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发表于 2025-4-4 21:01:25
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Hello My dear friends
Because of the rigorous policy implemented by CPC and joint efforts carried out by our beloved doctors, we're all spared from experiencing the undergoing horrid pandemic, but unfortunately, now we have to face an economic downturn, or to some extent, pretty much a financial crisis.
For over the last month, I've developed a habit of being wordy and chatty, now if you all excuses me, here comes the fun part:
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Have the Housewives read too much Camus?
Mark Rowlands
27 January 2005 • 00:01 am
Sisyphus sisters: desperation is part of the human condition
The residents of Wisteria Lane might not look like philosophers, but that's what they are, says Mark Rowlands
When Susan Meyer realised her marriage was in trouble, philosophy was ultimately to blame. Paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau, her ex-husband told her that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. The premise upon which the hit television series Desperate Housewives is built is that so, too, do most women. Or, as Susan puts it: "Really, do most women lead lives of noisy fulfilment?"
Her ex-husband, like the rest of us, is a philosopher. Philosophy is all around us, in the culture we inhabit, in the television programmes we watch and the magazines we read. All of us are the authors, producers, directors, stars and guest stars in various philosophical questions, issues, disputes, conflations and confusions - even though, most of the time, we have no idea of this. If you live life, and ever think about it, you're a philosopher.
The residents of Wisteria Lane, the most desperate place in America and the setting for Channel 4's hit drama series, might not look like philosophers, with their gym-toned bodies and designer underwear, but that's exactly what they are.
The picket fences and polished fingernails are in stark contrast to the harsh realities of human existence. Lynette Scavo, the mother of three ADD children and a baby, is desperate for her husband to stop getting her pregnant. The emotionally repressed Bree Van De Kamp has a husband who wants to leave her, and she is desperate enough to try to kill him rather than letting him do so. Gabrielle Solis is desperate that her husband doesn't find out about her affair with her teenage gardener - there can be no better image of desperation than a woman in a ballgown mowing the lawn. And divorcée Susan is desperate for a date with the new man on the street, Mike the plumber.
Desperation clearly sells: 4.4 million British viewers can't be wrong, can they? Albert Camus, the French existentialist and chronicler of the human condition, knew all about desperation. He took, as a leitmotif for human existence, the myth of Sisyphus, a mortal who had offended the gods; his punishment was to roll a huge rock up a hill. When he reached the top, it would roll back down, and he would have to begin all over again. And that was it - for eternity. What seems so unfortunate about this isn't that the work is difficult. The real horror lies in its sheer futility. There is nothing that it aims at, and nothing that could count as its fulfilment.
Compare this with Teri Hatcher, and her description of her life: "I get up at six every day," she says. "I make the lunch. I clean the litter-box. I feed the dog and the bird. I make breakfast and then I drive 45 minutes to school. I get home and I try to pull myself together so I can look like an attractive human being or come to work. And God forbid I actually try to have a date."
This description probably resonates with most of us. Hatcher does not say whether this frenetic activity makes her happy. But, just as with Sisyphus, happiness is not the point. What is the purpose of her activities? So that the little Hatchers can grow up and do pretty much the same. Camus's point was that each day of each person's life is like one of Sisyphus's journeys to the summit.
In all of this, the existentialists thought, we are ultimately alone. At first glance, the Desperate Housewives were seemed to having each other around. But if you take a deep dive into the following episode, that reality, as Bree, the OCD-driven perfectionist pointed out: "How much do we really want to know about our neighbors?".
After all, their best friend kicked off the series by committing a suicide as a result of some dark family secret. My point being: we all have our secrets, some are as innocent as honest mistakes, some are referred to us as skeletons in our closet. Often, we are a closed book to others and the same may applies to the other side as well. The result, as Mary Alice Young, the narrator puts it, is that: "Loneliness is something my friends understood all too well."
Is there anything to be done about the futility and alienation that characterise our lives? Camus had a straightforward solution: suicide. And suicide is precisely what Mary Alice did to get the ball rolling in episode one, after completing a list of daily chores. Perhaps she had been reading too much Camus, just as Susan's ex-husband had apparently been overdosing on Thoreau? Perhaps a philosophy-based reading group was responsible for the tribulations of Wisteria Lane?
Conversely, Camus thought - and this is philosophical irony at its best - that continuing to live, continuing to deal with the meaningless trivialities of existence, is an act of great heroism; so great that it might actually give life meaning. Something for Lynette Scavo to think about the next time her children hand-paint a classmate.
which we tried so desperately to make it go up in smoke
And this is exactly what I wanna do
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别希望寄托在孩子身上，你是想做他的累赘，还是要树立一个榜样。
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叶公好龙的人、缺乏激情的人、固步自封的人
without passion, with out commitment, and resting on your laurels.
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