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Jun. 29th, 2017 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionLeftovers 3.5
Crazy and fascinating. And am I nuts or was this basically (though not exclusively, given its other complexities) an adaptation of that Futurama episode where Bender's floating through space and meets God?!
Matt, like Bender, is overlooking the needs of those around him because he's always doing his own thing - which in Matt's case, since he's a priest, is in the name of others but is actually to keep himself saved. Matt, like Bender, is suddenly forced to spend time with a bunch of strangers and in doing so witnesses the vulnerability of some and the wickedness of others. Both wish to help but are stymied. A nearby god stand-in, in the course of revealing that it is not actually god so will not magically make everything better, convinces each that the universe is pragmatically heartless, so no one will fill that moral vacuum unless they do, by continuing to try to attentively help others - even when it proves inconvenient or impossible. By effecting this change of heart through being revealed to be a fraud, however, each stand-in is actually behaving the way a truly good god might, rather than an uncaring abandoner/destroyer of its own creations. Bender's little galaxy friend hides his omnipotence in order to make Bender more benevolent; Burton makes it clear he's a jerk and is eaten by a lion to make Matt prioritize his friends and do the right thing by going to the police.
Burton can come back to life. Burton was not eaten by the dingoes. Burton successfully commands the lion to be silent. Burton may thus have commanded the lion to follow him, safely leading it away from the others so that no one but himself is killed. The lion is, but if he's presently like his progenitor he's old and die for euthanasia. Unlike the rotten Jesus he takes away Matt's sins by ending his worship-addiction, not by instigating it.
The dizzying thing about the Leftovers episode compared to the Futurama one, though, is that the universe's God might either BE the man called God or be destroying him as a false one - hence all the Daniel stuff. The nosebleed is the invisible God's way of smiting Matt for putting others out and for ignoring his own happiness (how he lost his wife, I guess?), as compared to the man-God's punching of people who bother him. The invisible God does what he does to see what he can do FOR people, the man-God murders and claims to have engineered the Departure to see what he can do TO them.
Matt is saved because one of the lion-freers tells him to stay on the boat, which she does because she has seen him try to make the wicked (because negligent) orgiers to look into the potential murder - other good things he's done include taking it seriously that someone might be misleading people by complaining to be god. So in a sense he's Daniel. But he also becomes the lion by saying its name after midnight, maybe having something to do with the man-God's point that Matt's altruism has been ultimately egoistic. Getting to speak for God, to be the morally superior one, might be a god complex of its own. But he's also like the lion, not just because since he says the magic word but because the man-God closes HIS jaws when he was in danger of being eaten (the silencing moment is ambiguous as to which beast is being shushed, Matt or Frazier III). So we're to see that devotedly moral/religious people of Matt's sort are either a) Darius-like self-worshippers who are intolerant of others' seeing the world THEIR way until chastised by something higher, b) lion-like creatures who can't help attacking what they have a compulsion to attack, being started and stopped by their nature, or c) Daniel-like righteous men who laudably speak out against wickedness and false idols and are saved for it. Seems like Burton the man-God fits all three also - a) and c) for the reasons mentioned, and b) because he may just be permanently belligerent because his "death" left him with neurological damage. See what I mean about dizzying? This episode is either ingenious or insane. And I feel like I must be missing something, as you'd think there'd be a third figure who could also fill any of the three roles. Kevin's ex-wife is featured prominently and interpreted in a couple different ways, so maybe her? She seems apart from the Matt-God dynamic, though.
Seriously, there's clearly much more going on than I've picked up on one viewing. Clearly some of this is supposed to resonate with what Matt's done to Kevin, for example. Throwing him overboard, in a sense? The fact that at various points Matt wants there to be three men but there also turns out to be a woman. Etc.
(The realistically weird and gross orgy seemed like an awesome response to the stupid Westworld one.)
Crazy and fascinating. And am I nuts or was this basically (though not exclusively, given its other complexities) an adaptation of that Futurama episode where Bender's floating through space and meets God?!
Matt, like Bender, is overlooking the needs of those around him because he's always doing his own thing - which in Matt's case, since he's a priest, is in the name of others but is actually to keep himself saved. Matt, like Bender, is suddenly forced to spend time with a bunch of strangers and in doing so witnesses the vulnerability of some and the wickedness of others. Both wish to help but are stymied. A nearby god stand-in, in the course of revealing that it is not actually god so will not magically make everything better, convinces each that the universe is pragmatically heartless, so no one will fill that moral vacuum unless they do, by continuing to try to attentively help others - even when it proves inconvenient or impossible. By effecting this change of heart through being revealed to be a fraud, however, each stand-in is actually behaving the way a truly good god might, rather than an uncaring abandoner/destroyer of its own creations. Bender's little galaxy friend hides his omnipotence in order to make Bender more benevolent; Burton makes it clear he's a jerk and is eaten by a lion to make Matt prioritize his friends and do the right thing by going to the police.
Burton can come back to life. Burton was not eaten by the dingoes. Burton successfully commands the lion to be silent. Burton may thus have commanded the lion to follow him, safely leading it away from the others so that no one but himself is killed. The lion is, but if he's presently like his progenitor he's old and die for euthanasia. Unlike the rotten Jesus he takes away Matt's sins by ending his worship-addiction, not by instigating it.
The dizzying thing about the Leftovers episode compared to the Futurama one, though, is that the universe's God might either BE the man called God or be destroying him as a false one - hence all the Daniel stuff. The nosebleed is the invisible God's way of smiting Matt for putting others out and for ignoring his own happiness (how he lost his wife, I guess?), as compared to the man-God's punching of people who bother him. The invisible God does what he does to see what he can do FOR people, the man-God murders and claims to have engineered the Departure to see what he can do TO them.
Matt is saved because one of the lion-freers tells him to stay on the boat, which she does because she has seen him try to make the wicked (because negligent) orgiers to look into the potential murder - other good things he's done include taking it seriously that someone might be misleading people by complaining to be god. So in a sense he's Daniel. But he also becomes the lion by saying its name after midnight, maybe having something to do with the man-God's point that Matt's altruism has been ultimately egoistic. Getting to speak for God, to be the morally superior one, might be a god complex of its own. But he's also like the lion, not just because since he says the magic word but because the man-God closes HIS jaws when he was in danger of being eaten (the silencing moment is ambiguous as to which beast is being shushed, Matt or Frazier III). So we're to see that devotedly moral/religious people of Matt's sort are either a) Darius-like self-worshippers who are intolerant of others' seeing the world THEIR way until chastised by something higher, b) lion-like creatures who can't help attacking what they have a compulsion to attack, being started and stopped by their nature, or c) Daniel-like righteous men who laudably speak out against wickedness and false idols and are saved for it. Seems like Burton the man-God fits all three also - a) and c) for the reasons mentioned, and b) because he may just be permanently belligerent because his "death" left him with neurological damage. See what I mean about dizzying? This episode is either ingenious or insane. And I feel like I must be missing something, as you'd think there'd be a third figure who could also fill any of the three roles. Kevin's ex-wife is featured prominently and interpreted in a couple different ways, so maybe her? She seems apart from the Matt-God dynamic, though.
Seriously, there's clearly much more going on than I've picked up on one viewing. Clearly some of this is supposed to resonate with what Matt's done to Kevin, for example. Throwing him overboard, in a sense? The fact that at various points Matt wants there to be three men but there also turns out to be a woman. Etc.
(The realistically weird and gross orgy seemed like an awesome response to the stupid Westworld one.)
