Why Was The World Created?

Who had the most unfortunate Things befall them on their Journeys?

So people can post random crap on internet message boards, obv.

I really only came to the web cafe to get warm and stave off the howling voice of desperation in my head, but it didn't really work.

Ah well, at least I'm warmer than I was at home.

As a science project.

Like I said, it's all fun and games until someone gets their eye poked out or their tongue cut out or they start drowning anabaptists and we all get gassed.

Oh wait, no, it's all going a bit WWI now.

x-post... geez, people, you aren't supposed to ANSWER THE QUESTION, what do you think this is, ILX or something? We're talking about Candide. And Sade, because I still reckon Justine is better than Candide and Quills was on last night.

(I should have watched Quills - ages ago, my friend Owen told me I'd like it. Because of the bondage bits, apparently)

Anyway, only read 120 Days Of Sodom and not Justine, so I have to err on the side of Candide, I'm afraid.

I can't answer the original question, either, as there is no reason. Sorry.

xpost

I think one of the reasons that I actually got into Sade (apart from being a nihilistic teenage goth) was because I read Philosophy In The Bedroom and Justine first, and stopped before I got to the 120 Days Of Sodom. So I still think of him as an amusing political satyrist, rather than a dirty old man.

I stand by my assessment of Quills, which is that it is horny as hell until people start getting killed. Which I think is the point of the morality play and all. And the awfulness that the Church and Psychologists inflict upon people is far, far worse than anything that Sade either wrote about or advocated or even inspired. (The only thing he seems to inspire in the film is some decadent threesomes with bad poetry in haybales, and one case of true love.) Sade exorcises his demons through writing, but he's really quite a bit of a sad old romantic (in the film at least), while it's the Psychologist who is actually nailing testicles to boards and all that 120 Days type nastiness.

Sade at the Bastille was great, because he managed to incite riots and insurrection and people storming the place, despite the fact that, being a decadent aristocrat, he represented everything that the Revolution was against.

Please let me know how Marquis is. I need more smut. Which is the *worst* film about Sade, I wonder? I've seen some dodgy pornos, and, erm... well, I haven't seen Marat/Sade since I was a teenager and can't remember a bloody thing about it.

Anyway, this really was supposed to be a thread about Voltaire. Oh well.

if we don't know enough to say the world was created to some purpose, then we certainly don't know enough to say it wasn't created to some purpose. the second position assumes a position of objectivity that can't hold up.

Watched Marquis the other day, it is very strange but not as disturbing as I first imagined. In fact, it is almost cute.

Basically, the bulk of the film is done by actors dressed as oversized puppets, and each character is portrayed as some kind of animal (Marquis is a dog, Justine is a big soppy cow). Um, except for Marquis' penis, which is a character in its own right - there is an ongoing dialogue between the two, I guess representing the conflict between base sexuality and the intellect. There are other bits which are pure animation, and the storyline appears to be a conflation of the man's life and his works, hence my initial descriptive reaction would be to suggest you imagine a combination of Jan Svankmajer and The Naked Lunch film. With more sex and revolution.