Montréal 3 - Notre Goddam
Jan. 27th, 2003 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseSmartest thing we did this weekend was blow off the Saturday night party (with the DJ and his five dancers) and meet ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snowmit and redrunner instead. We took them to see the multimedia show at Notre Dame Cathedral. When you enter, you are given a headset and a little player (not sure what the medium is. I think it's actually a radio receiver) and you sit in the prescribed row. The walls and altar of the santuary are draped in huge pieces of white cloth which become projection screens as we learn the history the cathedral.
The video story of the fine and noble French Catholics coming to the new world with their pious mission would be impossibly offensive if it weren't so hysterically inept.
Narrator: "There was nothing there (meaning the Island of Montreal). Nothing at all. NOTHING! Just a forest."
Nothing? Just a forest? Nothing but a complete and self-sustaining eco-system, you mean? Oh yeah, and the Iroquois nation with their agrarian society were there, too. They do actually show up in the video as "raiding parties" on the poor pious settlers. On the sound track, the Iroquois sound like screaming macaques as the poor, holy sisters pray and cradle the frightened, apple-cheeked children.
The show is not a total loss. Eventually, the curtains fall dramatically and reveal the splendour of the cathedral, using lights to pinpoint various details and give their specific meanings. The fact is, the church is magnificient, unified, awe-inspiring. It's a wealth of detail that comes together as a beautiful whole, and exploring it never fails to take my breath away. The lover of beauty in me wants to explain away all the bad stuff in the video and extoll as virtuous the artisans behind the structure. It's probably not such a simple process.
snowmit and redrunner instead. We took them to see the multimedia show at Notre Dame Cathedral. When you enter, you are given a headset and a little player (not sure what the medium is. I think it's actually a radio receiver) and you sit in the prescribed row. The walls and altar of the santuary are draped in huge pieces of white cloth which become projection screens as we learn the history the cathedral.The video story of the fine and noble French Catholics coming to the new world with their pious mission would be impossibly offensive if it weren't so hysterically inept.
Narrator: "There was nothing there (meaning the Island of Montreal). Nothing at all. NOTHING! Just a forest."
Nothing? Just a forest? Nothing but a complete and self-sustaining eco-system, you mean? Oh yeah, and the Iroquois nation with their agrarian society were there, too. They do actually show up in the video as "raiding parties" on the poor pious settlers. On the sound track, the Iroquois sound like screaming macaques as the poor, holy sisters pray and cradle the frightened, apple-cheeked children.
The show is not a total loss. Eventually, the curtains fall dramatically and reveal the splendour of the cathedral, using lights to pinpoint various details and give their specific meanings. The fact is, the church is magnificient, unified, awe-inspiring. It's a wealth of detail that comes together as a beautiful whole, and exploring it never fails to take my breath away. The lover of beauty in me wants to explain away all the bad stuff in the video and extoll as virtuous the artisans behind the structure. It's probably not such a simple process.
