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Mr. Mechanical
ontological terrorist
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Scare Room 99
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 Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 5:06 am Post subject: Re: I'm inexperienced with Dick |
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| The Drunken Samurai wrote: |
| yeah ive been looking to get into PKDs books,im gonna check this one out today. |
I've read that, it's a good one. In fact, I think that was my first PKD book. Nice to see you walking the same path, my internet friend.
| Quote: |
| what else of his should i definetly get into? |
Well since Three Stigmata I've read A Scanner Darkly, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. All of which are very much worth reading. I've started The Man in the High Castle and enjoyed it quite a bit so far, I just need to make the time to go back and finish it. I have no excuse though, because it's not hard to spend a couple days reading a PKD novel.
Look into his short story collections as well, as I feel they don't get enough attention. Try to find The Philip K. Dick Reader, it's got a ton of his best short stories. They've all got the same themes as his novels, only in a more condensed, basic form.
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| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
True Doom Murder Junkies - Updated On Occasion |
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Mr. Mechanical
ontological terrorist
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Scare Room 99
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| Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 5:41 am |
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| Rud13 wrote: |
| Guys I just took a shower after watching A Scanner Darkly. Can you explain to me what happens in it, it's greater points, and why it is an outstanding film/book/story? Because all I can really say at this point was it was expertly shot. |
Oh man, Rud, I'm going to go smoke a cigarette right now. I'll be back in a minute.
...
Okay, there are several themes and ideas at work in A Scanner Darkly, with a sort of underlying philosophy beneath it all. I'm no expert on the matter but I'll do my best to tell you about it as best I can.
So, Bob Arctor is this druggie who's also a narc, right? He's caught between two worlds right from the start. On the one hand he's doing his own thing with his friends, being a free spirit and all, but on the other hand he's part of the oppresive machine of government that keeps the so-called "free spirits" from living the kinds of lives they want to live and should by their own right to existance be allowed to live. I should note that no one in the story is actively hurting anyone except themselves, with Arctor and the "Man" being the ones doing the most "hurting".
There are two sides to everything though, so it's a bit more complicated than just that. The illegal drug trade hurts society as a whole, because it undermines the laws and institutions put into place to protect the very citizens that often rebel against it. Arctor is caught between this, and if you'll recall the flashback scene from the movie where he remembers his life before he became a druggie he's not really satisfied with either option. What used to be a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice family has become a run-down drug house in a run-down neighborhood. But Arctor feels that he's only fooling himself by living the good life because when he bumps his head he realizes he's not truly "free", he's a slave to his job and his wife and his kids and his entire life. He was dissatisfied even when he was living a good clean life, and it's the rift in society between the government and the people that is sort of at the root of it all.
Keep in mind this was story that was written in the 1970s by a man who took a lot of drugs during the 1960s. What we see here with this story itself is that the 60s are officially over, like Hunter S. Thompson wrote, that wave has long receded and everyone still clinging to it is crippled. People like Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey tried to sell us enlightenment in a bottle, but enlightenment doesn't work that way. When you get high that's all you're doing, is getting high. Unless there is already some sort of religious or spiritual aspect there for a person to latch onto then they're not going to get anything more out of taking mind altering substances than being high. This is an underlying theme that Bob Arctor, and by association Dick himself, probably unknowlingly grasped with. Yeah, the 60s were great and all, but they didn't get anybody anywhere other than being a fun ride while they lasted.
Because once the government wised up to the substances people were taking they put a stop to it quick as possible. Because people taking mind altering substances cannot be relied upon to be constructive cogs in society, despite their best intentions. I don't particularly believe this myself, but it's sort of a theme to the story so let's roll with it. So in Dick's "near future" we have a world where people can't experiment with their own brainwaves and have to do it under the table, which leads to crime, corruption, deceit, and paranoia amongst most druggies. This is a story about drug culture and how it gets that way. Arctor gets progressively paranoid of his friends, and since he has access to the scanners he can monitor their movements to see who's betraying whom.
So not only are Arctor and his friends unable to live their lives of their own accord, they're also actively damaging themselves because of the highly addictive Substance D that's hit the streets in the future. No one knows where it came from so the government sets up task forces and agencies designed to combat it, while Arctor and his friends get progressively fucked in the head as the story goes on due to their addictions.
Of course, the major twist at the end of the story is that it's the government itself that's responsible for producing and distributing Substance D, and the only way to expose the fact is to get someone on the inside who can get the information necessary to reveal it to the public. In the end Arctor himself is the sacrificial pig used to get on the "inside" of the operation, because the New Path rehab clinics are what the government uses to recruit workers for the Substance D production. After a person has crossed a certain threshold of D addiction there's no going back, they're essentially a zombie, and zombies can't talk about big issues like government conspiracy and corruption. But Arctor's girlfriend, who also happens to be a narc but only unbeknownst to Arctor, works it so that Arctor hits his addiction status right on schedule and gets to the production side of things, all without him knowing. Which is the saddest part of the story because Arctor is essentially braindead, but also the most necessary.
So, we have a story where a guy loses his mind, first suspecting his friends and then even suspecting himself when he realizes that because he's reaching the threshold of the point-of-no-return with his addiction he can't even distinguish between reality and fiction (see the part where he's watching the scanner of the hooker's face morphing into his girlfriend Donna's, something he had attributed to his being high at the time but now upon later reflection seems to have taken place entirely in reality).
There are trust issues at work here. He doesn't trust the government for which he works, he doesn't trust the friends he hangs out with and fears that they don't trust him (and one of them doesn't), and eventually fings he can't even trust himself. This is Philip K. Dick's way of saying that drugs are bad, and he wrote it for all his friends that suffered brain damage or other health related issues due to their drug use. The saddest part being that they were all essentially good people just trying to have fun with their lives, but the world, and even themselves, conspire against them to cause them constant pain and suffering. Even Donna still suffers guilt from what she had to do to Arctor to get him accepted into New Path.
And the whole thing's not so far flung. Have you ever known somebody who got addicted to crack and then became a totally different person? It's kind of like that, in that in trying to keep the spirit of the 60s alive and well and just live freely they really end up losing control.
And that's sort of the whole story in a nutshell. Sorry for how rambling that was, but hell, this is a message board so if you have questions or whatever then we can talk it all out.
_________________
| internisus wrote: |
| You are a pretty fucked up guy. |
True Doom Murder Junkies - Updated On Occasion |
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