1. What do drugs mean to Ickarus?
The drugs help him relax and he believes that drugs will help him
produce better music. In the end he
makes better music when he starts recovering than he ever did while on drugs. If he hadn’t gone through rehab, his career
would have most likely been over and he would have ruined his relationship with
Mathilde.
2. Why, when, and how are his fans taking drugs,
and which drugs do they take?
Most people seem to be taking drugs to enhance
their pleasure and to make their lives more exciting and entertaining. When Ickarus asks Jenny about her job she
explains that it is boring and not what she wants to do. Many of Ickarus’s fans were taking Cocaine and
were snorting it through their nose in the bathroom stales of the club. They also take pills that contain Ketamine,
MADA, Crystal Meth, and PMA.
3. While we can see that his drug habits get him
ill and into a psychosis, and while we witness his relapse and inability to
work successfully, why does the subculture Ickarus belongs to focus on drugs?
I believe
the subculture focuses on drugs because, for a little while, it enhances their
senses and they feel the beat of the music more intensely. It also makes them stand apart from a lot of
music groups and people in general. Most
people don’t understand techno music and therefore think it isn’t really music,
but to those who know and enjoy it, drugs are away to escape from the constant
battery of people telling them its wrong.
4. Compare the standards you know from your home
society with the people you see depicted in this movie. Which are the stark
differences and contrasts?
In my home society, drugs are not as common. Obviously, there are people who do them, but
it isn’t as well know or done as commonly.
In the movie, people are doing drugs all the time and the lean more
towards cocaine and crystal meth. In my
home society, not very many people are into the hard core drugs like
cocaine. They tend to smoke
marijuana. To the people in the movie,
life seems to be one big party until something goes wrong. That is not so in my home society for most
people.
5. Germany is considered a strong industrial
nation the world over. Do you think that the youth culture as depicted here
could change that? How about work ethics of Ickarus and of Alice, the label
director who fires and then re-signs him?
I do not believe the youth culture depicted here could change very
much. This seems like such a small part
of Germany’s youth and not everyone has the same standards. While they might change how people interact
with each other, it doesn’t seem possible that they would change Germany into
something other than a strong industrial nation. The only way I see that happening is if they
all decided not to work and to just do music and party for the rest of their
lives. Even if this happened, I do not
believe it would make a big enough dent in the economy to change anything. Ickarus is passionate about his music and
just wants to keep doing what he loves.
The amount of effort he puts into this is great, but other than that he
doesn’t seem to have much work ethic.
Alice has been in the business for a long time and seems to know what
will sell and what won’t. She is from a
seemingly different world than Ickarus.
She does what she does to make money and when she hears Ickarus’ new
music, she hires him back.
6. Which similar "cult movies" of US
origin have you seen, if any?
I have not
seen any similar “cult movies”.
My personal reaction to the movie was not what I was
expecting. When I first read what the
plot of the movie, I didn’t believe that I would like it, but I did. All Ickarus wants to do is make music and he
believes that the drugs are helping to inspire him. He can’t see the real effect it is having on
what he produces and what everyone else see and extraordinary music that would
make his album sell. I am normally not a
big fan of movies involving drugs because nothing good ever seems to come out
of their use. People become dependent on
them and it changes who they are and how they treat other people. I liked this movie because, while it wasn’t
necessarily voluntary but it wasn’t forced, Ickarus stays in the psychiatric
hospital and tries to get clean. He has
a huge setback that puts him in the hospital, and I believe that truly helped
him. He wasn’t allowed to come and go
like before and he puts an effort into staying clean and taking his pills when
he is released. It is hard for most
hard-core drug users to admit they have a problem and even harder to get them
to stop. Mathilde did what she could to
help Ickarus and, even when they were no longer together, convinced Alice to
listen to the new music Ickarus was producing and to give him another
chance. There are not a lot of cultural
differences that popped out at me. Most
people get into drugs to make them feel better and to help them forget about
what is happening in their own lives. The
one difference that did pop out to me was that the police were never
involved. In the U.S. any kind of
illegal drugs use, such as crystal meth or cocaine, would be punishable by law
and they would be sent to rehab and possibly even have to serve prison time,
but that never happened to Ickarus. He
seemed to get off scot free, other than the psychiatric hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment