A Scanner Darkly
Ok een super gave en vage film .... met beroemdheden verfilmd en geanimeert net echt ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly
The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drop-out drug-users, but he is also living a parallel life as Agent Fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity from those in the drug subculture and, ironically, from the police themselves. (The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book.) While supposedly only posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D (also referred to as Slow Death, Death or D), a powerful psychoactive drug. An ongoing conflict is Arctor's love for Donna, a drug dealer through whom he intends to identify high-level dealers of Substance D. Arctor's persistent use of the drug, which causes the two hemispheres of the brain to function independently, or "compete", produces the strange scenario in which Arctor and Agent Fred do not realize they are the same person. Incapable of combining what each persona knows, Fred begins spying on himself, Arctor, more passionately. Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path", a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Unknowingly, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization.
As part of the rehab program, Arctor is renamed "Bruce" and forced to participate in cruel group-dynamic games intended to break the will of the patients. The story ends with Bruce working at a New-Path farming commune, where he is suffering from a serious neurocognitive deficit after withdrawing from Substance D. Although considered by his handlers to be nothing more than a walking shell of a man, "Bruce" manages to spot rows of blue flowers growing hidden among rows of corn; and realizes the blue flowers are the source of Substance D. The book ends with Bruce hiding a flower in his shoe to give to his "friends" on Thanksgiving: undercover police agents posing as recovering addicts at the Los Angeles New-Path facility.
In the novel, use of Substance D over an extended period can cause the user's consciousness to separate into two distinct parts. The drug also appears to facilitate the inducement of shared delusions, manifesting as folie à deux. The source of Substance D remains a mystery throughout most of the novel, though various theories are proposed. It is speculated that: Substance D is imported from the U.S.S.R. as a Communist scheme to destroy American resistance to Communism; that it was sent to Earth by aliens intent on either enlightening mankind or reducing humans to a zombie-like slave race; that it is involved in a government or corporate plot. At the end of the book, we find out that Substance D is an organic substance, derived from little blue flowers that are grown on large plantations, hidden between rows of corn as cover. Ironically, the drug is harvested by the brainwashed inmates of Substance D drug rehabilitation centers who are suffering from neurocognitive deficits as a result of their drug addiction.
The title is a reference to a passage in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13, which states:
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known[1].
The book's protagonist is required to view clips of his life on a "scanner", a holographic recorder/projector. In Chapter 13 of the book, the protagonist muses that he has seen his life with a scanner, but came no closer to properly perceiving his life than St Paul with his primitive mirror (or "glass"). True understanding, he suggests, will come only when "death" is defeated[2].
The initials of Scanner Darkly are also the initials of Substance D, which the characters refer to as Slow Death, Substance Death, or simply D.
In Chapter Eleven of the novel, the novel's central character, Bob Arctor / Fred, thinks to himself:
What does a scanner see? I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner … see into me — into us — clearly or darkly? I hope it does see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.
Philip K. Dick also gives the name of the species of the flower, which helps to show the relevant meaning of the story and the nature of both the drug and the character's struggle. The name is Mors ontologica, which translates as "ontological death", that is "death of being", or more loosely "the being of death itself".
En er zitten wat slordigheidjes in (let maar eens op de prijs van de pillen).
