Currently at Toronto Pearson: -1. High today: 1. Some more sloppy snow today. (Thanks, Sean Avery: I'll probably never see the word "sloppy" the same way again. Or "seconds", for that matter.)
So, after some 20 years of debate, the Attorney-General of British Columbia has decided to charge two men associated with the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints of Bountiful, BC with polygamy. This prompted me to go look at the Criminal Code, to see how exactly the offence of polygamy is defined. I append the section below. Reluctance to press charges in Bountiful has long been reported to be motivated by fears that the law would not withstand a Charter challenge on grounds of religious freedom (and, less plausibly, that this could open the door to religious challenges of other marriage-related statutes). Looking at the actual law, in light of the fact that it applies to "any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time", it seems fairly clear to me that it is not justifiable in a modern liberal state in the first place--hardly more justifiable than sodomy laws, for instance. In any event, it seems obvious that special attention has been directed to the FLDS in terms of the enforcement of this law.
Polygamy
293. (1) Every one who
(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into
(i) any form of polygamy, or
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,
whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or
(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
Evidence in case of polygamy
(2) Where an accused is charged with an offence under this section, no averment or proof of the method by which the alleged relationship was entered into, agreed to or consented to is necessary in the indictment or on the trial of the accused, nor is it necessary on the trial to prove that the persons who are alleged to have entered into the relationship had or intended to have sexual intercourse.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Or just some human sleep
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -1. High today: 0. Snow on the ground almost for the whole month of December, which is very unusual. 2008 was the first year Pearson has recorded over 1000 mm of total precipitation. Pearson and K-W are both running well ahead of last year's snow pace.
Still on strike.
Finally saw No Country for Old Men a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what I would've made of it if I hadn't read the book, though I'd read the book too long ago to remember many details. I'm not sure about playing Cigurrh with this touch of goofiness. (I have no picture of Cigurrh like I do of the Judge, though. The Judge might be easier to play because of his imposing physicality; anyway, he's more of a character than Cigurrh. I don't know of anyone who could play him, though. Brando, at some point, might have been perfect.) I'm also not sure some of McCarthy's dialogue can work off the page: "Tell momma I love her." "Your momma's dead, Llewelyn." "Well, I guess I'll tell her myself, then." I think that works on the page because you don't really know how someone would say that. (On the other hand, I will keep thinking "if this ain't a mess, it'll do 'til one gets here" for a while.)
I was happy that the film does some things (well, one thing in particular) even more indirectly than McCarthy does. This is one of the things about McCarthy's style that, to me, is most distinctive and that I like the most. So one of the best things you could do in making a McCarthy film would be to take that even further. I wish they had found a way to get deeper into the sheriff, though I guess there's only so much sitting around talking after the action's over you can expect an audience to put with. On the other hand, given the changes that are made to the narrative sequence at the beginning (which I can't say I like), I wonder why not spread the sitting around talking through the movie. Starting out with some of it would seem like a good idea. The more I think about it, the more I think that this movie is too much about Cigurrh, too little about the sheriff. (At least I keep forgetting that it's a Coen brothers movie. I can't say I have anything in principle against them, because I love Fargo, but I'm suspicious of them.)
For a fair bit of the time L. and I were watching it, there were dogs running around and someone playing with the dogs. This got me thinking about Benjamin and film and distraction:
"The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception [i.e., something like 'unconscious' apprehension of something in terms of gestalts you've established]. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value [i.e., the force of what Benjamin calls the 'aura' of the artwork] recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one."
Another question having to do with Benjamin I've kept returning to over the last year: is there any such thing as a great film actor? We watched Night of the Generals the other night. It stars (among others) Peter O'Toole as Peter O'Toole. Well, as Evil Peter O'Toole. Actually, he's, you might say, Lawrence with the rest of the goodness drained out of him. You know, I like Peter O'Toole a lot, but it seems like there is probably a reason that he didn't have many great roles, or even good ones. As Socrates says in the Republic, just because you have this purple paint which is the most beautiful paint in the world, you don't go painting your whole statue with it. I had no use for Tom Cruise until Eyes Wide Shut, but he was the perfect colour for that movie. Is that what movie actors are, shades of paint? Can you be a great actor if you're a shade of paint?
But then again: is a chameleon a great actor? (Well, it's about being able to understand the character, right? No, not understand.) And then again: it has always seemed to me that a lot of acting performances that people are impressed by (including me) are caricatures, cartoon characters, exaggerations. (It's easy to impersonate Elvis because Elvis is so distinctive.) I think right away of Forrest Whitaker as Idi Amin, which may have been the most impressive job of creating a character I've seen, but it is a very exaggerated character. Peter O'Toole has the bearing of a stage actor because the state actor has to exaggerate. You couldn't have someone mumble like Brando on stage, could you?
But film also tends to exaggerate, and this is another thing I've been mulling lately--oddly enough, thinking about Stephen Harper as an example. That moment in the debate when Paikin asked whether Harper would raise taxes, and Harper lifted his water glass to his mouth and said he wouldn't: it looked like Harper hiding behind his glass, saying something he knew he shouldn't say but had to, something he probably should have instantly recognized (apperceived) as the classic Bush (I) trap ... it looked kind of like that; it looked like it should have been that, but, well, maybe he just happened to lift his glass at that moment, you can't be sure. If it was in a movie, it would have been exaggerated into being that and only that.
Ah, now I remember what it was that got me into thinking about this exaggeration-in-film thing in the first place: Frost/Nixon, seeing the clips of the film juxtaposed with clips of the actual interviews, seeing how the film exaggerates Nixon's attitudes. It especially exaggerates anger. This is something I learned in highschool, playing Henry Higgins in a scene of Pygmalion (after seeing O'Toole do it): it's easy to impress people by playing anger.
One more random film note: I saw about half of Stardust last week. At one point, when Captain Shakespeare is talking, it struck me that De Niro is actually delivering the lines in in the manner of a not-entirely-immersed-in-the-material actor doing Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. If he was really doing that and it wasn't just my imagination, that was absolutely brilliant.
Got to move on....
Still on strike.
Finally saw No Country for Old Men a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what I would've made of it if I hadn't read the book, though I'd read the book too long ago to remember many details. I'm not sure about playing Cigurrh with this touch of goofiness. (I have no picture of Cigurrh like I do of the Judge, though. The Judge might be easier to play because of his imposing physicality; anyway, he's more of a character than Cigurrh. I don't know of anyone who could play him, though. Brando, at some point, might have been perfect.) I'm also not sure some of McCarthy's dialogue can work off the page: "Tell momma I love her." "Your momma's dead, Llewelyn." "Well, I guess I'll tell her myself, then." I think that works on the page because you don't really know how someone would say that. (On the other hand, I will keep thinking "if this ain't a mess, it'll do 'til one gets here" for a while.)
I was happy that the film does some things (well, one thing in particular) even more indirectly than McCarthy does. This is one of the things about McCarthy's style that, to me, is most distinctive and that I like the most. So one of the best things you could do in making a McCarthy film would be to take that even further. I wish they had found a way to get deeper into the sheriff, though I guess there's only so much sitting around talking after the action's over you can expect an audience to put with. On the other hand, given the changes that are made to the narrative sequence at the beginning (which I can't say I like), I wonder why not spread the sitting around talking through the movie. Starting out with some of it would seem like a good idea. The more I think about it, the more I think that this movie is too much about Cigurrh, too little about the sheriff. (At least I keep forgetting that it's a Coen brothers movie. I can't say I have anything in principle against them, because I love Fargo, but I'm suspicious of them.)
For a fair bit of the time L. and I were watching it, there were dogs running around and someone playing with the dogs. This got me thinking about Benjamin and film and distraction:
"The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception [i.e., something like 'unconscious' apprehension of something in terms of gestalts you've established]. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value [i.e., the force of what Benjamin calls the 'aura' of the artwork] recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one."
Another question having to do with Benjamin I've kept returning to over the last year: is there any such thing as a great film actor? We watched Night of the Generals the other night. It stars (among others) Peter O'Toole as Peter O'Toole. Well, as Evil Peter O'Toole. Actually, he's, you might say, Lawrence with the rest of the goodness drained out of him. You know, I like Peter O'Toole a lot, but it seems like there is probably a reason that he didn't have many great roles, or even good ones. As Socrates says in the Republic, just because you have this purple paint which is the most beautiful paint in the world, you don't go painting your whole statue with it. I had no use for Tom Cruise until Eyes Wide Shut, but he was the perfect colour for that movie. Is that what movie actors are, shades of paint? Can you be a great actor if you're a shade of paint?
But then again: is a chameleon a great actor? (Well, it's about being able to understand the character, right? No, not understand.) And then again: it has always seemed to me that a lot of acting performances that people are impressed by (including me) are caricatures, cartoon characters, exaggerations. (It's easy to impersonate Elvis because Elvis is so distinctive.) I think right away of Forrest Whitaker as Idi Amin, which may have been the most impressive job of creating a character I've seen, but it is a very exaggerated character. Peter O'Toole has the bearing of a stage actor because the state actor has to exaggerate. You couldn't have someone mumble like Brando on stage, could you?
But film also tends to exaggerate, and this is another thing I've been mulling lately--oddly enough, thinking about Stephen Harper as an example. That moment in the debate when Paikin asked whether Harper would raise taxes, and Harper lifted his water glass to his mouth and said he wouldn't: it looked like Harper hiding behind his glass, saying something he knew he shouldn't say but had to, something he probably should have instantly recognized (apperceived) as the classic Bush (I) trap ... it looked kind of like that; it looked like it should have been that, but, well, maybe he just happened to lift his glass at that moment, you can't be sure. If it was in a movie, it would have been exaggerated into being that and only that.
Ah, now I remember what it was that got me into thinking about this exaggeration-in-film thing in the first place: Frost/Nixon, seeing the clips of the film juxtaposed with clips of the actual interviews, seeing how the film exaggerates Nixon's attitudes. It especially exaggerates anger. This is something I learned in highschool, playing Henry Higgins in a scene of Pygmalion (after seeing O'Toole do it): it's easy to impress people by playing anger.
One more random film note: I saw about half of Stardust last week. At one point, when Captain Shakespeare is talking, it struck me that De Niro is actually delivering the lines in in the manner of a not-entirely-immersed-in-the-material actor doing Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. If he was really doing that and it wasn't just my imagination, that was absolutely brilliant.
Got to move on....
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