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DEUS_EX_STATUARY

                                                   October 12, 2018

                                                           CONJURE_WIFE

                      ARISTOTLE_POETICS          There was a somewhat
From Aristotle's                                 pedestrian movie made
"The Poetics",                                   from Fritz Leiber's
Section IX:                                      excellent horror/fantasy
                                                 "Conjure Wife"--
  "The tragic wonder will then be greater
  than if they happened of themselves or         Near the end of the movie,
  by accident; for even coincidences are         there's a long sequence
  most striking when they have an air of         where a gargoyle has been
  design. We may instance the statue of          brought to life by playing
  Mitys at Argos, which fell upon his            some mystically powerful
  murderer while he was a spectator at a         music over the PA system.
  festival, and killed him. Such events          After the gargoyle has been
  seem not to be due to mere                     terrorizing the campus for
  chance. Plots, therefore, constructed on       a while, it returns to it's
  these principles are necessarily the           perch over the door as the
  best."                                         music ceases.  Then in the
                                                 final scene, the bad guy is
             ARISTOTLE_POETICS                   leaving the building with
                                                 the reel-to-reel tape of
I thought that was a particularly                the music in hand, and as
interesting thing for Aristotle to               he steps under the
say, because while I understand what             gargoyle, it spontaneously
he's getting at things like this                 falls forward on top of him
always strike me as cheesy garbage.              and crushes him.  The
                                                 camera zooms in on the reel
But then, there's the word "even"                of tape magnetic tape now
there-- "even coincidences".  He's               fallen from his lifeless
making the point that they work                  hand.
better when there's a sense of
divine law underlying them like                  How *ironic*, eh?
this...                                          Hoist by his own gargoyle.

Though, isn't it strange that                       The Toadkeeper, who had
Aristotle is if anything best                       only been half-watching
known for his injunction *against*                  this, reacted: "but why
resolving a plot by divine                          would it fall on him?"
intervention?                                       and I said "he had the
                                                    tape in his hand", and
                                                    he immediately responded
                                                    "Oh, that's okay then."

                                                    He had his Aristotle
                                                    down.

                                                         TOADKEEPER



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