the phantom of the paradise

Jen and I watched the Phantom of the Paradise Friday night. If you haven't seen it and like kitschy early seventies rock operas with music by Paul Williams I highly recommend it. It is a pop-rock mishmash of Faust, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Phantom of the Opera.

I saw it in 1974 at the drive-in. I was four. It was totally inapproriate, but in my parents defense, they may have expected me to sleep through it.

As I watched it this last time, I identified some bad ideas that got lodged in my head and ended up skewing my life negatively. Whether this movie was the primary source of these constructs, or just a manifestation of the psychological environment my father fostered, I can't say. Regardless, they stood out clearly in all of their cartoonish sincerity.

Here's a list of the bad ideas:

1. The true artist is unappreciated
2. The system corrupts and destroys the artist
3. The artist can only love from afar
4. The object of the artist's affection will destroy him
5. Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of love

I absorbed all of these things.