“Euphoria,” a science-based, self-help art film about the authentic pursuit of happiness, is presented by Creative Alliance and Senator Theatre. The film begins by asking “are you happy?” and takes off on a journey through the American landscape—the one that surrounds us and the one inside us. Synchronized swimmers inhabit an underwater jungle of neurons; Teddy Bears hover in arcs of electricity, and real people share how their lives have been transformed by pursuing what is meaningful and engaging to them.
A montage of visual metaphors, profiles and scientific fact, feature-length Euphoria is not a documentary in the truest sense, and its narrative arc is as loose and loopy as can be.
Nor does Euphoria attempt to terrify viewers in the tradition of the 1936 cult film Reefer Madness and other memorable media scare tactics.
Instead, Euphoria, through scientific, historical and cultural inquiry, makes the point that the “pursuit of meaning and engagement looks like a good idea,” says Boot, the film’s director and screenwriter. Its message, though, is not revealed in any one scene or sentence. It arrives by way of a non-stop accrual of symbols, questions and thoughts over the course of the 80-minute film.
More euphoria = less need for security…unless of course pursuit of euphoria is incompatible with concepts such as common law, which just brings us back to the need for those who get euphoria from designing security controls.
Dancing pandas grace the stage for Chinese punk (pop) bands:
Why don’t American pop bands have giant bald eagles dancing around, or at least brown bears and beavers?
I think Caffe-In’s best song is “Mario and Peaches”. An arguably better band, with an awesome name to boot, is Carsick Cars. Their “Zhong nan hai” is catchy but they also play a song called…”Panda”. Could the image of a panda be so ubiquitous in China that it also provides a form of shelter for commentary and dissent? On the other hand, maybe the pandas are state spies observing the crowd.
Some speculate that separating the polar bear and his keeper led to a decline in both their health:
The celebrity polar bear was pictured walking morosely around his enclosure and staring at the ground, a far cry from the happy images of him with ‘surrogate father’ Thomas Doeflein as a young bear.
Mr Doerflein, 44, was found dead amid fears that he became depressed after he was told to stay away from Knut because they were too close.
Doerflien had to give up playing with the bear due to Zoo administration fear for his safety. It would seem the separation was more dangerous.
What Michelangelo was doing was trying to remind Rome five centuries ago that Jesus was a Jew, he came from Jews, and that Christianity is based on Judaism. Florence in his time was proud of that connection, whereas Rome was not only trying to separate the two religions but to negate in great part its roots in Judaism — and even forcibly separate Jews and Christians. There were many Papal bulls outlawing fraternization and friendship between Jews and Christians, whereas in Florence everybody was partying together.
Q: Was Michelangelo simply promoting the Florentine agenda in Rome?
Absolutely. In his poems he complains about the abuses of power and hypocrisy of the church. It’s not us imagining it; it’s in his own words and work. This was not somebody who was thrilled about working for the Vatican on a ceiling.
Although today the message might be subtle, perhaps in his lifetime it was as open as his poetry.
One only has to be
finding windows and doors
a member among those with a key
to unlock what we all stare towards
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
