Less organic intellectuals than morbid symptoms

Skip to content

L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

2 Comments

  1. Daru
    July 15, 2014 @ 10:32 pm

    What a great reading. The idea of the cleansing fire makes me think of framing the Dirty Pair with another goddess related to Tantra – Kali who as well as being a destroyer of dark, evil forces can also be benign in some aspects.

    Reply

  2. Spoilers Below
    September 8, 2014 @ 10:06 am

    One of the strange and wonderful things about Yojimbo is how the story has been translated across various genres and media forms. The basic story was adapted from Dashell Hammett's Red Harvest, a novel featuring the Continental Op, one of the original "secret agent" characters. From there, it is turned into a samurai epic by Kurosawa, and then a western, A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone, master of the spaghetti western.

    And in this episode, we have our secret agents, dressed as cowboys, acting as bodyguards ("yojimbos"), playing one side off the other. And just last episode, they raided and destroyed Poisonville, the name of the town in Red Harvest. Brilliant!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from Eruditorum Press

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading