a gun barrel. Reading deeper into this, the forced perspective combined with the gun personifying death itself in this instance( ‘as hunger does to teeth’) and Pierrot embodying fear, calls back to images of a grim reaper which we are helpless and are reminded of through the perspective of spike.

The Best Worst Movie

I was scrolling through Instagram while in bed and this meme struck me as funny, initially for the shock factor of devaluing someone’s entire argument with such a silly argument. But as I was sending it to my friends and rereading the original argument the dialectical nature of what it was saying sunk into me. Whether or not this is true is beside the point, the idea that we want to experience bad things instead of good things is counterintuitive but it makes sense in a bad-faith sort of way. We have anxiety about thoughts, especially of tastes, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to talk down on Morbius than it is to give a thoughtful and well-thought-out analysis of Casablanca. Moreover, the idea that we turn to YouTube for validation of those bad things is interesting because it’s almost denying us the freedom of forming our original thoughts while virtually (literally and metaphorically) simulating having those thoughts, “that YouTuber or movie critic is thinking exactly what I’m thinking” this may be true, or it might be a form of copium that people tell themselves instead of forming genuine opinions that could put their SELF-generated thoughts and opinions on display to be criticized. In that sense they were slowly moving away from Sarte and into the man of the hour Hegel (cheers). 

“They must engage in this struggle, for each must elevate its self-certainty of existing for itself to truth, both in the other and in itself. And it is solely by staking one’s life that freedom is proven to be the essence….

The individual who has not risked his life may admittedly be recognized as a person,12 but he has not achieved the truth of being recognized as a self-sufficient self-consciousness. As each risks his own life, each must likewise aim at the death of the other,” (187) 

In this sense the person who watches a YouTube video, movie critic, etc, and virtually has those thoughts and opinions escapes from this death battle with an artificial sense of victory over some other self-counciness while never actually putting anything on the line. They don’t have any risk but reap the psychological reward. This person is just that person, they are not self-sufficient self-consciousness. This also parallels the broader structure of the meme itself, we are avoiding the death battle(remember I said it didn’t matter if it was true or not), the “good” argument that the original user posted is not the one we saw or enjoyed, it was the “bad” response that was promoted and recommended by the black box of the Instagram algorithm. I can’t for certain say that if the counter to the original user was a good argument it would be less popular but it most likely would be. Instagram recommends memes not well throughout arguments in a format that allows for context. Moreover, given the context that I am showing you this meme and I got it from a meme page, I am both the nodding person to the meme page and the YouTuber to the person currently reading this. 

In addition, the use of the words BAD and GOOD have inverted meaning in this scenario. While usually, a good movie is something we would want to watch and a bad movie is something we don’t want to watch, this implies the opposite and thus flips the meanings of what makes a good and bad movie. A bad movie is good because you can virtually nod your head along to its critiques and a good movie isn’t good anymore because we don’t want to watch them. Moreover, YouTube can be thought of as the mediating middle here because it is what causes bad movies to become good. Ultimately we can’t mean what we say.