Re: Matriz reloaded

[Xenon Zi-Neng Yuan <wenhuadageming@xxxxxxxxx>]

henry,

your points are well-taken.  but does it really seem like i put more
emphasis on entertainment than life itself though?  maybe because i've
participated more on this thread than i ever expected, but then, so have
others it seems.  i'd argue, expecting criticism and comments, that perhaps
movies are not just mere street scenes, but narratives?  sure, in the
decadent american context, it's been warped into this commercialized and
alienated form, but haven't narratives always existed in human society (i'm
not saying they're more relevant than actual life experience and
observation)?  i ask as a youth trying to understand my "strong opinions
based on ignorance"...

speaking of which, i'm not yet even zhou enlai's cpc-founding age.  and i
never said working class youth weren't intellectually serious.  that
doesn't mean they have access to the same things as middle class folks
though, which was my point when saying many of them wouldn't have heard of
the movie "reds".

x. yuan

ps - thank you for the heads-up on nancy mitford


At 02:12 AM 5/15/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> There is nothing wrong with seeing a movie and having political thoughts
> stimulated by it anymore than walking down a sidewalk and seeing political
> implications in street scenes. But if you want those thoughts to add up to
> soemthing, you need to look at life, not movies. Life is good and should
> be enjoyed while one can, young or old.  Some are born old in spirit and
> others die with a young heart at old age.  This youth thing is part of the
> America culture and in reality there is nothing particularly attractive
> about youth.  Youth can be excused for not having the time or the
> discipline, or even the curiosity to be informed, but youth cannot be
> excused for strong opinions based on ignorance. Many of the Chinese
> revolutionaries were in their teens when they joined the revolution. Zhou
> En-lai was 24 when he participated in the founding of the Chinese
> Communist Party and Mao was 27.
>
> Nancy Mitford's best-loved novels are The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love
> in a Cold Climate (1949). She also wrote biogrophies: Madame de Pompadour
> (1953), Voltaire in Love (1957) and Frederick the Great (1970). She was
> also the editor of Nobless Oblige (1956), a collection of essays that
> revealed the behavioural secrets of the British upper class. The book
> coined the speech classification 'U' (upperclass) and 'non-U'. She also
> wrote the Sun King, a biography of Louis XIV in 1994.
>
> Many working class youths are much more serious and intelelctual than
> middle or upper class youths in rich neighborhoods. Movies are
> entertaining, at least some of them, and enetertainment is good. But
> entertainment is just entertainment.  For politics, you need reality, not
> entertainment.
>
> Henry C.K. Liu