The Invisible Counterpoint

Pre-Halloween Post: Concerning Kavanaugh, we've mostly heard arguments which clearly are portraying him as a liar -- that he knew exactly what he had done to Ford, and others, only that he clearly doesn't much care. However, we've also heard considerations that his memory IS actually faulty... that he either has subconsciously adjusted his memories over the years to keep him feeling like a decent person (NYT, I think), so what stands out in his mind now as factual, as TRUE, isn't what actually happened but rather an adjusted account that fits more or less with how society (through film, and other means) has commonly sought to soften-down the connotations of bro-culture, or that he really doesn't remember at all; not a thing. In the "not remembering at all" consideration of Kavanaugh, we're mostly hearing that blackouts mean exactly that -- a blackening out, forever, of any possibility of recall of what you might done when severely inebriated; it...

In "Infinity War," there's a humorous bit where Thor and Star-lord compare the atrocities they've had to suffer through, where it's all played a bit light so the humour in their battling one another over who has seen more of their kin annihilated -- and thereby the more deserving of consoling for pain-suffered, by "the sought-after maiden" -- triumphs over any deep consideration of what effect that might have had on them. It's a movie mingling different tones, though, and the Tony Stark-vs.-Thanos bit is clearly not supposed to eclipse the PTSD-ravaging explored in "Avengers" and subsequent Iron Man movies for bravado-suffering, but bring it all back to mind.... Tony Stark, sparked into immediate flashback terror at the mere innocent reference to the worm-hole by an attention-seeking kid: such is what would fuel his bringing the fight to Thanos. But in terms of how earlier traumas unsettle our adult being, it's actually Thanos himsel...

The film works against psychology in that what one has been engineered to expect people to be thinking, is portrayed as exactly what they are thinking. What is Armstrong thinking when he gets to the moon? Multiple, surely, but maybe ultimately chiefly about his daughter. The distant, detached dad, it turns out, has all the time been thinking about his beautiful family, not been somewhat disinterested in them. But parents maybe actually not all that interested in their children was supposed to be one of the errors of that era (remember Larkin?), which was improved upon in subsequent generations as parents began to find their children more interesting, more worth their focusing on, reflected in their spending more time with them. But nope... one of the failings of the era turns out not to be a failing at all -- children-focused, always -- so let's all head back to the 50s, why don't we. (If however we'd been shown Armstrong making a fetish of his daughter... so on his mi...