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Film 'Germinal' Resounds With Insights For Today's Challenges

crucial arts visionary | 07.11.2005 23:26 | Analysis | World

I saw this French film years ago, but have been re-watching such films of late, seeing that i have a very different take on them than when i was much younger. Watching this one (with English subtitles) brought some gems of thinking through things that i fear are not being thought through adequately in the current crisis in France and soon (?) to be elsewhere, surely.

In the elites' alienation they believe the masses (i.e. strikers)

go to war.

In the masses' alienation, they
believe
the elites are always at war

when in fact, war has so dominated
the imagination
that such belief is a self-fulfilling prophesy!


Some notes and comments after watching the French film "Germinal" (before hearing about the current French situation!).

An elite
Elite guy hates ideals cuz he reflects his own pains, now turned to beliefs.

'Huge risks,' he says to the newly striking group that approaches him, 'we *in dust rial ists* run.' Like overhead, PR expenses, ...uh... and competition *requirements*; must always be competitive, can't be a damn "socialist" that's been demonized by his local group of staunch *in dust real ists*. FACTS, for gods' sakes! Where's your LOGIC for gods' sakes?????

The trapped man called elite cannot *bring himself* to fathom the "illogic" of the stupid masses.

And another echo from his's own life. (that's supposed to be plural in a "strange" way)

Focus on a Mom
'Be fair without striking!' a Mom counsels, her ideals wanting to burst from her situation even tho she now has something like 8 kids and feels overwhelmed.

Then a human being labeled 'scab' and 'traitor' appears. It is a young woman, an elder daughter of the Mom, who has found herself caring in all her heart ways, for a man (they call 'beast') whom is not following the striker logic. (it is a logic, though still foreign to them; albeit they are beginners with such logic)

What time do they have to empathize? The situation is already too far gone, right? Why should they REALIZE THE VALUE of being RADICALLY EXCELLENT with each other?

The small businessman
He fears "being ruined" by giving so much 'credit' to the people whom are beginning to suffer by the suddenly harder times. Times which have gotten harder than their already hard times. Thanks to choices they made. Choices which were not *really* choices when they were younger and naiver.

Stuck
Stuck in the corralls, we. How our beliefs and other acquired assumptions tool us systematically. "Us"=ALL; you, me, and the "bad guys".

All these roles we've been led to believe we *must* play. These roles we've gotten stuck in. And cannot for the life of us, see beyond them, beyond the meta corrall all around us.

Europeon IMCers shall call me 'naive', yet i insist that they are missing something crucial.

work?
What would happen to us without the hated roles we believe we MUST play? And the hated work? We are ANGRY, and programming says, go to the BAR and DRINK! Then we will play right into the same old traps, from our teeth falling out, to beating our spouses and kids (or worse), to getting in fights with each other and getting locked up.

See how hated roles tool us?

Backlash
Then "the rich" (what is this "rich" that they are, anyway?), they, as a seemingly monolithic entity resort to BACKLASH since it's all they know (a few amongst them will find such 'abhorrent', but have nothing more meaningful to suggest).

How easily tooled we are--ALL OF US-- since having been programmed into these ways since childhood.

Programmed? By whom? By *belief passed forcefully onto each generation by persons whom've internalized such values!

Belief, rigid belief, a reflection of the INTENSITIES of people's whom have been long colonized by war mind-set!

Origined? Apparently in fear of difference. Assumed, then armored, becoming enforted, then enfortressed, and *always* in the defense (to the people involved).

So it begins, and here we are now.

What to do?

"No solution" only if you can see only from the corrall.

Time we dared beyond the same old again of what we *believe* we "know" about others AND ourselves! All of us might finally realize the value.

And let's not forget how limited we've *all* been in our beliefs of what constitutes 'care' these daze.

Look, i eat veggietarryan off the land and find many ways to 'cut' corners and still live vividly with much to be euphoric about. The always war continues around me; how long will it take to mess with it with such ideas as RADICAL EXCELLENCE WITH EACH OTHER?

We will most assuredly hav to do SOME things "awfully" BEAUTIFULL to mess with thousands of years of deadening mind-set. Me, i don't look at the seemingly impossible mountain (except to keep my bearings on the bigger picture!), i look at the path i help inspire each day.

Think this thru. Give yourself some time to. Keep it in "the back" of your 'mind'. Then, begin a process of doing art (art is everything, remember) in capacities you're attracted to.

We need no formal organization to distract us from our excellent intentions and desires. Better to *create families*, extended families (bio and not) in the ways we've always wanted. If only we were "revolutionary" enough, eh?

crucial arts visionary
- Homepage: http://www.whywork.org

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  1. Is it an Adaptation of the Book? — E Zola
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