So last night was "French Movie Night". My friend Megan and I noshed on brie and strawberry jam on crackers, had an amazing salad nicoise and finished up with some pastry and ice cream. The movie we watched was "Ma Mere" (there's an accent in there, but I don't know how to add one), which was based on a book by George Bataille. If you know anything about George Bataille, you'll know that he writes about really perverse and messed up stuff. And this movie was an intense and perverse journey through, uh, I-don't-know-what, but a whole group of people were participating in it, not just one crazy individual. Now, when it comes to commenting on George Bataille and his writings, honestly, I'm just speechless; but today as I was sitting on some stairs, eating my sandwich for lunch, I was struck with this idea that I think was facilitated by watching a very decidedly 'fucked up movie', and that idea is this: Maybe madness is merely a matter of relativity or subjectivity.
I mean, is it just a matter of sameness? Whether or not our behaviors align with what our culture deems 'normal' or not?
What if we discovered an island where everyone there hallucinated all the time. To each other that'd be normal; to us they'd be crazy.
Or what if there was a person living all alone in a forest, crazy as a loon, doing all manner of weird things, totally talking to invisible entities, etc. but no one else was there to judge this person and label him 'crazy'? Is someone mad if no one is there to tell them they are so?
Just what I was thinking about for a little bit at lunch; the relativity of insanity, yep, that's it.
