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Notes -
Well, no. Nuclear war is horrific. ALS and prion diseases are horrific. Whatever is being experienced by any remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza is horrific. But this... - what should we call it? how should we describe this body? is it a portent of disease and disability, an abdication of potential, or is it a body into which is inscribed a steadfast refusal to press oneself into a form that would be more conducive to capitalist-utilitarian labor? - this body cannot be horrific unless the image of such a body occupies a particularly peculiar position in your libidinal economy.
Nonetheless if it does occupy such a position for you, then that is still in a certain sense commendable, as a form of taking responsibility for one's own horrorscape. The root of any experience that could be properly called "aesthetic" is the determination to find what is most uncanny in what is most familiar. If you did indeed experience the uncanny in such an otherwise innocuous stimulus, then the film, as well as your particular receptive experience of it, was a success.
pre Wall-e nirvana
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