Discuss The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

MORAL: To the vector belong the spoils.

The Line, hopelessly in love with The Dot - who has a thing for wild and crazy The Squiggle - eventually finds itself and develops personality and a compelling identity.

From Wikipedia:

The story details a straight blue line who is hopelessly in love with a red dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. Taking advantage of the line's stiffness, the squiggle rubs it in that he is a lot more fun for the dot. The depressed line's friends try to get him to settle down with a female line, but he refuses. He tries to dream of greatness until he finally understands what the squiggle means, and decides to be more unconventional. Willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, the line manages to bend himself and form angle after angle until he is nothing more than a mess of sides, bends and angles. After he straightens himself out, he settles down and focuses more responsibly on this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles in order to keep his place. When competing again, the squiggle claims that the line still has nothing to show to the dot. The line proves his rival wrong and is able to show the dot what she is really worth to him. When she sees this, the dot is overwhelmed by the line's responsibility and unconventionality. She then faces the now nervous squiggle, whom she gives a chance to make his case to win her love. He makes an effort to reclaim the dot's heart by trying to copy what the line did, but to no avail. No matter how hard he tries to re-shape himself, the squiggle still remains the same tangled, chaotic mess of lines and curves. He tries to tell the dot a joke, but she has realized the flatness of it, and he's forced to retreat. She realized how much her relationship with the squiggle had been a mistake. What she thought was freedom and joy was nothing more than sloth, chaos and anarchy. Fed up, the dot tells the squiggle off how she really feels about him, denouncing him as meaningless, undisciplined, insignificant, and out of luck. She leaves with the line, having accepted that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils."

From the groovy, trippy mid '60s. Unique idea, and quite cool, definitely visually highly imaginative, artistically striking execution thereof.

Here's the 10-minutes short film.


Please check out the following list of titles and celebrities I've created TMDb threads for: https://www.themoviedb.org/list/118052

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