My Memory of the Amphibian Man in Te-hran
When I was about twelve or thirteen I read a book with an unusual story, and the main thing I remembered about it was the fact that the ending had made me quite sad.
It was about a particular kind of loneliness sensed by the protagonist and caused by the behaviour of others.
For some reason in the recent months this book was on my mind and I was trying in vain to remember its name. I knew the book was a translation from Russian into Persian.
And then suddenly last week I saw the word ‘amphibian’ somewhere and thought perhaps that word could be in the title. Although I didn’t think at the time that the meaning of the word would necessarily be reflected in the Persian title of the book.
So, below is the video of the film that I found following the search.
Having seen the film I could only remember the end, which had made me sad, and of course the space I had in my mind when reading the book was a very different one.
The space in a film is the space that the film-maker has created in their own mind when reading a book/script.
This is the reason why to read a book is much more individualistic than watching a film. And to make a film is much more individualistic than writing a review about it.
When a reviewer on the other hand tries to be more individualistic then s/he will end up being less just. When reviewers are less just mediocrity will rule, as no one is supposed to get more attention than the reviewer and the culture will stagnate.
A culture stagnant is no culture at all. It is the lack of culture that is activated reflecting the collective obsessive behaviour encouraged by the mediocre media.
In democratic countries there is too much information and no wisdom. A random collection of ‘know this, know that’.In tyrannical systems on the other hand there are partial information mingled with gossips and again no wisdom. Here neither those with ideas nor the mediocrity receives any attention.
And it is for this reason that it is not possible to analyse the inner culture of those societies by even partly looking at their media.
In end effect however both are stagnant. There we have media that fears challenging the governments and here we have media that fears challenging people and perpetuates bad taste.
The Amphibian Man is written by Alexander Belyaev.