I watched a short animated film the other day that showed up on Google Video’s front page and thought it was worth sharing. It’s by a Japanese guy named Kunio Kato and has won the grand prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival as well as an Academy Award for Best Short Animated Film.
I don’t have much to say about it since it sort of speaks for itself, even though there’s no dialogue. I also don’t want to ruin the effect of watching it. To me, it does an impressive job at summing up where one is going/has to go as well as where one has been. Somehow, having something so visual that represents this idea makes it much more affecting than just saying it.
The music, by Kenji Kondo, is worth commenting on. It sounds, to me, highly influenced by Erik Satie, especially his Gymnopedies. In fact, the French title may be a nod to French art in general. After all, the animation could be considered impressionistic. Satie was a composer writing around the beginning of the 20th century. He wrote mostly solo piano pieces which are notable for their, for the time, unusual chord progressions and harmonies. They were progressive works at the time that, now, sound like a demonstration of how much can be expressed with a few simple sounds. If you enjoy the music in this film, I would definitely recommend checking out Satie’s music.
UPDATE: The video seems to be getting pulled from video hosting sites very quickly. You can problem still find it but I have no way to post it here without getting the dreaded “This content has been removed” message. So, if you’re interested, search Google Video for La Maison en Petits Cubes.
So I’m being a dork, reading comic books, and in one particular issue of Sandman by Neil Gaiman I find a story about Joshua Norton. Turns out that this guy was real and pretty much just as crazy as the story makes him out to be. He lived in San Francisco in the 1800s and declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico in 1849. For whatever reason, the people of that city played along. He was completely poor and yet ate at fancy restaurants and was provided booth seats at every theatrical event. He even issued his own money which became accepted currency and had all the officers in the town salute him when he passed. I had no idea someone that crazy could get a whole city to play along with their fantasy. Truly awesome.
I got into a discussion, an internet argument even, which is never a good idea, recently about whether it makes sense to label all Muslims your enemy (assuming that you’re not a Muslim) based on the fact that the Qur’an contains passages that can be read as, “Kill non-believers.” My stance was, obviously, that this was stupid. My opponent’s stance was that he labels all Muslims enemies because of these passages but probably wouldn’t have a problem with a Muslim if they were standing in front of him. His reason? He suggests that people can believe things that they don’t follow. If this were true then it would be possible for a Muslim to believe that their holy text is telling them to kill the guy in front of them and yet they don’t.
Regardless of the rampant contradictions in such a stance, the whole conversation made me really wonder how someone can believe something and yet do the opposite. For instance, in the example of the Muslim in front of my short-sighted online debating partner, does that Muslim, who we’ll assume does believe he’s being commanded to kill the guy in front of him, not follow through with his God’s command out of sheer willpower to go against his beliefs or is it that at the time he believes that it’s not a good idea to kill this person. Basically, if you believe something and then act in a way that goes against that belief, did you really just have a couple beliefs overlap each other?
Upon trying to think of some examples where someone is acting against their beliefs, I came up with a couple that were questionable. Lets take priests who molest children. These people most likely don’t interpret the Bible to be saying that it’s honky dory to ruin children’s lives in this way yet they still do it. When those particular priests are in that situation where they decide to go through with these actions, is it just some blind moment like blacking out after drinking too much or do they justify the action in the moment? If they do justify the action, does that justification enact a new belief? For example, the priest normally believes that it’s not okay to touch small children but at the time that they are doing so they also believe that it is okay to do so for such and such a reason. You can do the same thing for recovering alcoholics. They believe that they should stop drinking but they still end up drinking because they believe at the time when they fail in their endeavor that it’s okay for them to drink.
So yeah, is it safe to say that no one ever acts against their beliefs, or no?