Narcissism and the Electric Eye
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
117.006035
Summary
In this episode of Narcissism and the Electric Eye, I discuss the dark history of pedophilia in Jean-Luc Godard's films, and how it runs rampant in so much of modern cinema. I also discuss why people hate Common Filth so much, and why he gets so much flack.
Transcript
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Hey folks, welcome to this podcast titled, Narcissism and the Electric Eye.
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That was Confrontational opening us up with their song, Stand Your Ground, featuring Tony Kim.
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Link down below to it, they've got some good stuff if you're into the new wave.
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Now this video is inspired by Common Filth Radio episode 103, because he was discussing
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Jean-Luc Godard, a rather significant filmmaker, and he was exposing some of the dark history
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You can probably guess what sort of dark history we're talking about.
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Although if I'd ever seen a Godard film, it probably would have been absolutely obvious
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This is why I do not like quote-unquote high art or literature, is because the modern examples
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of high art and literature are absolute garbage.
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And what he was talking about, he was just talking about the, some of the details, but
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I want to build off of what he was saying about Jean-Luc Godard, about the rampant pedophilia
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But before I get to that, before I get to that and start talking about the selfie culture,
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the Facebook culture, the modern narcissism, I want to talk about why people hate Common
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Because the reason people hate Common Filth is that he tears apart the pretty lies that
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Okay, when he denounces sodomy, he is denouncing all of us, which is why so many people are eager
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And the reason I mention this is because one of the films that I'm going to be briefly
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And I can't think of this film without thinking of how I first saw this film.
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She was the woman that would eventually falsely accuse me of domestic violence.
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You know, and through her, through all of that, really opened up my eyes to just how
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broken and disgustingly evil the legal system is.
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It's what really blew my eyes open to just how deep the rot goes in feminism.
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Not just a few bad ideas, but a poisonous seed right from the get-go.
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And yet, when I look back at that woman, that relationship, and this is my confession,
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Can I blame the legal system for everything I went through?
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None of it would have happened to me if I hadn't been disobeying God.
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And that's what people don't like about common filth, is that he doesn't give you a cheap
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out just because you're of the white race, or you're part of the alternative right, or
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Because all of us, as I've said, everybody in prison is guilty of something.
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Maybe not what they were accused of, but they're guilty of something.
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But yeah, I was guilty of sodomy and that unnatural relationship her and I had together.
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And I think I need to clarify this because of the autists out there.
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She was a biological woman, but it was still an unnatural relationship.
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This is why you need to get right with God, is because if you don't, it is going to catch
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On his podcast, Common Filth was talking about Jean-Luc Godard and how this guy has an unnatural
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And there's so much of this that you'll see in so many other places.
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A guy that is apparently, he has children, right?
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But he did an entire movie about bisexual teenage skateboarders.
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You know, I thought it was just, uh, Salo, quite frankly.
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I knew that there were a few of these, these films that really ought to be considered child
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You know, and I'm not, and I'm not saying maybe a book shouldn't be, but when you get
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child actors into a movie like this, it is just absolutely sickening.
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It's one thing to write a book, for instance, about child prostitutes or children being abused.
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It's a whole other thing to film something with children being abused or prostituted or forcing
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Because that, that's, that young actor or actress there, you're, you're scarring them.
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And see, I, I've never watched anything by Jean-Luc Godard, but I am familiar with the
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And in fact, I'm familiar with one particular quote that stands out to me.
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The history of cinema is the history of men filming their girlfriends.
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And what's the first movie that, uh, Common Filth was, was reading about?
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Well, it's about a married man who can't get it up to have sex with his wife and who both
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of them have inappropriate conversations in, inappropriate, inappropriate nudist displays.
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Not, not nudist, but, but sexualized nudity in front of their, their child, children on the
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So the guy that says the, the history of cinema is the history of men filming their girlfriend
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is the man that can only get it up when he's looking through the lens of a camera.
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And, you know, I was just watching Red Letter Media's review of the Blair Witch Project.
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And one of the interesting things they point out from the film, it's a quote I remember
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too, when I saw it back in the day, where the girl, the guy asked the girl, why do you
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And she says that the camera gives her comfort.
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Listen, you see the whole anime waifu phenomenon going on.
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And it, in some cases it gets so exaggerated that some of these people, they don't even
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They commit, not commit a reproductive act, actual human women with, uh, uh, uh, the scent
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to them, the natural human scent, uh, with sweat, with, um, you know, with hair, with real
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You know, this lens, the lens takes you one level away.
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And the whole movie Videodrome, you know, maybe I should, uh, put this up for an Irini's
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You know, as much as I hate the movie, I hate it because that girl I was in the unnatural
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It's also my fault for letting that into my life.
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But she got turned on by it because the, the movie is all about how the media is sexualizing
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How people are finding catharsis in religion through the television screen, how they are
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no longer attentive to the reality around them, but rather the only reality which matters is
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that on the screen, that which is displayed, that which is antiseptic, that which you are
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And so the protagonist winds up making love to a woman while on the screen, an innocent
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And you think about that old, that old, uh, almost certainly, uh, apocryphal, the claim
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about natives thinking that the video camera would steal their souls.
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See, I don't think the natives actually said that.
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Maybe they did, but I don't, I don't think they did.
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We, the inventors of the camera, saw our souls being removed by it.
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In fact, if you go back to the defining term of narcissism, it comes from narcissists, of
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course, of Greek myth, falling in love with his own reflection.
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Now, here's what's truly stupendous about that.
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We didn't have mirrors back then, not like we have today.
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Okay, back at, back then, you know, well, in, in Rome, you know, during its heyday, they
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They were reflective, but they were nothing like the mirrors we have today.
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Uh, modern mirrors weren't invented until, uh, uh, until about 1500 or 1600 around there.
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Uh, just silvered glass, you know, where you actually get a, a perfect, um, image of yourself.
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You had, you had, you had polished bronze, okay?
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That's what women used to apply, uh, um, makeup back then.
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And yet, even this, before we have true mirrors, we have narcissists, you know, falling in love
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Which, you know, just sounds absurd at the time.
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If you've ever seen your reflection in a body of water, it's, you don't see very much, okay?
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It's, there's very little that you can actually make out.
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But, and yet, with this development over the time of the electronic eye, of the artificial
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eye, polished bronze, silvered glass, and now the video camera, this artificial eye creates
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The artificial eye creates a perfected reality, missing all the organic components that make
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Because when cinema first began, when we first got the talkies, they were still imitating the
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And so there are three major stages of cinema in our culture.
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The earliest stage, you know, this is coming, you know, 40s and 50s, this was the virtuous
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This was where the hero, the protagonist of the film, was an everyman.
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He was just like your neighbor down the street.
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He was a regular guy with regular concerns, put into extraordinary circumstances, who threw
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Following this, and now we're moving up to the 70s, 80s.
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Think these men that are, they're bigger than life in a way, right?
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Because Arnold Schwarzenegger, he is incredibly muscled, and he knows how to use every single
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Even if, you know, we're not the biggest guy out there.
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Even if we don't have the, you know, perfect chiseled looks.
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Something we reach towards that we try and improve ourselves and build ourselves up, even
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though we can never reach that aspirational hero.
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And finally, the final degradation of the heroic form in media is what we're seeing in the
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Why does Captain Kirk become the captain of the Enterprise?
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He becomes the captain because he's Captain Kirk.
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Why is it that Iron Man is the only guy in all of the world that can figure out how to
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These heroes are heroes because they're magical.
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Okay, this isn't the old Kirk that earned his way up to becoming captain of the Enterprise.
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The new Kirk just automatically gets promoted to that position because he's Kirk, even though
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there's plenty of other people on the ship that should have been in line for the chain
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Nobody, if I even point this out, it sounds like I'm being pedantic, that I'm demanding too
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much realism from fantasy because we are all so conditioned for this iconic hero.
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Our role is to sit in the audience and experience reality through that electronic eye.
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That electronic eye that has defined the ideal life as this fake and plastic form of masculinity.
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And this is just as antiseptic as Goddard's women.
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When you see Goddard's interest in prepubescent girls,
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The reason he has this interest is because adult women, adult women with adult hormones who have
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a menstrual cycle, who have their own needs and desires, who are independent from him in
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a way that a child is not, real flesh and blood, that terrifies him.
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His interest in prepubescence is that it has not manifested itself yet.
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The only sort of sex he can deal with is the sex through the camera.
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And if it's sex involving somebody who is not sexually mature, all that much better.
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And this is how so many, so many people nowadays define their relationships through non-procreative
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And so this electronic eye, it removes us from ourselves.
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Except not that it captures it onto the celluloid.
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What it does is it locks you away from your own soul.
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Look at Facebook, because this is what we are now.
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That moment that you capture, that instantaneous moment you capture with the camera,
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and you post on Facebook, you make it your avatar, this becomes you.
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And the actual you, the imperfect you, the you who is a sinner, well, that's ignored.
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That your actual soul, which is stained, is ignored.
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And so we all want our Facebook avatars to be who we are.
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Okay, we all want to be that picture of excellence.
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We want to blame all the history on somebody else.
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Okay, and again, this is why I started off with this acknowledgement of that ex of mine.
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It certainly would be psychologically convenient if I could blame everything on her.
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I could say it's all her fault, it's the feminist's fault, it's the justice system's fault.
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And deny any culpability, any involvement in any of it.
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You know, because then I could maintain my Facebook avatar as pristine, as perfect.
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The electric eye divorces us from our very nature.
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We're all, these days, we're all putting on a performance.
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And she was writing about how excited she was to see her favorite male porn star.
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And then she had sex with him, and it felt very empty.
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It felt as if both of them were putting on a performance for a camera that wasn't even there.
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Sex and violence and artificial ego, all of these are separated out of ourselves.
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And because this external self that we are so desperate to maintain,
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you know, this self that we want others to see,
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hypocrisy is the final sin of a dying civilization.
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you're showing the disconnect between their Facebook avatar and their real self.
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Okay, because what's people's reaction when they get caught in hypocrisy?
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It's usually to double down on whatever they were hypocritical about.
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And there's some article about a woman breastfeeding her boyfriend.
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when they get contacted by the journalist saying,