I’m reading Reading Lolita in Tehran. In chapter 10, Azar Nafisi writes about Professor X, a villain who has ridiculous views and clearly doesn’t believe in debate. Now look at this passage:
“1 of his students had decided to write his thesis on Lolita. He used no sources, had not read Nabokov, but his thesis fascinated by the professor, who had a thing about young girls spoiling the lives of intellectual men. This student wanted to write about how Lolita had seduced Humbert, an ‘intellectual poet’, and ruined his life. Professor X, with a look of thoughtful intensity, asked the student if he knew about Nabokov’s own sexual perversions. Nima, with ripples of contempt in his voice, mimicked the professor, shaking his head sadly and saying how, in novel after novel, we find the lives of intellectual men being destroyed by flighty females. […] Yet despite his views on Nabokov’s flighty young vixens, when this man had been ‘looking’ for a new wife, his main condition had been that her age should not exceed 23. His 2nd wife, duly recruited, was at least 2 decades younger than he.”
The stupidity and hypocrisy needs no comment, but isn’t it the same for many idiots in the West who attack Lolita in the name of feminism or whatever-ism? I have seen many people who have not read the book but called it a child sexual abuse manual and said only books written from the victim’s perspective would be worth reading. I have seen many people who have read it but either fall for Humbert Humbert’s trap or say that the book must be bad because it’s narrated by a paedophile. I have also seen many people who think that if you see Lolita as one of your favourite books, something is wrong with you morally. Just recently, for example, there’s a woman who started a twitter thread saying that she stopped seeing a date who said Lolita was his favourite book. To her, that’s a red flag. To me, the question is why they like Lolita. If they say it’s a tragic love story between 2 people who can’t be together because of her age and the unjust law about age of consent, or something along those lines, they’re an idiot and can go away. But if the answer is because Lolita is a great work of art, a masterpiece, which it is, that’s a different matter. In this case, the real red flag is the philistinism of those tweets. I can’t help seeing Lolita as a test, some kind of measure—how someone reacts to it and what he/she says about it says a lot about him/her as a reader. I have written quite a lot about Lolita: love/ nympholepsy/ paedophilia, Lolita and the obligation of literature, the complexity of the book and Nabokov’s moral intention, the saddest chapter in Lolita, and Lolita’s tears (or the little details that escape careless readers). Here are passages written by Nabokov about poshlost and philistinism. Not to mention, my blog has posts about Lolita’s 1st appearance, the dog motif, the butterfly and bird motifs, a theory about Quilty and Lo, the other Lolita, and sympathy for fictional characters. At the moment I don’t have much to write about Reading Lolita in Tehran. I like that the author loves Nabokov, and we’d probably get along because she also likes Flaubert, Jane Austen, Fitzgerald, and Henry James. It’s dry though, surprisingly dry for a book about literature and passion—compared to the prose of Sy Montgomery in The Soul of an Octopus and even Walter Murch’s prose in In the Blink of an Eye, an editing book I’m reading at the same time, Reading Lolita in Tehran feels so dreary and lifeless.
Bill, 1 of the people working at the aquarium, makes the decision of switching tanks for Octavia and Karma.
“Bill had made the right choice. Though for many months, Octavia’s constant attentions to her eggs were rituals rich and full of meaning, at some point, her tending may have ceased to feel fulfilling. A wild octopus tending fertile eggs is surely rewarded, as are birds on the nest, by the signals that her eggs are alive, her embryos growing. Mother birds and their babies chirp and cheep to one another when the young are still in the egg; the mother octopus can see her babies developing inside the egg, starting with the dark eyes, and feel them moving. But Octavia had no such feedback. Perhaps the very sight of the eggs inspired her to try to protect them, the way a mother orangutan will continue to carry and even groom a dead infant, often for many days, and some dogs will refuse to leave the body of someone they love who has died. Perhaps, now that her eggs are no longer in view, Octavia at last was freed of duties she might have suspected were pointless but had felt compelled to perform. Perhaps now, at last, she could rest.”
(Source) I have now finished reading The Soul of an Octopus. It’s such a wonderful book. I’ve just read about an encounter with a stump-armed female octopus in the ocean, followed by a visit with Octavia the octopus in the aquarium in her old age, in chapter 8 “Consciousness”. The Soul of an Octopus is full of interesting facts and descriptions, but it is so captivating and affecting because everything is observed and described with such awe and wonder, such joy and gratitude, and such compassion, that I too am full of curiosity about octopuses and the ocean, and can no longer look at them the same way. In a sense, I feel changed as a person. Once in a while, you pick up a book, expecting nothing, then you’re surprised to find yourself changed because of it. Your perspective’s expanded, your thinking’s shifted. Sy Montgomery learns, and wishes us to learn, about octopuses—creatures that are so alien and so different from us in everything. We don’t just read about what octopuses are like, she also makes us wonder what it’s like to be an octopus. Their experience of the world is completely different. At the same time, she doesn’t treat them like subjects of study, but like beings, with feelings—she treats them with respect, sensitivity, and tenderness, and seeks to understand them and have a connection with them. With octopuses, Montgomery could do something Melville/Ishmael couldn’t do with whales—develop a connection, or even friendship, with them. It’s interesting that I’m writing my dissertation about love and human contact (and motif of touch) in 3 Ingmar Bergman films, and now, The Soul of an Octopus has this passage:
“…We wished she had eaten, but we learned something new: Hunger was not the reason she had surfaced earlier, and it wasn’t what brought her now. The reason she surfaced was abundantly clear. She had not interacted with us, or tasted our skin, or seen us above her tank for 10 full months. In less than 4 weeks, on a Saturday morning in May, Bill would find her, pale, thin, and still, dead at the bottom of her barrel. Yet, despite everything, we knew in that moment that Octavia had not only remembered us and recognized us; she had wanted to touch us again.”
That is so moving. Everyone should read this book.
I’ve just read a very sad chapter in The Soul of an Octopus. Female octopuses die a few months after laying their eggs—they spend all energy caring for and cleaning the eggs, and at some point, stop feeding, and slowly die. At the aquarium that Sy Montgomery visits for The Soul of an Octopus, the octopus Octavia lays eggs, and starts dying.
“Octavia is puffed up, her skin not, as usual, creased or crinkled, thorny or warty, but smooth as a blown-up balloon. This looks decidedly wrong to me, like a giant tumor or an internal organ bloated with disease. My distress increases when I can’t see her gills, her funnel, or her eyes. She has turned her face to the wall, as a dog or cat often does when suffering.” (p.111, ch.4)
Octavia changes colour, and devotes all the time and energy to caring for the eggs. She loses interest in interaction with people at the aquarium. Nothing else matters but the eggs. The sad part is that her eggs are not fertile.
“… we watch Octavia, our alien, invertebrate friend, caring for her infertile eggs at the end of her life with a tenacity and tenderness at once heartbreaking and glorious.” (p.118, ch.4)
“Though Octavia’s eggs will never hatch, it fills us with gratitude that Octavia tends them with diligence and grace. For when she dies, Octavia will do so in the act of loving as only a mature female octopus, at the end of her short, strange life, can love.” (p.119, ch.4)
Before going to the main point, I’d like to say that The Soul of an Octopus is a very good book. It is less about octopus facts than about the author’s personal accounts of her encounters with octopuses at New England Aquarium, written in lucid prose, full of feeling and tenderness. Now and then there’s a sense that there’s some exaggeration—like the over-enthusiasm of an octopus lover who glorifies everything about the creature, but the author has such an infectious curiosity and sense of wonder that you share the enthusiasm and want to know everything possible about octopuses and start seeing them in a different way. Now, on chapter 4, I’ve started to see a significant difference between me and Sy Montgomery—it is the fact that I’m not an animal lover. By this, I don’t mean that I dislike animals; I love dogs and cats, and like other “safe” animals like hamsters or rabbits, and so on, and even with dogs, prefer puppies and small dogs; I’m not a fan of insects nor arthropods, and don’t come near wild, untamed animals, especially those with venom or massive strength. Part of it is ignorance, indifference, and fear. I have always been a city person, who can’t tell the difference between crocodiles and alligators, between leopards and jaguars, between rabbits and bunnies and hares, between frogs and toads, you get the idea. I can’t tell which kinds of snakes are venomous either. To me it’s simple—stay away from snakes. My interests have always been in other things. Part of it is that I think wild animals are wild animals. No matter how much you love them and care for them and understand them, they are still wild animals, driven by instinct, undomesticated, untamed, and unpredictable. Animal lovers usually say people are not much better, they may also kill you or ruin you in other ways, but at least people can communicate in language, and people know such things as law and concept of ethics. Animals follow instinct, they function and operate in their own ways, and don’t know anything about law or consequences. Wild animals are very different from us humans. On page 70-71, chapter 3, Sy Montgomery writes about Marion Fish, who “demonstrated the positive power of interesting, gentle, loving interaction between keepers and the animals in their care” by directly handing anacondas, without head restraint. “[T]he snakes are healthier and happier for it”, she says. That seems to work, I guess, but they are anacondas. What if 1 day they go crazy? What if they get irritated by something and take it out on a keeper? What would you do? Now, in chapter 4, Montgomery describes an episode where several people are having an interaction with a young octopus named Kali, suddenly she (Kali) hoses and then, for no obvious reason, bites Anna, a volunteer. It is an act of aggression. The bite isn’t serious, there is no venom, Anna feels fine afterwards. Montgomery says “Being bitten is an intimate interaction” and “a bite is proof of a kind of contact that—even when it goes wrong—at a time when most people are increasingly isolated from the natural world, we are privileged to experience.” Nobody understands why the octopus bit Anna. Montgomery’s theory is that Anna is on medication and the doctor has just changed prescription, so Kali could taste the difference and got confused. Even then that doesn’t change the fact that the octopus, unprovoked, bites someone it knows. If an octopus attacks again, you can never know, as you don’t know what they think. Montgomery may try to understand, and explain the behaviour, but it doesn’t change anything. Wild animals are still wild animals. At the beginning of the book, when an aquarist introduces Montgomery to an octopus, he also tells her never to let an octopus near her face. He has worked there for years, and knows enough not to let an octopus near the face. It could pull out your eye.
Last year I didn’t write a word about the Oscars. It was a bad year. Of the 9 films that were nominated for Best Picture, I haven’t seen Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Get Out, and The Post—I was busy, and just indifferent. I had a strong dislike of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which had some touching moments but as a whole was a corny film, with a forced message and a contrived plot. I didn’t buy Sam Rockwell’s character’s transformation, which means that I wasn’t happy about him getting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (though it’s the fault of the script, not the actor’s fault). Above all, I didn’t like that the dead police officer was so perfect, and the Frances McDormand character was seen by everyone as a bad person—the film deserves credit for its different approach in that generally the mother of a raped and murdered girl should be sympathised with, but the character is so angry, obsessed, and single-minded that everyone else turns against her as she becomes more extreme, but at the same time, it seems to me rather heartless that she is portrayed as an angry and unreasonable character and has nobody’s sympathy and understanding. Another film that I vehemently disliked last year was The Shape of Water, which won Best Picture. It’s a silly film, with a banal, commonplace story and a 2-dimensional villain. The Shape of Water was a disappointment after Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, and it’s beyond my comprehension that such a film won Best Picture. I thought more highly of Phantom Thread and Lady Bird, especially the former. Phantom Thread is a film that I didn’t enjoy on a personal level, because of the toxic relationship depicted, but it’s an excellent film, a great film that doesn’t have the bagginess and messiness of most of Paul Thomas Anderson’s works. It’s also a nice film for Daniel Day-Lewis to end his career with, though of course I wish he’s still acting. In general, last year was a bad year, and I was indifferent to most of the films. I wasn’t, for example, enthusiastic about Blade Runner 2049 and Dunkirk, the 2 films that my classmates were crazy about. The only film I really liked last year was The Square, in Foreign Language Film category, but it didn’t win. I haven’t seen A Fantastic Woman. This year is another shitty year. I haven’t seen Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, and A Star Is Born. Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, and Green Book are quite good. Vice is dead boring and tries too hard to be quirky. Roma is hugely overrated. Do people praise it because it’s slow and in B&W? It baffles me that the film gets nominated for Best Cinematography—it’s not even B&W, just shades of grey, with no real black and no real white. A friend of mine compares the film to Fellini, but it’s nothing like Fellini, especially in cinematography. I hate that Roma didn’t have close-ups and the camera was far away most of the time, that at the beginning I got the main character and another servant mixed up. I hate that the camera movement was, for a large part, unmotivated. I hate that it’s not really B&W. Another thing that perplexes me is that Yalitza Aparicio got nominated for Best Actress. She was passive and unresponsive for the entire film. Things happen—earthquake, forest fire, fights, cries, threats, riots, shootings, etc. she never reacts. She remains slow, unresponsive, and expressionless for the entire film, except when the character has a miscarriage—but even then, the actress doesn’t express much. It is not stoicism, even when the lover shows off his martial arts skill by playing around with a pole, which might fly into her face any moment, or when he later humiliates her, or when he points a gun at her, she never reacts. Her performance doesn’t hint at anything hidden underneath. Why would she deserve the nomination, and such praise? Roma is, to me, a weak film, and I wouldn’t hate it so much if not for the universal acclaim among the critics. Why is it that such a film gets nominated for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film? I don’t remember any such thing happening before. I predict that Rami Malek will win Best Actor for Bohemian Rhapsody, Olivia Colman—Best Actress for The Favourite, Mahershala Ali—Best Supporting Actor for Green Book, Marina de Tavira—Best Supporting Actress for Roma. For Best Picture and Best Director, I suspect Roma will win, though I prefer The Favourite. Still going to watch it tonight, but this year is such a shitty year. Maybe for me the Oscars have lost their magic.
I’m on a break, after finishing filming on Monday night 18/2. Currently reading The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery. There are lots of interesting facts and observations about octopuses in the book. Take this passage from chapter 2:
“The ability of the octopuses and their kin to camouflage themselves is unmatched in both speed and diversity. Octopuses and their relatives put chameleons to shame. Most animals gifted with the ability to camouflage can assume only a tiny handful of fixed patterns. The cephalopods have a command of 30 to 50 different patterns per individual animal. They can change color, pattern, and texture in 7/10 of a second. On a Pacific coral reef, a research once counted an octopus changing 177 times in a single hour. [...] For its color palette, the octopus uses 3 layers of 3 different types of cells near the skin’s surface—all controlled in different ways. The deepest layer, containing the white leucophores, passively reflects background light. This process appears to involve no muscles or nerves. The middle layer contains the tiny iridophores, each 100 microns across. These also reflect light, including polarized right (which humans can’t see, but a number of octopuses’ predators, including birds, do). The iridophores create an array of glittering greens, blues, golds, and pinks. Some of these little organs seem to be passive, but other iridophores appear to be controlled by the nervous system. They are associated with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the 1st neurotransmitter to be identified in any animal. Acetylcholine helps with contraction of muscles; in humans, it is also important in memory, learning, and REM sleep. In octopuses, more of it “turns on” the greens and blues; less creates pinks and golds. The topmost layer of the octopus’s skin contains chromatophores, tiny sacks of yellow, red, brown, and black pigment, each in an elastic container that can be opened or closed to reveal more or less color. Camouflaging the eye alone—with a variety of patterns including a bar, a bandit’s mask, and a starburst pattern—can involve as many as 5 million chromatophores. Each chromatophore is regulated via an array of nerves and muscles, all under the octopus’s voluntary control. To blend with its surroundings, or to confuse predators or prey, an octopus can produce spots, stripes, and blotches of color anywhere on its body except its suckers and the lining of its funnel and mantle openings. […] And of course the octopus can also voluntarily control its skin texture—raising and lowering fleshy projections called papillae—as well as change its overall shape and posture.”
Later in the same chapter:
“… the octopus eye and our own are strikingly similar. Both have lens-based focusing, with transparent corneas, irises that regulate light, and retinas in the back of the eye to convert light to neural signals that can be processed in the brain. Yet there are also differences. The octopus eye, unlike our own, can detect polarized light. It has no blind spot. (Our optic nerve attaches to the back of the eye at the retina, creating the blind spot. The octopus’s optic nerve circles around the outside of the retina). Our eyes are binocular, directed forward for seeing what’s ahead of us, our usual direction of travel. The octopus’s wide-angle eyes are adapted to panoramic vision. And each eye can swivel independently, like a chameleon’s. Our visual acuity can extend beyond the horizon; an octopus can see only about 8 feet away. There is another important difference as well. Human eyes have 3 visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one—which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind.”
Isn’t that fascinating? It’s like reading about whales in Moby Dick. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, Sy Montgomery has such an immense curiosity and sense of wonder that you feel captivated and feel changed as a person as you read the book—you start to wonder, what is it like to be an octopus? do they have consciousness? do they think? how do they feel about us? how do they see the world? do they dream?why are they so smart? Love this book.
1/ This is a scene I did last year for Directing Workshop: I wrote, directed, and edited it. Cinematographer was my classmate Frances Farrell Oscroft. The scene was only marked on the way I worked with actors—nothing else, and there was no budget. 2/ This is the bank scene from the test shoot last December for my graduation film Non-Person. We did 3 scenes for the test shoot, this is one of them. A few points to clarify: a) This was a SW4 assessment, which we saw as a chance to test a few things for the scenes. There will be changes. b) For the assessment, the scene was shot in a studio. The actual film will be shot on location. c) The actors were hired by the film school for the assessments. The actual cast will be different. Having said that, this scene can give you an idea of what the story is like, and what kind of tone we are going for. In addition to the 3 scenes, we also did a camera test: 3/ Here again is my film Colours of Her Mind, which I made on the side: I made some flip tests: And here’s a random silly video: 4/ Now serious stuff: My film Footfalls has just been nominated for the RTS (Royal Television Society) Yorkshire Student Awards. The ceremony is on 27/2. Here’s the link: https://rts.org.uk/award/rts-yorkshire-student-awards-2019-0?fbclid=IwAR1VKwI5pAq1XVLcGRZYAKANb03mjPKuulqagGfiV5z1nbspqmrrH8BmoGo (under Short Form) I didn’t expect that.
North and South is, I think, a rather bland book. Elizabeth Gaskell’s main strength is in the individual scenes—I’m near the end, and the best chapters are chapter 40 (Mr Hale, Mr Bell, Margaret, and Mr Thornton sit together, and Mr Thornton lets slip a mocking allusion to her lie that silences her and makes him ashamed of himself), and perhaps chapter 46 (the visit to Helstone, and the conversation between Margaret and Mr Bell about Mr Thornton). I like Margaret Hale. Next to some 19th century heroines, she might not stand out much, but she has inner strength and self-reflection, without being perfect—she has her own prejudices, and sometimes appears haughty. Moreover, she doesn’t understand herself. Like Jane Austen’s novels, North and South is about Margaret growing, learning, and coming to understand others and herself. A lot of the book is about misunderstandings, and Gaskell writes these scenes with subtlety. I like the way Margaret changes without realising. She grows up in London with her cousin Edith’s family, then returns to Helstone for a short time, and is forced by circumstances to move to Milton, which she doesn’t like at 1st, but afterwards she returns to London and revisits Helstone but no longer feels at home at either place. Gaskell’s prose is plain, but I won’t complain—it is remarkable what she could achieve, having to deal with the weekly serial. It’s the plotting of the book that I don’t like. It’s clumsy, and it’s like Gaskell, for the entire book or at least the 2nd half, tries to crush Margaret. I’m on chapter 48, and now Mr Bell is dead—she kills off Margaret’s friend, then mother, then father, and now even her godfather. Who will be next? Frederick? I count 6 deaths, plus a roasted cat. Gaskell has to roast a cat too. Such cruelty. ______________________________________________________ Having said that, I know Mr Bell’s death brings Margaret liberation—she becomes an heiress, and can have all the freedom she wants. That is like the plot device at the end of Jane Eyre. An inheritance can solve all problems and bring about a happy ending.
