hunter s thompson fear and loathing movie

However, even though Duke’s perceptions are growing false as the drugs kick in, his lived reality is still valid. But, add some mescaline pulled from the trunk of a car, and any soundness in thinking gets carried off by bats. While all reality is subjective, our day-to-day, unaltered perceptions are functionally accepted as true. A magazine needs a journalist to cover the Mint 400. For an argument to be valid and sound, it has to start with premises that are actually true. That’s ridiculous but hey, that’s what Duke’s brain was making him see. Therefore, front desk agents can be moray eels.

For instance in the book, There is a hotel front desk agent talking to Raoul Duke She is a moray eel. Even if the premises we start with are totally false. When a conclusion follows logically from its premises, it’s valid. All reality is valid, even if it’s not always sound, and that, I think, can apply to the characters and worlds within our own books. All reality is constructed… from whatever our gray matter is given to work with. This was the key lesson for me from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. His reality was valid even if what he was experiencing was far-fetched and unsound. All of his experiences, chemical or not, counted as Duke’s reality because it just was the reality he was living.

I never felt the need to question the reality Duke was living, even though I knew there was a “real” world outside the one his drug-bound mind was creating for him. While I may not have been able to relate to the kaleidoscope reality within the book personally, as I read, I was living those experiences alongside the character and I bought it hook line and sinker. What it paints on his consciousness is just as “real” as his normal, everyday reality, it’s just been filtered through booze and drugs and adrenalin. It’s taking in those dulled sensory clues and attempting to sort them with altered, perverted logic. His poor, drug-soaked brain is still trying to do its job. What FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS does remarkably well is to show that, while reality is skewed and by whatever intoxicant of the moment happens to be coursing through Raoul Duke’s veins, it’s still portrayed as his reality. That’s sketchy on a good day, but add a few chemicals to the mix and… We use various fleshy bits to sense and send evidence of an external reality to our brain, only for it to choose what all that input might mean and paint its best guess on our consciousness. The nature of reality can be a tricky business. Thompson’s incredible work of gonzo journalism that truly bonded it to my writing DNA. That love was deep and immediate and while I may have seen the film umpteen times before I read the book, it was the reading of Hunter S. I was on a page somewhere just after Barstow when my love for FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS took hold. The Books That Made Us – Fear and Loathing and Valid Realities

Hunter s thompson fear and loathing movie