my most enjoyed reads + re-reads of 2012

the order in which these were read and seen

 

The Three Great Lies, as told by Allison Poole, aka Rielle Hunter

1.  The Check is in the mail.

2.  I won't come in your mouth.

3. I love you!

lfu piece

I wrote this article that was published by La Furia Umana.  NOTE:  my editor quit during the uh edits so mine got posted sans edits.

whatever.

http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=649:sick-fulfillment&catid=25:rapporto-confidenziale&Itemid=27

Mental Rapedown as Mental Breakdown

A Psychotherapeutic method, Mentalization - Based Treatment (MBT) is used as therapy for men with aggressive, anti social and violent behaviour.   British  medical foundation Tavistock and Portman's site describes " the concept of  ‘mentalization’, as a process through which we interpret the actions of ourselves and others by considering underlying intentions, desires, needs, feelings and beliefs."

Put simply, mentalization is the capacity to think about and reflect upon the workings of one’s own mind and other people’s minds.  Researchers believe that the ability to mentalize is impaired in people with certain personality disorders, and that this can lead to problematic, distressing and often harmful behaviour, putting both the person themselves and others around them at risk."

So is the predilection toward violent, antisocial behaviour a result of a stunting of the ability to mentalize, or to explain , visualize and contextualize connections?

The violence found in the film worlds of TROUBLE EVERY DAY and DRIVE  (and even a great new film i just watched , SIMON KILLER, are sudden and potent.  Both seem to have a direct and carnal relationship to FANTASY.  They are borne from sexual desire, and both films feature minimal plot exposition (TROUBLE going almost completely devoid of all exposition) to clarify  these violent characters' mental states.
Unclear to me is the impact of  over-immersion into mentalizing (specifically violent, sexually aggressive, antisocial) fantasies versus the impact of lack of mentalzing  altogether on said 'violent' anti social men.
Gosling in DRIVE  is not much else beyond a man lost in the dreams of being a part of a Hollywood film. Not so different from the Hollywood Characters documented in CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO, he adorns himself with a movie costume, swagger to spare,  and a tangential role as stuntman, but resides on the sidelines and in his own imagined dramas.
I saw the film at a prerelease BAMCinematek screening with the director in attendance.  Winding Refn said he views the  film as a fairy tale about a person who has always dreamed of finding a reason to act out in psychotic violence.

Cora and Shane in TROUBLE exert sexually cannibalistic violence, but more out of a reaction to imprisonment. Imprisonment of the everyday kind, like urban life, married exclusiviity, Shane being a newlywed, struggling against his own nascent criminal path.

Are Cora and Shane less egocentric than Gosling's guy ?  Is their visible aggression stealing something from other people to feed their own self centeredness (lack of mentalization/contextualization of connectedness) ?  Or is it more of an afterbirth?  Coming into being as an overreaction to the pain of being close without the exceptionality of a type of intimacy that really breaks through the separation of self?

committing thought to action.

theres something about the satisfaction of breakage.

Cutting through the passive stage (fantasizing) and committing lips to lips, or knife to flesh.

Carrying through a temptation or an intense emotion to a concretized end.

There's  just something about stabbing.

DRIVE got it right.

And about ten yrs earlier, TROUBLE EVERY DAY nailed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfENjj_VqfQ

for the record

for the record, i wrote this

http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=566:tren-de-sombras&catid=25:rapporto-confidenziale&Itemid=27