Nicodemus
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- Joined
- Aug 2, 2010
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I believe the following conversation to be revelatory of certain personal qualities and that some of them can fairly be associated with MBTI types. I am curious as to how you would interpret them.
The game is simple: Type the debaters and, if possible, explain your assessment.
Some background information: The conversation transpired today. It was fast-paced. All of its participants have in the past taken an online MBTI test. All of them are male and between 25 and 30 years old. They talk to each other on a daily basis. Discussions about quality, taste, music, film, literature, philosophy are common among them, and even this particular topic has to different degrees been explored before, even, as C notes, in person between himself and B.
What you read is a translation. Where necessary, errors in spelling and punctuation were corrected.
The game is simple: Type the debaters and, if possible, explain your assessment.
Some background information: The conversation transpired today. It was fast-paced. All of its participants have in the past taken an online MBTI test. All of them are male and between 25 and 30 years old. They talk to each other on a daily basis. Discussions about quality, taste, music, film, literature, philosophy are common among them, and even this particular topic has to different degrees been explored before, even, as C notes, in person between himself and B.
What you read is a translation. Where necessary, errors in spelling and punctuation were corrected.
Code:
A: [i]Alice[/i] has a lot of newfangled hipster stuff in it.
B: Yes, the music.
A: Among other things.
C: I saw the vampire movie with Johnny Depp on Wednesday.
C: It was terrible.
A: Yes, C.
B: I am not going to see the vampire movie either.
C: The best thing about the film was the music.
C: I even stopped watching before the end.
B: [Expression of laughter]
A: Moody Blues and so forth, that was good, yes.
B: Moody Blues [i]Nights in White Satin[/i]?
A: Burton adjusts to the box office.
A: Yes.
B: [Expression of laughter]
B: But I have already heard that in [i]Halloween 2[/i].
B: And my actor at all costs wants to have [i]Nights in White Satin[/i] in that stupid film that he was written.
B: It seems to be quite popular again.
B: Suddenly.
A: I, too, like the song.
B: I too, but I would under no circumstances use it.
A: Not that.
A: It is a bit too trite for that.
B: Yes.
C: I would use it if it fit well.
D: I would not touch it because it surely has already been used hundreds of times in films.
B: Films do not exist in a bubble.
C: I don't give a damn.
B: You are a kitsch head.
C: Because I do not react allergically to the familiar?
B: No, because, after all the uses it has had, you would by all means use it yet again because you think it fits well.
C: If it fits well, that is enough for me.
C: I will not have my decisions dictated by what other people do.
D: There surely is a collective notion of how one has to use a song properly.
D: Your actor probably uses it in a cliché manner, B.
B: Yes.
A: What is that collective notion?
B: But there simply are other films, too, in which it has already been used, and to use it again within the collective awareness is really just very dull.
A: With Burton, a woman rides a train.
B: What is that still supposed to evoke within the image/sound combination?
B: You make it become kitsch.
C: That depends entirely on the way it is used.
B: Not only, no, not entirely.
C: For instance, I do not find the way Enya is used in [i]The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo[/i] to be cliché.
B: Sure, because Enya has not been used often recently.
B: But if five previous films had used Enya, the scene would no longer work the way it does.
C: Then you must be quite the contemporary artist.
C: Orientated to the taste of the day - diametrically to it.
B: I don't ignore the world around me.
B: There is no question that the hundredth use of [i]Give me Shelter[/i] isn't worth shit.
C: That is your right, but it simply is not the only reasonable opinion to hold.
D: I, too, find that a piece has been exploited at some point, or at least for a certain period of time, then, perhaps, one can creatively re-discover it.
C: You can repeat it as often as you like: that will not make it universally valid.
C: I would not make a film just for a current audience.
C: (Apart from the fact that I would not make film at all.)
D: [A critic] says in his [i]Departed[/i] review that Scorsese FINALLY used [i]Gimme Shelter[/i] in the right way.
D: After several attempts.
A: It is the best sequence in [i]Departed[/i].
C: Even in [I]Shine a Light[/I] it failed.
B: Why are you even talking about the current audience?
B: I talk about films, you talk about the audience... What is that shit about, C?
C: That, then, is a misunderstanding.
C: But what bearing soulless films should have on my decision, I do not know either.
[Several minutes pass.]
A: I'm a little hungry.
C: I am going to drink tea.
A: That, too, may be permitted.
[Several minutes pass.]
B: They exist, they are a fact - you can only dismiss them if you are aware of their existence and the use of the music, how, then, should it still make sense to put the same thing into an image/sound-frame again
B: if at least that context is already been fairly limited by different uses, while it can be enriched by one of squillions of other songs that have never been used at all.
B: I'm going to continue soon, I have company.
C: Other films are relevant to my decision only insofar as they necessarily impact the perception of my work.
C: The crucial part is its effect, not the relation that one film has to the history of films in general.
C: And even if a song has been used a hundred times, that does not mean that I cannot now - finally - use it perfectly.
C: That is, once again, the same discussion we have already had in my living room.
[Two hours pass.]
B: [Begin of copy-paste text] "Other films are relevant to my decision only insofar as they necessarily impact the perception of my work."
B: That is not a minor, but a main point.
B: The song itself is fixed, 100 uses are fixed, repetition is fixed, technical possibilities: diegetic, extradiegetic, "live", technique: montage.
B: ...but now to the effect: Which effect except the dramaturgic can you imagine? The song itself as a fixed variable has a fixed dramaturgy that is being abstracted in connection with image and sound...
B: Well... but how many options to abstract a fixed dramaturgy in connection with imagine are left if the effect alone is already limited by the fact that the dramaturgy has become well-known,
B: that the connection image/sound is well-known (even if in another, non-"perfect" effect context) and, most of all, if you have the alternative to decide against the 101 use?
B: What is not fixed is the context:
B: But that is even less fixed with the alternative of something unknown, it cancels out this one point of self-limitation in a context that is already very limited.
B: "The crucial part is its effect, not the relation that one film has to the history of films in general."
B: The crucial part is that the relation exists, that is has an effect - by its mere existence. The belief that with a 101 use an effect of such a form that one can speak of "perfect" is still possible
B: seems like this idea, for example, to compare [i]Gosford Park[/i] to [i]Regle du Jeu[/i] and to dismiss the fact that a work of art also consists of the information that is not part of its inner confines:
B: It does play a role in the experience to know when and under which circumstances something came to be -
B: As it plays a role whether what you see is a documentary or fiction: The experience is information-dependent and such minor matters are the minor matters of the experience spectrum.
B: ... but all-too real. It is the fund of experience that first makes the effect receptive and if connections lie within that fund, the effect will be different.
B: Of course it makes no sense to think about an audience, but, on the other hand: What forces you to use this connection of image/sound at all costs?
B: If it is only egocentricity and the film is your diary: fine, the effect is pure catharsis - but you cannot tell me that the repetitive tangle of effects of musical structures and their dramaturgy
B: in consequence of the multiplication is so irrelevant that one would not even consider doing it another way, and most of all you cannot tell me that you have created something "perfect" while the world, which
B: is supposed to share in it, is wrong in feeling that this additional variation is shit due to the perceived surfeit that came about in consequence of the construction of a cliché and that is so obvious and tangible
B: (more tangible than "perfection") - where is the aspiration to perfection if this little obstacle cannot be overcome, does not want to be overcome, because one pretends that this context does not exist?
B: That is perfect in its dadaism, but was that the sphere of effect you had in mind?
B: Even if you work against the cliché, you deliberately decide and take into consideration the existence of a hundred uses: One can only do it differently, better, worse, but, again, only within
B: the spectrum that has so limited your sphere of effect. You can, of course, creatively comment on this limitation - this solution at least accepts the real ways of effect of the hundred uses
B: (but is, "unfortunately", at least I regard it thus, only their consequence), which, however, is dismissed by everything you wrote. [End of copy-paste text]
C: "What forces you to use this connection of image/sound at all costs?"
C: The composition of the work. If it demands the use of a trite song - and yes, I do believe that this is approximately possible -, then it will be used.
C: Then it is of no importance, although it can be taken into consideration, whether it has been used in the very same way before. I talked about necessary impacts of other works, not possible ones.
C: You are talking about the audience now, by the way, because that is where effect takes place.
[Several minutes pass.]
C: Are you excluding the possibility that the perfect effect could be a cliché one?
B: I am excluding perfection.
C: I do too; it is an ideal that one can approximate and that, of course, is subjectively defined.
C: But your axiom that only unfamiliar effects are desirable is not without its premises.
C: And I simply do not share your premises.
B: Well, it does not matter whether the effect is cliché as long as it conveys something true, something immediate, etc... But if one can avoid clichés and still convey the same effect, I prefer that option.
C: Me too.
B: In the use of music in film, I mostly do not see this urgency for the true, the immediate, etc.
B: Perhaps in a very small percentage.
C: Well, we are talking about the principle, the theoretically possible.
B: Well, I do, but mostly not.
B: I prefer the theoretically impossible.
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