Why, yes, of course, he was a hulk, a wreck of obesity and self-indulgence, a hideously fat man - he who once had been so beautiful he altered our idea of maleness.
Like it or not (and James would not have liked it at all), film has altered our idea of how stories are told, and works as irreducibly, as intractably, literary as James's seem in this brave new world of visual narrative a little awkward and uneasy: out of their depths, somehow, like Americans abroad.
TA: Do you think in that sense genetics has altered our ideas of fate, suggested our lives are predetermined?
Still, a reasonable case can be made that Dylan, a songwriter who changed the language of his form, and a singer who altered our ideas of what great singing can be, and so deserves almost every accolade going, does not, perhaps, deserve this one in particular.
If that's really the case, we would have to alter our current ideas about corporate ethics.
And since definite answers about Ubik are so hard to come by, it seems a good idea to alter our usual formula slightly and question someone who has an affinity for Dick's kind of writing as well as expertise on the author's life and times.
The film focuses on love, loss, and how artificial intelligence may alter our perceptions of those abstract ideas--as well as how our conceptualization of a "relationship" is already changing. .
Ronald K. Siegel wrote a book titled "Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise" in which he proposed a radical idea: the urge to alter our consciousness is a natural human drive, no different than the urge for sex or food.
Should I out her? -- Anonymous, Illinois I'd chalk up her conversion to necessity; life has a way of altering our adolescent ideas.
When the idea of altering our opinions, expanding them, or god forbid, abandoning them feels like suicide, we're in real trouble.
