Pensive Platypus

The movie "Trainspotting" opens with a soliloquy wherein the main character justifies his heroine addiction. After watching him debase himself in all sorts of highly unpleasant ways he reminds you of a simple truth, his techmarion argument if you will: "We wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun! We're not that stupid, after all". Fun... Fun worth stealing and getting thrown in jail? Fun worth watching your best friend die; the one you got hooked because you needed the cash? Fun seeing someone's child die because they were too strung out on heroine to remember to feed him. I could go on; the movie does. Of course all that's not fun; and that's the point. It's the high that counts, you can make it through the rest of it, living in a crack-house in abject poverty, because hey the next hits' coming and then you won't care about any of this. Such a simple choice: Fun is more important. Sure, other things are important too, but what's the good of it if you aren't having fun? "Trainspotting" seems to me a dark and cold example of what happens when we pursue something as an end in and of itself. When we set "fun" as our highest good, we loose it because we disregard and set at naught the people, joys, and community that creates "fun" in the first place. Then "fun", no matter how we derive it, becomes just another "hit" and the consequences are every bit as devastating though they may not be as readily and blatantly apparent.

The Platypus does not recommend "Trainspotting". It is a well made film, but highly graphic and rightfully and purposefully disturbing. Watch at your own risk.