Reply: multiple versions

From: DiCandeloro, Zachariah Joseph <[email protected]>

If I may respond once more without seeming too trollish... The whole
question of multiple endings, itself, points toward philosophical stuff.
How are we to deal with disjunctive phenomena in culture at all? Multiple
endings, director's cuts, and deleted scenes are great for case studies.
Moreover, we might even risk the hypothesis that every sequel is a sign of
the "multiple endings" disjunction. Who can imagine a "sequel" to Taxi
Driver or Zorba the Greek or The Big Lebowski?

Digging deeper, one finds that there is a choice (judgment) to be made when
it comes to recording (historicizing) what such a disjunction means. Does a
"multiple endings" or other such disjunction simply mean more goodies for
consumers to gobble up and chronologize? Or does it represent for us the
risk of having to develop further the idea of what a human being really is
amid the conditions of open context?

What are we, as scholars, to do with the following existential proposition:
There are multiple endings. Yes. So what.

-Joseph

 --