Convex, Concave

"Our friendship is an ethical responsibility."-- Robert Sean Leonard


The confluence of spiritual beliefs is handled with the appropriate level of reverence in the Dreamer episode of The Collector, and the high camp gives way to a more authentic sincerity, at least momentarily. For all the differences between American and Canadian mien, however, Cooksey is at once more honest and more subversive than his muscled friend to the south. The indigenous natives were notoriously screwed by European conquest in the northern hemisphere, which recalls to me the interesting demands by the British Empire for the creation of an Indian Free State during treaty negotiations as the war of 1812 came to a close, the victor inconclusive. Clever ploy by the mother country to slow the expansion of American land consolidation, that was pissed away in a murky conflict that seemingly had no raison d'etre. Not that my favorite Scott would give me a hand here, but I'll take a clever grad student, as I am interested in expanding my history studies. Not an encyclopedia like David Foster Wallace, I'm afraid.

Cooksey's subversion is the twist that makes the Chief a near megalomaniac who needs to retain his power at any cost, to the point of killing unborn fetuses, and this is so close to the real nature of the modern banality of human evil that the satiric goading of the Satan is left out in the denouement, although this is the standard the directors employ when Pym is victorious. Cooksey is much better at troping the classical God versus Lucifer struggle to contemporary significance than these guys.

I may expand on this later, but my lung is struggling this morning; I'm weak.