[Appendices to this essay.]
(A) Viewers
have remarked how odd it is, that FBI Guy ends every other sentence addressed
to Jane Doe with “… , Jane.” Odd especially since that isn’t even
her real name.
Concurrently, by chance, I have been listening to an
audiobook of Jane Eyre; and there, Mr Rochester exhibits the same
the same vocative quirk, towards his coworker/love-interest.
In both cases, the phenomenon is striking, owing to
the utter asymmetry in vocatives: the senior man regularly recurs to this
first-name address; the woman protege, never.
There is a slight syntactic distinction: FBI-Guy postpends
the vocative ("I'm so sorry, Jane"); Rochester prepends
it.
(B) More
musings on the motif of the Verhängnisvolle
tattoos:
Compare palmistry (or phrenology)-- the notion that your character or fate
are written in your fingerprints, or the lines of your hand, or the bumps of your skull.
(C) Motivation for
the master-conspiracy
One of the features I hated about “24” (which fortunately
did not intrude to spoil the fun
until the final episodes of each season) was the bogus, ex-nihilo
explanation of the vast, nation-destroying events, via a conspiracy by a tiny
and ill-defined clique, whose motivation was simply unfathomable. Often, all we learned about Mr Big was that he spoke with a British accent
(very suspicious!).
Oddly, and with a certain commendable candor, Episode 4 of “Blindspot”
came forth with the motivation behind a horrendous global bioattack, right at
the end of the episode in which it was introduced: as a desperate, planet-saving move in the face of Malthusian pressures. To the average viewer, that must seem as
far-fetched as the (even vaguer) motivations of the “24” arch-villains. But actually, it is more firmly grounded in (at least
psycho-social) reality than you might surmise.
(1a) It is already a fact, that persistent,
influential voices in Africa aver
that AIDS, and ebola, and probably much else, were caused -- deliberately -- by
the West.
Similar conspiracy-theories thrive in much of the third
world.
(1b) Such
fantasies have their American proponents as well. Thus, the P.C. anthropologists
campaign against Napoleon Chagnon; or a certain tenured professor who toes the
conspiratorial ebola-line.
(2) In
fantasy though not in act, such
ideas have indeed been entertained.
„Es zeigt sich, daß die ethischen
Menschen nicht so viele Kinder haben und die Gangster sich unbegrenzt und
sorglos weiter reproduzieren.“ Und: „… gegen Überbevölkerung hat die Menschheit
nichts Vernünftiges unternommen. Man könnte daher eine gewisse Sympathie für
Aids bekommen.“
-- Konrad
Lorenz in einem Gespräch anlässlich seines 85. Geburtstags, in: Natur, Nr. 11, München 1988.
And, from a couple of years ago:
I watched in amazement as a few
hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a
standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of
90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr.
Eric R. Pianka, the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard
expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
One of Pianka's earliest points was
a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a
privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked
him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are
you?”
Pianka hammered his point home by
exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”
[-- Rense.com]
Thus, the perpetrators of the “Blindspot” terror-attack were not so implausible, being rather analogs
of the Oklahoma City bomber, or of Breivik
[Update 9 Nov 2015] Takehome from the (otherwise unmemorable) Episode
Eight:
Twofer is actually
a Threefer (Urninde).
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