Film, Detachment: One of the best scenes in the movie is when Henry (Adrian Brody) stands in front of his classroom ...
He asks the class to define assimilation and ubiquitous, then “Ubiquitous Assimilation” – meaning to always absorb everything everywhere all the time. He asks, how are we to imagine anything if the images are already provided for us? Then, to “doublethink,” meaning having two opposing beliefs at once and believing BOTH are true:
“Assimilate ubiquitously. Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they’re false. Examples of this in everyday life: “oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable.”. Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, shit on, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death. So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds.”
(― Henry Barthes)
He asks the class to define assimilation and ubiquitous, then “Ubiquitous Assimilation” – meaning to always absorb everything everywhere all the time. He asks, how are we to imagine anything if the images are already provided for us? Then, to “doublethink,” meaning having two opposing beliefs at once and believing BOTH are true:
“Assimilate ubiquitously. Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they’re false. Examples of this in everyday life: “oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable.”. Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, shit on, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death. So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds.”
(― Henry Barthes)