Re: The new, improved Sophie's Choice...

Oh, there are a lot of possibilities, some of them insidious and some
benign.

Thinking back to the little flurry of South Park posts, I remember
agreeing with you that the Mormon epsiode was a really, really good
one. Then I started recalling all my other "favorites." This was
purely a reaction to the pleasure I received watching these shows -- I'd
notice some were more pleasurable than others, and start listing those
that were most pleasurable to me. But once I've done that I've set up a
hierarchy, intentionally or not. When I noticed I was doing this I had
a bit of a shock, because I don't normally think in terms of a hierarchy
of pleasure, or think I should. But I think the truth is we do this all
the time. If we really like one Kubrick film, we're likely to see a
second. If we really like the second we're sure to see a third. If we
don't like a Farrelly Brothers' film, we're not likely to see a second.
If we dislike the second, we're sure not to see a third. And so we've
set up a hierarchy, like it or not -- Kubrick good, FBs bad.

The next obvious step is to ask myself -why- the Mormon episode or the
hate crime episode was more pleasurable to me than, say, the J-Lo
episode, or why the Kubrick films are more enjoyable than the FB films.
And once we've done this we've started doing aesthetics.

Now, I think you'd be just fine with this whole process so long as we're
just describing -ourselves- or our own preferences. But, you see, once
we've thought about it this much, the whole process starts to take on a
life of its own. And once we talk to others about our preferences, they
become communal property rather than just personal, they impinge on our
listeners somehow, who are always free to share them or disagree, but
who now, either way, have to take them into account.

And once we become so subtle that we identify different kinds of
pleasures -- say, just a simple belly laugh over some stupid slapstick
ploy in a Julia Robert's movie, as opposed to a deep feeling of terror
watching a good performance of Oedipus Rex, we may even start to
organize a similar hierarchy over the different pleasures we
experience. Some of our pleasures may be pretty simple and basic. Some
we might think are wrong -- say, laughing when we see something bad
happen to someone -- but they're still pleasures so we need to admit to
them. Some we might think expand us as human beings, opening up
possibilities for thought or insight or emotions we didn't consider
before, while others might just seem base or animal -- neither wrong nor
right, but certainly nothing very surprising. So we may start a
hierarchy of pleasure based upon the types of pleasures available to us,
and understand the pleasures given to us by creative works in these terms.

I think we all do this to some extent without even thinking about it, so
that the effort to stop doing it is conscious and deliberate and
requires training, and a specific type of morality that motivates us to
do so -- something "democratic" or levelling or "tolerant." Otherwise
we'd keep on going, asking ourselves why we enjoy what we do and what
that tells us about ourselves.

Jim

Omlor@aol.com wrote:

> The desire to have them, on the other hand, the desire to insist on
> some sort of "primary greater worth" in such matters, I still find
> fascinating (and a bit scary). Thus my time spent with Robbie.
>
> I still wonder what's behind that desire. And who the target of such
> judgments and discussions really are (besides the one making the
> judgment). And why.
>
> --John
>

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Received on Fri Dec 19 09:56:06 2003