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Posts Tagged ‘Aristotle’

Batton Lash

Steve Ditko’s ‘The Ever Unreachable’

by Batton Lash

For comic book readers, Steve Ditko is a name to be reckoned with. In a career spanning more than five decades, Ditko has drawn countless pages in every genre for every major publisher. Ditko has created scores of original characters and is probably best known for co-creating The Amazing Spider-Man. Ditko is also the author of many non-fiction essays on topics that range from the popular culture to metaphysics.

Ditko

Several months ago, Big Hollywood posted Steve Ditko’s provocative essay, “Toyland”. It was a powerfully written piece on creativity, philosophy, heroism and the disturbing trend towards nihilism in the culture.  As a result, “Toyland” got some interesting comments and Ditko has prepared the following as a response.

Written especially for Big Hollywood, here is Steve Ditko’s “The Ever Unreachable.” (more…)

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Posted Nov 21st 2009 at 7:03 am in Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Featured Story | 64 Comments

Leo Grin

Introducing ‘For Conservative Movie Lovers’

by Leo Grin


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A thousand years ago in Cairo, surrounded by ancient pyramids and the ghosts of lost civilizations, the great Arab scientist Alhazen conducted a peculiar optical experiment. Building on observations made by Aristotle thirteen centuries earlier, he first constructed a room, one completely shuttered from the light of the outside world, as dark as death. He then cleverly lit the space around the room with an array of bright lamps. Finally, he punched a single pinhole into one wall, just large enough to let a small beam of lamplight bleed in.

Alhazen confirmed that if you entered such a room, and sat in the darkness until your eyes had ample time to adjust, and then followed the beam of light emanating from the pinhole to where it splashed onto the wall opposite, you would be privy to an amazing, almost magical sight. As you watched, shapes and colors would begin to coalesce. Familiar forms would appear. And eventually, when your eyes had acclimated enough, you would be staring at nothing less than an exact upside-down projection of the outside world, perfect in every detail. Alhazen marveled at this, and gave the experiment an evocative name: Al-Bayt al-Muthlim, translated by later scribes into Latin as camera obscura — The Veiled Chamber. (more…)

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Posted Oct 16th 2009 at 6:43 am in Classic Hollywood | 78 Comments

Jeffrey Jena

Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

by Jeffrey Jena

I was watching the President at Notre Dame a few weeks ago and hoping that one good Catholic student would rise in defense of the church and the unborn and do what the Jesuits teach best, question authority. I wanted just one strong Catholic woman to respectfully express her disappointment with the school’s decision to invite a man so at odds with many of the teachings of the church. It didn’t happen, or if it did I didn’t see it reported.

As I watched the address, and many of the events since, I realized that what we are all watching is the unfolding of a classical Greek drama. It is interesting to note that the early Greek tragedies started with a song of praise to the god Dionysus who was known to inspire ecstasy and madness. Perhaps our unfolding modern drama was begun by the mainstream media’s song of praise for Mr. Obama. Aristotle thought a good tragedy should arouse both fear and pity … anybody with me yet?

The first element in a classical tragedy is the noble hero or protagonist. The hero must appear at first to be perfect though he has a fatal flaw. The hero is driven to accomplish some great task but his flaw will make this go horribly awry. The protagonist in our tragedy is Mr. Obama. He is the modern Oedipus tortured by his abandonment as a child by his mother. He craves the love she showed for causes and others but not him. Rejection by his mother caused him to doubt his worthiness to be loved and develop low self esteem. I know that might sound a little nutty — how can someone who has risen so far have low self esteem? Many overachievers are driven by that same flaw. This character fault also may have led him to experiment with drugs and alcohol in his early years. (more…)

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Posted Jun 6th 2009 at 3:33 pm in Politics | 7 Comments