Bokelskere.no

..there is a bronze of Dylan Thomas.
Anyone who can look at it without compassion is dead.
There he faces you with a cigarette at the side of his mouth,
the very cigarette hung in despair. ..this is sensitivity crying
out in darkness. But it is not mere emotion; the problem is not
on this level. These men are not producing an art for art's sake,
or emotion for emotion's sake. ..a strong message coming out of
their own world-view. There are many media for killing men, as
men, today. They all operate in the same direction: No truth,
no morality. You do not have to go to art galleries or listen to
the more sophisticated music, to be influenced by their message.
Cinema and television will do it effectively for you.

MODERN CINEMA, MASS MEDIA AND THE BEATLES

We usually divide cinema and television programmes into two
classes -- good and bad. The term 'good' here means 'technically
good' and does not refer to morals. The 'good' pictures are the
serious ones, the artistic ones; the ones with good shots.
The 'bad' are simply escapist, romantic, only for entertainment.
But if we examine them with care we will notice that the 'good'
pictures are actually the worst. The escapist film may be
horrible in some ways, but the so-called 'good' pictures of recent
years have almost all been developed by men holding the modern
philosophy of meaninglessness.
This does not imply they have ceased to be men of integrity, but
it does mean that the films they produce are tools for teaching
their beliefs.

Four outstanding modern film producers are Fellini and Antonioni
of Italy, Slessinger of England, and Bergman of Sweden.
Of these four producers Bergman has, in the past, perhaps given
the clearest expression of the contemporary despair.
He deliberately developed the flow of his pictures, that is, the
whole body of his movies rather than just individual films,
in order to teach existentialism.

His existentialist films extended up to, but do not include,
'the Silence'. This film is a statement of utter nihilism.

Man, in this picture, does not even have the hope of authenticating
himself by an act of the will. 'The Silence' is a series of
snapshots with immoral and pornographic themes. The camera just
takes them without any comment, 'Click, click, click, cut!'
That is all there is. Life is like that: unrelated, having no
meaning as well as no morals.

In passing, it should be noted that Bergman's presentation in
'The Silence' is related to the American 'Black Writers'
(nihilistic writers), the anti-statement novel and Capote's
In Cold Blood. These, too, are just a series of snapshots
without any comment as to meaning or morals.

Such writers and directors are controlling the mass media, and
so the force of the monolithic world-view of our age presses in
on every side.
The posters advertising Antonioni's 'Blow_Up' in the London
Underground were inescapable as they told the message of that
film: "Murder without guilt; Love without meaning".

The mass of people may not enter an art museum, may never read
a serious book. If you were to explain the drift of modern thought
to them, they might not be able to understand it, but this does
not mean that they are not influenced by the things they see and
hear -- including the cinema and what is considered as 'good',
non-escapist television.

No greater illustration could be found of the way these concepts
are carried to the masses, than 'pop' music and especially the
work of the Beatles.

The Beatles have moved through several stages including the
concept of the drug and psychedelic approach.
The psychedelic began with their records Revolver,
Strawberry Fields Forever, and Penny Lane.
This was developed with expertness in their record Sergeant
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in which psychedelic music,
with open statements concerning drug-taking, is knowingly
presented as a religious answer. The religious form is the
same vague pantheism which predominates much of the new mystical
thought today. One indeed does not have to understand in a
clear way the modern monolithic thought in order to be
infiltrated by it.
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is an ideal example
of the manipulating power of the new forms of 'total art'.

This concept of total art increases the infiltrating power of
the message by carefully conforming the technical form used
to the message involved. This is used in Absurd Theatre,
the Marshal McLuhan type of television, the new cinema, the new
dance, and the new music following John Cage.

The Beatles used this in 'Sergeant Pepper' making the whole
record one unit: the whole is to be listened through and
makes one thrust, rather than .. individual songs. In this
record the words, syntax, the music.. form a unity of
infiltration.

(Francis A. Schaeffer, 'The God Who Is There' 1968)
_

they found his head

The Great Evangelical Disaster