the way it is
according to the ancient rabbis (some of them, anyway), the world's host of demons and frightful things resulted not from some treachery of the morning star, but by the cavorting of lilith, the first of adam's three wives, with the beasts in eden. this theory is surely correct.
for what is a monster but an unholy union of the most mundane elements? take the riddling sphynx, for example, who comprised the legs of a lion, the wings of a bird, the head and (far more horrifically) intellect of a woman. or the dragon; so much salamander decorated with the wings of a bat and the disposition of a chief executive officer. or mike wazowski, a human eye atop the legs of a chicken, dressed to the nines in gucci alligator skin.
"the hybrid object," explains chronically self-stimulating scholar homi bhaba, "retains the actual semblance of the authoritative symbol but revalues its presence by resisting it...." in better words, the monster realizes potentials which are not available to the creatures whence came its various components, particularly us human creatures, in our dreary periods of consciousness. thus the enduring appeal of the monster: it is, by definition, more than the sum of its parts, more powerful than the thing that composes it. the impregnable lines that delineate our waking hours are no obstacle to the monstrous incarnations we dream up for ourselves. the possibilities, if not endless, are as vast as the known universe, and every permutation into which the human mind may distort it.
this is what makes monsters inc. more or less the best movie ever. it is a proper cartoon, animating what cannot be given life in the waking world. which is to say, animation is at its best when it concerns itself with the monstrous, and this is animation at its best. like all pixar films, it envisions impossibilities just the way everyone knows them to be.
so if the ending seems "tacked on," it is not, i think, a concession to hollywood convention, but a necessary amendment. are we supposed to accept, as roz explains, that this is "the way it has to be?" that a door, supernatural, symbolic, metaphysical, or otherwise, can ever be truly destroyed? we have just swung on their frames through a dingy, disorganized used bookstore of the soul to shame the entire network of "amazonian" warehouses, wherein every country ever inhabited or invented by man awaits discovery. and they would speak to us of the way things are?
no, that simply will not do. when the credits roll, we will return to our cars, turn on the radio, and let sixteen-year-old girls who have already made more money than we will amass over our interminably long careers tell us how life is. we'll drive past countless doors that are irreparably unopenable, and go home to lie in bed thinking of others. but until then, do not detain us with trifles like impossibility. we have paid $8.75 for ninety minutes of liberation from such concerns; monsters, inc. is that rare film that gives us our money's worth.
for what is a monster but an unholy union of the most mundane elements? take the riddling sphynx, for example, who comprised the legs of a lion, the wings of a bird, the head and (far more horrifically) intellect of a woman. or the dragon; so much salamander decorated with the wings of a bat and the disposition of a chief executive officer. or mike wazowski, a human eye atop the legs of a chicken, dressed to the nines in gucci alligator skin.
"the hybrid object," explains chronically self-stimulating scholar homi bhaba, "retains the actual semblance of the authoritative symbol but revalues its presence by resisting it...." in better words, the monster realizes potentials which are not available to the creatures whence came its various components, particularly us human creatures, in our dreary periods of consciousness. thus the enduring appeal of the monster: it is, by definition, more than the sum of its parts, more powerful than the thing that composes it. the impregnable lines that delineate our waking hours are no obstacle to the monstrous incarnations we dream up for ourselves. the possibilities, if not endless, are as vast as the known universe, and every permutation into which the human mind may distort it.
this is what makes monsters inc. more or less the best movie ever. it is a proper cartoon, animating what cannot be given life in the waking world. which is to say, animation is at its best when it concerns itself with the monstrous, and this is animation at its best. like all pixar films, it envisions impossibilities just the way everyone knows them to be.
so if the ending seems "tacked on," it is not, i think, a concession to hollywood convention, but a necessary amendment. are we supposed to accept, as roz explains, that this is "the way it has to be?" that a door, supernatural, symbolic, metaphysical, or otherwise, can ever be truly destroyed? we have just swung on their frames through a dingy, disorganized used bookstore of the soul to shame the entire network of "amazonian" warehouses, wherein every country ever inhabited or invented by man awaits discovery. and they would speak to us of the way things are?
no, that simply will not do. when the credits roll, we will return to our cars, turn on the radio, and let sixteen-year-old girls who have already made more money than we will amass over our interminably long careers tell us how life is. we'll drive past countless doors that are irreparably unopenable, and go home to lie in bed thinking of others. but until then, do not detain us with trifles like impossibility. we have paid $8.75 for ninety minutes of liberation from such concerns; monsters, inc. is that rare film that gives us our money's worth.
posted by boy blue at 7:31 PM
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