Notes on reoccurring themes in the undoubtedly disturbing films of James O. Incandenza, some of which show up in the rest of the pages we have so far read (the themes, not the films—I hope I never meet these films):
-Tennis (not so surprising) -Optics—films about optics, not just employing them. Ex: Kinds of Light, Various Small Flames, The Medusa v. the Odalisque, The Machine in the Ghost, Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators -Humans with physical deformities—I count six, including the one-armed attaché, the child's palsied hand, and a "grotesquely mangled fiancée" -Nearsighted people—two in the films, and an optician, plus the nearsighted congested Frenchman we previously encountered. Then there's the thing about the giant eyeballs. -Pain and torture—often inflicted by doctors -Quebec -the Middle East -the Church of the Latter Day Saints -The human being physically and psychically "transparent" or "opaque"—examples of films containing "transparent" characters would be The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass, or Every Inch of Disney Leith. Films with "opaque" characters—characters hiding in a shell, or behind a wall, for whatever reason—are Cage II, Insubstantial Country, and, of course, both the film and the "real version" of It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him. These seem to be films about people who put up walls around themselves, or who have walls put up around them against their wills, so that they cannot communicate—I'm thinking here of people who have physical impairments, who are perhaps autistic, who don't speak the same language. For me it goes back to the Kafka alienation thing, or maybe if someone wants to put an existential spin on this, go for it.
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