wortwelt

The Hunger Games, and no need to end a story

I’m through the first two books of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and I think that right now, before finishing the third book, the second one should have never ever been written.

The first one is perfect. It sets a premise - A totalitarian state controls the people by threatening to possibly throw them (or their child) into a televised gladiatorial death match. The premise is thought through so concise it’s painful. The moral dilemma - you got to kill other teenagers, or you will die - is also executed very well. Limited by the first person narrator, one can only guess what happens behind the curtains. Beauty craze, decadence, suffering at the hand of an unjust political system, defiance, the problem with the media - the novel has it all, and a complicated love triangle is basically the icing of the cake. The first novel is so full of antinomies it’s overwhelming. Especially the contrast between the people at District 12 and the people living at the capitol.

At the end, a whole lot of questions remain unanswered. Naturally, the reader is demanding answers. Here’s the thing: The second book delivers. A lot. But all these things were very predictable, almost necessarily so. The narrative logic of the book, the basic premise, basically dictates what ought to happen next. And then, the whole story gets retold.

Seriously?

I kind of wish I didn’t read the second book. It didn’t tell me anything actually new. Although it answered the questions, it felt like Matrix Reloaded. It was telling a story only hinted at in the first book, and that story is NOT the story I admired in the first book.

It all feels like superfluous stuffing. It is just not needed to make a good story. Maybe Suzanne Collins should’ve stopped after the first book, and leave the brilliance without context, the destinies unexplored and the questions unanswered. It would have upset a lot of people who can’t stand unanswered questions, but the power of that first book would still be much more forceful.

Idle Expectations: Friend of mine is looking for a new laptop, and a guy said she...

Looting of El Hibeh continues

rudjedet:

Please, please, please sign this petition if you care even the slightest for antiquities, Egyptology, archaeology or just the pretty artefacts. Signing the petition will not cost you anything but half a minute of your time and your email adress. It needs about 4500 more signatures so that we’ll be able to call for protection of not only El Hibeh, but also all the other archaeological sites of Egypt.

Reblog if you can! 

Humanities sympathy!

Philosophical Technique No. 10

Technique 10

Spend some time - one or two seconds - concocting the most outrageous ethical conundrum possible. It should involve Nazis in some way. For example: What should person B do if confronted by person A, disguised as a Nazi, but not really currently a Nazi, but who used to be a Nazi, and who is threatening to kill B, who does not know whether A is or ever was a Nazi, and who is known as having a penchant for torturing small children, though only Nazi children, just for fun, but who has a special relationship with A’s child, who is not a Nazi, but who will enlist in the Nazi party if A harms B in any way or if B lies about his/her penchant for torturing Nazi children? Just when you think that the conundrum is complete, add in the possibility of saving one’s wife from a dire predicament, just to throw off the reader’s intuitions.

I retrieved this piece of hilarity from here. When studying philosophy, you come across a LOT of strange so called thought experiments. Since philosophers don’t work empirically, thought experiments try to test our intuitions: In this situation, what would you do? Usually, the thought experiment is designed in a way to evoke a certain response, then altered a little to evoke a different response and then it is shown that the alteration wasn’t central to the experiment, showing an inconsistency in the way we evaluate things.

Andi and the Theatre Garden Path

In school, I used to do everything but go to classes and study. Especially in 5th to 13th grade, I was primarily occupied with acting and directing the theatre group, experimenting with analogue photography and juggling (we had a juggling group, it was rad!). 

We performed several plays at a local cabaret in front of always excited parents and teachers. With such an audience, it was pretty hard to get someone to write a damning review. You never knew if your performance had been actually good, because they cheered anyway, even if we just performed the saddest drama with the good guy suddenly dying horribly at the very end.

“Whatcha think?” I was staring nervously at Andi. He had just watched us perform the dress rehearsal. Smiling wearily, arms crossed, his eyelids only half-lifted. “It’s waaay too long, you could have cut basically every other scene…” and he listed a couple of scenes we thought were indispensable, but suddenly felt superfluous. “…and you all - no exceptions - speak too fast and not close to loud enough.”
It was true, and we knew he was right. Andi was the equipment guy, light and sound engineer, harshest critic and one of the strangest people I ever met in my life. He always gave us this speech at the end of the last week of frenzied rehearsing. It varied based on the weaknesses of our performances, but it was always good to hear, because he brought us back to the ground. 

Andi is a drop-out. After school, he studied a lot of things, and when I met him two years ago, he told me he even had been studying economics. He didn’t finish it. 

The play was called “Top Dogs” by Swiss author Urs Widmer. We had a scene in which managers shouted business terminology at each other. It was several minutes long. We had the idea to perform it to the left and right of the audience and not on the stage. We decided to do the experimental thing and added a break in the middle of the scene - when a certain word was shouted, everyone fell silent. Then, we would start to chant the next words Gregorian-style. The chanting would be quite random, but the tonal sequences ensured that it would not be dissonant. Gregorian monks were smart people.
“You need dirty light.” Andi paused. “It has to be bleargh.”
“Huh - ?”
“Bleargh. Really disgusting light. Un-light, if you want. Hang on a minute.”
He went to the storage room and returned with a light filter. He put it on and filled the whole room with a turquoise light that had a depressing grey hue. It induced a sickening solemnity, which was a perfect fit to a Gregorian chanting of economy terminology. Perfect.

“What are you doing now?”
“I’m studying Philosophy.”
He chuckled. “Well, then. The Arts will get you back eventually, y’know?”