Monday, October 14, 2024

The Infernal Machine




Jean Cocteau's The Infernal Machine premiered on April 10, 1934 directed by Louis Jouvet. It's a wonderful title since it hearkens to the ineluctability of the Oedipus myth. Oedipus, as you may call, famously brought about what he feared. Sometimes  you hear about self-fulfilling prophecies, but that's not Oedipus. He doesn't say I'm going to meet daddy at the crossroads and hence undo us both. He doesn't know his interlocutor is Laius. It's a seemingly didactic point that accounts for the true tragedy at work ie the infernal nature of ignorance. Who cares? Spiro Agnew who must have been the bastard of Fred Trump once railed at effete intellectuals. His life was devoted to demonstrating that stupidity pays. The philosophical and spiritual state of being a dumbbell is the lingua Franca of history from the Greeks right down to Matt Gaetz.

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy The East Hampton Star 

and listen to "Land of a 1000" by Wilson Pickett

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