The Horror

[Judge Pen]

I've seen horrors...horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that...But you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terrorare your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children.
We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried...
I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought:
My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...
without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that defeats us.

Discuss. . . . . .

[MasterKiller]

You looking for an in-depth discussion of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" as a discourse in modern colonialism as it pertains to the Bush administration's imperialist goals in the Mid-East?

A compare/contrast between the American involvment in Vietnam and British involvment in the Congo?

A deconstructionist interpretation of "Heart of Darkness" and what really scares Kurtz?

Or maybe something a little lighter?

[Judge Pen]

Well if your offering. . . . I'm interested in the deconstructionist interpretation on "Apocalypse Now" and what really scares Kurtz. I've always thought I've gotten Williard's character, he overcame his own deamons to avoid becoming Kurtz (imo), but what's it like to be Kurtz? What scares a man that has done the acts that he has done?

[MasterKiller]

Well, on one level, Kurtz becomes the "brute" that he originally wanted to civilize. The "horror" is his own psyche...his real psyche...he comes to understand that modern, civilized, society is only a muzzle on the true nature of the human spirit, a nature that eventually overtakes him in the shadows of the jungle.

The wickedness he sought to root out doesn't take root in him, it was already there, waiting to be nourished; and it frightens him.

On another level, you have Kurtz making a deathbed confessional on the wickedness of Imperialism. The "white man's burden" to civilize the less fortunate is really a vehicle of hypocricy. Marlow considered Kurtz to be redeemed at the end of the novel "Heart of Darkness" through this confession.

[Judge Pen]

Yet he worries about what his son will think of him and what he has done. Also he seems to fear judgment more than anything but he obviously judges himself as weak since he allows Willard to kill him (a different dynamic than Marlow and HofD).

Willard, in doing so, has confronted his own Heart but does not (apparently) succumb to the temptations within.

[MasterKiller]

I haven't seen Apocolypse Now in a few years. I'm more familiar with HOD, so the differences are escaping me right now.

But, if you would like, we could discuss the Kurtzian logic in Batman Begins...:D

[Judge Pen]

I need to re-watch Batman Begins. I have the DVD, but I haven't had time to watch it yet.

[Shaolinlueb]

i just ordered hellraiser 1 and 2. i cant wait for them to come in.

[MasterKiller]

That's not quite the same kind of 'horror,' there Lueby. :D

[Mr Punch]

I dunno, if you look at Pinhead's rationale for choosing the box it has quite a lot of crossover in looking inside to make friends with horror and moral terror... and the primordial instinct without judgment! :rolleyes: ;) :p :D

Eat that, you condescending egghead!

[Ben Gash]

I'm just astonished that anyone can make any kind of sense of the second half of Heart of Darkness!
Did Willard overcome anything by killing Kurtz? Does he not instead betray himself and revert to the role of enforcer for a system he has no real faith in, becoming what Kurtz accused him of being all along? Is there any gain in Kurtz's death other than to prove that the system is the bigger dog? Indeed, is there any victory in Kurtz's death for the system? Kurtz submits to his own murder, doing things on his own terms, and showing that the authorities demean themselves by assassinating him.