Consequences of Globalization

Marie Laforet's 'Maire Douceur Marie Colere' x Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots mashup.

Dionysus Rising

Still from Black Narcissus, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947.

Powell & Pressburger's technicolor-induced fever dream of colonial failure, Black Narcissus, presages the British withdrawal from India by almost a year. Though the film's dramatizes the unraveling of the British Colonial Empire, it traces failure elliptically. A group of British nuns attempt to convert a palace atop a Himalayan mountain into a convent, then slowly begin to realize unremembered and repressed desires through both gardening and fashion. The Catholic Legion of Decency protested the film's American release, and forced the excision of several flashback scenes. The still above exists as a telegraphic omen from the film's meticulously choreographed final act. It always unnerves.

See also:
The Criterion Collection: Black Narcissus

Swine Flu