Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Miles wrote:
> [clip]
> > Even further: the distinction between "herd mentality" and
> > "individual moral choice" is dubious, because, the meaning of every
> > individual action or thought emerges as a product of social relations.
>
> I agree with you in terms of philosophy. Simply looking at films as
> fictions (as opposed to accurate representations of the real world),
> though, it is not impossible to make the kind of film that Wojtek
> believes he saw in Paradise Now: contrast between a person who makes
> a moral choice and a person who follows the crowd, exhibiting a "herd
> mentality" and the works.
This is true not only of this film (or the Lang film you mention) but is the core of almost all western art for nearly 400 years. The individual moral choice Wojtek clings to is precisely what Milton, in what was then a revolutionary work of art, posed for Adam & Eve in PL. Wojtek's posts, whenever he gets on this individual responsibility kick, read exactly like a thousand run-of-the-mill essays on Milton's epic. All bourgeois ideology presupposes this concept of the autonomous and responsible individual.
The most boring freshman theme in the late '50s at Michigan (I got at least two or three of them a week) were themes bewailing "herd mentality" and praising individual judgment.
Carrol