There's nothing original in the idea that one plus one can sometimes give us something greater than two, but occasionally that something can venture into the unexpected. The eminently forgettable 1960's horror film "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (aka, "The Head That Wouldn't Die") gives expression to this idea with what to my mind is one of the great lines of cinema. The "head" of the film is the rescued, but bodiless, head of the girlfriend of a grieving mad scientist who intends to graft the head onto the body of a woman whom he will of course have to separate from her head. The scientist has been running various experiments, and in a separate room near where the head is kept alive he's keeping some sort of semi-human monster from a previous experiment. The head, aware of her predicament communicates with the monster, begging him to detach her from her life-support series of tubes. She explains to him:
Together we're both more than things, we're a power as hideous as our deformities.The question of how such a great line found its way into such a terrible movie is one that surely deserves attention, but it's also clearly outside of the scope of even this column that has a distinct kitchen sink feel to it. The entire movie can be watched on YouTube, but for me at least that one line is about the only reason for doing so.
But it is as though the owner of a very valuable garden, being anxious for the preservation of his fruit, employed two men, one blind and the other lame, to watch his orchard. Said the lame one to the blind, 'Would I could walk! I could feast on the wonderful and enticing fruit which I see all round about me.' 'I,' said the blind man, 'am strong enough in my legs, but unfortunately have not the sense of sight, and cannot even feast my eyes on the choice fruit of which you tell me. Supposing,' suggested he to his lame comrade, 'you were to get on my back and pilot me to those wonderful trees which you see, I could with ease carry you there and you could pluck the coveted fruit for both of us.' The suggestion was adopted, and the garden was quickly despoiled. When the owner visited his garden, he was shocked at the havoc committed on what to him was his most precious possession, and charged the two men with depredation. Said the blind man, 'I surely cannot be guilty of the theft of a thing the existence and whereabouts of which I could not even see.' 'Neither was I able,' said the lame watchman, 'to lay my hand on any of the fruit, for you know that my legs refuse to carry me a step.' The owner of the orchard was, however, able to demonstrate the method employed by the pair in robbing him of his precious fruit, by taking the lame man and putting him on the back of the blind watchman, and making the latter carry the former to the trees.The intermingling of our online and offline lives may not present situations such as this, but they do raise new questions that we may not have expected.