lucashelsing

A friend of mine told me two very important things: first, that both the shape and the content are important, and that the content might be even more important than the shape. Second, that when we read or watch a story, we must be able to analyze what we see and question what we are reading or seeing, we must not just see it for pleasure, we must see and try to ask questions about what's the meaning of that and try to understand what is happening. When I watched "Class Relations" I got really uncomfortable when people started leaving the room as the movie continuously got worse on its shape, but what those people might have not paid attention, (or maybe they didn't wanted to make an effort to try to understand what was happening) is that the content of that awful shape is very interesting and important. If you ever had parents, you know what is to have your opinion ignored and your ideas be laughed at, if you are a woman, you might experiment that too sometimes when your gender is minority in a table and you have friends with patriarchal thinking. And if you are just a waitress, a waiter or a "heater", you will be ignored in your claims no matter how based on facts they are. That's what happens with the "heater" at the beginning of the film, he is from a lower class, a labourer, and he is asking for very reasonable things, but the dominating class members, the captain of the ship and Karl's uncle, make his claims seems absurd. Karl thinks that it's because the "heater" could not explain well his intention, but it's not just a matter of performance, it's a matter of position in a determined situation, on that case, it was a matter of a labourer facing his exploiters, the bourgeoisie. That's why the name of the movie is "Class Relations". You, the reader of this text, might not agree with me at first, but when we compare the relations the young Karl had with others when he was a member of the bourgeoisie with the relations with others when he was just a labourer, you get to know that your position really matters in a discussion about an subjective problem (sometimes even about an objective problem). I'll give you a personal example. When I was a child, I once told my father that a thunder could get five times the temperature of the sun, he yelled at me "where the hell did you heard that?". My father was no ordinary man, he was a very erudite person with years of study and he had a personal library of many important titles of many important authors, but his position in that situation was above mine, he wouldn't listen to what just a child would say. I told him that I heard that in a channel that was ranked by BBC on 2014, the second best channel in the world for culture and knowledge, he laughed at me saying that such channel wouldn't say such stupidness, and that if a thunder could get five times the temperature of the sun the entire Earth would be reduced to ashes. At that time, I didn't have the knowledge to explain how a thunder could get five the temperature of the Sun without causing the apocalypse, but even if I knew, I would most likely be quiet and unable to explain what I knew, just like the "heater" at the beginning of the film and the young Karl at the end of the film. William Footwhite in his "Cornerville" shows how a position of a person in a determined social group could affect his "power to convince" or the "power to be supported by the majority when taking a decision in group", something similar happens in a macro level, between classes, and that is the very important content the movie tries to show us. It's not easy to get to this comprehension, you might need some sociological knowledge before that, but when you get it, even the shape of the film being awful (bad interpretation, bad plot, bad photography, bad filming, etc.), it will be worth to watch it if you like movies with a good content. But I believe all these "problems" are intentional, the absence of drama made by music, which is so common in western mainstream movies, make clear the purpose of this film, but this is another story to speak about...

I just arrived back from a very special session of this movie on the 39th Sao Paulo International Exhibition of Cinema. Maybe I should have waited to cool off my head first, but I couldn't. This special sessions was at Sala Sao Paulo, home of the best Latin American orchestra, OSESP, and one of the top ten best concert rooms of the world. To this orchestra and at this place is where the main character, Laerte, wants to join as a violinist in the film. After the movie, Heliopolis Orchestra, the one whose beginning was similar to what is shown at the film, played a short but beautiful concert, and it was unforgettable. As the summary says, after failing the test to enter OSESP, Laerte is forced to give classes to young class in a school in Heliopolis, a very poor outskirts neighborhood which in Brazil we usually call a "favela". The movie was very realistic, to me, who love music as the greatest of the arts and who goes to Sala Sao Paulo to see OSESP playing very often, it was much of a pleasure. But I'm not just that, I'm also someone who was raised in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, and many things which happen in the movie made me remember things that I passed through. But you don't have to have any of these characteristics to love this movie, you just have to love music and believe in it's "power to calm down even the most dangerous beasts", quoting Laerte from a scene. The movie is filled all the time with musical references, but I repeat, if you enjoy music, no matter the style, you will love it, especially the adaptations made of some classics with the "Brazilian way" if you know what I mean. I'm not sure if it was the director of the film or if it was Happin Hood (a rapper who makes some songs to the film and also appears in it), who said that the biggest message of the film was that "talented people can be born anywhere", I agree, but I make an addendum saying that the movie also wanted to say that talent is not everything, you also need OPPORTUNITY to show you talents, and this the film shows very well. In Brazil, on the last 20 years poor people started to have more opportunities of studying and having a good life. I'm myself an example of that. I believe that this message should be sent to the whole world: give equal opportunities to everyone and we will listen, see or enjoy beautiful and amazing things.

First thing of all: a drug that gives us all our wishes the way we want is not good for economy, for the entire world economy. The main pinnacle of our occidental economy is the fact that people BUY, constantly, with a great variety. People buy all kinds of products not because they need to buy it, but for two main reasons: for social status, or for tradition. It's not just a choice of an individual if she or he is going to buy a new food, drug, mobile-phone, book, etc. Doesn't matter how perfect an Apple phone (Iphone) can be, sometime you either buy a new one, or the one you have gets broken and you buy another. It's for some social reasons that people buy. First, it's because the occident have created a society in which such consumerism is possible with De La Division du Travail Social (The Division of Labour in Society), second, it's because we are born in a family in which it's OK to buy a mini skirt or something like that (for example, if you're born in a Quaker family, you going to have a bad time with freedom to choose what you buy), third, if we are lucky about the previous possibilities, we still buy according to what kind of social group we are integrated, for example, if I'm a skater, the things that I'll buy will be slightly different from what a "headbanger" buys, or a rapper from Brooklyn, etc. And here I get into the second point about what the movie gets wrong about society. What I want to say is that we do not only seek individual pleasure, we also seek social status, we are constantly trying to reaffirm our position on our social groups, and we act accordingly with it. Although the individual has much more liberty to choose and act than it had before the modernity (the consequences being not so good as it seems, as Durkheim shows on Le Suicide), we still are seeking new ways to be more easily socially integrated, that's why the people who use Facebook the most are people with more social life (as some studies have concluded), and even on Facebook we have dozens of crews, and that's why new kinds of social integration are constantly being born and reaffirmed (the boom of "what's up" for example). I don't know if this movie would be scientifically possible, I would not doubt, since technology is improving beyond our sights, but what I do know is that it's sociologically impossible, for two main reasons: it would break the world economy, and second, it's not sociologically viable. And a third point that I won't discuss much further, what about the State? Only in anarchy that would be possible, and it doesn't seems that all order was abandoned in that world, the Contemporary State is a bourgeois State, it needs, as a corporation, to maintain the profits of the dominating class. Beyond this sociological analysis, I must say that the story is a little bit confusing, that "revolt" or "revolution", I could not get it if that was meant to break the new system that was about to happen but failed, or if it just changed the way of how things were going to be, like a single company was selling these drugs but then it became free for everyone. Second, I did not get it that thing about Robin being frozen to wait for a world in which she could be cured (the disease appearing to be "seeing the world as cartoon" or just the "random dreams" she was having?), it seemed just a bad excuse to get her separated from her son for a long time. Although its sociological failure, the movie have a good picture, and it's an interesting sci- fi. And it shows a very important thing about post-modern society: that we are blindly trying to seek happiness and understand what we need by individual ways, we forget that what we need since we invented religion is being socially integrated, not just individual pleasure. As Durkheim shows on Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, we praise society, not a god, and being moderately socially integrated is necessary for our health, as he shows on Le Suicide.