The Vancouver Chat (Reboot!)

This meetup is hosted by Wisdom and Woe. For more details and to sign up for this event, go to: https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/306106550

“I am writing this account, by candlelight, inside the belly of a fish. I have been eaten, yet I am living still.” Scribbling his diary in the overwhelming gloom of the cavernous fish belly, old Geppetto reflects on the strange life of the puppet his "sacred magic" carved out of wood, whom he grew to love with a slow-burning intensity.

The Swallowed Man (2020) is the story of how Pinocchio's father spent two years inside the enormous sea creature that swallowed him, of the journal he wrote there, the art he made…and the strange presence that lives beside him in the gloom.

Wisdom and Woe is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."

Tired of churning out lightweight comedies, John Sullivan (played by Joel McCrea) sets out to film an ambitious masterpiece — a serious, socially responsible film about "the suffering of humanity". After his producers point out that he knows nothing of hardship, Sullivan hits the road disguised as a hobo to learn about Depression-era America’s “forgotten men” and make his upcoming drama more authentic. En route to enlightenment, he meets a lovely, no-nonsense young woman (Veronica Lake) — and more trouble than he ever dreamed of. This comic masterpiece by Preston Sturges is among the finest satires of the film industry and a high-water mark in the career of one of Hollywood's most revered funnymen.

"Sturges' most deeply ambiguous and contradictory film. Though much of his work subtly underscores the discrepancies between varying levels of the socioeconomic strata, Sullivan's Travels explicitly centers on issues of upper crust naiveté and class guilt." (MUBI)

"Sullivan's Travels is both screwball comedy and socially conscious melodrama — as well as a satire of socially conscious melodrama, and a serious apologetic for crowd-pleasing comedy." (Rotten Tomatoes)

"To understand the depths of Sturges's reflexivity, nearly each scene requires a double take where what's being stated by the film's characters is taken bluntly in one sense, but read as procedural, Hollywood hypocrisy in another." (Slant)

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Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss the 1941 classic Sullivan's Travels written and directed by the American filmmaker Preston Sturges, recently voted the 243rd greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of film critics and scholars. The movie's title is a reference to Gulliver's Travels, the 1726 novel by satirist Jonathan Swift. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the fictional book in the movie that Sullivan wants to adapt for the screen, was used as the title of the 2000 film by the Coen brothers.

Please watch the movie in advance (90 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.

A preview.

We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/312595478/

Check out other movie discussions in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
To be the speaking participant you must RSVP via Calendly.
The link to my Calendly calendar is available in my Egora profile:
http://egora-ilp.org/philosopher/Cezary_Jurewicz

All others are welcome to join to listen, use the chat, use the breakout rooms, and comment at the end.

About Citizen Office Hours:
If the Citizen is to be the highest authority in democracy, should we not have office hours to make ourselves available and accountable to our fellow citizens? The answer is YES – yes, we should.

Also, in democracy, there is no power without responsibility. If the citizens do not accept the responsibility of being citizens, then we do not really have any power – the power we might think we have is illusory. Therefore, all responsible citizens should make themselves available at their own "Citizen Office Hours" to build our democratic power through collaboration.

This event is a publication of my Citizen Office Hours. I am making myself available to discuss any of my or your ideas published in Egora. Egora is a platform for efficiently developing and effectively sharing our political philosophies with each other. Please be already registered for Egora before our meeting and at least somewhat familiar with my Ideological Profile so we can have a proper and thorough discussion. If you share your Ideological Profile in the comments in advance, i will take some time to study it before our meeting (ideally, the audience will do so too). Here is the link to my profile again:
http://egora-ilp.org/philosopher/Cezary_Jurewicz