Georges Bataille was one of the brightest minds in France. He is well-known in the philosophical circles as one of the most extraordinary minds of the Western philosophy. The author of such notable ideas as base materialism, limit-experience and the accursed share had a visible influence on a certain raw of philosophical schools and social theory. His unusual and, in some way, innovative idea of human sacrifice goes through all his philosophy. It’s known that Bataille wasn’t only the eager follower of the ideas of sacrifice but he also inaugurated himself as the sacrificial victim together with Acephale, a secret society, which was founded by him (wikipedia.com).
Talking about sacrifice, Bataille highlights that its main principal - destruction doesn’t mean a complete annihilation of a thing. The meaningful and real understanding of the principal of destruction is only taking needed part or a piece of a matter in order to accomplish a certain process. As an example, Bataille talks about an animal which is taken from a livestock sacrificed, being a meaningful part of a process. In that case, the thing is taken from the whole world of things which means everything to it and nothing to a human being. It loses its intimacy just like a wife sacrifices her virginity to her husband. Bataille assumes that a sacrificer needs a sacrifice in the same way as a sacrifice needs a sacrifice to regain their intimacy. As an intimate thing, a sacrificer withdraws a sacrifice, reducing it to the condition of the thing, giving it the precious meaning of the divine world which was foreign to it before.
Bataille presumes that the thing, positing itself as a puerile gratuitousness to the divine world, passes from its objective reality. One of the most interesting facts is that Bataille doesn’t assume killing as a complete destruction and further full non-existence of a thing. He explains that death is nothing in immanence that is why we can’t say that a being isn’t a part of it. As a matter of immanence, death has no difference in comparison to life, there’s no sense to be afraid of death or to defense against it.
Bataille explains that a thing possesses an operative power when its values are preserved in duration. For instance, the author cites food and fuel that have a lasting purpose in a human’s life. Future time for real world leaves no place for death. From the other point of view, death means everything to it because it ends an objective precipitance of the world.
Reflecting on the connection between life and death, Bataille calls death the affirmation of life, something that makes life even more precious. Bataille considers death as the part of life, which is being ignored during a lifetime, overlooked and shadowed among material world of things until the life comes out. That leads to an assumption that death is the only real thing in the world and that means that real society is lying. Bataille assures that death shows all the plentitude of life and reveals the order of the things in life. He makes us look at death as at the end of duration which is only in a naive mind conceders as suffering and can be also associated with the neutral behavior of a human being. In the author’s mind, the need conceals life from us and only impossibility of duration frees us. Bataille takes the duration as reality which lacks of object and subject. He doesn’t separate the duration from death. And the only way to go out of this duration is to realize the end.
Bataille reveals a hidden sense of death, saying that death doesn’t necessary has to be bloody. It’s more about relinquishing and giving. Sacrificing in Bataille’s eyes has much broader meaning, it’s the gift. It’s something that gives essential part to some wonderful process, like a coal to furnace.
Posing it as an impossible thing to express intimacy with words, Bataille is thinking of it as a bonfire of different kinds of feelings both negative and positive. He sees sacrificing as the intimacy between life and death. He continues his thoughts reflecting on the meaning of the sacred, comparing it with the flame that destroys the forest, burning it to the ground.
Works Cited
“Georges Bataille.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 Apr. 2016. Web. 02 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bataille>
Spirituality in Hollywood movies
A neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, called Hollywood is associated with movie industry worldwide. It has given life to many fascinating movies. Some of that not only entertained us, but also, by the closer look, had a hidden sense and influenced people’s way of thinking. The theme of God, religion and spirituality is interpreted in different movie genres, beginning with thrillers and ending with comedy. Let’s look at the most readable cases where some spirituality might be traced.
“Bruce Almighty” was filmed in 2003, directed by Tom Shadyac and distributed by Universal Pictures (sagepub.com). The film tells us an incredible story about a man receiving God’s power. Despite being a comedy, “Bruce Almighty” goes far out of an entertainment level, containing meaningful dialogues between a God and a man, as well as significant actions, referring to the Holy Writ. In the movie, a God presents the ultimate power of virtue. The film shows that almightiness means not only the unlimited power but also great responsibility which can cause sometimes some unexpected consequences. Blinded with the troubles in his own life, the main character of the movie – Bruce Nolan, starts making his life better without looking at other people’s needs and feelings. That ignorant behavior leads him to the dead end and he has to ask the God in a human form for help. Watching this movie you can feel all the positive energy and torrent of unlimited Godlike power through the charismatic playing of the actors, you can place yourself in a position of the main character and almost seriously consider yourself in a role of God (galegroup.com).
Another example of spiritually-rich movie, and a fine opposite of the positive comedy “Bruce Almighty”, is a horror film “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” directed by Scott Derrickson. It was created in 2005. The everlasting fight between Good and Evil is represented in this film. The evil comes into the main character’s life, a layer, who doesn’t believe in presence of anything supernatural until she faces it personally. The whole atmosphere of the movie is filled with the spirit of horror, darkness and something unknown that makes you tremble. The most fascinating thing is watching the ways Darkness choses to make people fear it: strange noises, smell of burning, bad forefeeling, weird visions. The creator of the movie wants to show how the Other Side communicates with people. He makes the things around live, fills them with the spirit (eprints.ums).
Obviously, every person has his/her own way to react to some movies or sees something more in them than just a commercial thing. But the modern Hollywood movies reflect the state of people thinking. It’s easy to notice that the modern movies differ from the movies of the last centuries. We can say that each decade is unique and is worth much deeper look into its difference. And film-making is one of the best criteria of estimation or judgment of a certain time frame.
Works Cited
Cerise, Glenn. The power of Black Magic. Journal of Black Studies, 8 Nov. 2009. Web. 03 May 2016. < http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/40/2/135.short>
Jeserich, Florian. Spirituality as Anti-Structure in James’s Cameron’s Avatar. Journal of Religion and Film. 14 Jan. 2010. Web. 03 May 2016. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA238271443&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=fulltext&issn=10921311&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1&isAnonymousEntry=true>
Zainudin, Aris. Frustration in Scott Derrickson’s the exorcism of Emily Rose. UMS ETD-db, 20 Jun. 2011. Web. 03 May 2016. <http://eprints.ums.ac.id/6302/>
