A note on a thought that remains to be fleshed out

Mark k-p, in his piece on Peter Jackson’s King Kong and the lack of historical sense in the postmodern, makes the following observation in passing:

“in 2005, technological progress is the only faith that remains to us”.

I have been stewing over Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles - the title under which there are more complete reviews on Amazon) for a good week and a half now. The novel is most certainly a most striking portrait of the dissolution of the West’s collective hope for a meaningful future. But I have been unable to put my finger on precisely what hope or myth the book embodies. I believe I now have it, however: the novel depicts the realisation of precisely what Mark has named, that is, the belief that technology provides the only source of salvation that we can hope for now.

I’m posting this unfleshed-out thought here in order to stop me from filing it away and then forgetting it. I will try and develop it more in the near future. In the meantime, it goes without saying that k-punk’s piece is worth checking out.

Interestingly, I had an experience similar to the one that Mark describes – that of a film refusing to linger in the memory – when I saw another current film that attempts to effect an ‘atmosphere of history’: the much-lauded, Goodnight and Good Luck. I could make no comment to others about the film other than to say that it was so perfect that it seemed to round itself off wholly as the credits rolled. Not having seen King Kong, however, I suspect that this may have as much to do with the parable-like nature of the film – parables being enclosed things – as with the sense of period Goodnight and Good Luck contains in its visual style. Why on earth was the Goodnight shot in black and white, anyway? What was the effect of this?

To be continued.