Cvasimilitudini III.22 [Mirror, mirror on the wall...]

Screenshot from Puzzle of a Downfall Child (dir.: Jerry Schatzberg/1970)

Screenshot from Twin Peaks - Season 2, Ep. 22 - (Created/directed by David Lynch/1990 - 1991)

„The convention of the mirror, used throughout the series as the hackneyed trope signalling the reversal of inside and outside, appearance and reality, is given another turn: subjects are chillingly presented as no more than reflections of the mirror. As a reversal it is predictable enough in a series that continually played with generic and cultural codes. But as a double reversal, from inner depth to external surface and then from superficial image to superficial image, it is more disturbing, an index of evil: «the principle of evil is synonymous with the principle of reversal» (Baudrillard). 

The reversal doubles the identification of Cooper as romance hero, the only figure holding the playful fragments of the series together, and as metaphor of romance identification, staging the duplicitous play of coded images. While the former would have offered a way to close the series as a story of good’s triumph over evil, the latter offers no exit from a play of narrative surfaces that flicker with the ambivalence of evil”. (Fred Botting & Scott Wilson - Bataille/2001)

Why Maradona matters

„(...) Maradona played a different sport, a form of art. Watching Maradona one experienced something akin to what Immanuel Kant defined as the sublime. The experience of the sublime destabilizes our subjectivity, and for a moment, we are undone; we lose ourselves. 

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The other meaningful thing about Maradona, particularly for people like me who are very, very secular and non-religious, is that when he was on the pitch, he created something that was similar to a secular divine experience, an experience of what Hegel calls the Absolute. For people like me, this only happens through art, but then again soccer is a performing art, at least when Maradona was on the pitch.” 

Cum David Foster Wallace nu poate adăuga nimic despre fenomenul social Maradona (sugerez a se citi, în schimb, ce a scris despre Federer), voi rămâne definitiv la acest text, de fapt, un interviu, în care sunt trasate meridianele și paralele unei hermeneutici maradoniene complete.

Dincolo de unele comparații (pe care, de acord, le putem privi ca exaltate) rămâne încadrarea lui Maradona într-o ramă ce i se potrivește țais. Autorul e Mariano Siskind, profesor de umanioare la Harvard, argentinian de origine, dar asta nu-i invalidează expunerea, dimpotrivă, o legitimează, e acea privire din interior ce pune subiectul în lumină, cu și pe toate fețele, fără a-l oculta. 

Discuția e publicată în gazeta online a universității, conține și o serie de „tălpi” la adresa ipocriziei societății & elitelor americane (le consider binevenite în context) și o puteți citi integral aici.

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O carte scrisă de Siskind poate fi cercetată aici.