[SFRA-L] ANOTHER EARTH (was Re: "Getting it")

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/19/2012 11:44 AM, Allen, Virginia [ENGL] wrote:

>On the question of what is "required" of Damien Broderick, please allow 
me to clarify that as well.  The "obligation" I spoke of was 
rhetorical/grammatical.  ... When someone claims personal injury at your 
hands, you are "required" to apologize or launch into a tiresome defense 
of how it wasn't your fault but his... <

I appreciate Virginia's defense, but I should briefly defend Pawel's 
original comment in turn. I think it has been somewhat misconstrued.

I wrote at the outset:

<it seems likely to me that hardly anyone with well-trained sf 
sensibilities will be able to watch this incredibly stupid movie 
(ANOTHER EARTH ) without screaming repeatedly in pain.>

Pawel replied, in effect, that he--an sf critic and theorist--was not 
affected in this way:

<I personally liked how it flows visually - whatever this makes me or my 
sf sensibilities.>

That seemed to me a fair and even illuminating response to my somewhat 
hyperbolic statement. Yes, there *are* in fact some people "with 
well-trained sf sensibilities" who are not distressed by what I claimed 
are stupid evasions of real-world consequences in the mise en scene.

I find Virginia's pomo bonobos quite entertaining as an analogy. I can 
also report that my wife, trained in mathematics, architecture, law, 
decision theory, and business management, and a novelist, could barely 
force herself to watch the film all the way through, and complained 
bitterly at the internal inconsistencies and physical absurdities of the 
plot. It's not just pre-post-post literary fogies who feel this way. :)

Damien Broderick