女神殿

moot



Y
(法學院) 假設案件,假設案件討論會

D

–adjective 
1. open 
to 
discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point.  

2. of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic.
3. Chiefly Law. not actual; theoretical; hypothetical. 

–verb (used with object) 
4. to present or introduce (any point, subject, project, etc.) for discussion.
5. to reduce or remove the practical significance of; make purely theoretical or academic.
6. Archaic. to argue (a case), esp. in a mock court. 

–noun 
7. an assembly of the people in early England exercising political, administrative, and judicial powers.
8. an argument or discussion, esp. of a hypothetical legal case.
9. Obsolete. a debate, argument, or discussion. 

–noun 
1. a ring gauge for checking the diameters of treenails. 

–verb (used with object) 
2. to bring (a treenail) to the proper diameter with a moot. 


C

moot (adj.) 
   
has three Standard meanings: "discussable, debatable"; "under discussion, being disputed"; and "without practical significance, academic." 

Thus a moot question may be open to discussion, in the process of being discussed, or not worth discussing at all, depending on the sense dictated by context.   
  

erudite
dunce
symposium
A symposium in the "men are pigs" school of gender relations
polemic 
controversial argument
elevates "Descent" beyond case study and into the realm of [bomb]-throwing polemic.

disquisition (dissertation)
delve 
delve [into] the background of a case
glean
The Talented Mr. Ripley became a [broad] critical [success] and [gleaned] several award nominations in the States
If there's one thing that can be [gleaned] from The Brown Bunny, it's that Vincent Gallo is a damn considerate turn-signaler. 
Crypto




　
On a global scale, Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter sharply [divided] critics upon release. Reviewers generally fell into two [camps] -- the Euro critics, who almost unanimously hailed it as a masterpiece -- and the über-P.C. American commentators, such as Pauline Kael, who referred to it in the New Yorker as "proof that women can make junk just as well as men." Roger Ebert even went so far as to blast the film, damning it "as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering."

lubricious
–adjective 
1. arousing or expressive of sexual desire; lustful; lecherous.
2. lubricous.  

[Brushing] these criticisms aside for a second, The Night Porter, over three decades later, feels strongest in retrospect because Cavani manages -- in two hours -- to deeply engrave one of the most credible portraits of sadomasochistic bondage ever committed to celluloid, outside of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. Cavani uses the Nazi mystique to climb deeply into the womb of sadomasochism, exposing the inner sicknesses and depravity inherent in S & M -- so deeply that the viewing experience becomes palpable, sweat-inducing, and wickedly uncomfortable. The director's refusal to become sexually [gratuitous] or [explicit] is exactly the point; she begins with the widely accepted conviction that sadomasochism is sexual and digs deeper, [plunging] into the pathological core of the dominance/submission dynamic. The film gradually becomes a dark immersion into the psyches of two individuals who enjoy giving and receiving pain, and an orchestra of sadomasochistic nuance. 

Nowhere is this more evident than in the picture's final act; the band of Nazis intent on hunting down the renegade Max becomes not merely a gripping plot device, but -- in Cavani's hands, a manipulative ploy -- a deus ex machina that the director uses to strip bare the core of sadomasochistic yearning. Trapped by their pursuers in a barren apartment, Max and Lucia gradually, imperceptibly starve themselves to death, [clinging] psychologically (and physically) [to] one other and growing wan and emaciated; at one point, Lucia walks barefoot over broken glass, lacerating the soles of her [feet] -- an act that single-handedly reveals her need (and desire) for self-abuse. Cavani has, in a few brilliant strokes, stripped away the sex and reduced her two diseased lovers to the core of pathological need. Criticisms of this as disgusting or depraved are moot, for it remains utterly, chillingly, and peerlessly real.

ploy
【口】計謀,計劃
sole
腳底,鞋底,襪底
【魚】比目魚,鰈魚

The wonderful paradox in The Night Porter, of course, is that the film's presentation and context are deliberately unreal -- an irony that completely eluded critics like Ebert, who slammed the picture's historical inaccuracies. As David Mamet has noted, motion pictures may be dreamscapes by default, but Cavani heightens the dream effect in Porter, dramatically playing up the nightmarish aspects of her onscreen imagery as she toys liberally with historical detail -- as in her visceral glimpse of a Nazi carnival torture ride for Jewish girls (an image whose lightning-flash appearance -- and absence of explicit violence -- render it almost subliminal).

In the end, the critics' need to attack Cavani as historically inaccurate become moot because The Night Porter never even attempts historical accuracy. Cavani has a different agenda altogether. Like Last Tango in Paris (with which it deserves comparison), The Night Porter is one of those gutsy films that extracts deep insights into pathology by constructing an unreal psychosexual phantasmagoria onscreen as a vehicle. The picture's depth and credibility on a psychopathological level thus could not possibly exist without the artificiality of the context that delivers it, fully justifying any contextual liberties that Cavani may take with her material, historical or otherwise. This forces us to look at the film's Nazi mythos allegorically instead of literally, exempting Cavani [from] accusations of Holocaust trivialization.