February 2012
4 posts
4 tags
“[I]t’s a black dark screen and then, lights thrown on. Are we basically...”
– Slavoj Zizek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006)
1 tag
“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire....”
– Slavoj Zizek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006)
2 tags
“The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude,...”
– Susan Sontag, On Photography
1 tag
January 2012
8 posts
4 tags
3 tags
CTRL + S
i won’t pretend to say that we were chums or friends, but one of my school-mate (the vocalist for Riot !n Magenta) made it to the guardian’s list of music around the world. so a shout-out to local (‘indie’) music in singapore i guess. pretty cool if you ask me!
well i’m no expert in the arena of tron, but this is one that has a kind of electronic-lounge...
4 tags
3 tags
Ah Boy, Huat Ignorance You Talking?
at the annual gathering of the family over at gramp’s
aunt: what are you studying again?
me: english literature.
aunt: orh, so you want to be a teacher? or are you going to be a writer? (chuckles)
me: erm, no. not really. i’ll probably be going on for masters or something. film studies.
cousin: wah, you want to be a film director huh?! (slightly mockingly)
me: no? anyway, erm...
1 tag
“I was raised up believing, I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among...”
– Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
2 tags
“Als das Kind Kind war, war es die Zeit der folgenden Fragen:
Warum bin ich ich,...”
– Wim Wenders & Peter Handke, Wings of Desire/Der Himmel über Berlin
10 tags
December 2011
14 posts
4 tags
Nova Godina
“Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.”
Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
at the point of this reflection/refraction, earth completes its round around the sun once more as it has been doing so for millions. the end of...
2 tags
Jurong: Ground Zero
Here in the west side of things, there is no setting sun to speak of
The dust clouds that gather in this industrial hub fails to settle
hovering above and around the people of this town,
always failing to hit the ground
The lorries and trucks here beep to the workers’ song, their engines humming along
People living in...
1 tag
2 tags
“Everyone is a curator is his own museum.”
– Dubravka Ugresic, The Ministry of Pain
3 tags
Urban Insomnia/Electronic Dreams
Between the click of the light, and the start of the dream.
(Arcade Fire, No Cars Go)
David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983)
and as we traverse the infinite fields of electrons, we come to the numbing paradise of the net. my ghost is losing bits of itself in this ritual that goes on for circuits of life. at high speed, everything seems to be in technicolor. the screen is the retina of...
“I am the machine that reveals the world to you as I alone am able to see it.”
– Dziga Vertov
1 tag
Two Coffees Left Untouched
i dreamt of us sitting down in an anonymous cafe, over the table, the camera blinked silly at our coffees. untouched.
a close-up on their brown surfaces reveals nothing, not even evidence of the point-of-view camera. silence.
my two hands lying dead on my thighs, as I glanced downwards into the darkened space beneath. beyond.
i was thinking up galaxies of meanings far far away galaxies of...
2 tags
Pop Friction: Fuck Yeah I'm a Consumer! →
finally updated the blog with a post on Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994)
http://popcorntheory.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/pop-friction-fuck-yeah-im-a-consumer/
3 tags
1 tag
“grant my last request, and just let me hold you.
don’t shrug your...”
– Paolo Nutini, Last Request
Ad Nauseam: The White Flare of Morning
I woke up with an ill sense of nausea, and wondered if I did at least sometimes exist. other than the image of solidity I receive from the mirror, other than this sensation of running my fingers down my loins, other than this stream of thought running through my head as I wondered hard if I truly did exist: do I exist simply because I am conscious of myself as both an object and a subject?
I...
3 tags
November 2011
10 posts
2 tags
WKW: Pop Music & HK Postmodernity →
awesome visual commentary on the cinema of wong kar wai
2 tags
deus ex machina
sometimes i wonder if it is wrong to hate the capitulated. those who give themselves up uncritically to the race to be superhuman. to be the idols groped by the multitude.
but refractions after refractions, i found myself. or at least where roughly i stood. and the reflection is a hater. or is it a more a refraction, i wandered in wonder.
these little pockets of epiphanies could be painful...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“yo mama so poor, she can’t afford to pay attention.”
– Eric Cartman
4 tags
Chaucer is my Homeboy
A man is not a sinner with his wife, He cannot hurt himself with his own knife; We have the law’s permission thus to play.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale”
i’m perhaps the least qualified person to speak of Lacanian theory, given that i am one of the few remaining english lit students in my cohort yet to have taken module on literature and...
1 tag
“in my dream i was almost there
but you pulled me aside and said you’re...”
– Arcade Fire, Modern Man
1 tag
metaphors for breakfast
morning mist on glass words somersault on my tongue cant break this silence
October 2011
6 posts
2 tags
2 tags
“the stars are blazing like rebel diamonds
cut out of the sun
when you read my...”
– The Killers, Read My Mind
1 tag
“she’s up in the sky and the sky is on fire.
she set the whole...”
– Foals, Alabaster
Does He look like a Bitch?
i just handed in a paper on Pulp Fiction (1994) earlier this evening. for a lack of imagination, my paper’s entitled “Frankfurt School goes to the Movies: Reading Pulp Fiction with Adorno and Horkheimer.” (yes i know, not the most original)
with the dominant literatures on Pulp Fiction all focused on the postmodern themes and the figure of the postmodern gangster, i thought...
4 tags
Dial M for Murder
Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images (1928)
Roughly fifteen thousand years ago a person painted a picture of a bison on a cave ceiling … [T]he making of a picture of a bison was thought to yield power over the living bison such that it could be killed … it is the making of the depiction or the representation that holds the power. (Hagberg, Meaning and Interpretation)
...
September 2011
5 posts
3 tags
“Derrida’s claim is that all philosophising is infected with a blindness to...”
– Karl Simms on Jacques Derrida’s “White Mythologies”
5 tags
A History of Violence
my love is like a red red rose. if roses are red, the violence is you.
i am a murderer, just watch me murder reality
bit by bit, and word by word.
(imitation, not duplication)
i will show you fear in a hand full of lust. i will liberate your world with my pen s.
(refraction, not reflection)
this oblique space in you - it calls for me, calls for my violence.
watch me watch you disappear into...
2 tags
2 tags
Chaucer can just deconstruct my arse
The thoughtful marquis, speaking with an air Of sober gravity, said thus to her: ‘Tell me, Griselda, is your father there?’ In all humility, without demur, She answered, ‘He is here and ready, sir.’ She rose at once and of her own accord Fetched out her father to his overlord.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales “The Clerk’s Tale” (emphasis mine)
...
August 2011
15 posts
6 tags
God is a number you cannot count to
god is a number you cannot count to
- marilyn manson
if the image of manson was to precede the statement he makes, most people would at first glance (at least) dismiss his words simply as an atheist or god-hating sentiment. it’s not hard to understand, given the “bad name” on postmodern pop culture these days.
i’m not a fan nor a scholar of lacanian theories. but if...
4 tags
2 tags
