Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam, is one of the best regarded dystopian films. Sam Lowry, a cog trapped in the system, dreams of escaping the bounds placed on him. He dreams of flying away and meeting a beautiful woman, who he saves from various enemies, represented by great monoliths which burst from the earth and the terrifying creatures which live inside this dreamscape city. As we see, this was leading towards the grand finale. This time Sam's vision tricks even the audience. We see the world as it appears to Sam as he escapes this nightmare through the power of imagination. It is important to remember that God himself was supposed to have created the universe by imagining it, and in Hinduism, Brahma is said to be dreaming us all. Terry Gilliam was not only showing a future potential reality, but also a present one maximized to the ludicrous. Everyone is trapped by this modern culture, and the only escape is through story and myths. This society is one with government-sanctioned terrorist attacks (this may hold relevance in the modern day, if one chooses to go down that path), of small mistakes leading to the destruction of lives, and of materiality brought to its startling conclusion (binaries being split even further than we see today). All this is allowed to happen because technology separates the individual from the people around him, from the land, and most horrifyingly, himself. And of course, in this Panglossian Model, the government utilizes this potentiality. Often the modern world is characterized by increasingly drastic separation, balkanization, departmentalization, and so on. Scientific minds find it necessary to names things, and by doing this, they separate it from the rest of the universe. They place the new discovery in categories, classifications, and kingdoms. This is healthy for that sort of thing, but I think people lose the big picture when they do this. They forget that everything is connected, that this universe is controlled by certain laws of balance (see William Blake), and that there is a great mysticism beyond numbers and words, a mysticism which many cultures have forgotten long ago.
The problem I have with Brazil is the same problem I have with all of Terry Gilliam's movies: they are too long and meandering. The man is self-indulgent, and what he really needs is a better editor, maybe during the script writing phase, to get rid of some of the fat. Don't get me wrong, Brazil has wonderful ideas, cinematography, writing, and direction—it really just needs to be trimmed and shaped, much like a hedge bush. There is so much potential here, and Gilliam comes so close to succeeding. I often feel after coming out of many of his movies drained, like I want to take a nap—and that's not a good thing. Any entertainment should at the very least be interesting. Brazil is interesting, but somehow also manages to be terribly boring. What an odd paradox the director suffers. Like I said, there are some great ideas here. Sam Lawry is seemingly trapped in his own hell. He doesn't appear to realize it on the surface, but subconsciously he dreams of being free—free of social pressure, to love whom he chooses, and to choose his own career. This is, of course, represented by the winged angel which he imagines himself to be, flying over the countryside, fighting enemies, saving the damsel in distress, and living happily ever after in a cottage. Brazil's dystopia is one of bureaucracy—no one ever takes responsibility for anything because they can blame it on someone else's department. It is a world of rigid dichotomies. One of the most visible ones is the road surrounded by billboards of beautiful landscape, but beyond is industrial desert—Baudrillard's "desert of the real". A sense of hopelessness pervades everything in the film. There is no hope of escape for Sam or Jill. The only one truly free is Tuttle, the Heating Engineer, who can do his work without reprisal. It is interesting that is an American playing Tuttle. I am not sure if Gilliam was trying to get at something here: that the American sense of individualism is a good thing?
The world which Gilliam creates is essentially our own reality brought to a certain end. We see the problems presented by technology, which is constantly breaking down. These seemingly tiny malfunctions often lead to spheres of greater consequence—remember, the whole series of events was a result of a literal bug in a printer by some nameless man who never appears again. This initial error is followed by more, until in the end, poor Sam sits in a chair being tortured, and Jill, who was completely innocent of all crimes, is dead. It's always the innocent who suffer in such a huge, complex machine. We can see echoes of Brazil's totalitarian government today. The U.S. government is always expanding surveillance. It's always using these terrorist attacks to enter new wars and pass new laws restricting citizens' freedoms. Examples include The Oklahoma City Bombing, the 911 attacks, and the underwear bomber. All these were done dubiously and with a tightly controlled flow of information from the U.S. government to broadcast media. One could argue that this continued encroachment on the Constitution can only be done with an ignorant population. So what makes the "sheeple" such "sheeple"? It's their technology. We are inundated with so many distractions: sports, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, iPhones, iPads, iPods, taxes, and debt. Many of these modern conveniences (and inconveniences) serve to make us not pay attention to the world around us. I picture a quiet suburban neighborhood, the windows full of blaring television screens (ala Farenheit 451). There is no real culture here, only people trapped in their own little multi-national corporation produced worlds which Horkheimer and Adorno wrote about.
Brazil paints a picture a government gone wild, and my guess would be that this came as a natural progression. There were no massive revolutions which were a direct cause for such a system (the script is deliciously vague on how this Britain came about). A communist revolt of the underclass would seemingly not put in such a pyramid structure, and I would assume this wasn't so far in the future that the revolters would become top-down rulers so quickly—but isn't that the mechanisms of man? Our own faults. It is highly relevant that this film took place on Christmas. Throughout the world, this was a day of death/rebirth. The Christ-figure in this story is Sam Lawry. His hands get holes driven into them, and in his final fantasy, he is in a church with crosses appearing on almost every wall. The Mother Mary/Mary Magdalene tripartite goddess is there, eternally reliving the fall of man. Sam Lawry is the sun god trying to bring spiritual light to a forsaken world. He can't. This reality is too far gone. There is no going back.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Native American Culture and Sherman Alexie
"When Your Hands Are Tied" is an illuminating documentary. You can watch it for free here. Native Americans appear to have a particularly hard time accepting and finding pride in their own culture. In American media, they have either been portrayed as a backwards savage, their society inferior to the foreign European one, and conversely, as a noble savage, representing idealism in nature. For a Native, I imagine, this can be a heavy burden to bear. I cannot speak for an Indian, but what I can do is speak for myself. All of us have to "walk in two worlds". Most of us come from an isolated family unit which has its own tiny culture. Families have their own language, their own ways of doing things, of eating, sleeping, and communicating, so when we are thrust into the greater American society, we have to decide what we want to keep and what we want to get rid of. The transition can be greater for others—the more alien the culture, the harder it is to adapt to a new one. However, if a person breaks down and decides they are incapable of conforming or don't want to, they often resort to drugs and alcohol. This is especially true for natives. Many of the actions people take are a result of rejecting the world around them. It can seem unfair, pointless, and impossible. Thus, people break into communities—be they healthy or no.
There is a greater tension here—one between society and the individual, or this case the greater culture versus the minority culture. The documentary was trying to give natives a positive way of dealing with this social dilemma. Instead of going down a bad path, they can learn how to dance, to sing, to paint, and to skate. Many of these are done in a modern way: rapping, doing a hip hop dance, and skating. This is a healthy flow, one that allows “two worlds” to come together. I think often, the Indian culture is so foreign to the greater American one that young natives feel left out. There only choice is to convert or stay on the reservation (the place they grew up and where everyone they know lives). It is the same tension that The House on Mango Street had. How do you leave these people behind? Do you have to abandon where you came from? The answer the documentary gives is "no". You have to learn how to walk "two worlds", much in the same vein that Gloria Anzaldua advocates. However, you can't do this if your own "world" is being eliminated. This is one of most important things the movie discusses: the carrying on of the culture so it continues into the future. I was reading Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth". He explained that in today's America, we lack initiation rituals. A boy or girl doesn't know when they are supposed to become a man or woman. We have to discover when and how to do this on our own. The proliferation of sitcoms with childlike men confuses me. We really lack strong male figures in our media; instead, I think, most children have to discover their roles through movie plot lines. I suppose this is okay, but I am not sure if I am comfortable with children learning how to be adults from multi-national corporations. That's why I am impressed with the Navajo culture overtly telling the little girl that she is now an adult. That's powerful, and it is something the greater society could learn. It is also a good way to bring together a community, to let it grow and flourish for another generation.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is also a story of a native boy "walking in two worlds". Arnold, like Esperanza, has the ability to leave the slums in which he grew up, but he also shares the guilt of deserting the ones he loves. This guilt is symbolized with the character of Rowdy, "the toughest kid on the rez". The final pages of the book show Rowdy and Arnold playing a game of basketball. Arnold thinks, "I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them" (Alexie 230). Rowdy tells the skinny kid to stop blubbering. (It's almost as if Sherman self-directed this line at himself.) Arnold realizes he does have to leave if he wants a better life, but he also bares the guilt of losing his sister to a fire (he blames himself). Arnold was born with water on the brain. Water is always flowing, always moving to a new location. "I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world" Rowdy tells Arnold (Alexie 229). I think Alexie, like When Your Hands Are Tied, condones this nomadic American Dream, but at the same time reminds us not to forget where we came from. It's never easy curtailing to the greater culture. And this book should almost be read as a guide to doing it. You have to get out of your safe environment to grow as a person. You have to experience new things and places. You have to use this societal monkey on your back in healthy ways, don't go down dead end paths, learn to be greater than the circumstances you think would allow. Strive for more, that's the American dream right there.
At a certain level, yes I think the Indian culture is suppressed. As is Chinese culture, Sufi culture, Hispanic culture--it's not because we necessarily dislike those people, it's because, in general, people are adverse to what's different than them. I don't forgive natives for being lethargic either. It's just a tough system. The American Dream itself may be a corrupting factor. It creates unhealthy goals in a young person's life which can never be met. This leads to withdrawal, and it's worse in some communities because it's even harder to obtain in the first place. You're never going to be a beautiful blond walking down the red carpet with a hunka-hunka-burning-love on your elbow. You're never going to an action hero beloved by a generation of women. I am reminded of that famous Fight Club quote,
A healthy culture would have had an elder sit a young Esperanza or Arnold down and have told them, in so many words: “hey, you like to write? Then you write because you are good at it and that's beautiful. Art for art's sake and all that jazz.” But our culture makes us all become whores. We sell ourselves out. The Joker says in The Dark Knight, "If you're good at something don't do it for free." I love capitalism. I love our Republic's Constitution. What I don't love is the fame worship American Dream. "Lift yourself up by your own boot straps and make something of yourself" is what we are told. Never, "be who you are, it doesn't matter if you are renowned across the ages." Do the things which make you happy. Some of it may tough, but in the end, you know who are, and that's peace. Not this constant chasing after tail which can never be caught.
Samuel Beckett said we are always waiting for something which never arrives. I think that's the difference between someone like Arnold and just another kid on the rez--he has chosen not to fully assimilate to the idea of the American Dream nor has he decided to stay on the reservation. He is walking "two worlds". To repeat my last line: "Do the things which make you happy. Some of it may tough, but in the end, you know who are, and that's peace. Not this constant chasing after a tail which can never be caught." I know it's pretentious to quote myself, but I don't know any other way. The power which both Esperanza and Arnold have is what Anzaldua illuminates--they are aware of both worlds, therefore they can pull themselves back from either. The American Dream can become unhealthy only if you buy into it hook, line, and sinker. If you are aware of it, it can't hurt you. You can protect yourself against it.
In the end, I see the American Dream as just a retelling of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. We progress, beating back metaphorical monsters, until we arrive at a happy ending.
However, I think this overall myth has been corrupted, and fame has been made the metaphorical end of the journey. Look at our fame-whore reality shows; look at our movies which end before they should. I have written about how celebrities today are seen almost as gods. They are projections of a particular zeitgeist of the age, but we wish to be like them, to obtain some figurative absolute--a vegetable state--but we can't because we are always trapped in our heads. The American Dream is ultimately about progression until some sort of victory (success, whatever that is), then coming back home to be at peace--pure, free. I see my own life goals: getting a job which pays well, write a novel which gets my name recognized, and settling down. The aspect which makes my own dream unhealthy is this fame-seeking aspect. If I really loved to write, I would just do it, there would be no ultimate goal involved, no achievement to be unlocked. So many kids are drawn to video games today, I think, because clear objectives are given. They know when they have achieved something. Life isn't like that. No one tells you when you arrived. There is no +1 that appears above your head. There is no God Mode to be unlocked. But we have been tricked. To look at the face of things (what an odd phrase), I would say this fuels consumerism, this massive debt spiral we are currently living in and the banks which make money off of it, and also Atheism, the giving up of God completely and living only in the material reality.
One of main problems in American culture is the lack of culture--I know that is paradoxical, but work with me. The great problem people deal with is what to do with the time that is given. We all crave some sort of supernatural entity to come down and say, "hey there buddy, you should be a lawyer." "Okay, I'm happy with that. At least I don't have to endlessly think about my career anymore. Thanks, God." But there is no God to tell us what to do, he kicked us out of paradise, remember? So some of us resort to government (totalitarianism, communism, socialism, fascism) to tell us what to do. Some of us to letting our culture guide our lives (we all do this and I think it can be the healthiest way). Some say that there is no point and either kill themselves or head towards anarchism. This line of thinking is the result of "the earth we live on is an artifact" myth, or "we were put into this world" myth. The truth is, the earth is a living entity and we came out of this world, we weren't put into it.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." It is entirely appropriate to become frustrated with history and the impossibility to escape the cycles, the rhythms of life. What you have to do is vibrate with it. There are two consciousnesses at work inside us--the vegetable, and the animal one (represented by Lucifer). The animal consciousness is full of doubts and regrets; it is the individual aspect of the cosmos. It is the one which require goals, dreams, and aspirations. It desires to return to the vegetable--the absolute, the wholeness of existence which flows through us. The two great parts: the part of us that knows it's just a droplet in the ocean, and the other part which knows it's different than everything else. (Also, the mineral, which I will not go into here.) The West has forgotten true spirituality and has driven itself to near complete materiality. We have lost a sense of community. We have no great speakers trying to wake us from the coma which is called materiality. We desire peace through fame, an impossible thing for most of us to achieve (unless we shoot up a school or drift off into the Alaskan wilderness to die alone). We need the resurgence of the culture of community, the true spirit of Jeffersonian democracy, to return. We have to placate the reptile inside us by giving ourselves a purpose, but always remembering that we are a part of an interconnected universe.
I remember watching "Smoke Signals" a few semesters back for another class. This movie seems to be a favorite of the English department at MSU, and I see why. There's a lot going on in this film, and it can be read from many different angles. There is the multi-cultural aspect which is the focus of this class. There is the narrative of forgiving the father's sins, which seems to be on the heartbeat of all Western art--the guilt of being alive in the first place. There is the hero's journey, which is how I watched it earlier ("Mythologies"). The movie is also charming, the characters easy to connect to, and the screenplay written by the relatively local writer, Sherman Alexie. I guess I see this movie as an easy crossover point for many Americans who know nothing of the Indian community. This story is universal and crosses cultural boundaries, which David Hume would point out makes it a great piece of artwork. As an early foray into film by Sherman Alexie, he does an admirable job with the new medium, and the all native cast was a great choice. From my own experience growing up pretty close to an Indian reservation, it was enlightening to observe something from their perspective. Often I see only the bad things, but there are good things there too: a real strength in community and family which that has been lost in much of American culture.
To read Smoke Signals from only a multi-cultural perspective would be a mistake. The universal truths conveyed, I think, go far to show the audience the universal experience of being a human. It boggles me that someone could focus on the racial tension alone in the film because it's such a small part. We all feel attacked by the cosmos sometimes. The native experience of being discriminated against could be a representation of anyone's life. Yes, native prejudice is a real thing which should be fought against (To a certain level, we're all a little bit racist, we all make stereotypes on the first meeting no matter who the person is. It's a natural thing humans do, we construct stories to get by in this world. Plus we all have the drive to be a part of a community, and most of us tend to see our race as a certain community even on a subconscious level.) Yes, we should look at this film from a realist perspective and try to combat our own prejudices and the prejudices of society, but more importantly, we should see the ability of story to connect us with anyone in the world. In the end, we are all the same, with all the same internal desires. We are sometimes blinded to this fact because we are human, and that's what humans do: we create groups because we need them to survive. Groups are healthy and if wielded correctly can be amazing for own growth and enlightenment. Alexie knows this: he wrote a whole movie about it. However, they also have the ability to destroy us when we forget what the original purpose of the group was, or if it was poisonous to begin with.
There is a greater tension here—one between society and the individual, or this case the greater culture versus the minority culture. The documentary was trying to give natives a positive way of dealing with this social dilemma. Instead of going down a bad path, they can learn how to dance, to sing, to paint, and to skate. Many of these are done in a modern way: rapping, doing a hip hop dance, and skating. This is a healthy flow, one that allows “two worlds” to come together. I think often, the Indian culture is so foreign to the greater American one that young natives feel left out. There only choice is to convert or stay on the reservation (the place they grew up and where everyone they know lives). It is the same tension that The House on Mango Street had. How do you leave these people behind? Do you have to abandon where you came from? The answer the documentary gives is "no". You have to learn how to walk "two worlds", much in the same vein that Gloria Anzaldua advocates. However, you can't do this if your own "world" is being eliminated. This is one of most important things the movie discusses: the carrying on of the culture so it continues into the future. I was reading Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth". He explained that in today's America, we lack initiation rituals. A boy or girl doesn't know when they are supposed to become a man or woman. We have to discover when and how to do this on our own. The proliferation of sitcoms with childlike men confuses me. We really lack strong male figures in our media; instead, I think, most children have to discover their roles through movie plot lines. I suppose this is okay, but I am not sure if I am comfortable with children learning how to be adults from multi-national corporations. That's why I am impressed with the Navajo culture overtly telling the little girl that she is now an adult. That's powerful, and it is something the greater society could learn. It is also a good way to bring together a community, to let it grow and flourish for another generation.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is also a story of a native boy "walking in two worlds". Arnold, like Esperanza, has the ability to leave the slums in which he grew up, but he also shares the guilt of deserting the ones he loves. This guilt is symbolized with the character of Rowdy, "the toughest kid on the rez". The final pages of the book show Rowdy and Arnold playing a game of basketball. Arnold thinks, "I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them" (Alexie 230). Rowdy tells the skinny kid to stop blubbering. (It's almost as if Sherman self-directed this line at himself.) Arnold realizes he does have to leave if he wants a better life, but he also bares the guilt of losing his sister to a fire (he blames himself). Arnold was born with water on the brain. Water is always flowing, always moving to a new location. "I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world" Rowdy tells Arnold (Alexie 229). I think Alexie, like When Your Hands Are Tied, condones this nomadic American Dream, but at the same time reminds us not to forget where we came from. It's never easy curtailing to the greater culture. And this book should almost be read as a guide to doing it. You have to get out of your safe environment to grow as a person. You have to experience new things and places. You have to use this societal monkey on your back in healthy ways, don't go down dead end paths, learn to be greater than the circumstances you think would allow. Strive for more, that's the American dream right there.
At a certain level, yes I think the Indian culture is suppressed. As is Chinese culture, Sufi culture, Hispanic culture--it's not because we necessarily dislike those people, it's because, in general, people are adverse to what's different than them. I don't forgive natives for being lethargic either. It's just a tough system. The American Dream itself may be a corrupting factor. It creates unhealthy goals in a young person's life which can never be met. This leads to withdrawal, and it's worse in some communities because it's even harder to obtain in the first place. You're never going to be a beautiful blond walking down the red carpet with a hunka-hunka-burning-love on your elbow. You're never going to an action hero beloved by a generation of women. I am reminded of that famous Fight Club quote,
God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. (Fight Club)
A healthy culture would have had an elder sit a young Esperanza or Arnold down and have told them, in so many words: “hey, you like to write? Then you write because you are good at it and that's beautiful. Art for art's sake and all that jazz.” But our culture makes us all become whores. We sell ourselves out. The Joker says in The Dark Knight, "If you're good at something don't do it for free." I love capitalism. I love our Republic's Constitution. What I don't love is the fame worship American Dream. "Lift yourself up by your own boot straps and make something of yourself" is what we are told. Never, "be who you are, it doesn't matter if you are renowned across the ages." Do the things which make you happy. Some of it may tough, but in the end, you know who are, and that's peace. Not this constant chasing after tail which can never be caught.
Samuel Beckett said we are always waiting for something which never arrives. I think that's the difference between someone like Arnold and just another kid on the rez--he has chosen not to fully assimilate to the idea of the American Dream nor has he decided to stay on the reservation. He is walking "two worlds". To repeat my last line: "Do the things which make you happy. Some of it may tough, but in the end, you know who are, and that's peace. Not this constant chasing after a tail which can never be caught." I know it's pretentious to quote myself, but I don't know any other way. The power which both Esperanza and Arnold have is what Anzaldua illuminates--they are aware of both worlds, therefore they can pull themselves back from either. The American Dream can become unhealthy only if you buy into it hook, line, and sinker. If you are aware of it, it can't hurt you. You can protect yourself against it.
In the end, I see the American Dream as just a retelling of Joseph Campbell's monomyth. We progress, beating back metaphorical monsters, until we arrive at a happy ending.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
However, I think this overall myth has been corrupted, and fame has been made the metaphorical end of the journey. Look at our fame-whore reality shows; look at our movies which end before they should. I have written about how celebrities today are seen almost as gods. They are projections of a particular zeitgeist of the age, but we wish to be like them, to obtain some figurative absolute--a vegetable state--but we can't because we are always trapped in our heads. The American Dream is ultimately about progression until some sort of victory (success, whatever that is), then coming back home to be at peace--pure, free. I see my own life goals: getting a job which pays well, write a novel which gets my name recognized, and settling down. The aspect which makes my own dream unhealthy is this fame-seeking aspect. If I really loved to write, I would just do it, there would be no ultimate goal involved, no achievement to be unlocked. So many kids are drawn to video games today, I think, because clear objectives are given. They know when they have achieved something. Life isn't like that. No one tells you when you arrived. There is no +1 that appears above your head. There is no God Mode to be unlocked. But we have been tricked. To look at the face of things (what an odd phrase), I would say this fuels consumerism, this massive debt spiral we are currently living in and the banks which make money off of it, and also Atheism, the giving up of God completely and living only in the material reality.
One of main problems in American culture is the lack of culture--I know that is paradoxical, but work with me. The great problem people deal with is what to do with the time that is given. We all crave some sort of supernatural entity to come down and say, "hey there buddy, you should be a lawyer." "Okay, I'm happy with that. At least I don't have to endlessly think about my career anymore. Thanks, God." But there is no God to tell us what to do, he kicked us out of paradise, remember? So some of us resort to government (totalitarianism, communism, socialism, fascism) to tell us what to do. Some of us to letting our culture guide our lives (we all do this and I think it can be the healthiest way). Some say that there is no point and either kill themselves or head towards anarchism. This line of thinking is the result of "the earth we live on is an artifact" myth, or "we were put into this world" myth. The truth is, the earth is a living entity and we came out of this world, we weren't put into it.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." It is entirely appropriate to become frustrated with history and the impossibility to escape the cycles, the rhythms of life. What you have to do is vibrate with it. There are two consciousnesses at work inside us--the vegetable, and the animal one (represented by Lucifer). The animal consciousness is full of doubts and regrets; it is the individual aspect of the cosmos. It is the one which require goals, dreams, and aspirations. It desires to return to the vegetable--the absolute, the wholeness of existence which flows through us. The two great parts: the part of us that knows it's just a droplet in the ocean, and the other part which knows it's different than everything else. (Also, the mineral, which I will not go into here.) The West has forgotten true spirituality and has driven itself to near complete materiality. We have lost a sense of community. We have no great speakers trying to wake us from the coma which is called materiality. We desire peace through fame, an impossible thing for most of us to achieve (unless we shoot up a school or drift off into the Alaskan wilderness to die alone). We need the resurgence of the culture of community, the true spirit of Jeffersonian democracy, to return. We have to placate the reptile inside us by giving ourselves a purpose, but always remembering that we are a part of an interconnected universe.
I remember watching "Smoke Signals" a few semesters back for another class. This movie seems to be a favorite of the English department at MSU, and I see why. There's a lot going on in this film, and it can be read from many different angles. There is the multi-cultural aspect which is the focus of this class. There is the narrative of forgiving the father's sins, which seems to be on the heartbeat of all Western art--the guilt of being alive in the first place. There is the hero's journey, which is how I watched it earlier ("Mythologies"). The movie is also charming, the characters easy to connect to, and the screenplay written by the relatively local writer, Sherman Alexie. I guess I see this movie as an easy crossover point for many Americans who know nothing of the Indian community. This story is universal and crosses cultural boundaries, which David Hume would point out makes it a great piece of artwork. As an early foray into film by Sherman Alexie, he does an admirable job with the new medium, and the all native cast was a great choice. From my own experience growing up pretty close to an Indian reservation, it was enlightening to observe something from their perspective. Often I see only the bad things, but there are good things there too: a real strength in community and family which that has been lost in much of American culture.
To read Smoke Signals from only a multi-cultural perspective would be a mistake. The universal truths conveyed, I think, go far to show the audience the universal experience of being a human. It boggles me that someone could focus on the racial tension alone in the film because it's such a small part. We all feel attacked by the cosmos sometimes. The native experience of being discriminated against could be a representation of anyone's life. Yes, native prejudice is a real thing which should be fought against (To a certain level, we're all a little bit racist, we all make stereotypes on the first meeting no matter who the person is. It's a natural thing humans do, we construct stories to get by in this world. Plus we all have the drive to be a part of a community, and most of us tend to see our race as a certain community even on a subconscious level.) Yes, we should look at this film from a realist perspective and try to combat our own prejudices and the prejudices of society, but more importantly, we should see the ability of story to connect us with anyone in the world. In the end, we are all the same, with all the same internal desires. We are sometimes blinded to this fact because we are human, and that's what humans do: we create groups because we need them to survive. Groups are healthy and if wielded correctly can be amazing for own growth and enlightenment. Alexie knows this: he wrote a whole movie about it. However, they also have the ability to destroy us when we forget what the original purpose of the group was, or if it was poisonous to begin with.
Monday, May 23, 2011
"The Right Stuff" Examination
The key image which sticks in my mind from "The Right Stuff" is Chuck Yeager on his horse. He rides over a hill and below sits the plane which he is going to try and break the Mach 1 speed barrier with. It sits like a monster below him, eerie music playing, almost as if we were suddenly transported to a horror movie. This theme is repeated throughout the film: the distances man is willing to go with technology, but also the danger it represents. One of the first things we see when "The Right Stuff" opens is a plane crashing and the subsequent funeral for the pilot. This urge to push the limits of our capabilities is a thin knife we balance on. Sometimes we fail horrifically, but sometimes we succeed. When Yeager pushes the limits of Mach 2.5, it is as if he is seeing the face of a demon. Surviving, he howls at the moon, taunting his creator with his achievements.
I thought the movie was very well done, if not a bit too long. There's such a huge breadth of material that sometimes I wondered where it would end up. The length stretched over the two and a half hour mark. Looking at Wikipedia, it is 193 minutes long (three hours and 13 minutes)! That's a long time to sit and watch something, no matter how good it is. And "The Right Stuff" is very good. The images of the planes flying through the clouds are simply breath taking. The acting is superb, the starring men and women giving their all to their roles. I was especially impressed with Ed Harris' performance. He sold the personality that is John Glenn so well that the whole audience was rooting for him. Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard was also superb. He gave the role just enough gruff and good humor that I was legitimately concerned when he got in the rocket ship. I was unfamiliar with the history of the NASA pilots, so for all I knew he was going to blow up. I liked how the movie makers played with the audience's expectations. I feel many of us today only know John Glenn's name. Most people watching might assume he was the first American in space. I certainly did.
What the director, Philip Kaufman, was trying to bring to the surface was the power of technology: it can give man so much, but it is also dangerous. The creators oscillate between the Pangloss and Pandoran scenario offered in Benjamin Barber's essay, "Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy". Will this new technology bring about the end (as represented by the test pilots crashing down to earth), or will it bring on a new age of illumination? At the onset, it's quick for the viewers to see that we are in store for another Prometheus tale; however, it is unclear whether this was perceived by the makers as a good or bad thing (I wish we would have seen the end). Early on, we see a group of technocrats sitting around a table. They are like a council in King Arthur's court trying to find a hero like Parsifal to save the Fisher King and restore the land—the king and land in this case both being America. If someone can break the speed barrier, the Americans might be able to beat the Soviets at their own game. This is a situation based on pride and honor. Whoever can get the fastest planes, or get to space first will win a symbolic victory. The United States is a dying king, wounded in his genitals by the Soviets' quick technological progression. The only way to counter this is to win a battle in the space war. Initially, the chosen knight to do this is not the one who demands to be paid, but Chuck Yeager, the pilot who accepts his destiny of tempting God. He wants to confront the "Prince of the Air", Satan, Enlil, and Zeus. Others have gone before him, only to crash down to earth like Lucifer for their vanity.
Yeager is at once comfortable with the technology he uses and terrified of it. As I described earlier, he confronts the plane, horror music making the audience uneasy. The aircraft is a bright red. It is a powerful color, representing both aggression and power, but blood, the life-force of the universe. The plane is death, spilled blood. The horse Yeager rides down to greet the plane, on the other hand, is an older, out-of-date technology. It, of course, is dangerous as well. We can see that when Yeager is thrown off the animal when he chases his wife (this also echoes another tale in the Celtic Mabinogian, Pwyll riding after Rhiannon, the beautiful woman of the Otherworld, but unable to catch her no matter how hard he tries), but he survives. As Yeager gets in his plane and pushes the speed barrier, to make a funny pun, it's almost as if he is thrusted into another "plain". The screen suddenly turns into a psychedelic whirlwind. We are reminded of Ahriman, the Zoroastrian demon who was said to hover above Persia fighting the Archangel, Michael. On a second try, this time when he is trying to beat Mach 2, he passes out and starts twirling, spinning down to earth. It is here where we see what Barber calls in his essay, a symbol "of technology's ever-present dark side, the monster who lurks in Dr. Frankenstein's miraculous creation" (587). He rights himself at the last moment, but the image of the two girls playing with toy planes, smoke of a crashed aircraft in the distance, is still seared in the audience's brain. We know the danger this new technology represents. Like Robert Oppenheimer said when the first atomic bomb went off in 1945, "Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"
Throughout the movie, the moon is a driving presence. Yeager seems to be obsessed with it, and one of the bureaucrats says to another, "We can't go to sleep under a communist moon." In the end, Yeager sets a new altitude record but gets burned in the process, walking confidently away from his plane toward the ambulances. Yeager is the urge we all feel to go beyond what we thought was possible. The human psyche has always been attracted to what is above it. The ancients saw the stars at night and made constellations out of them. Throughout the world, man tells myths where the gods or God are spoken to on top of mountains, and even today, climbing to the top of Mount Everest is seen almost as a ritual. In this story, we are made aware of the feats man can achieve but also his hubris in trying. For a democratic society such as ours, this Icarus plot is somewhat alien. We have been taught from an early age that nothing is impossible, nothing is beyond our capabilities, and America today suffers for this hubris. She thought she was invincible, could police the seas, land, and sky, control the world's economy, and continue upwards towards the heavens—but she has failed. We have yet to see whether she shall metaphorically walk away like Yeager, badly burned but still alive. Technology itself, represented in the movie by aircraft and rocket ships, is leading the charge towards globalization. However, this process is often controlled by elites, be they corporate heads, revolving door politicians, or cartel bankers. The TSA is groping our bodies, every six hours the NSA "gathers as much data as is stored in the entire library of Congress," and the CIA, FBI, military, and police are constantly expanding their surveillance, domestically and around the world. Technology has led to a sort of Frankenstein's monster. "The Right Stuff" admonishes that man's hubris can destroy his fragile body, mind, soul, and through extension this beautiful thing called a Republic. Technology can empower as much as it can destroy.
I thought the movie was very well done, if not a bit too long. There's such a huge breadth of material that sometimes I wondered where it would end up. The length stretched over the two and a half hour mark. Looking at Wikipedia, it is 193 minutes long (three hours and 13 minutes)! That's a long time to sit and watch something, no matter how good it is. And "The Right Stuff" is very good. The images of the planes flying through the clouds are simply breath taking. The acting is superb, the starring men and women giving their all to their roles. I was especially impressed with Ed Harris' performance. He sold the personality that is John Glenn so well that the whole audience was rooting for him. Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard was also superb. He gave the role just enough gruff and good humor that I was legitimately concerned when he got in the rocket ship. I was unfamiliar with the history of the NASA pilots, so for all I knew he was going to blow up. I liked how the movie makers played with the audience's expectations. I feel many of us today only know John Glenn's name. Most people watching might assume he was the first American in space. I certainly did.
What the director, Philip Kaufman, was trying to bring to the surface was the power of technology: it can give man so much, but it is also dangerous. The creators oscillate between the Pangloss and Pandoran scenario offered in Benjamin Barber's essay, "Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy". Will this new technology bring about the end (as represented by the test pilots crashing down to earth), or will it bring on a new age of illumination? At the onset, it's quick for the viewers to see that we are in store for another Prometheus tale; however, it is unclear whether this was perceived by the makers as a good or bad thing (I wish we would have seen the end). Early on, we see a group of technocrats sitting around a table. They are like a council in King Arthur's court trying to find a hero like Parsifal to save the Fisher King and restore the land—the king and land in this case both being America. If someone can break the speed barrier, the Americans might be able to beat the Soviets at their own game. This is a situation based on pride and honor. Whoever can get the fastest planes, or get to space first will win a symbolic victory. The United States is a dying king, wounded in his genitals by the Soviets' quick technological progression. The only way to counter this is to win a battle in the space war. Initially, the chosen knight to do this is not the one who demands to be paid, but Chuck Yeager, the pilot who accepts his destiny of tempting God. He wants to confront the "Prince of the Air", Satan, Enlil, and Zeus. Others have gone before him, only to crash down to earth like Lucifer for their vanity.
Yeager is at once comfortable with the technology he uses and terrified of it. As I described earlier, he confronts the plane, horror music making the audience uneasy. The aircraft is a bright red. It is a powerful color, representing both aggression and power, but blood, the life-force of the universe. The plane is death, spilled blood. The horse Yeager rides down to greet the plane, on the other hand, is an older, out-of-date technology. It, of course, is dangerous as well. We can see that when Yeager is thrown off the animal when he chases his wife (this also echoes another tale in the Celtic Mabinogian, Pwyll riding after Rhiannon, the beautiful woman of the Otherworld, but unable to catch her no matter how hard he tries), but he survives. As Yeager gets in his plane and pushes the speed barrier, to make a funny pun, it's almost as if he is thrusted into another "plain". The screen suddenly turns into a psychedelic whirlwind. We are reminded of Ahriman, the Zoroastrian demon who was said to hover above Persia fighting the Archangel, Michael. On a second try, this time when he is trying to beat Mach 2, he passes out and starts twirling, spinning down to earth. It is here where we see what Barber calls in his essay, a symbol "of technology's ever-present dark side, the monster who lurks in Dr. Frankenstein's miraculous creation" (587). He rights himself at the last moment, but the image of the two girls playing with toy planes, smoke of a crashed aircraft in the distance, is still seared in the audience's brain. We know the danger this new technology represents. Like Robert Oppenheimer said when the first atomic bomb went off in 1945, "Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"
Throughout the movie, the moon is a driving presence. Yeager seems to be obsessed with it, and one of the bureaucrats says to another, "We can't go to sleep under a communist moon." In the end, Yeager sets a new altitude record but gets burned in the process, walking confidently away from his plane toward the ambulances. Yeager is the urge we all feel to go beyond what we thought was possible. The human psyche has always been attracted to what is above it. The ancients saw the stars at night and made constellations out of them. Throughout the world, man tells myths where the gods or God are spoken to on top of mountains, and even today, climbing to the top of Mount Everest is seen almost as a ritual. In this story, we are made aware of the feats man can achieve but also his hubris in trying. For a democratic society such as ours, this Icarus plot is somewhat alien. We have been taught from an early age that nothing is impossible, nothing is beyond our capabilities, and America today suffers for this hubris. She thought she was invincible, could police the seas, land, and sky, control the world's economy, and continue upwards towards the heavens—but she has failed. We have yet to see whether she shall metaphorically walk away like Yeager, badly burned but still alive. Technology itself, represented in the movie by aircraft and rocket ships, is leading the charge towards globalization. However, this process is often controlled by elites, be they corporate heads, revolving door politicians, or cartel bankers. The TSA is groping our bodies, every six hours the NSA "gathers as much data as is stored in the entire library of Congress," and the CIA, FBI, military, and police are constantly expanding their surveillance, domestically and around the world. Technology has led to a sort of Frankenstein's monster. "The Right Stuff" admonishes that man's hubris can destroy his fragile body, mind, soul, and through extension this beautiful thing called a Republic. Technology can empower as much as it can destroy.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango Street"
English patters like spoons on tin. Dop, dop, dop. It is an ugly language with a few beautiful words, but it's also my favorite. That's how I approach The House on Mango Street--an interesting book, if you can call it that. There is a lot of dop, dop, dop in the story line, rain drops hitting the earth and forming into a puddle, but with this format also comes danger. Some of the tales are not as good as others. We get this large portrait of a community. We are shown bits and pieces of different people's lives. We have a man who beats his kid, a young girl discovering her sexuality, a dying aunt lying in bed, and a man who flees from the cops in a stolen car. "O brave new world! That has such people in it!" Thankfully, like the Beatles’ album, Abbey Road, they are short little images. You don't have time to hate anything or poke holes in her dialogue (which is downright confusing sometimes) because you move on to the next story quickly. It reminded me of a television sitcom with each vignette being an episode, a day in the life of Esperanza, her family, her friends, and her neighbors, and it is also set up in much the same way as Grimm's Fairy Tales or Ovid's Metamorphosis--many lessons with ambiguity written in.
Cisneros does a good job of showing each person's interesting characteristic, a tragic flaw which might prevent him/her from moving on--the only beacon of hope being Esperanza, the author's avatar, who may have the greatest ability of all, one which may allow her to escape from the hell of the ghetto. There are some very interesting things going on inside this text. Cisneros, who was burgeoning on the mythological throughout "Mango", keeps tragically realistic, the fairy tale aspects only flowing under the surface like a current. But in the end, the author overtly puts in the Fates, the Moerae of Greek lore. One sister makes the yarn. One sister measures it. The other cuts it. Like Wikipedia says, "They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death." In a way, we can see Esperanza's journey from Mango Street (either a paradise or a hell, depending how you look at it) as a retelling of the Hero's journey. But I like to delve in deeper, grab a hold and shake until the apples fall from the trees.
Esperanza, or Cisneros, is yet another representation of Prospero, stuck on an island with the only escape being through the stories he/she tells. Julie Taymor reinterpreted Shakespeare's The Tempest with a female Prospero, and so did Cisneros--the island in this case being Mango Street. It is the place Esperanza still looks to as an adult. It is where she grew up and became who she is today. But it is also terrible. The biblical story of the fall is repeated in the short, The Monkey Garden, with Sally, a Cleopatra-esque character, with her Egyptian eyes. She is an incarnation of the Mother Goddess, Isis, the original, the wholeness of existence, Venus, Cybele, Mary, and Eve. The Monkey, on the other hand, is Saturn who is defeated by Apollo, the son god, leaving a world of vegetables. The garden is a representation of this residual paradise—Eden, in the biblical context. It is peaceful, a place full of stories and myth but also of initiation and loss of innocence. Sally learns to play the game of love in this garden, to act her gender role around the boys, and to use her sex as a tool of gaining what she wants. It is a retelling of the ancient myths of the vegetable consciousness morphing into animal (Lucifer). The old games lose their appeal, and the only one who seems to care is Esperanza. When she sees Sally falling from grace, she runs to a hidden corner of the garden and cries. Cisneros writes, "I don't know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything inside hiccupped" (98). Finally, she stands, after trying to force herself to die, "and the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either" (98). Yep, you got it right boys and girls, Esperanza can never go back. Paradise is lost to her forever. In this way, the Monkey Garden itself is a representation of the whole book.
The fates, who appear later, tell Esperanza not to forget where she came from, that when she leaves, she "must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are" (105). It reminds me of Mufasa telling Simba to remember. The Lion King is a retelling of Hamlet, but in Esperanza's case, she is not coming back to kill her uncle. She is coming back to save the others who can't tell stories as well as her (Minerva) or who never tried (Esperanza's aunt), who can't use their talents to elevate themselves, who are trapped in their own cycles of defeat and misery. Esperanza is the hero restoring her community to balance. She is the knight riding out to save the Fisher King. I find in life, it is not only desire which causes people to suffer (we can see this represented in "Mango" when the family drives to the hills to see the nice houses), but also people denying themselves of who they really are. We find Sally moving into a boring ol' house, not reaching for the stars. We see people full of regrets because they didn't do what they had to do in life to be happy. They denied themselves.
Cisneros was, perhaps, experimenting with retelling these lessons in a modern setting, but the story format and lead character also make "Mango" easy to connect to, especially for Cisneros' target audience. The author was clearly aiming for the dispossessed people who she worked with as a teacher. These are their stories, and by writing at a level which many of them would be capable of reading (English as their second language), she was setting up a novel which she hoped they could get into: the short bits could be read out of order and in one sitting, there is no fear of the massiveness of a typical book. And by writing from a child's perspective, it makes it simpler for people with limited reading skills to understand. Because we are not given much background or many of the darker elements of what probably is going on, we, as readers, fill in the lacuna. Each person makes the text alive in their own way because it is the gaps which allow us to make the story personal. By using a minimalist style, the author was working towards connecting to an even greater audience than the people she worked with.
Her themes are also universal, going beyond cultural borders. The Esperanza Cisneros portrays is at war with herself. To move on, she has to abandon the ones she loves, her own people and culture. If she stays behind, she will never be able to rise out of this shanty. There is a tension between remaining with the ones you love and moving on--and it's a tension we all have to grapple with, even a pale white guy from suburban Billings, Montana. To succeed in the American Dream, do you have to give up part of yourself? Do you have to sacrifice the ones you care for? I think so. Even this semester I have figuratively lost my friends I grew up after they graduated. The American Dream is a nomadic one. You have to displace your initial tribe and go through superficial ones (granfalloons if you will) before arriving at success. I am reminded of Alan Watts speech about life as music:
The American dream is one of progression. A man or woman starts out low and then rises upward, towards a goal, be it success, riches, or power. Alan Watts would say this is an unhealthy dream, and will only lead to dissatisfaction in the end. In today's world (yes, I am about to make a huge generalization), there is so much pressure put on kids to be something. To get an amazing job, to be the head of the company, to be a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur, to be famous like Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington. It is this system which causes kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to shoot up a school, for young Muslim men to ram planes into buildings, and for Timothy Treadwell to get eaten by bears in Alaska. It also leads to people rejecting society, who can't stand the pressure. I think of Chris McCandless as portrayed in Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer or the hikikomori sufferers in Japan. Some people would rather commit suicide then live in this high demand culture. People forget to enjoy life and "dance to the music of the spheres" because they are distracted by the bait-and-switch. That's why I think atheism is growing so quickly--it reflects people's world view. In the end, they realize all this work was in Ecclesiastical vanity. The Buddha would say to be happy, you must free yourself of this desire to be something more than you are. This is impossible. You realize the desire to be free of desires is itself a desire (ha!). Your will breaks down. You start to see the universe as it really is.
Cisneros' definition of culture would be the place where you came from. It would be that street in Chicago where you grew up, where you were initiated into the ways of the world. It would be the place you lost your innocence, and the people you lost your innocence with. In the end, culture is people. They propagate it, they continue it. When Esperanza stares back at her past, she remembers this family she left behind. She had to if she wanted to go on her "journey". She dreams she could take them along with her. But it's impossible. Her friends, her family, her neighbors, they continue living in the ghetto, while she moves on without them. The American Dream is one of regret, loss, and suffering. It is repeated again and again in our cinemas: Spiderman, Superman, the Lord of the Rings, Thor. They all begin with a hero who is demoralized in some way. They all try to fight and beat their way to some great victory over a villain. They all lose friends along the way. But in the end, when it's all over and they can rest, the movie finishes. We never see the Tennyson's Ulysses, Shakespeare's King Lear, or even Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Just "The End", and the credits role.
Cisneros does a good job of showing each person's interesting characteristic, a tragic flaw which might prevent him/her from moving on--the only beacon of hope being Esperanza, the author's avatar, who may have the greatest ability of all, one which may allow her to escape from the hell of the ghetto. There are some very interesting things going on inside this text. Cisneros, who was burgeoning on the mythological throughout "Mango", keeps tragically realistic, the fairy tale aspects only flowing under the surface like a current. But in the end, the author overtly puts in the Fates, the Moerae of Greek lore. One sister makes the yarn. One sister measures it. The other cuts it. Like Wikipedia says, "They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death." In a way, we can see Esperanza's journey from Mango Street (either a paradise or a hell, depending how you look at it) as a retelling of the Hero's journey. But I like to delve in deeper, grab a hold and shake until the apples fall from the trees.
Esperanza, or Cisneros, is yet another representation of Prospero, stuck on an island with the only escape being through the stories he/she tells. Julie Taymor reinterpreted Shakespeare's The Tempest with a female Prospero, and so did Cisneros--the island in this case being Mango Street. It is the place Esperanza still looks to as an adult. It is where she grew up and became who she is today. But it is also terrible. The biblical story of the fall is repeated in the short, The Monkey Garden, with Sally, a Cleopatra-esque character, with her Egyptian eyes. She is an incarnation of the Mother Goddess, Isis, the original, the wholeness of existence, Venus, Cybele, Mary, and Eve. The Monkey, on the other hand, is Saturn who is defeated by Apollo, the son god, leaving a world of vegetables. The garden is a representation of this residual paradise—Eden, in the biblical context. It is peaceful, a place full of stories and myth but also of initiation and loss of innocence. Sally learns to play the game of love in this garden, to act her gender role around the boys, and to use her sex as a tool of gaining what she wants. It is a retelling of the ancient myths of the vegetable consciousness morphing into animal (Lucifer). The old games lose their appeal, and the only one who seems to care is Esperanza. When she sees Sally falling from grace, she runs to a hidden corner of the garden and cries. Cisneros writes, "I don't know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything inside hiccupped" (98). Finally, she stands, after trying to force herself to die, "and the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either" (98). Yep, you got it right boys and girls, Esperanza can never go back. Paradise is lost to her forever. In this way, the Monkey Garden itself is a representation of the whole book.
The fates, who appear later, tell Esperanza not to forget where she came from, that when she leaves, she "must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are" (105). It reminds me of Mufasa telling Simba to remember. The Lion King is a retelling of Hamlet, but in Esperanza's case, she is not coming back to kill her uncle. She is coming back to save the others who can't tell stories as well as her (Minerva) or who never tried (Esperanza's aunt), who can't use their talents to elevate themselves, who are trapped in their own cycles of defeat and misery. Esperanza is the hero restoring her community to balance. She is the knight riding out to save the Fisher King. I find in life, it is not only desire which causes people to suffer (we can see this represented in "Mango" when the family drives to the hills to see the nice houses), but also people denying themselves of who they really are. We find Sally moving into a boring ol' house, not reaching for the stars. We see people full of regrets because they didn't do what they had to do in life to be happy. They denied themselves.
Cisneros was, perhaps, experimenting with retelling these lessons in a modern setting, but the story format and lead character also make "Mango" easy to connect to, especially for Cisneros' target audience. The author was clearly aiming for the dispossessed people who she worked with as a teacher. These are their stories, and by writing at a level which many of them would be capable of reading (English as their second language), she was setting up a novel which she hoped they could get into: the short bits could be read out of order and in one sitting, there is no fear of the massiveness of a typical book. And by writing from a child's perspective, it makes it simpler for people with limited reading skills to understand. Because we are not given much background or many of the darker elements of what probably is going on, we, as readers, fill in the lacuna. Each person makes the text alive in their own way because it is the gaps which allow us to make the story personal. By using a minimalist style, the author was working towards connecting to an even greater audience than the people she worked with.
Her themes are also universal, going beyond cultural borders. The Esperanza Cisneros portrays is at war with herself. To move on, she has to abandon the ones she loves, her own people and culture. If she stays behind, she will never be able to rise out of this shanty. There is a tension between remaining with the ones you love and moving on--and it's a tension we all have to grapple with, even a pale white guy from suburban Billings, Montana. To succeed in the American Dream, do you have to give up part of yourself? Do you have to sacrifice the ones you care for? I think so. Even this semester I have figuratively lost my friends I grew up after they graduated. The American Dream is a nomadic one. You have to displace your initial tribe and go through superficial ones (granfalloons if you will) before arriving at success. I am reminded of Alan Watts speech about life as music:
"In music, one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who wrote only finales. People would go to concerts just to hear one crashing chord because that's the end. But we don't see that as something brought by our education into our everyday conduct. We got a system of schools which give us a pretty different impression. It's all graded, and what we do is we put the child into the order of this grade system with a sort of come on kitty kitty kitty. And now you go to kindergarten, and that's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. And then come on, first grade leads to second grade and so on, and then you get out of grade school, you got high school, and its revving up, the thing is coming. And then you got to go to college, and by Jove, then you get into graduate school, and when you are through with graduate school, you go out and join the world. And then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance. And they've got that quota to make, and you got to make that. And the whole the time, the thing is coming, it's coming, it's coming, that great thing, that success you're working for. Then you wake up one day when you are about 40 years old, you say, my God, I'm arrived. I'm there. And you don't feel very different from what you always felt. And there is a slight let down because you feel there was a hoax. And there was a hoax. A dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. Success, whatever that is, or Heaven, after your dead. But we missed the point the whole way along, it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played."
The American dream is one of progression. A man or woman starts out low and then rises upward, towards a goal, be it success, riches, or power. Alan Watts would say this is an unhealthy dream, and will only lead to dissatisfaction in the end. In today's world (yes, I am about to make a huge generalization), there is so much pressure put on kids to be something. To get an amazing job, to be the head of the company, to be a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur, to be famous like Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington. It is this system which causes kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to shoot up a school, for young Muslim men to ram planes into buildings, and for Timothy Treadwell to get eaten by bears in Alaska. It also leads to people rejecting society, who can't stand the pressure. I think of Chris McCandless as portrayed in Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer or the hikikomori sufferers in Japan. Some people would rather commit suicide then live in this high demand culture. People forget to enjoy life and "dance to the music of the spheres" because they are distracted by the bait-and-switch. That's why I think atheism is growing so quickly--it reflects people's world view. In the end, they realize all this work was in Ecclesiastical vanity. The Buddha would say to be happy, you must free yourself of this desire to be something more than you are. This is impossible. You realize the desire to be free of desires is itself a desire (ha!). Your will breaks down. You start to see the universe as it really is.
Cisneros' definition of culture would be the place where you came from. It would be that street in Chicago where you grew up, where you were initiated into the ways of the world. It would be the place you lost your innocence, and the people you lost your innocence with. In the end, culture is people. They propagate it, they continue it. When Esperanza stares back at her past, she remembers this family she left behind. She had to if she wanted to go on her "journey". She dreams she could take them along with her. But it's impossible. Her friends, her family, her neighbors, they continue living in the ghetto, while she moves on without them. The American Dream is one of regret, loss, and suffering. It is repeated again and again in our cinemas: Spiderman, Superman, the Lord of the Rings, Thor. They all begin with a hero who is demoralized in some way. They all try to fight and beat their way to some great victory over a villain. They all lose friends along the way. But in the end, when it's all over and they can rest, the movie finishes. We never see the Tennyson's Ulysses, Shakespeare's King Lear, or even Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Just "The End", and the credits role.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
LOST Pilot Part 1 - Dissection
LOST begins with a close-up of a single eye opening. The pupil dilates, the irises a brown green color swirling around the center. The man stares frantically upward, gasping for life. He is pale as death--the tuxedo he wears could be the one he is buried in. As his senses become clear, he remembers who he is and looks straight into the bamboo trees above. This scene becomes more relevant as we look at it from the perspective of the entire series. Could one discover the whole meaning of the show just from this opening frame? To begin with, what does the eye signify? In the secret tradition, it is the eye which creates the universe, and not vice-versa. We can see it's importance--it's on the dollar bill and the CBS logo. It is a powerful symbol used by many ancient cultures and modern ones. We perceive the world around us, and in today's society, we assume that's all we do. In the mind before matter universe, simply by looking at something, you are changing it. It focuses in your vision. It becomes clear and materializes. When Jack stares into the tree tops (because we soon learn that's his name), he is creating the island. In Mark Booth's "The Secret History of the World", the author says the mystery schools teach that the universe "is a living, dynamic connection. Everything [...] is alive and conscious to some degree, responding sensitively and intelligently to our deepest, subtlest needs" (34). Matter is crystallizing, forming under Jack's gaze. So it is to say that nothing existed on the island before the arrival of humans, because there was no one to observe it--like the "universe" creating humans so it could think about itself. A question which is often raised in later seasons is why the island (a representation of the Mother Goddess) brought people there in the first place. The answer is simple (yet quite complex to understand), "she" needed them or else "she" wouldn't exist. It is similar concept of the tree paradox: if tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? According to the mystery religions, the answer is no. Observers, hearers are necessary if the universe (the island, the mother goddess) wanted to materialize. Like Schrodinger's Cat, there would be no one there to give mass shape or coherence.
The image of the eye also brings to mind Brahma, the dreaming god. In Hinduism, we are all an aspect of the great God's being. He hides behinds masks, the Hindu maya, tricking himself into believing that this great play should be taken seriously, but in reality, he is just having a bit of fun. Alan Watts asks: if you were a God, an all powerful being with nothing to do and "all time, eternity, and all power at your disposal," what would you do? He suggests that the God would dream about an infinite number of things in an infinite number of bodies. You would be a mighty king with thousands of concubines, a cowboy, an Indian, a martian, a performing monkey, a tycoon, but also a starving child, Job the unfortunate, a prostitute. And it would be okay, because it would be a dream. But that would eventually get boring--you would make yourself start believing it's real. And that is what Watts means when he calls this a Cosmic Drama. We are all the great God Brahma pretending to be someone else. Alan Watts says this about the eyes:
The eyes are our most sensitive organ, and when you look and look and look into another person's eyes you are looking at the most beautiful jewels in the universe. And if you look down beyond that surface beauty, it's the most beautiful jewel in the universe, because that's the universe looking at you. We are the eyes of the cosmos. So that in a way, when you look deeply into somebody's eyes, you're looking deep into yourself, and the other person is looking deeply into the same self, which many-eyed, as the mask of Vishnu is many- faced, is looking out everywhere, one energy playing myriads of different parts. Why? It's perfectly obvious, because if you were God, and you knew everything and were in control of everything, you would be bored to death.
You can find the whole article here. When we stare into Jack's eyes, God is staring back. We are peering into his soul, and it as if we can see everything: his troubles with his father, with his ex-wife, with his career, and even his future problems with alcoholism and letting go. But the good also glows through: the future leader, the caring man who wants to protect everyone but can't. The great drama which will soon be unfolding and the role Jack is going to fulfill also start to reveal themselves, even in this first scene. We are all acting out this play, lila, and have our entrances and exits, as the great Bard once said. The tragedy of the plane crash was the beginning. It was necessary for all the candidates to begin their test.
To become a member of secret schools, a candidate must go through an initiation. The most important part of this process is the death ritual. In Mark Booth's book, he gives the example of Caglistro in a Masonic lodge in London. I will quote directly from him:
In the Esperance Lodge above a pub in Soho, he [Caglistro] was asked to repeat an oath of secrecy, then blindfolded. A rope was tied round his waist, and he heard pulley creak as he was winched up to the ceiling. Suddenly he fell to the floor, his blindfold removed, and he saw a pistol being loaded with poweder and a bullet. The blindfold was replaced, he was handed the pistol and asked to prove his obedience by shooting himself in the head. When he hesitated, his initiators shouted at him, accusing him of being a coward. He pulled the trigger, heard an explosion, felt a blow to the side of the head and smelled gunpowder. He had believed he was going to die -- and now he was an initiate. (Booth 196)
The plane crash was in much the same vein as Caglistro's trial. It was an initiation into the world of the island. Only upon fear of death would the candidates be prepared to take on the rituals and the trials which were going to be thrown at them--as Booth puts it another way, "the candidate is made to feel the tragedy of his own life, an overwhelming need for catharsis. He begins to judge his own life as the demons and angels will judge it after death" (220). This initiation process is common in mystery schools. Mark Booth gives another example which took place during the French Revolution, where candidates were put in a pit. A bull was sacrificed above and the person below was drenched in the beast's blood. In another part of the process, "the candidate would lie in a tomb as if dead. The the initiator would grab him by the right hand pull him up into 'new life'" (Booth 183). Many have reported at this "death" moment, the world made sense. "So that's why that happened. So that's what it all meant," reported soldiers who returned from war, a bomb inexplicably not blowing up under their feet or a bullet grazing their face. To the mystery schools, this process prepared the candidate for the ascent and descent through the spheres. Mark Booth writes that the "spirit ascends through the sphere of the constellations and is finally reunited with the great Cosmic mind" (Booth 191). Aristides calls what Booth described a "lightness which nobody who has not been initiated could either describe or understand." The Cosmic mind, "the wondrous light", is the center of the island for Jack, the place he goes to die at the end of series, though "It has been a painful, confusing and tiring journey" (191). The ancients believed that when you died you traveled into the heavens, past the seven known spheres and communed with the highest being. You were guided by both Mercury and Lucifer (Foe Locke, The Man in Black), and then afterwords descended back to earth. It is pertinent that a fifth season episode was titled "The Little Prince", because the novella is perhaps another retelling of the spheres of existence--a tale told in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" and Dante's "Commedia". At any rate, the survivors are being prepared here. They plummeted to the island, death before them, and in Jack's case, awoke ready to begin "his mission" because as The Man in Black (in the disguise of Christian Shephard, Jack's deceased father) put it in the webisode "So It Begins", he has "work to do". After the final episode of the series, we come to an even greater realization: the island was only one sphere itself, and there are many more the survivors have to travel through before they reach the "ultimate "nirvana", a joining with "God", whatever or whoever that is. Some decide to stay behind. Some fall backwards, descending to a new hell. Some move forward.
However, in the LOST mythology, you can only continue on your journey in the company of a chosen few. When Jack rushes out to see the fallen plane, he is meeting his "karass"--a term invented by Kurt Vonnegut for his made-up religion Bokononism. A karass is "a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will". Ka-tet is a similar word created by Stephen King, meaning "a group of people [who] can be tired together by fate, or ka". "We are ka-tet. We are one from many." He doesn't know these people are his karass or ka-tet yet. Jack doesn't know they will change his life and bring him closer to God. He only knows a "pool-pah" has happened, and he needs to save lives. Booth says, in the initiation, the candidate "would be plunged in utter darkness. He would seem to himself to be losing all consciousness, to be dying. But he would seem to himself to come round again, then be led by an animal-headed being, traveling down long passages and through a series of chambers" (217). The first living creature Jack sees upon opening his eyes is a yellow lab, who quickly runs off. He stands, orientating himself and pulling a bottle of alcohol out of his pocket. The line Where am I? is never uttered. It will be spoken aloud by another character later in the episode, but here it isn't needed. We can see it on Jack's face: Where am I? Suddenly, he hears screaming in the distance. Jack runs through a seemingly endless jungle of bamboo, trying to find its source, and emerges on a scene of horror--the pool-pah, the shitstorm. We now know he is his karass' shepherd--a healer, associated with Asclepius (Apollo's son) and Jesus. He tries to control everything and save everyone, but it is his his tragic flaw. No matter how many times he is told to let go, he can't. He can't believe in anything but the material. He can't believe the island also has healing powers, alchemical and ancient. Jack can't believe that there may be something more than meets the eye here. (Cue the obligatory Transformers reference)
In the final season, Jack does let go. It takes him years of suffering, but he becomes what he was always meant to be. He becomes the Christ archetype, his Asclepius/Jesus connection playing itself out. Jacob hasn't been introduced yet, but he is an incarnation of Apollo/Osiris, the sun god, who wages a war against the darkness, Satan/Saturn/Seth (the smoke monster) and the triple-diety's other aspect, Lucifer (The Man in Black). Jack is the son of Jacob in spirit. In Greek mythology, Hades becomes angry when Asclepius' healing powers, which are extraordinarily effective, makes mortals live forever. He goes to Zeus, complaining of this offense against the rules which were set up, and the sky god smites Apollo's son. In the end, Jack, the initiate, is fulfilling his purpose. He is not fighting his role, his performance, his act. He dies to save everyone. He is letting go and can move onto the next sphere. I imagine Cleopatra at the end of Shakespeare's play, giving into her destiny, knowing that by dying, she will live forever. Like Asclepius, Jack was trying to prevent fate, but you can't. You have to own it. But I am warping to the end of the series. For now, Jack finds the crashed plane, and his journey in this sphere truly begins.
The beauty of LOST is that you can look at it on so many different levels. We have the very human drama of a man surviving a terrible plane crash and pulling a bottle of gin and tonic out of his pocket, the phantasmagoria of the crash site, but also the mysteries, the mythology, the yarns, unfolding before us. We have two warring entities setting up their game of chess, which LOST is such a clear metaphor for, and how the plane and all the people aboard it might be yet another retelling of the Lucifer tale. The passengers were vain enough to believe themselves greater than God, so God thrust them back down to earth, to this figurative hell, so they can learn to let go of their hubris. LOST also raises not only mystical questions, but also scientific ones. The writers try to bridge the gap between spiritual and material. It's one of the great binaries within the show, but I will cover that more in later blogs. I hope to make this number one in a series on LOST.
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