Tuesday, July 19, 2005
42
Does this blog (Gadfly's Musings) have the answer to life the universe and everything? Jollyblogger seems to think he just might. The first post that Jollyblogger points to certainly indicates a guy that think well, but doesn't seem to get the joke, even if he does get the point -- at least in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Here's where he gets the point
The essential fact is that Hitchhiker's Guide is a framework upon which the writers can hang joke after joke. Like the "Airplane" movies the plot is little more than an excuse to tell jokes. This is a large part of the reason that the various incarnations of the material (book, radio, TV, movie) are so radically different. The movie was heavier on the absurdity angle than most of the other material and this may account for Gadfly's perception. Or maybe he just does not know enough physics to get all the jokes?
However, I will agree with Jollyblogger, this is a blog worth reading. It's on my bloglines as of now.
There is power in the argument that the world is absurd. But it is the power that lives in the world of impressions, not the world of realism. If one has only the impressions that he or she receives from the world to go on, then the ultimate conclusion that death comes eventually to all things and that chaos governs all things up to the point that death takes over, is easily attained. A fellow called "The Preacher" wrote about that 3500 years ago in a book called Ecclesiastes. He makes the same point a lot more clearly and, quite frankly, with far more zeal. The conclusion of the matter is the same.Now that is extraordinarily insightful -- a literay comparison of Ecclesiates and Hitchhiker's Guide might just be thesis material. Buty I am not a literary type -- I am a science type, which is why I have to disagree with the Gadfly on this
The problem with the Hitchiker is that its message is delivered through farce and English farce at that. Farce wears extremely thin after about an hour. After two hours all hope of entertainment is lost and all that remains is the task of gold-miner, sifting through endless grains of sand, all of which look alike, in the hopes of finding another nugget that makes the whole enterprise worth while.This indicates to me someone that is missing the leaves for the forest. He is right in broad brushstrokes, but Hitchhiker's Guide is so full of "little" jokes and hilarious references to the absurdity of how physics understands the universe that I laugh at virtually every page, and enjoyed the movie immensely, saddened only by how much material did not get in it.
The essential fact is that Hitchhiker's Guide is a framework upon which the writers can hang joke after joke. Like the "Airplane" movies the plot is little more than an excuse to tell jokes. This is a large part of the reason that the various incarnations of the material (book, radio, TV, movie) are so radically different. The movie was heavier on the absurdity angle than most of the other material and this may account for Gadfly's perception. Or maybe he just does not know enough physics to get all the jokes?
However, I will agree with Jollyblogger, this is a blog worth reading. It's on my bloglines as of now.
