Soul's Sonata: Des pensées profondes

So, fellow GDSHP founding father forever Matt (god damn his soul©) has consistently insistently persistently suggested that I follow up on the first post of this blog, which was actually intended to be the sole and terminal entry. Subsequently I have submissively let myself be cajoled to step out from my pouting corner and thrust my fingers towards the keyboard in a fresh fit of critical analysis.

Matt specifically suggested that I do an entry on Soul's Sonata, accepted among the GDSHP community as our best production. I guess I'll see what I can recall from memory and write out whatever I think.

Although I do agree that Soul's Sonata is GDSHP's best work, I really don't think there's too much to be said about the characters, as there is in College Daze. Donald, the protagonist, is nowhere near as contradictory and multi-faceted as Shep Foster. Rather, he's a fairly one-dimensional character, albeit one who finds himself in rather particular psychological conditions, believing that his destiny is to become a piano virtuoso, as mystically prophecized by the neighborhood shaman. In fact, the scenes which feature Donald exclusively and no one else tend to be the weakest in the movie. (WTF was the whole failed dream sequence thing where he goes retarded pretending to play piano?) So Soul's Sonata, rather than being driven by Donald's character, finds its merit in the interplay of forces and characters around Donald.

Something that achieves particular comedic effect in Soul's Sonata is the juxtaposition of mystical and spiritual elements on one side against the recreational use of psychedelics. In a particularly self-destructive move, Donald chooses to adopt drugs as an essential part of the path towards reaching his mystical destiny. Interestingly, his drug dealer has an almost as mystical status as his shaman, only being known as the "capsule man". This creates a strong conflicting antagonism between the contrasting spiritual and psychedelic elements present in the film. And so the humorous side-by-side co-existence of the two opposite ends of the spectrum continue throughout, with lines like "it is my destiny" and "uppers, downers, and all-arounders" being liberally tossed around into the same scene. But how can these two seemingly conflicting beasts lay in bed together? The answer is they cannot, not for long. For near the end of the film lies the ultimate confrontation of the two, in the scene where Capsule Man meets with Shaman. At this culmination of tension, the situation becomes no longer sustainable and results in the death of Donald, who was really the underlying cause of all the tension, him being the one who brought the Shaman and the Capsule both into his life at once. And so the uncontrolable force of Destiny, combined with the even-less-controlable force of Drugs, leads to the final loss of control: Death.

So, following logical order, one can only conclude that the purpose of Soul's Sonata is to make fun of hippies. Only hippies, who attempt to unite drug culture with eastern spirituality are as stupid as Donald. Let this be a warning for YOU, hippy.

But what about Drew's role in the movie? Simple narrator? Crucial witness of events? Subliminal shaper of the storyline? Maybe Matt will comment?


Who cares?

Réflexions sur Collège Daze

Left with a gaping hole in my already empty day, my mind started to wander outside of regular three-dimensional space and stumbled on the memory of College Daze. So I watched it, and "lawl'd." I subsequently remembered that sometime in the past 2 years I had started drafting some sort of character study of College Daze. Obviously never finished. I figured that my academically inclined project could now be considered "vaporware" and had entered its post-mortem stage, so I am releasing it into the interwebs.

Here it is:

SHEP FOSTER

His perception of time

Though he manages to roughly situate events in the past and recognize routine processions (e.g. “Every day we go to class…”), time for him inevitably becomes a sort of blur, and the lapse of three months becomes indistinguishable from the span of a lifetime. (“Eddie, we’ve known each other for a long time…”)

He lives almost exclusively in the present, allowing himself to be whisked away to parties with friends, lets mysterious drugs be placed in his mouth and masturbating basically whenever he feels sufficiently horny. He seems to have no plans whatsoever for the future, and in the rare case when he does they are puzzlingly vague (“… we are gonna rock this world like its never been rocked…”) His shallow perception of time affects his relations with others, for example when he ruins all of Eddie’s work and forgetting about it completely as soon as Ralph walks in, having been fired.

He likes things with instant consequence, like pizza that arrives “Prompto” [sic].

His perception of space

He seems to have a very good grasp of the concept of space and orientation, being able to walk out of his dorm and proceed to party hard even with a box on his head.

His relations with other people

With Eddie

Shep wants to attach himself to his roommate of 3 months, despite Eddie’s reluctance to show any signs of affection and his aggression towards Shep’s eccentric behaviour. For example he “accompanies” Eddie to “classes” every day.

Shep shows an amazing amount of ignorance and incomprehension towards Eddie’s desire to complete his courses and presumably graduate from college. Shep lives entirely within himself, either judging that everyone else is in the same position as himself, or trying to get them to share his frame of thought.

Shep wants to develop a certain complicity, and maintain a close friendship. He recognizes that Eddie wishes to ignore him and shut him down, and tries to mend the relationship on the brink of eruption by talking to him, then resorting to drastic methods in unplugging Eddie’s computer. Thus we see some paradoxal behaviour in Shep’s character: he lives entirely within himself, but shows himself concerned in his relationship with others, which he will relentlessly attempt to maintain.

Nevertheless, he and Eddie have a very distant relationship, sharing basically no common interests outside of drinking. (aside: I guess that’s pretty normal in the highly specialized world of higher education.) Eddie keeps Shep completely in the dark of his own activities and aspirations (e.g. “Why do we have so many dildos anyway?” “None of your fucking business.”)

Shep’s interest in friendship is probably completely superficial.

Shep seems to have some kind of control over Eddie: Eddie continues to walk with Shep to school, and he allows himself to resign after Shep unplugs his computer. I suppose this can only be seen as weakness of the will.

Voila. GDSHP 4EVA.