The artist has to work like the devil

"Religions, in spite of their enlarged perspective, cannot as social institutions contain an art of unlimited hypothesis.  The arts in their turn cannot help releasing the powerful acids of satire, realism, ribaldry, and and fantasy in their attempt to dissolve all the existential concretions that get in their way.  The artist often enough has to find that, as God says in Faust, he 'Muss als Teufel schaffen,' which I suppose means rather more than that he has to work like the devil." (127 NF)

The artist has to work like the devil.

Texts (Many of them are movies) that have caught my attention this semester.

Natural Born Killers

Kari has mentioned two of my all-time favorites: 

Toni Morrison

Moulin Rouge

Last Miracles at Little No Horse

Deliverance

Aristotle's belief on why society needs poetry is very interesting to me.  I think about movies like Natural Born Killers.  The story idolizes a pair of murderers. I have always considered why America went crazy for the movie.  But because of this class, I can now view the movie as a form of literary criticism, instead of a moralistic accusation against young America.  The scenes are in sitcom style with camera angles and fade ins and outs similar to television.  The scenes are short, about the length of a good sitcom, and they are extremely dramatic. In fact, television shows are required to have intense action or drama or unresolved tension at the end of each sitcom, so that they can hook their selective audience to tune back in later. NBK seems like its a week of sitcoms, connected together as a film. 

 I haven't yet watched or read any commentary on the movie, but it seems to me that the director(s) had deliberate intentions (Of say, "satire, realism, ribaldry, and and fantasy") in making the movie both realistic and outrageous, while playing on the audiences sense of pathos and Ironic comedy.  There are moments where I am rooting for Mickey and Mallory, and yet moments where they disgust me.  But I don't want to kill people myself...or do I? 

The first scene deals with the formidable acts of incest and molestation, and I realize that I, also, want to kill Mallory's parents.  And yet, how can I respect Micky and Mallory when they themselves commit similar crimes?  Ironically, the two murderers are not only forgiven, they are also idolized by the mass public in the movie, and in America.  Perhaps they have proven Aristotle right.  

Mickey and Mallory are in a sense, the artists in the movie.  They scripted their own universe.  The wedding scene on the bridge was the only reality to them.  The two wore disguises and played games in a frighteningly convincing way, where the audience became attached to them as a united pair of lovers, not haters.  Mickey and Mallory worked like the devil.  They became what they hated and feared. They thrived off of murder, torture, chaos, and exposure.  They worked like the devil, as did the writer who created them.  How else could he/she (I will find out more about this) show that the boundaries between good and evil, or God and Devil are illusions, if not using the devil as a muse?

If the artist has to work like the devil, than the artist must explore every thought, action, desire, motivation... of the text.  Writing becomes a temptation. The aritist must know her character (who is also the audience), and offer him or her what he or she desires most. And then discover what is done with the fruits.  Then if he or she finds it, it will appear everywhere. In archetypal patterns, in morals, in conversations, in pictures, in dreams.