Friday, October 30, 2015

 

José Valverde at Amazon (23)

José Valverde at Amazon (23)

WHAT’VE YOU DONE, HARRY? QU’AS-TU FAIT, HARRY ?
A BILINGUAL EDITION IN OUR FOUNDING PAST
José VALVERDE, translation Jacques COULARDEAU

Even when fully written a play is still and always remains a project. Only its performance after working with the actors during the rehearsals brings out the proper music with its tempos and its colors, because for me theater is first of all a musical genre, a concerto whose instruments, the actors, are not defined beforehand. This assertion might surprise those who will note the play is very realistically inspired by unluckily real events. And nothing is final? Actors change but audiences do too, and the weather outside as seen in our inner time. A play only exists during the short length of time of the performance. Only those who would try to produce this “dramatic project”, the director and the actors could give a temporarily more final version of it with or without my active support. Another version exists in French with four extra characters, historical characters who are here referred to without being present (Please ask for it if interested).

The play takes place in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, on August 6, 1945, that is on the day of the dropping of the first atom bomb on Japan. The names and official functions of the main characters are real but their declarations are entirely fictitious as imagined by the author, though quite believable. Major Patricia Hinsmith is entirely fictional.


La pièce se déroule dans le salon ovale de la Maison Blanche à Washington le 6 Août 1945, c'est-à-dire le jour du lancement de la première bombe atomique sur le Japon. Elle commence au moment de l’envol du B29 depuis l’ile américaine de Tinian avec la bombe dans sa soute.  Les noms et les fonctions officielles des principaux personnages sont authentiques mais leurs paroles sont de la pure imagination de l’auteur tout en étant vraisemblables. Le Major HINSMITH est imaginaire. Les évènements et les discussions qui ont eu lieu à la Maison Blanche sont à peu près connus mais ils se sont déroulés pendant au moins une semaine. J’ai souhaité contracté le temps, le lieu et l’action. De manière à donner aux évènements relatés authentiques la dimension d’une tragédie classique qui implique unité de lieu, unité de temps, unité d’action. Il s’agit de théâtre !

Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; Amazon.fr; and all other Amazon stores. KDP Edition
File Size: 1030 KB
Print Length: 129 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Editions La Dondaine; 1st edition (July 10, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: French and English   
ASIN: B00LPP3C2M

PRICE:  US$10.05, EUR 7.39, 995, IndR 375.00, …

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

 

Arrêtons les barbares qui veulent que les auteurs crèvent la dalle ouverte comme aux temps romantiques

LETTRE OUVERTE DES AUTEURS EUROPÉENS DU LIVRE



LETTRE OUVERTE DES AUTEURS EUROPÉENS DU LIVRE AUX INSTANCES EUROPÉENNES     (22 octobre 2015)

Protégez les auteurs, préservez le droit d’auteur !
  
Disons-le franchement : nous, les auteurs du livre, ne comprenons pas votre insistance à vouloir à tout prix « réformer » le droit d’auteur en Europe.    
La Commission européenne se trompe de cible quand elle s’en prend au droit d’auteur pour favoriser l’émergence d’un « marché unique numérique », alors que le droit d’auteur est la condition sine qua non de la création des œuvres. L’affaiblir, ce serait tarir la source du marché du livre numérique avant même qu’il ne prenne véritablement son essor. Un droit d’auteur affaibli, c’est une littérature appauvrie.    
Le droit d’auteur n’est pas un obstacle à la circulation des œuvres. La cession de nos droits permet à nos œuvres d’être diffusées dans tous les pays et traduites dans toutes les langues. S’il existe des freins à la diffusion, ils sont économiques, technologiques, fiscaux, et c’est bien plutôt aux monopoles, aux formats propriétaires, à la fraude fiscale, qu’il faut s’attaquer !    
Le Parlement européen, en adoptant une version largement amendée du rapport de Julia Reda, a réaffirmé haut et fort l’importance de préserver le droit d’auteur et le fragile équilibre économique des filières de la création. Hélas, dans le même temps, il a imprudemment laissé la porte ouverte à de nombreuses exceptions au droit d’auteur – des exceptions qui pourraient être créées, élargies, rendues obligatoires, harmonisées par la Commission, au mépris parfois des solutions nationales qui ont déjà permis de répondre aux besoins des lecteurs et des autres utilisateurs.    
En quoi la multiplication des exceptions au droit d’auteur favorisera-t-elle la création ? À partir de combien d’exceptions (archivage, prêt numérique, enseignement, recherche, fouille de texte et de données, œuvres transformatives, œuvres indisponibles, œuvres orphelines…), l’exception devient-elle la règle et le droit d’auteur l’exception ?    
Parce qu’il nous confère des droits économiques et un droit moral sur notre œuvre, le droit d’auteur est essentiel pour nous.  
Il est le socle sur lequel s’est bâtie notre littérature européenne ; il est source de richesse économique pour nos pays et, par là même, source d’emplois ; il est la garantie du financement de la création et de la pérennité de l’ensemble de la chaîne du livre ; il est le fondement de nos rémunérations. En nous permettant de récolter les fruits de notre travail, il garantit notre liberté et notre indépendance. Nous ne voulons ni revenir au temps du mécénat, ni vivre d’éventuelles subventions publiques, mais bien de l’exploitation de nos œuvres. Ecrire est un métier, ce n’est pas un passe-temps.  
Le droit d’auteur a permis la démocratisation du livre au cours des siècles derniers, et c’est lui encore qui, demain, permettra le développement de la création numérique et sa diffusion auprès du plus grand nombre. Hérité du passé, le droit d’auteur est un outil moderne, compatible avec l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies.    

Il faut cesser d’opposer les auteurs aux lecteurs. La littérature n’existerait pas sans les premiers, elle n’a pas de sens sans les seconds. Les auteurs sont foncièrement et résolument ouverts aux changements et aux évolutions du monde dans lequel ils vivent. Ils défendent plus haut et plus fort que n’importe qui le droit à la liberté d’opinion, à la liberté d’expression et à la liberté de création. Ils sont favorables au partage des idées et du savoir, c’est leur raison d’être. Ils sont lecteurs avant d’être auteurs.    
Nous, auteurs du livre européens, demandons à l’Europe de renoncer à étendre le périmètre des exceptions au droit d’auteur ou à les multiplier. L’assurance d’une quelconque « compensation » ne saurait remplacer les revenus tirés de l’exploitation commerciale des œuvres, alors même que les auteurs sont déjà victimes d’une précarité matérielle croissante. Nous demandons à l’Europe de lutter contre la tentation d'un illusoire « tout gratuit », dont les seuls bénéficiaires seront les grandes plates-formes de diffusion et autres fournisseurs de contenus. Nous lui demandons de nous aider à obtenir un meilleur partage de la valeur sur le livre, notamment dans l'univers numérique, d’interdire les clauses abusives dans les contrats et de combattre efficacement le piratage de nos œuvres.    
La liberté des créateurs et la vitalité de la culture européenne dépendent aussi de vous.  

Premiers signataires : Lidia Jorge, Valentine Goby, Yannis Kiourtsakis, Pierre Lemaitre, Erri de Luca, Robert Mc Liam Wilson, Eirikur Örn Norddahl, Marie Sellier



Signataire 1772 




#38     Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Ma contribution, Signataire #1772
2015-10-28 17:08

Il est nécessaire de cesser de jouer au tout gratuit. Tous les spécialistes de l'économie numérique actuelle signalent l'importance de bien reconnaître la valeur ajoutée incorporée dans tout "produit" raison de plus une œuvre, et surtout de voir que cette valeur ajoutée doit intégrer la propriété intellectuelle comme une dimension essentielle. Voire par exemple l'ouvrage collectif de 2015 "Reinventing the Company in the Digital Age" diffusé par Open Mind et téléchargeable, justement gratuitement, bien qu'aussi achetable chez tous les vendeurs en version papier.

En fait au niveau économique la distribution de services par abonnement forfaitaire (téléphone, accès internet, et maintenant avec les tablettes et autres ordinateurs transportables les logiciels de base, le calcul des industriels est bien que cette forme de paiement en droit d'utilisation limité dans le temps mais renouvelable est bien plus profitable que la vente du produit. Il y a des milliers d'exemples, de toutes les boîtes Livebox, freebox et les autres, à l'accès à la presse par abonnement électronique.

Mais jamais il n'est question de gratuité.

La question qui se pose alors pour les auteurs est que la valeur ajoutée portée par leurs œuvres soit reconnue et que sa rémunération soit à la fois proportionnelle à la diffusion et recalculée en fonction des coûts de production et de distribution/circulation réduits dans des proportions monumentales, et même gigantesques.

Dr Jacques Coulardeau
,



Monday, October 26, 2015

 

Qui se ressemblent trop ennuient

FRANCESCO-CAVALLI-AMORE-INNAMORATO - 2015-10-26

Vous ne serez pas vraiment déçu par le CD. Deux sopranos extrêmement proches l’une de l’autre et une suite d’arias d’un compositeur  principal, Francesco Cavalli et quatre pièces de deux compositeurs supplémentaires.  Les voix sont parfaites mais tellement semblables qu’on ne les distingue plus et les arias étant coupés de leur contexte musical et dramatique apparaissent comme des exercices plus qu’ayant une dynamique qui les dépasse. Mais il n’y a aucune aspérité à laquelle se rattacher pour avoir une quelconque dynamique.

Si vous aimez les arias de sopranos totalement coupés de leur contexte vous serez très satisfaits car ici on touche à la perfection. On n’en approche pas. On l’atteint. Si vous préférez le dramatique, la dynamique tragique ou même amoureuse des opéras vous serez frustrés. Si vous aimez la diversité des voix vous serez frustrés à nouveau.

Mon opinion est donc mitigée.

Par contre le DVD qui atteint tout autant la perfection et qui est presque deux fois aussi long donne une rétrospective du travail de L’Arpeggiata depuis 15 ans. Là vous n’avez pas plus de construction dramatique et de dynamisme tragique puisque ce sont à nouveau des arias qui se succèdent. Mais vous avez deux éléments qui sortent avec fureur et puissance ;


D’une part la variété des voix car dans cette rétrospective de nombreuses voix sont associées, mises les unes après les autres. Je regretterai cependant que le luxueux livret n’en donne pas la liste. Mais soit dit en passant on a la photo des musiciens et des deux sopranos, mais ces photos ne sont pas identifiées : c’est comme un album de photos de famille Pour revenir au DVD on a tout au plus la liste des compositeurs et des titres, mais pas des chanteurs. Cela est frustrant car c’est bien gentil de donner ces indications sur l’écran mais si on veut simplement savoir, garder en mémoire qui chante quoi, il faut prendre des notes comme un journaliste au concert.


En plus, et là ce travail devient fascinant les genres sont absolument antagonistes, différents, conflictuant de musique traditionnelle à musique d’opéra, les genres, les tons, les colorations, les tempos, les rendus en un mot sont tous si différents que c’est un vrai enchantement même si les pièces isolées perdent leur dimension dramatique. Cela crée une dynamique qui ne montre pas vraiment le progrès de la formation car il y a longtemps qu’ils ont atteint la perfection et que leur progrès est dans l’ouverture à de nouveaux genres, de nouveaux styles. Et là le DVD, en images en plus, est de loin époustouflant.


Mais il semble surprenant que ce soit le DVD de bonus qui emporte mon enthousiasme, même si j’ai la plupart de ces enregistrements en CD. Il y a entre autres Jaroussky qui fait la fête en Amérique en ce moment, enfin presque puisqu’il tourne à Toulouse « Niobe, Regina di Teba » d'Agostino Steffani créé au Festival de Musique Ancienne de Boston il y a déjà quelque temps.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU





Sunday, October 25, 2015

 

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (22)




A CONTRADICTORY BACKDROP FOR C.S. LEWIS
MARTYRDOM VERSUS EUGENISM
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


 
UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LILLE
FACULTÉ DES LETTRES ET DES SCIENCES HUMAINES
Colloque C.S. LEWIS - 2-3 juin 2011



C.S. LEWIS & THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA
BBC REWRITING AND ADAPTATIONS
RADIO AND TV
And other films
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


All Amazon reviews of CS Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles
and various adaptations for TV and the cinema
  


A CONTRADICTORY BACKDROP FOR C.S. LEWIS
MARTYRDOM VERSUS EUGENISM

I would like to say from the very start that I will only consider The Chronicles of Narnia in their seven volumes (1950-1956), and the four BBC adaptations. So I will not consider the various cinema adaptations and the other works by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963).The second thing I want to be very clear about is that I am not going to psychoanalyze neither the author nor The Chronicles. It would be interesting to do so from a certain point of view. This is not mine here.
I will concentrate on the political and ideological model that can be found in The Chronicles. But I want to be clear about one thing before starting. For me children’s literature is just as mature as any other form and type of literature and it deserves to be analyzed exactly the same way as any other fiction. We do not have to suspend our disbelief but as C.S. Lewis says himself: “You cannot know, you can only believe or not.”
And I have chosen to believe what C.S. Lewis tells us, no matter how creative and imaginative it may be. I will start with the background I have chosen, i.e. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and H.G. Wells(1866-1946).T.S. Eliot, particularly in his play Murder in the Cathedral (1935) deals with the question of martyrdom when a church official is confronted to an attempt at limiting the church’s freedom from the state or any other institution.
This vision of martyrdom became a real backdrop for C.S. Lewis because of the play at the end of the 1930s in the Canterbury Festival, then the film at the beginning of the 1950s and finally the opera by Pizzetti in Italian and in German (for Karajan) at the beginning of the 1960s, too late for The Chronicles.
H.G. Wells defends a eugenic vision of the world and he is a backdrop for C.S. Lewis because of the vast and lasting success of his early novels like The Time Machine (1895) or The Invisible Man (1897) at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century and because of his commitment to eugenics all his life in many writings, in film with his 1936 Things to Come by Alexander Korda and William Cameron Menzies in which he envisaged the end of the world we know by a universal war in 1940 and the rebuilding of a truly human society.
The Time Machine was adapted a first time by George Pal in 1960, an adaptation that may have come across to C.S. Lewis though too late for The Chronicles. Of course the second adaptation by Simon Wells in 2002 does not have to be considered, though the great-grandson of the author corrects part of the eugenics of his great-grandfather.



 

Cry on John Dowland, Cry on that English Renaissance, death in the egg!

DAMIEN GUILLON – ERIC BELLOCQ – JOHN DOWLAND – LOVE SONGS – 2009

This field of love songs, madrigals or other Renaissance forms in England is an enormous well arrayed and furnished jungle of archives and music pieces that have been explored all around and all along. The English, thanks to the university choirs have been able to continue with the century-old tradition of all male choirs and thus to cultivate and develop countertenors of all sorts since no women could take part and children were out at this level. The most famous English countertenor is Alfred Deller in the second half of the 20th century. I remember hearing him in concert in 1964 or 65 in Bordeaux. Another world opened up then. And since then I had been opened by this rare new discovery.

Damien Guillon is the perfect countertenor for these songs that were never performed by castratos, at least they did not have to be since the countertenor tradition was very strong with Purcell himself one century later being a countertenor. Thanks god at times humanity is able to keep some old traditions that are kept not because they are traditions but because they are good, unforgettable, beautiful.


Shakespeare used and overused such voices since he could not have women on the stage. But the songs chosen here correspond very well to the main tradition of the 16th and 17th centuries in England. The six wives of Henry VIII, the successive changes from Catholicism to Anglicanism then back to Catholicism and finally back to Anglicanism soon to be replaced by Puritanism to finally go back to clean and clear Anglicanism with the Glorious Revolution that instated though the full ban for a while of all things and people Catholic. The secret passages in the great halls, mansions and family seats of the nobility were far from being forgotten and made useless to hide the clandestine catholic priests or the catholic members of the families. Today these secret passages are overused in series and films.


The tone of the songs here that are from more than one composer as announced on the sleeves are all very languorous and sad as if in that time love was always associated to drama and tragedy. It is true the theater of the time was full of such sad events, the killing and death of all members of all these doomed love affairs. Think of Ophelia and Juliet and their male lovers. That’s a choice but we must keep in mind that madrigals and other pieces that were not destined to go on a stage could be sung by women and thus have lighter themes, more danceful, joyful, pleasureful. But keep in mind there were then no women’s universities and women were hardly educated beyond basics and their early teenage. Look at Shakespeare again. Juliet was supposed to be married at fourteen at the latest and her education is never alluded to whereas Romeo and Mercutio, Tybalt and all the boys were officially students of some type or other.


Damien Guillon doubles up this very sad music of his, these songs of languor and unrequitedness with Eric Bellocq’s luth music that is just a lugubrious, funeral, tenebrous descent into the hell of all scales. It is marvelous, beautiful but we are dealing here with the beauty of introspective love that expects and waits for the coming of the main lover of all men, death of course, and yet that’s so ambiguous since Death is a male in the English and Germanic tradition. In other words Death, the lover of all men, is a castrating lover that leaves these men impotent, frigid, dead in one word.


The full unity of the music of this CD makes it exceptional. It is a dirge, a mortal and in some way morbid descent to the underworld of love, to the seventh hell of love’s pains and pangs. And you have to enjoy all that torture and suffering because that’s part of man’s fate, I mean the fate of all males, to suffer for the love they experience for the lady they will never be able to approach, touch, kiss or even look at except at a vast distance. I feel that in these troubled centuries in England the famous courteous love of the Middle Ages in the Arthurian tradition has turned somewhat sour and has become a Tenebrae à la Charpentier. “I sing, Fie fie on love, Fie fie on love, it is a foolish thing,” sings Damien Guillon in one of the more vivacious songs “A shepherd in a shade”. Even the poor lover of Cynthia can only tell that Cynthia is nothing but a nest for cuckoos, which leaves little to the lover himself.


The question about that art has to do with what is typical of England since 1215 and the Magna Carta. In 1215, and that had been going on for a long time in the form of a rivalry between nobility and church on one side and the king on the other side. It is the fiorst document in Europe that actually sets in writing some rights for some women and children, precisely widows and orphans in noble families. It is thus the beginning of a rather long quest and conquest of freedom for women and Elizabeth I played an enormous role along that long line, though the Stuarts and the Puritans will bring or try to bring many things down.


A perfect rendition of this period when the Canterbury Tales were forgotten and the sad side of things of love or anything else were cultivated. We seem to forget that in Shakespeare you always have some farcical at times farcical-looking scenes in the most tragic and dramatic situations, but at the same time we always had some tragic or tragic-looking scenes in the most farcical of all comedies. Ben Jonson as for that is a genius, how he brings the tragedy of Puritanism and of man’s vanity in simple joyful and lustful fests like “Bartholomew Fair” or “The Silent Woman,” the former with the hanging and quartering of some condemned bloke on the day before the Fair on the same ground, in the middle of the fair to start afterwards, and the latter with the pangs and dangers of gender orientation for the great pleasure of the audience and the full chastisement of the vain husband.


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



Saturday, October 24, 2015

 

Countertenors are superb in J.S. Bach

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH – CAMIEN GUILLON – LE BANQUET CÉLESTE – STRASBOURG 2011

We will never end discovering the phenomenal possibilities of high-pitched male voices, be they countertenors, altos or male sopranos. This CD is typical at that level. Damien Guillon has the range of a mezzo soprano but with the male harmonics and he is easy and sounds full and warm in the lower range just as much as in the higher range, which I have always found kind of problematic with a female mezzo soprano.

But a countertenor has an extraordinary expressivity because he is a man and he can give to his voice some tones a woman wouldn’t be able to reach. In Cantata BMW 170 it is typical how the sadness of the sinner, the resignation and yet the desire to get over that fate of being a sinner like all men are trying to emerge from some kind of bleak tone meaning there might be no hope, no way out and yet in the end it reaches some faith, some hope in Jesus and in Jesus’ promise that he will be forgiven if he strives and tries hard to get over his sins. Damien Guillon very easily expresses this double dimension from resignation in the absence or impossibility of hope, and yet to that hope he finds in Jesus, in his faith, in his conviction that he will be saved in spite of being a human sinner. There is in this cantata such a feeling that after all we can only strive and have the best life we can but it is all in Jesus and in how we will be judged or deemed. There is nothing we can do about the end. Just resignation, striving and faith and there might be a way out. Damien Guillon just has the voice for this way of thinking and seeing life, a very protestant way indeed. Damien Guillon can even be poignant about it from time to time.


In Cantata BMW 35 we have a new chapter of that triple dilemma of man, both body and mind, confronted to God and God’s predestination of humanity, since he knows everything that was, that is and that will be, a God that reverberates in your soul. The opening Concerto is so strongly optimistic that we are there in full communion with the heavens and the angels of God. Dance we must, sing we must and believe we must. We are confronted to perfection, and the three levels of the organ are just all playing and singing in some kind of tempo unison. But the meaning of this cantata is in one Greek word directly imported from Jesus’ Aramaic preaching. “Ephphatha” he said, and “Be opened” he meant, the Greek form of an Aramaic word uttered by Christ when healing the man who was deaf and dumb. « Mark 7: 33-35: 33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, ""Ephphatha!"" 35 At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly. » And this time the meaning is simple: faith is the belief that by letting God pour his light in us we will be saved, we will be spared the suffering of sinning; Deep hope, deep trust in God’s perfect creation and management of his creation and thus of us. Amazing enough Damien Guillon with his male countertenor voice expresses that feeling, that empathy with God, if we can imagine having any empathy with God, as if it came from deep in us, from the deepest and most somber side of our soul and mind. It is the pure child in us, the virginal boy in us that is speaking through Damien Guillon’s voice. We can only project ourselves in his voice, in his song, in his faith, in his belief and we are in touch with Jesus and God. We are saved. We can go out in the world and miracles will happen provided we remain opened by the call of Jesus.


The organ, a modern organ in Strasbourg’s Église Réformée du Bouclier, is pure in sound and rich in many effects. It is played in a modern building too a building that has no vault or domes, that has no Romanesque or even gothic architecture. It is plain, undecorated, with a very square volume with very vertical and horizontal lines, what I could call a perpendicular space. The sound of the organ is thus pure and clear but it has no resonance coming from the building. That makes the sound nearly cold, distant but it is very effective when three registers are competing to lead the whole piece. And I must say these organ pieces are perfect for it and Johann Sebastian Bach was an expert on that kind of work. He has three pitch levels, the lower pitch, the middle pitch and the higher pitch and in the Trio Sonata in D minor we have that constant competition and the possible alliance of two levels against the third one. But what more Bach plays on the tempos of the three registers. The lower one is slower, the middle one is just peaceful and quiet and the top one has the tendency to be fast and even energetically galloping or flying and dancing at high speed to some birdlike singing or music. This triple conversation is interesting indeed. Does it have a meaning? I am not sure but it does evoke emotions in the ears and heart of the listener. Each register moves in us some feelings and empathy as if we could hear the deep voice of our body, the serious voice of our mind and the mesmerizingly fast voices of our soul and angels. The body, the mind and heavens all in the same composition at the same time! This organ music is the full voice of man in its three dimensions and the result is never sure, never won before being fought for, strived for, gained with Jesus’ help and the conviction that we can be saved if we believe. I must say Maude Gratton, the organist, is quite convincingly able to play on these three levels, three voices, three beings in us and in the organ.


In Fantasia and Fugue in G minor the organ starts its triple game again and this time the three registers do not really try to find some unison. They are really trying to compete generally two against one, most of the time the lower register and the higher register are uniting against the middle one that fights quite hard to take over and take off. The music is absolutely beautiful but we have to understand it had a spiritual meaning for Johann Sebastian Bach, a spiritual meaning we maybe do not share any more. And yet let yourself be opened by this music to the deep spirituality in it and you will feel deep in you some pangs of body impulses with the lower register, some reasonable and sensible mental language telling you what you must do, what you must pacify in you, your impulses, to just have a human life, and yet the higher register will come back and will try to get you up into the air, into the sky, to heavens, with angels and miracles if you can follow their tempo and their speed. High up in these heavens you have the trance of Jesus revisited and fully received because you have been opened. And then you feel your impulses fighting to take over, your mind fighting to control them and your soul if you want fighting to get you off the ground, to get you in full supernatural meditation.


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



 

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (42)

TIM BURTON – SEVENTEEN FILMS A VOYAGE TO EREWHYNA INSTEAD OF EREWHON

https://www.academia.edu/17238393/TIM_BURTON_SEVENTEEN_FILMS_A_VOYAGE_TO_EREWHYNA_INSTEAD_OF_EREWHON

Dr Jacques Coulardeau


Abstract:

The only question we may ask when watching so many films by one film maker covering a thirty year period is about the existential meaning of the whole set. 

First let me tell you I do not give a damn about the film maker’s personality or personal data. That he had a bad or good youth with a father who was loving or terrifying;, and a mother who was evanescent or over powering is of no concern to me though we could say hat the  virtual “author” of these films obviously has an existential problematic relation with life and death.

He will, I guess, excuse his morbidity, his cultish liking of death, his depressive black humor by saying he is a Halloween author. That would be short indeed. That would neglect the audience. The public, and mostly children when the films are not restricted or are Walt Disney films, are bombarded with gruesome juicy corpses in any state of decay, with frightening scaring traumatizing supernatural beings from the other side of life: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches and so many other curse-throwers and curse-catchers as if cursing your neighbors was nothing but a game of baseball.

But in the end does Tim Burton have a vision of society that could be explained to anyone? I am afraid not. In the name of extreme black somber humor he criticizes, vandalizes and victimizes anything and anyone supposedly sacred in this society, except mind you anything really religious. In other words these horror or suspense stories are the stories of a very faithful choirboy, or choirgirl if they could have girls in that function, who has never been able to take his robes down, probably because that is his only vestment, clothing and he is nude and prudish underneath. In other words these stories, be they morbid, humorous or simply gruesome, are nothing but the expression of his total nudity under his superficial existential circumstantial diapers. He hides behind such ugly stories and tries – at times fails – to make people laugh at his funeral corpselike mind. [...]
 
Research Interests:
Terrorism, Horror Film, Horror Cinema, Frankenstein, Werewolves - Trials and Theoretical Demonology, The Fantastic, Clown, Funny Games,Fantastic Literature, Clowning, Funny People, Dracula, The Thriller Genre, Funny, Thrillers, Debunking History, Farces, and Pastiche Villain


Discussion
https://www.academia.edu/s/47abc1dd41

Can there be any sense in this farcical grotesque pastiche showered onto the innocently perverse world? Tim Burton turns the whole world into a funeral parlor. And even Alice in Wonderland becomes under his fingers a story of death, of dying, of getting their heads off not with laughter but with an axe. Doesn’t he know that such obsessive references could become traumatic for some children who would experience all that as a symbolical castration? In fact he knows and he must think that these boys and girls who will lose their phalluses (because even girls have phalluses according to Jacques Lacan) in contact with such stories definitely deserve that loss because they have no stamina, no courage, no daring crazy enterprising sense of adventure. If they do not like his stories – must he think – let them get to C.S. Lewis instead of Lewis Carroll Burton. So enjoy hunting the Snark in these pages and you might find a truffle here and there if you have the nose for such nice black tubers, but are they tubers really?

Friday, October 23, 2015

 

A remake of a copycat film

TIM BURTON – FRANKENWEENIE – 2012

This is an absolute pastiche copied up from no matter how many films and books, you won’t be able to trace them all from Stephen King to Mary Shelly, to you know whom better than I.

But it is a festive big laughing competition against all basic beliefs of parents about the education of their darling children, especially when they, the parents, are at work and the children at home and the latter understood  myriads of years ago how to by-pass the “security” on the TV and computer. They are able hours on top of hours to view all the nasty shows they can find and imagine.


For them parents science like technology are dirty words and unbearable subjects that have to be kept away from the children’s ears and from the dinner table, when there is a family dinner, once every blue moon. For them parents a science fair, festival, competition, fest or carnival only has one aim and goal: to learn how to be badder than bad and produce both Viagra and ecstasy. You children know the type of pills your parents or you parents are buying on the Internet. Is it from Amazon or from Alibaba? Maybe only from the corner store, well the chap that is standing ,in front of the corner store. How old is he by the way?

This farce is absolutely successful and in black and white, or something close, which is better than you could have imagine. Don’t you play with electricity, Benjamin Franklin would say. You may burn your fingers and roast your tonsils. When I say your tonsils you know what I mean.


Of course the film has no depth whatsoever and does not pretend to have any. The only point is that it is funny ah ah and nothing else. Enjoy it and play with death as if it were your nightmare friend in the science class of your dear high school. And do not forget the science teacher is necessarily a bomb maker, a heroin refiner, a mental pervert, a serial killer and eventually a religious fundamentalist.

Have a good day with Walt Disney

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU




 

Jacques Coulardeau at Academia.edu (41)


 THE MAYAS-LANGUAGE & DICTIONARY-QUAI BRANLY MUSEUM & MUSIC

1.  JOHN MONTGOMERY – DICTIONARY OF MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002 - SECOND PRINTING 2006
2.  JOHN MONTGOMERY – HOW TO READ MAYA HIEROGLYPHS – 2002
3.  MUSEE DU QUAI BRANLY – MUSIQUES ET CHANTS – MAYAS – LES AMERINDIENS, PEUPLES MAYA, TOTOMAQUE, CORA – MEXIQUE – FREMEAUX ASSOCIES, 2014
4.  MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY – MAYAS, RÉVÉLATIONS D’UN TEMPS SANS FIN – 2014


I am here finding elements that can be connected to many other systems in the world, both languages and rituals. Maya as a language is not an isolate. The point is that the written system is so complex and the calendar calculations are so complicated that we cannot consider they appeared like that, ready to be used in about 1000 BCE and certainly not later.
These systems must have required many millennia to be invented and refined, just like Mayan architecture and Mayan technology capable of producing a durable material medium for their language and stories.
It is the same thing with corn that had to be completely genetically modified to become what we know it is that CANNOT reproduce without a human hand to get the grains out of the husk. And we could speak of their ritualistic beverages that are so complicated that they look like some fine art perfume produced by today's chemical laboratories.
I think here that the Mayan culture, the Aztec culture, the Toltec culture, the Inca culture could not have evolved from a population coming along with the Clovis migration. If it took 5,000 years for the Sumerians to devise their writing system which is child's play when compared to the Mayan system, I believe these Homo Sapiens must have arrived in the Americas before the Ice Age and certainly not late after it. To devise this writing system when the language would have stabilized enough, not to speak of the calendars, the Mayans must have needed at least 15,000 years, probably more.
Except of course if you consider language is a gift from extraterrestrials or angels and gods, which is not within my frame of mind.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU



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