MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country’s attention, excitement over the NFL’s championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself. The Onion
Three Colours Blue A woman’s family are killed in a car crash. Being of independent means, she decides to exist without any personal attachments. They say “no man is an island” but she attempts to simply existing without desire or pain. A fine plan, at first, but she is faced by repeated, unintentional entanglements with people and she begins to lose her apathy. She is also haunted by a musical theme that her late husband (possibly) was composing for the unification of Europe and probably represents fraternity (of the French motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité). The film is themed on “liberty”, in opposition to fraternity and the tension between these conflicting goals is played out through the film. Philosophically, this story is attempting to avoid existential choices by escape into nihilism. (This film might be the polar opposite to Taxi Driver.)
Julie Vignon: Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps.
High Noon A recently resigned sheriff (Kane) gets married to a pacifist, only to discover that his nemesis Miller (and his goons) are arriving shortly by train. The town, although grateful for him bringing peace and order, tells him this is not his fight and giving him every opportunity and excuse to leave. Although his usual allies are originally keen to help, they equivocate and eventually beg to not be forced to assist the sheriff. Kane is forced to make a choice: to step away from the town he helped create, or to suicidally fight Miller’s gang alone. The choice is made existential as it is without public support, potentially risky/fatal and motivated by personal values. I hear the film is also an allegory of McCarthyism and the failure of Hollywood to stand in solidarity.
Martin: You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you’re honest you’re poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.
See also: 13th Floor, eXistenZ
To be continued…
I recently finished Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Emerson. It was well worth reading. Emerson was ordained as a pastor but distanced himself from institutional religion. He developed his ideas of transcendentalism and the value of the individual. He utilizes paradoxes in writing and his call for to me at peace with your own nature puts him as a precursor to existentialism. (He is a contemporary of Kierkegaard but I am not aware of any cross influence. Nietzsche did read Emerson but probably not Kierkegaard.)
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
In his iconoclastic “Divinity School Address” he calls for ministers to use ones own instinct to reinterpret religious teaching and not to rely in previous experts to define doctrine that is set in stone.
Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man [Jesus] is made the injurer of man.
Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.
They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.
As you can probably tell, his writing style is very quotable. But it takes a surprise effort to read, as his sentences tend to be fairly lengthy. This is not ideal for scan readers. In agreement with Kierkegaard, he does think there is an objective (and transcendental) truth behind everything. But the unknowableness of this objective truth makes it rather superfluous to my mind.
Anti Citizen One
Rope Two anti-heros execute a murder as a form of art. They consider them superior beings that are not restricted by conventional morality. They host a party as a sort of game, to see if their friends will suspect them of murder. Their former mentor, invited to the party, was an advocate of this type of action, at least in principle. When he discovers the truth, he thanks them for putting him to the test, and U turns to claim the murders are evil. The film being produced in 1948, Hollywood films were not permitted to let the anti-heros win or escape “justice”. The film conveniently overlooks the choice faced by their mentor, Rupert Cadell: to approve of the murder as art or to personally inform the police, and therefore have then tried, judged and executed. This makes Rupert an approver of killing or an actual killer (but state sanctioned in the latter case).
Lost in Translation This film is perhaps the most direct treatment of enui and existentialism that I have seen. Two characters, who are “lost souls” and who’s marriages are in doubt have a chance meeting in Tokyo. Through their unlikely friendship, they struggle against boredom, insomnia and anxiety of the future. The message, in my view, is that their lives might be otherwise meaningless, but their friendship in that time and place was something worth valuing. Although the characters are usually alienated by Japanese culture, the aesthetic of the movie is in accord with Wabi-sabi (the acceptance of the transience of things).
Lydia Harris: Did you like any of the other colors?
Bob: Whatever you like – I’m just completely lost.Bob: [picks up Charlotte's CD] Whose is this? “A Soul’s Search: Finding Your True Calling.”
Charlotte: [evasively] I don’t know.
Bob: I have that.Charlotte: Does it get easier?
Bob: No. [pause] Yes. It gets easier.
Charlotte: (sarcastically) Oh, yeah? Look at you.
Bob: Thanks. [Chuckles]
Bob: The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
Charlotte: I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
Blade Runner has many elements that raise identity and existential questions; in fact too many to list here. I will list a few provisional examples. A few characters discover or suspect their memories are artificial implants. Since our values are generally based on past events and experience, the loss of one’s past throws the basis of all future actions into unknown territory. Also, “appropriate” relationships between machines and humans, and between each other, has not been defined to any great extent in contemporary culture – the movie has several relationships that are perhaps unsettling in this regard. Finally, the movie has a memorable “anti-villian”, Roy, who is merely trying to stay alive and preserve lives of others. The “anti-hero” Deckard ends up questioning his orders to kill replicants on sight, including possibly Rachael – his robotic love interest.
Rachael to Deckard: You know that Voigt-Kampf test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?
Deckard: How can it not know what it is?
Groundhog Day is often cited as an existential movie and with good reason. Phil is confronted with reliving the “worst” day of his life a seemingly endless number of times. He can remember the whole experience, but everyone else doesn’t notice anything unusual. The writers speculated that he experiences the same day for 10,000 years. He soon realises that no action he takes has long term consequences and seemingly has no meaning. Hilarity ensues! (It’s Bill Murrey after all). His experience is similar to Camus’s analysis of Sisyphus being force to eternally roll a stone to the top of a mountain, only to see it roll to the base again. According to Camus, he is happy rolling his stone. By appreciating life in the moment, there is no expectation of a better life. A person’s attitude to life is simply a consequence of physiology.
Footnote: Groundhog day is occasionally mentioned in connection to the concept of the eternal return. Although the protagonist faces the possibility of him experiencing it, he only returns a finite number of times (in the movie anyway) and there is reality outside the “ring”. I hear that the movie K-Pax mentions the possibility of the eternal return in a more strict sense. It’s on my to do list.
[Phil explains how he spends eternity on trivialities.]
Rita: Is this what you do with eternity?
Phil: Now you know. That’s not the worst part.
Rita: What’s the worst part?
Phil: The worst part is that tomorrow you will have forgotten all about this and you’ll treat me like a jerk again. It’s all right. I am a jerk.
Rita: You’re not.
Phil: It doesn’t make any difference. I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.
Rita: Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil. Maybe it’s not a curse. It just depends on how you look at it.
Phil: Gosh, you’re an upbeat lady!
To be continued…
In other news: When religion and games intersect—and how it often goes badly
I have decided to attempt a series of articles on existentialism in film. There are few ways this movement can manifest itself in film, some are more obvious than others. It seems easier to group them by the way the existential issues are handled and in what manner the characters are aware of it. This is a necessarily incomplete list. The first group I will address are films with an existential theme.
Films Themes Raise Existential Questions
Taxi Driver being influenced by Dostoevsky (particularly Notes from Underground), its psychological examination of character is hardly surprising. Travis is a lonely person and throughout the film tries to overcome his lack of purpose in life and nihilism. The film ends violently and he enjoys being a hero for a day, but it is implied that he still is slipping back into insanity and nihilism. This is perhaps an example of a “failed” existential film.
A Scanner Darkly is the story of an undercover police officer Bob Arctor aka Fred. Due to drug use, he is becoming increasingly confused at his situation and his identities begin to disassociate. He also is a pawn in the larger picture of a “war on drugs”. His quest for self knowledge is a losing battle as his personality and grip on reality are destroyed. The only ray of hope of personal choice is in the ending scenes – but the cost Bob as paid is very high. (”A present for my friends…”)
Fight Club covers a great deal of ground and is better known for anti-consumerism and anarchism. For the unnamed protagonist (informally called “Jack” by commentators), he starts in a similar place as Travis of Taxi Driver – lonely, suffering insomnia, lack of meaning, etc. He fills this void for a time with being a “tourist” at support groups, “Fight Club” itself and its spin off movement “Project Mayham”. All these are collectively trying to deal with changes or loss in personal identity in a group setting. In the last scenes, he takes responsibility for his actions but at the same time repudiates them. The ending is left open ended but hints that he can experience healthy personal relationships (finally).
Apocalypse Now is a monument to moral relativism. Willard is a troubled covert operations soldier. This superiors tell him about Kurtz – a former model soldier who has being using “unsound methods”, which euphemistically refers to his going completely “insane”, having a private army that worship him as a god and practising human sacrifice. Willard’s orders are to “terminate” Kurtz’s command. On his way up the river, he sees the insanity of the Vietnam war. It is hinted that Kurtz actually is still effective as a soldier and is a fierce critic of the conventional American war effort. The question is who is insane: Willard, Kurtz, the generals running the war, or all of the above? When Willard meets Kurtz, he sees Kurtz is a haunted individual who is questioning his own identity. And the end of the movie, Willard is so isolated from conventional moral standard, he is faced with his own existential question of what to do next…
Other notable films: Magnolia, Ghost World, Eyes Wide Shut, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (the book explicitely deals with existentialism, the film less so), His Dark Materials, The Machinist, American Beauty, Adaptation
I finished The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus. It was generally very interesting. For several pages, I thought this is really deep. For the rest I was left baffled, which may have been the intention! He quoted generously from Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. (I did not recognise a single Nietzsche quote for memory.) Since the book is pro-paradox it can’t be summarised in any conventional sense. It is a foundational text in absurdism, I would imagine. I admire his clear statement of his assumptions – that the world is absurd. In a sense, attempting to justify this is impossible. He is appealing to those who already know this is the case. I am not really sure I am one of those entirely but I can feel where the thought originates. To me, it is a reaction or over-reaction to idealism – that there is order behind the apparent chaotic world. The idealism is rejected… obviously. But to cling to the idea that the world is chaotic? Or to use his terms, humans are unreasonable and the world is not reasonable and therefore inhuman. There are many responses to this lack of reasonableness. The famous response is suicide (and this makes this work infamous). The absurdist response is revolt against the world and without hope that the world can become humanised. A third is acceptance and embracing it, with a hope of a leap into meaning – Kierkegaard is said to have taken this option.
It is refreshing to read an author who is more well read in existential writings than myself, but I still read it from a existential and frankly Nietzschian viewpoint. The main objection to my view is how does Camus separate himself from this world he finds so inhuman? The world can only be experienced through his body and any judgements of the world reflect more on his body than on the world. Although I’m sure Camus does not need lessons in existentialism:
…that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.
Meaning the metaphysical world is inhuman. But the metaphysical world cannot be known except by accepting (tacitly or otherwise) the testimony of our senses. So where does the expectation that the world should be “reasonable” originate? In our nostalgia i.e. ourselves? But with the rejection of metaphysics, we reject the a-priori idea of reasonableness of the world. Of course, Camus does not claim that people generally share his view. He spends effort distancing himself from Kierkegaard when I perhaps would have been interested in a constrast with Nietzsche (surprise surprise!) The appendix discusses Kafka’s work and interestingly rejects it as absurdist. The possibility of K reaching The Castle is, according to Camus, retained. I don’t see the stark contrast he draws between that and The Trial. The protagonist tenaciously seeks access to The Castle or acquittal from The Trial. Both are predicted by other characters to be impossible. And even if he does access the Castle, which is never described since the author abandoned the work, he probably would find another layer of bureaucracy and another and another – in the same fashion as Kafka’s parable Before The Law.
Anyway, it got the juices flowing. Knowledge of Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky is recommended before reading this work!
Anti-Citizen One
A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them “so you won’t think you’ve neglected something.” The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers “No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I am now going to shut it.”
This is a condensed version of Kafka’s “Before the Law“, taken from Wikipedia.
I noticed this semi-serious “how to” guide on existential crisis survival. A few points make me scratch my head (such as “Turn on a light, preferably 75 watts or brighter.”) but I am pretty sure it would not hurt to try – lol
It also says “Don’t do too much thinking after midnight. That never goes well.” Ironically this is a moment of realisation in Thus Spake Zarathustra:
There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night
up to thy cave:-
-When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then
thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon-
AC1
I have finished reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. It has very interesting characterisation but rather rambling in style. It is packed full of social commentary, moral questions and psychological analysis – often expressed in the story in “ravings” of one character or another. Among the themes are love for one woman, Nastasya Filipovna, by three very different men: Myshkin, who is a paragon of virtue and humility; Rogozhin, who is passionate but roguish and mercenary; and Ganya, being ambitious but always mediocre. The outcome is a tragedy – each character is torn apart by an aspect within themselves which is at odds with their circumstances. Myshkin, the protagonist, is almost Christ-like in his readiness to forgive and to love. His love for Nastasya Filipovna degenerates from selfless love to total pity with a self destructive intensity. (No wonder Nietzsche took such a liking to Dostoyevsky.)
Various proto-existential questions are raised – what are the values of a society? are people responsible for their actions or does their circumstances and environment undermine “free will”? The case of a man driven to cannibalism by near starvation is discussed.
This criminal ended at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving himself up to justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system of that day, and the tortures that awaited him [...] There must have been something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even than the habits of twenty years! There must have been an idea more powerful than all the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or torture, leprosy or plague–an idea which entered into the heart, directed and enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell supportable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in this our century of vices and railways!
This raises the possibility of a value system which overrules self preservation in this case. The speaker (Lebedeff) claims that the modern would has become devoid of strong convictions and therefore devalued. Another case is discussed concerning a murderer of 6 people and his unusual moral defence:
Well, not long since everyone was talking and reading about that terrible murder of six people on the part of a–young fellow, and of the extraordinary speech of the counsel for the defence, who observed that in the poverty-stricken condition of the criminal it must have come NATURALLY into his head to kill these six people.
If we admit we would have done the same in the murder’s position, we may be less inclined to condemn him. “Guilt” would no longer be free choice of evil over good, since there is no “free” choice. On the other hand, how can meaningfully discuss “If I were in another’s position” or “If another was in mine”? This might be comparing oranges and apples since there is no possibility of individuals swapping their circumstances. But that too would undermine a universal moral law.
In another place, a terminally ill man discusses what use to make of his last two weeks of life:
Who, in the name of what Law, would think of disputing my full personal right over the fortnight of life left to me?
Since he feels cannot do anything “significant” in the remaining time, the man feels he has no further obligation in his actions or even to carry on living. If this point is admitted, he argument might be extended to an entire life… hello existential crisis. No wonder Dostoyevsky is listed as a founding thinker of existentialism 
Anti Citizen One
I just finished Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground and I’ve started Kafka’s Metamorphosis, so this made me laugh:
Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport
Recent Comments