Dearest Tammy,
I decided to go view that animation based upon your review of it. You know I honor your most sacred view of Jesus. So, I had to see what was up.

To me, it looked as if Chris Mars was showing through this piece the ill effects of mind-altering drugs. There was a young "menace" growing inside his mind as a result of those drugs. Then, the jibberish he was reading was a depiction of the lower form of hateful thoughts that go through one's mind when they are in that lowered awareness. If you listen to the words in the jibberish, they contained a very low quality of words (crap, shi... etc) .that were strung together without much sense to them. However, when a person is in that state just before life is no longer valuable to them, they are not making sense and they only relate to the lowest forms of communication.

If you remember, after he knocks the head off the robot, a few things occur. You again get the view of the "menace" inside of his head where all the pills are floating around as the obvious companion to his insanity. The menace has grown into a huge size, even bigger than the robot himself. The influence of the drugs and the resultant "menace" are overwhelming the robot. However, when he bends over in remorse, it shows that, even with this drug-induced menace, the robot is still basically good.

But, the robot is blaming others for his own condition, as depicted by his last line of "If it weren't for you...." Thus, he was not up to being responsible, but instead was putting forth blame. (This scenario of the combination of drugs and blame shows me more of Satan's evil than anything else)

The biggest point for me in this animation, was the fact that Chris is depicting humanity as robots who are obviously being controlled by drugs, even though the drugs are somehow related to this "menace" and people are killing people when they are on these drugs. (All nine college shootings involved the shooter taking these very drugs)

He then, ends this piece by having the head of the robot continue to be unaware of what is going on around him. This severed robot still talks about the inclement weather just like he was doing earlier at the piano. (I saw the piano scene as an example of the social chit chat people do without ever going deeper than the surface.)

Anyway, that's my take on it. Evil, to me, is something that causes a spirit to move away from its highest potential of good. Some people cannot see evil. I truly feel this artist is trying to get people to get better at looking so that they can truly see it.

For me, it's the principle of "Seek and ye shall find." So, that's just my take. We all see things from our own perspective. What truth you see is what is true for you. What truth I see is true for me. They are both truth the way we each see it.

BTW, if you look at the title of this piece, "Secondhand Loppo," and try to think of it as the theme of the animation, then you can possibly view the piece knowing that he is giving a message about a "lop" (to cut off or remove as unnecessary) that is "secondhand" (not obtained from the original source). I viewed that title as saying the story was about a severing of something deemed unnecessary which came from an outside source. Thus, the drugs and "menace" were the secondary source of the robot's urge to lop off the other robot's head.

Respectfully,
Heidi

Last edited by Heidi Thompson; 07/12/07 05:13 PM.
"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Paul McCartney