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My Dogma ran after my Karma On:2000-12-08 14:22:36

Since I moved down to Texas I'm not getting any---culture I mean.
While this is not a complete Ozymandian1 desert (more like scrub-land if you ask me) we are definitely not overwhelmed with culture and I've been reduced to watching movies from the local video store.


To my everlasting shame I have to admit that there are only so many times you can watch Kurosawa's 七人の侍2 or Eisensein's Александр Невский3, so I've been watching all sorts of things. For example the other day I got out a movie called Dogma4. This, if you don't know, is a kind of eschatological or at least scatological comedy, refurbishing jokes that I thought the Nominalists had worn out by the mid-fourteenth century at least. The film was, though, quite amusing---but was also, I believe, considered rather controversial, even wicked, and so had a disclaimer of sorts written out along with the opening credits. This suggested that we shouldn't get too worked up about a mere movie because, after all, God has a sense of humour. "Just look at the Platypus" it said in demonstration. Then, trying to be cute and Monty-Pythonesque, added an apology to the apology, apologising "to all platypus enthusiasts out there who are offended by our thoughtless comment about the platypi".

Well! I was deeply offended---in fact the rest of the movie was a bit of an anticlimax in the offence department.
Platypi!
Platypi!!
I ask you? Have they no shame? And in writing too! Obviously the plural of platypus should be either platypuses (since it's a word in the English Language) or, more ringingly, Platypodes (since we got it from classical Greek). Platypi is the sort of rubbish you'd expect from that Mr Bill's Microsoft Encarta dictionary not from a weird movie. It's like octopus You can say octopuses or octopodes but never octopi ! Platypi or octopi are just trying too hard. Oh you can strain and say that they are really from Greek via Latin because we've dropped the 'u' from 'pous', but as Americans you should be very careful when it comes to commenting on loosing the u from words. Actions of that colour wouldn't be honourable.

And when you get down to it, this sort of thing is really just another example of pretentious behaviour, like the modern habit of people (who apparently have a little Spanish and less English) of pronouncing the previously perfectly naturalised word junta(/djunta/) as /hhoonta/, just as though they were using a foreign expression. I mean this is a word that's been in English since the 17th century. Why it even nearly got a c added to it because it goes back to junctum (like putting the 's' in 'isle' becuase it's from 'insula'). It's like pronouncing 'racoon' (which has also been in English since the 17th century) as "raugroughcums" (and here I'd better apologise to any speakers of Powhatan or other Algonkian speakers out there because I'm probably mashing that pronunciation into road kill). Hoonta-ists aren't that consistent though? Oh! No! I bet they just use "Octopi" and "Platypi". And they could so easily get it right, with an English plural or even a Greek. There is even an example of a Greek plural for them, look at "Antipodes", referring to the guys and later places that have their feet opposite ours. You don't see many people saying *Antipi, or at least I don't.

I suppose in the final analysis that's because, unless you happen to be Long John Silver, you don't have an Antipus in the singular.

Oh! Aar! lad and Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton




Notes:


1
"... not a complete Ozymandian desert" Shelley's poem has Ramesses (Usr Maat Ra Setep-en Ra Ra-messu Meri Amon---Rameses II) suggesting that he is so powerful that the mighty should look on his works and despair, but ironically it ends:

... round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The whole sonnet is here. For a different take on this sonnet see Graveyard Shift.

2 ShichininoSevenSamurai
"... Kurosawa's Shichi Nin No Samurai" The Seven Samurai, one of the great movies of all time Shichi Nin No Samurai should only be avoided if you wish to die unfulfilled.

 

 

 

3 NevskiiBelskiy
"... or Eisensein's Aleksandr Nevskiy" This is the other great Movie, and should only be avoided if you wish to die unfulfilled and ignorant of just how unimportant special effects are.
Aleksandr Nevskiy has great Prokofiev music too (See this essay for more Pro and Con Kofiev).


 

4 Dogma
"... a movie called 'Dogma'." If you really must, you can see notes on Kevin Smith's Dogma here.






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