iTube

[snurri]

I hadn't made much of an attempt to explore the depths of YouTube, but since discovering VideoSift it's become easier to find the good stuff. They cull the good stuff--from Google Video as well--and highlight it. RSS it. This is how I discovered such videos as this mad crazy dulcimer guy and this surprisingly affecting acoustic cover of "Hey Ya". Other fave vids (found elsewhere) include this new-to-me Miyazaki short which brought me nearly to tears and this illuminating discussion of Pokemon taxonomy.

Comments

[jennreese.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. Thank you so much for linking to the Miyazaki short. I'd never seen that one before and... wow. I don't if anyone else combines sense of wonder and sadness so perfectly. I just watched Laputa again the other day, and in just six minutes, he manages to capture so much of the same emotion. Wow.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I know! I didn't know what I was watching at first, and of course I didn't understand a word of the song--but the words weren't necessary. So beautiful.

[colonelrowe.livejournal.com]

Wow, that dulcimer performance is incredible. A lot of times, in music, it seems to me that speed (and vocal range) stems from the athleticism of the performer and while yeah, that might be as impressive as hell in some sense of the word, it doesn't necessarily have a lot of bearing on the artistry of the performance. This guy's got it both ways.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree. I saw a comment somewhere that the guy could have just been the Yngwie Malmsteen of the dulcimer, but that he took it to another level. I liked that comparison.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

I'm having a mixed reaction to that Miyazaki short; I think the body count is interfering with my sense of wonder.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I guess that's part of where the impact comes from, for me: the contrast between/juxtaposition of the inorganic, impersonal violence of the city and the green and open sky. Claustrophobia vs. room to escape and fly free. Could be I'm projecting somewhat, but I think that's consistent with Miyazaki's body of work. (Although so is the violence.)

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

It's not really the level of violence that's bothering me. Nor the contrast, which is, yes, very Miyazaki. It's the implication of right and wrong: I'm sure she's a very nice angel, and I'm sure she's better off now, etc. etc... but that's an awful high body count. I keep twitching at the notion that this one individual's freedom is worth the cost of all those other lives. That's a hard equation.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Watching again I guess I'm confused about what's bothering you. It seems to me that the initial raid is being conducted by some sort of police organization which the two protagonists are officers in; while it's unclear whether the "angel" was a prisoner to the cult that's being attacked, it's pretty clear that she's kept as a prisoner by the police (or some other related organization) after the raid. So these two set her free, against orders, and without harming anyone as far as I can tell.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

It's completely unclear why they are raiding the cult -- did they know the cult was holding a hostage, or are they just Ye Olde Generick Crazies With Gunnses? The chain makes it clear that the prisoner was being held against her will; her condition makes it clear that she's was being treated rather poorly.

When the two officers gassed the lab techies in the radiation suits, it was also unclear whether they used knock-out gas or something more lethal. Being as they didn't exactly use rubber bullets on the cultists, I initially assumed that they'd killed the techies -- maybe not. But the occupants of the police helicopter certainly kicked the bucket in the highway explosion.

It's probably mostly the question marks over the early violence in the cultist's tower that getting to me. Miyazaki keeps repeating the image of the policemen stepping over dozens of bodies. I don't have strong opinions about Waco, but that gave me the heebie-jeebies -- these guys just helped wipe out a hundred-plus people, and now we're supposed to just move on and accept them as the good guys because the wackos were, well, obviously wackos, and were holding an innocent prisoner. Now we're supposed to accept it and get absorbed in the story to free the angel from her subsequent imprisonment by the goverment.

But I'm still stuck at the moral implications of establishing sympathetic protagonists by wiping out a tower full of religious crazies. They're all questions marks and unfinished stories, too: the dead cultists, the lab techies, the unseen police officers in pursuit of rescuers. But Miyazaki treats everyone outside of the prisoner and the two officers as disposable bad guys -- a bunch faceless Star Wars stormtroopers.

And I liked Star Wars just fine, stormtroopers and all... but I guess I must have outgrown faceless, disposable bad guys at some point when I wasn't looking?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I don't have strong opinions about Waco, but that gave me the heebie-jeebies -- these guys just helped wipe out a hundred-plus people, and now we're supposed to just move on and accept them as the good guys because the wackos were, well, obviously wackos, and were holding an innocent prisoner. Now we're supposed to accept it and get absorbed in the story to free the angel from her subsequent imprisonment by the goverment.

Here's where we're not on the same page, because I don't see an implication that the raid is being weighted as morally good, or the perpetrators of it as the good guys. I'm seeing it as, this angel-person is being exploited by the government in the same way she was exploited by the wackos, and after the raid these two individuals come around to realizing it and their own complicity in it. So they try to make amends, to make a stand against what they've until now been a part of. I can see arguing that it's not really possible to make things right with this one action, but again I don't really see that as what Miyazaki is trying to say.

As to the raid, I assumed the gas was non-lethal, and it's not really that clear to me what's happening in the highway explosion--there are two versions of the chase, and I don't think anyone is killed in the second. I could be wrong.

Sure, faceless, disposable bad guys = too easy. But this also seems to me to be part of the contrast Miyazaki is drawing; impersonality, disregard of individual value vs. a conversion, a focus on faces not uniforms, on individual action not following orders. YMMV.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

I think you cornered me good with "realizing their complicity" and "make amends by taking a stand against what they've until now been a part of."

Heck, that's pretty much verbatim my argument against John Kessel's reading of _Ender's Game_.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, then, we have something else we could argue about, but we may as well save that for another time. :-)

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

And besides, you now know pretty much exactly how my argument would go...