"Each character has the opportunity to generate God by his or her behavior. All of us are the mother and father of God, to the extent we accept the limits of our humanity."
[snip]
"My understanding of the way the mechanism of storytelling works is...whether or not the audience is conscious of the process, apart from the audience awareness that there is a process, any story is constantly appending specific values to the meanings of words, and of the actions of characters. And the fact that story uses as its building blocks words or characters that the audience believes it has some prior recognition or understanding of, is really simply the beginning of the story, but not its end.”
To which, like the Geico Caveman, I can only respond, "Uh...What?"
J from C was, then, a story about how the characters defined their personal view of God from within their own experiences. To emphasize this self-definition, Milch attempted to divorce the words and actions of the characters from their meaning allowing the audience to self-define the entire show, giving them latitude to allow the characters to define their view of God based on the viewer's personal view of the characters. At least, I think that might be it.
A curious experiment. It may have worked if we (the viewers) were prepped to go into it with that mindset. But we weren’t, we were told it would be another great David Milch drama. I am half tempted to re-watch the entire ten episodes with the knowledge that I am supposed to self-define the narrative, but I just don't have time. I am reminded of James Joyce, who believed his readers should devote their lives to understanding his work.
I certainly wouldn't call J from C a failure. I would have probably continued to watch ad infinitum just because I so admire the fact that someone has the guts to use the English language in something other than a utilitarian way. I also thought it was drop dead funny in parts, which, to me, is worth more than all the philosophical experimenting in the world. But many of the characters were not very complete or consistent and a lot of their "conflicts" were on the cliched and contrived side. Gotta let this one pass and call it a learning experience.
At least now Milch can get back to finishing up Deadwood, although it sounds like Ian McShane is holding up the stagecoach.
Entourage and Flight of the Concords finished up last week, but Curb Your Enthusiasm begins so we'll have our comedy fix. The final season of The Wire doesn't start until January so drama-wise we are left with something new called Tell Me You Love Me which looks absolutely excruciating. Without seeing anything but the trailers, my guess is that it is essentially Thirtysomething (What about myyyy needs!!!!!) with lots of lurid sex and shock talk which gets pumped as "groundbreaking." Ugh. But that’s just a guess...
