bad lieutenant: versus

The relationship between Abel Ferrara's (1992) Bad Lieutenant and Werner Herzog's (2009) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is highly ambiguous. Reportedly, Ferrara hated the 2009 version, and Herzog didn't even see the original.

As far as I can tell, Port of Call is the first produced feature script by a TV writer, although on imdb they've credited all four writers of the original as well, perhaps because there are so many plot / thematic similarities between the two movies.

Both "bad lieutenants" (i) take drugs; (ii) gamble; (iii) abuse their authority to obtain drugs; (iv) abuse their authority to obtain sexual favors; but also (v) do actually care about their role as homicide investigators and pursue it vigorously.

Additionally, the arc of both movies is similar, with a traumatic event haunting the lieutenant (original: massive gambling debt accruing as the Mets come from behind to beat the Dodgers in a seven game series; Port of Call: constant pain due to an injury suffered during Hurricane Katrina) as he relentlessly investigates a horrendous case (original: Nun raped in a church by young hoodlums; Port of Call: immigrant family slaughtered by drug lords).

Both films bear the distinctive stylistic marks of their respective directors.

But one can see the origins of Ferrara's hatred of the Herzog not-really-a-sequel, perhaps, in the radically different messages of the two films.

Ferrara's is a complex Catholic passion play. In his quest to solve the rape / desecration case, the lieutenant (re)discovers the significance of sacrifice and forgiveness in the attitude of the nun, who refuses to identifier her assailants because she has already forgiven them. Ultimately, promising her the justice she wants, he discovers their identities, but helps them escape, thereby sacrificing his own life in the process. Redemption through sacrifice and forgiveness.

Herzog's version is completely stripped of religious imagery or significance. Instead we see the images of violent nature and chaotic forces common in so many other Herzog films. Where Ferrara's lieutenant sees images of Christ's suffering on the cross, Herzog's sees phantom iguanas and break-dancing Japanese. Where Ferrara's lieutenant "solves" his case by helping the criminals escape and sacrificing his own life, Herzog's sees a bizarre twist in fortune, and arrests his criminals on phony evidence, though preventing his partner from slaughtering them on the spot, instead trusting the due process of law to see right. There is redemption here, but redemption through a combination of chance, diligence, and assistance from others.

So, Ferrara's message is quintessentially Catholic, while Herzog's is resolutely humanistic. Unsurprising, perhaps, given Ferrara's Catholic upbringing and Herzog's chaotic youth during World War II.

assaf sharon on west bank settlements

pigs to swine

It's natural to think that "pig" and "pork" are related words. Certainly, the conjunction of related meanings and alliteration makes it easy to suspect a strong etymological relationship. So far no direct evidence of such exists; if one does, it's not half unlikely that it was an indirect consequence of the Norman invasion.

The etymology of "pork" is well known, derived from Latin porcus via proto-IndoEuropean porko:

porko: young pig. pork; porcine. porpoise: pigfish. It porcellana; relating to a sow; hence the cowrie: Venus shell, from its resemblance to a sow's vulva; from the hard shell, applied by Marco Polo to Chinese ware, via Fr, came porcelain. Du, aardvark: earth pig, a burrowing animal; muzzled hogs have long been used in Spain to root up truffles. Gc, farrow.

Joseph T. Shipley (1984) The Origins of English Words

Was porcus brought via porcine by the French swine? Was Old English

picgbréad [] n (-es/-) glans, mast, pig’s food
a corruption of these? And if so, was picq even the true forebearer of "pig"?

A symbolic form in a language describes (not perhaps very satisfactorily) that class of word that stands somewhere between onomatopoeic words like cuckoo and sizzle on the one hand and ordinary non-echoic words like beauty and bedstead on the other. As one authority puts it, such forms 'have a connotation of somehow illustrating the meaning more immediately than do ordinary speech-forms'. . . .

One symbolic group that has not attracted so much attention is typified by the word pig. 'Rightly is they called pigs,' said some fictional character, presumably a townsman, after a look at life in the sty. So it could be a term of contempt or even loathing, whether applied by an old-fashioned farmer to a domesticated animal or by a slightly less old-fashioned demonstrator to a policeman. That demonstrator might care to know, by the way, that that use of pig was first recorded in the year 1812, only a dozen years after the first policeman or such figure appeared in London. Meaning the animal, pig began to drive out the older word swine in the early nineteenth century, meaning a person probably about 1860.

Pig, it will readily be agreed, is a monosyllable (therefore emphatic) beginning with the sound pi-. There are only a limited number of these possible in English, but three of them do, or can, carry contempt: pimp, the archaic exclamation pish, and good old piss, a term of strong execration when uttered on its own. . . .

Kingsley Amis (posthumous) The King's English

Of course, "swine" also has derogatory connotations, we can see their application in the Latin precursor sus in the Vulgata:

circulus aureus in naribus suis mulier pulchra et fatua
which Shipley renders as "Like a gold ring in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion."

If Amis is right, "pig" appears to have been applied to the police relatively quickly after their appearance, and before solidification of its application to swine. If derived from picgbréad [where is the attestation of picq alone?], then why does its use as a modifier predate its use as a noun? Could contempt for the French oppressors have motivated the derogatory connotations and near immediate application to law enforcement? Or perhaps the nature of the policeman's job is such that comparison with swine is inevitable . . .

the pig stand (houston), r.i.p.