I finished Oscar Zeta Acosta's "The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo" yesterday. It was a difficult book to read because it was so exasperating, being so fundamentally uneven in tone. There were, however, many interesting issues to investigate, and one must not forget that this book has been incorporated into the canon of Chicano literature.
I look forward to presenting my observations in the near future.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
An ethical epic
I haven't seen all of Terrence Malick's movies, but I have been entranced by the ones that I have seen. Despite the fact that I was a young man still in junior high school I nonetheless clearly remember the reception that was extended to his film "Days of Heaven". The cinematography by Nestor Almendos was justly recognized, and the acting seemed to be in key with the understated tone of this movie, but it was the story that seemed to work its enchantment on viewers. Perhaps it was an exercise in sublime romanticism or perhaps it seemed to capture a wistful look towards the past that had been elevated in response to the disenchantment we all felt in the late 70s, but it seemed to catch hold and maintain a grip on our imagination. Of course, the idea of escape and of journeys towards new and open realms of possibility have always exercised their appeal on the western imagination, and this film was no different, as grasped even by a child of my age.
It seemed as if we heard very little from Terrence Malick in subsequent decades, and indeed, he has come to be known as a director who produces films at considerable intervals. From time to time his name registered in my consciousness, but I lament that I didn't take the time to watch his latest works. It wasn't until the highly laudatory comments with regards to his latest film, "The Tree of Life", that I undertook to begin exploring his works once again. I turned first to his film from 1998, "The Thin Red Line".
This film is an adaption of a novel that deals with the experiences of a group of soldiers during one of the pivotal battles of WWII, this being the Battle of Guadalcanal. From the very beginning, when we see a crocodile submerging itself into a pond full of algae, it struck one again the lyrical notes that I remembered from his classic of the seventies ("Days of Heaven"). It was a film that struck a deeply philophical tone, being as it was a profoundly meditative exploration of the ways in which humans abide by the values that they think define them.
Through the use of multiple first-person internal narrations we become much more connected with the characters as they reveal their own internal worlds. One obtains the unsettling sensation that these revelations are a little too personal, and that we are eavesdropping on a conversation that is not meant for our ears, however much the issues that are raised strike a universal note. It would seem as if we are placed in the position of an interlocutor who is asked to intercede for these characters, and to dispense some form of dispensation for the suffering and for injustices that are committed. This is, of course, an uncomfortable position for us.
I was struck over and over again by a plaintive note in these meditations. The characters are genuinely honest in their ruminations, and they seek an explanation for the inhuman situation in which they find themselves, treated as they are as pawns who are about to be sacrificed. It raises, understandably, questions of ethics as we ponder the meaning of violence and the petty compromises that each and every one of us makes as we proceed in our existence. It is very much an interior search that consumes all of us at certain points, and one that leaves us breathless as we consider the possibility of mortality.
The characters are all enmeshed in conflictive situations, both external as well as internal. We have the military officer by the name of Tall, played by a grizzled Nick Nolte, who reflects on the meaning of failure as he perceives it. It is an experience that humiliates him and leads him to pursue redemption at whatever cost, even if it be the sacrifice of his entire company of soldiers in the single-minded pursuit of the capture of a hill defended by Japanese soldiers. We also have the earnest Witt, a soldier who had gone awol but who was reincorporated into the ranks, and who is forever held in a form of wistful suspension as he meditates on the spirit he sees in his fellow soldiers. He represents a form of earnest reflection that serves to denounce the inhumanity of their situation, and yet through his observations we recognize how it is that this group of men are bound together, and how it is that their weakness constitutes, paradoxically, their strength.
The reason I found the character of Witt so compelling has to do with the ethical concerns that hit me as I was watching the film. While it may very well be true that we live unconsciously for the majority of the days of our lives, unable as we are to recognize and value the relationships that define our existence, it is also true that there is a fundamental spirit that coheres around groups of people as they find themselves in desperate circumstances. The idea seemed to overwhelm me after watching the film tht compassion, that ability to "see the light" in other people, is an experience that is only felt by those who are similarly cognizant of their own weaknesses and vulnerability. It cannot be attained by a higher entity who is removed from our sphere of concerns, and as distant as the religious icons to which people address their appeals in moments of desperaton. What hope of compassion do we have from a God that is removed, and that is portrayed as eternal and all-cognizant? How can this God every truly understand us and feel compassion, if compassion truly necessitates the awareness of a fundamental bond that these men come to feel as they perceive their supreme weakness and vulnerability? Pity is not the same as compassion, for pity is defined by the awareness of hierarchy, and in hierarchy, there is no bonding. It is easy enough to see the abuses of power in the actions of an officer such as Tall, although this is compensated in some minor way by the actions of his subordinate Staros, the Captain who tries to delay the order to march his soldiers up to the hill where they will certainly be slaughtered.
Is obedience a virture? Why is it that faith as presented in Christian ethics seems to involve so much needless suffering? We are left to question ourselves and to wonder, as one of the characters asks himself, about the presence of good, and of how we are left mired in a debilitating morass of ethical incertitude, where values seem to be compromised eternally for petty ends, as is all too evident in this film. "How did we lose the good that was given to us? Let it slip away, scattered, careless?". Did we indeed squander the gift that was given to us?
The experiences of these soldiers as they see their comrades cut down is one that is profoundly unsettling. Their perpetual thirst is emblematic of this quest for satisfaction, of this most elemental need to explain not only this monumental battle between two opposing forces but also the internal self-doubt that consumes them all. The married officer, Bell, is particularly consumed by the memory of the wife he has left behind, and he relives over and over one particular memory, that of a golden and melancholic afternoon spent in her company and consuming what he saw as the ultimate aspiration of all human beings: a genuine bond with another human being. Bell, of course, is fated to lose this relationship and to see his fondest hopes shattered as the movie progresses, but his relationship is perhaps emblematic of all the hopes and disappointments that we all feel.
The action sequences are indeed fairly dramatic. As the soldiers proceed in their campaign a sense of dread gradually overwhelms them, and it is only as a result of desperate actions undertaken in an attempt to combat the perception of futility that they manage to overtake the hill and proceed to overrun the Japanese line. It is evident once again that these experiences are devastating, and all the characters are left in various states of despair but also, in fleeting moments, with glimpses of a raw and angelic humanity that reveals how it is that humans are able to achieve communion once their illusions have been shattered. They are not numb and this experience of not seeming to care is not indicative of "bliss" or nirvana. They are all being born anew, but this rebirth is one that is divested of Christian theology. It is religious but it is not dogmatic.
The movie proceeds from one character to the next as we are exposed to their innermost thoughts, thoughts that are piercing in their honesty and in their desperation. This suffering reduces many to incoherence, and we see this time and again in the shots of soldiers, both American as well as Japanese, who lie in fetal crouches or who are left in various postures of supplication, crying aloud and seeking, it would seem, some explanation for the suffering they are forced to endure. The wounded soldiers who lie prostrate, with terrible wounds, and who shiver uncontrollably, or who wail bitterly like the wails of a doomed humanity that rails against the injustice of this situation, like the soldier who is given a lethal dose of morphine as the only way to get him to finish dying.
We see humanity at its extremes, and yet there are a myriad number of ways in which humans promulgate suffering amongst others. It is not a situation that is limited to wartime, for the seeds of this evil or, what we may term, compromised humanity are evident everywhere, as is all too evident in the earnest reminiscences of the soldier Train who recounts the beatings he used to receive as a small child from his violent and drunken father, or the false illusions held by others who had failed to find a place for themselves among regular society. One thinks most tellingly of officer Tall.
In the end, there is an earnestness in this film that speaks to issues of self-awareness and of what it means to be human. As evident in officer Welsh's response to the inquiries of Witt, that pair of friends who remonstrate with one another and carry out a debate as to the fundamental redeemability of humans, we see that experience of loneliness and alienation that is also, paradoxically, a marker of weakness and compassion. "Do you ever feel lonely?", Witt asks. "Only around people", answers Welsh.
Captain Staros leading his men:
The Japanese platoon as it corners Witt near the end, killing him soon after.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Samurai Action Redux
More to come later. (Addendum -- I guess there is no update to this review, as of June 2013)
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Time to venture out
This will be one of my shortest blog entries, but also, one fraught with emotional significance. I'm going to the park to exercise and I am going to drive to that location. After several days of despair over my accident on the fourteenth, I am looking to get over a psychological obstacle. I desperately need a return to normalcy.
Addendum: I returned somewhat chastened. My torso hurts, something all the more apparent with any jarring motion. I couldn't jog my regular 2 to 3 miles, and limited myself to walking.
Addendum: I returned somewhat chastened. My torso hurts, something all the more apparent with any jarring motion. I couldn't jog my regular 2 to 3 miles, and limited myself to walking.
Friday, July 15, 2011
A Grander Perspective
Although I spent the day at home, dealing with anxiety and regret over the accident I had yesterday, I find that I need to recover a sense of normalcy. Towards that end, I need to continue to review the books and movies as well as cultural events that I attend. I can't lose perspective, after all, even though I feel that I am in a sinkhole of despair and regret.
A few days ago I finished reading Robert Charles Wilson's latest novel, Vortex. It is the third novel in his series that portrays a future world in which the Earth encounters a process (better to say process or agent rather than entity) that is denominated as the "Hypotheticals", originating as it did out of robotic entities that have been propogating throughout the galaxy since time immemorial. In the first book they arrived on Earch without announcing their presence and they encased it in a sort of time fold, propelling it into the future. In the end a gigantic arch was brought to Earth and this proved to be a passageway that connected the planet to other worlds.
The first novel in the series, Spin, won the Hugo award for best science fiction novel a few years ago, and it was justly earned. The book detailed this premise, and it followed the life of three individuals who had to find some way of accomodating this vast change. Perhaps the most compelling figure was that of Jason Lawton, the brilliant son who was put in charge of undertaking explorations of the spin mechanism, and who in his psychological complexity revealed the fragility as well as the triumpth of human will. This family was furthermore conformed by his sister Diana and by a family friend who lived with the family from an early age, and who was at times a distant rival as well as close accomplice, Tyler.
The premise was intriguing from the very beginning, alluding to the ways in which humans would project their hopes and fears on the intervention that had been visited upon them. This is no classic novel of first contact, for this contact will ever be frustrated. After all, it is continually asserted that the Hypotheticals have no consciousness and are instead akin to an "ecology", but I would debate this premise and would merely say that what seems to distinguish them is a lack of individuality, not a lack of self-consciousness. They (the ecology or process or conglomerate) does undertake to carry out momentous projects, and it does accumulate and salvage technologies, and it is in a continuous state of expansion, but it never reveals individual points of view. Perhaps a forest does have a form of self-awareness, if I may project my doubts on an example that comes to mind, but one that is only dimly perceivable if at all by its inhabitants.
This is a novel in which humans are forced to adapt to changed circumstances, and as such, we are made aware of a variety of responses that vary from the positive to the paranoic. We have obsessive personalities and sibling as well as paternal and social conflicts, and these manifest themselves in startling ways.
The second novel, Axis, was a little more uneven. It lacked the psychological depth that had been evident in the characters protrayed in the first novel, and the phenonomenon that forms the crux of this novel (the arrival of a cloud of Hypothetical machines whose purpose is to gather up and transmit information down the line in their network) seemed perhaps out of step with the scale of a satisfying novel. It turns out that there are not only geographical arches but also temporal arches and the Hypotheticals are revealed to consist of some mechanism or process that documents the information prevalent throughout the galaxy at certain specified time periods, in this case, at cycles of about ten thousand years. Once again, the Hypotheticals don't seem to reveal self-awareness as embodied in individual consciousness, but instead are likened to a process, one that is emblematic of evolutionary imperatives but that, distinct from what happened with anthropocentric creatures such as ourselves, has not resulted in individual self-consciousness in the Hypotheticals. This conception, as ever, proves debatable in my mind, for we must not excessively anthropocentrize conciousness such that we can recognize it only when it takes our form.
In the third novel, we are made aware of another leap in scale. The story takes place about ten thousand years in the future, and in this story we see the reincarnation of two characters we had seen in the preceeding novel. They are Isaac Dvali, the child who had been gestated and incubated with hypothetical technology, and Turk Findlay, the pilot who had been killed at the end of the second novel.
What Robert Charles Wilson does is continue to create fascinating new scenarios for human civilization. Now, humanity has used the arches to expand onto new worlds, forming a polity of worlds that are termed "cortical" democracies because they are dictated by rationality and debate. But we also have another intriguing alternative, which is the "limbic" civilization represented by Vox Central, a group of artificial islands whose citizens are networked by the implantation of nodes, and who share a common emotional and volitional consensus that is governed by what is called the "Choreophagus" (the "leader of the choir").
It is a collection of processes that helps to regulate the emotional stability of its citizens, and it was created to service a new theology that addresses an old need, that of reaching out and somehow establishing contact with entities that were personalized. It is a form of wish fulfillment for establishing literal contact with a Godhead, this being, of course, the Hypotheticals.
The story is interspersed with an episode that details an episode of conflict and unexplained revelation in the early period of human experience with the Spin mechanism. It is the story of Bose, a man who has suffered a tragic loss and who has taken the Martian biological treatment to become a "Fourth", Sandra, a psychologist at a state institution, and the vulnerable, angelic but also mysterious character of Orrin Mather, a man of humble background who is somehow transcribing a story of the far future, one that details the story of Turk and Andrea in the far future.
As is the case with all of Wilson's novels, we receive an intriguing combination of speculative and, at times, breathtaking description of evolving human society in the face of new approaches and discoveries, and an exciting story that directly illustrates how these discoveries are incorporated in a conflictive way into human consciousness. They are the same, eternal stories that have so compellingly formed a part of our cultural framework. Stories of societies in conflict, of social bonds that seem fragile, of mechanisms of compulsion as well as autonomy, and an intriguing thread that I have seen in various novels: that of the dangerous role of perverse theologies that seem like tools used by unscrupulous people to try to tyrannize human existance.
Such was the case with "Mysterium", the novel that won the Phillip K. Dick Memorial award over a decade ago, and details the existence of a parallel universe in which a theocratic institution modeled faintly on a repressive form of Catholocism held sway. Such was also in evidence in "The Chronoliths", an exciting mystery in which the appareance of gargantuan, monolithic monuments leads to the speculation about the end of the world and the possible advent of the parousia, leading to ever greater dislocations and an ever more fanatical religious group that is formed to exploit this uncertainty.
Religious authorities, because of their closed and hierarchical nature, always seem to be a source of conflict in Wilson's novels. In this case, we see such a rigid and paranoid entity in the members of Vox Central, and it points to the perception of and distrust of dogma that is in service to a prescribed end.
And this novel is also concerned with the end. In a breathtaking narration, after the human conflicts have been resolved, we see the evolution of the being known as Isaac Dvali, who becomes fully incorporated into the hypothetical network, attaining the considerable powers that have been accumulated by this process or ecology that can be described as archeological.
Isaac proceeds to the far future, and he narrates the evolution of a universe that is rapidly hurtling towards a strange ending, in which the expansion of the universe has been completed, and the bonds that held subatomic structures have dissolved. The future societies, and we do see societies and collective agencies with volition, are brought together and responses are evolved, and as such, we see a galaxy that resonates with cohesion (that cohesion that always seemed to escape human society), and in which new dimension are colonized, only to discover the existence of ever older and more powerful societies. Structure and consciousness pervades the universe even at the end of time, and the novel makes use as well of the "many worlds" speculative construct to offer a resolution to the mystery of how Orrin Mather had received this narration of the far future.
It is an ending that recalls Olaf Stapledon's seminal work, "Starmaker", and it points to a cosmology that is at both ends affirming and comforting but also, so to speak, apocalyptic. I use this term in accordance to the original meaning that refers to an "unveiling", but also consciously wish to suggest a religious aspect as well, the sense of culmination that would accompany religious ecstasy.
For Wilson's novel, ironic as it may be, also contrive to incorporate a religious experience of ecstasy that affirms the survival and the attainment of cohesion. Consciousness is celebrated, and it is breathtaking to see how this experience conforms to the contours of a out-of-body experience, quite literally in both "Starmaker" as well as "Vortex".
It is a celebration of consciousness and of the attainment of a supreme state of empathy that seems also, at times, because of problems of scale, to be oddly distant. We can imagine it, but it is hard to really incorporate it. We are beings of a much smaller scale, but the fact that we can imagine it, as well as imagine narratives in which humans in uncertain circumstances find common ground, serve to invest this novel as well as other works by Wilson with a moral and ethical grounding. And, as such, leads the reader to take into consideration the idea of a cosmology that is more personal, that is ethical and affirming rather than distant and cold, and that is, as such, a romantic conception.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
A few days ago I finished reading Robert Charles Wilson's latest novel, Vortex. It is the third novel in his series that portrays a future world in which the Earth encounters a process (better to say process or agent rather than entity) that is denominated as the "Hypotheticals", originating as it did out of robotic entities that have been propogating throughout the galaxy since time immemorial. In the first book they arrived on Earch without announcing their presence and they encased it in a sort of time fold, propelling it into the future. In the end a gigantic arch was brought to Earth and this proved to be a passageway that connected the planet to other worlds.
The first novel in the series, Spin, won the Hugo award for best science fiction novel a few years ago, and it was justly earned. The book detailed this premise, and it followed the life of three individuals who had to find some way of accomodating this vast change. Perhaps the most compelling figure was that of Jason Lawton, the brilliant son who was put in charge of undertaking explorations of the spin mechanism, and who in his psychological complexity revealed the fragility as well as the triumpth of human will. This family was furthermore conformed by his sister Diana and by a family friend who lived with the family from an early age, and who was at times a distant rival as well as close accomplice, Tyler.
The premise was intriguing from the very beginning, alluding to the ways in which humans would project their hopes and fears on the intervention that had been visited upon them. This is no classic novel of first contact, for this contact will ever be frustrated. After all, it is continually asserted that the Hypotheticals have no consciousness and are instead akin to an "ecology", but I would debate this premise and would merely say that what seems to distinguish them is a lack of individuality, not a lack of self-consciousness. They (the ecology or process or conglomerate) does undertake to carry out momentous projects, and it does accumulate and salvage technologies, and it is in a continuous state of expansion, but it never reveals individual points of view. Perhaps a forest does have a form of self-awareness, if I may project my doubts on an example that comes to mind, but one that is only dimly perceivable if at all by its inhabitants.
This is a novel in which humans are forced to adapt to changed circumstances, and as such, we are made aware of a variety of responses that vary from the positive to the paranoic. We have obsessive personalities and sibling as well as paternal and social conflicts, and these manifest themselves in startling ways.
The second novel, Axis, was a little more uneven. It lacked the psychological depth that had been evident in the characters protrayed in the first novel, and the phenonomenon that forms the crux of this novel (the arrival of a cloud of Hypothetical machines whose purpose is to gather up and transmit information down the line in their network) seemed perhaps out of step with the scale of a satisfying novel. It turns out that there are not only geographical arches but also temporal arches and the Hypotheticals are revealed to consist of some mechanism or process that documents the information prevalent throughout the galaxy at certain specified time periods, in this case, at cycles of about ten thousand years. Once again, the Hypotheticals don't seem to reveal self-awareness as embodied in individual consciousness, but instead are likened to a process, one that is emblematic of evolutionary imperatives but that, distinct from what happened with anthropocentric creatures such as ourselves, has not resulted in individual self-consciousness in the Hypotheticals. This conception, as ever, proves debatable in my mind, for we must not excessively anthropocentrize conciousness such that we can recognize it only when it takes our form.
In the third novel, we are made aware of another leap in scale. The story takes place about ten thousand years in the future, and in this story we see the reincarnation of two characters we had seen in the preceeding novel. They are Isaac Dvali, the child who had been gestated and incubated with hypothetical technology, and Turk Findlay, the pilot who had been killed at the end of the second novel.
What Robert Charles Wilson does is continue to create fascinating new scenarios for human civilization. Now, humanity has used the arches to expand onto new worlds, forming a polity of worlds that are termed "cortical" democracies because they are dictated by rationality and debate. But we also have another intriguing alternative, which is the "limbic" civilization represented by Vox Central, a group of artificial islands whose citizens are networked by the implantation of nodes, and who share a common emotional and volitional consensus that is governed by what is called the "Choreophagus" (the "leader of the choir").
It is a collection of processes that helps to regulate the emotional stability of its citizens, and it was created to service a new theology that addresses an old need, that of reaching out and somehow establishing contact with entities that were personalized. It is a form of wish fulfillment for establishing literal contact with a Godhead, this being, of course, the Hypotheticals.
The story is interspersed with an episode that details an episode of conflict and unexplained revelation in the early period of human experience with the Spin mechanism. It is the story of Bose, a man who has suffered a tragic loss and who has taken the Martian biological treatment to become a "Fourth", Sandra, a psychologist at a state institution, and the vulnerable, angelic but also mysterious character of Orrin Mather, a man of humble background who is somehow transcribing a story of the far future, one that details the story of Turk and Andrea in the far future.
As is the case with all of Wilson's novels, we receive an intriguing combination of speculative and, at times, breathtaking description of evolving human society in the face of new approaches and discoveries, and an exciting story that directly illustrates how these discoveries are incorporated in a conflictive way into human consciousness. They are the same, eternal stories that have so compellingly formed a part of our cultural framework. Stories of societies in conflict, of social bonds that seem fragile, of mechanisms of compulsion as well as autonomy, and an intriguing thread that I have seen in various novels: that of the dangerous role of perverse theologies that seem like tools used by unscrupulous people to try to tyrannize human existance.
Such was the case with "Mysterium", the novel that won the Phillip K. Dick Memorial award over a decade ago, and details the existence of a parallel universe in which a theocratic institution modeled faintly on a repressive form of Catholocism held sway. Such was also in evidence in "The Chronoliths", an exciting mystery in which the appareance of gargantuan, monolithic monuments leads to the speculation about the end of the world and the possible advent of the parousia, leading to ever greater dislocations and an ever more fanatical religious group that is formed to exploit this uncertainty.
Religious authorities, because of their closed and hierarchical nature, always seem to be a source of conflict in Wilson's novels. In this case, we see such a rigid and paranoid entity in the members of Vox Central, and it points to the perception of and distrust of dogma that is in service to a prescribed end.
And this novel is also concerned with the end. In a breathtaking narration, after the human conflicts have been resolved, we see the evolution of the being known as Isaac Dvali, who becomes fully incorporated into the hypothetical network, attaining the considerable powers that have been accumulated by this process or ecology that can be described as archeological.
Isaac proceeds to the far future, and he narrates the evolution of a universe that is rapidly hurtling towards a strange ending, in which the expansion of the universe has been completed, and the bonds that held subatomic structures have dissolved. The future societies, and we do see societies and collective agencies with volition, are brought together and responses are evolved, and as such, we see a galaxy that resonates with cohesion (that cohesion that always seemed to escape human society), and in which new dimension are colonized, only to discover the existence of ever older and more powerful societies. Structure and consciousness pervades the universe even at the end of time, and the novel makes use as well of the "many worlds" speculative construct to offer a resolution to the mystery of how Orrin Mather had received this narration of the far future.
It is an ending that recalls Olaf Stapledon's seminal work, "Starmaker", and it points to a cosmology that is at both ends affirming and comforting but also, so to speak, apocalyptic. I use this term in accordance to the original meaning that refers to an "unveiling", but also consciously wish to suggest a religious aspect as well, the sense of culmination that would accompany religious ecstasy.
For Wilson's novel, ironic as it may be, also contrive to incorporate a religious experience of ecstasy that affirms the survival and the attainment of cohesion. Consciousness is celebrated, and it is breathtaking to see how this experience conforms to the contours of a out-of-body experience, quite literally in both "Starmaker" as well as "Vortex".
It is a celebration of consciousness and of the attainment of a supreme state of empathy that seems also, at times, because of problems of scale, to be oddly distant. We can imagine it, but it is hard to really incorporate it. We are beings of a much smaller scale, but the fact that we can imagine it, as well as imagine narratives in which humans in uncertain circumstances find common ground, serve to invest this novel as well as other works by Wilson with a moral and ethical grounding. And, as such, leads the reader to take into consideration the idea of a cosmology that is more personal, that is ethical and affirming rather than distant and cold, and that is, as such, a romantic conception.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Thursday, July 14, 2011
State of Shock
I had an accident as I was driving home on the freeway today. It was, as you may imagine, a shocking experience, and I still find myself in a trembling state, five hours after it happened.
It turns out that I decided to modify my routine. Instead of staying in my office I left for home after finishing my work. Little did I imagine what would happen.
As I was nearing a major interchange where two freeways cross, I had no cause to suspect that I was entering into a dangerous situation. Traffic had been bunching up at times, alternately moving smoothly and at high speed, then slowing down before clearing up again. It was frustrating, but nothing I hadn't seen in decades of driving on California freeways.
In this case, I was on a speedy portion, having moved to the fast lane where I normally don't drive (why, why, why did I switch to that lane?) when I passed a turn in the highway, underneath an overpass that obscured somewhat my sight. I then saw with intense alarm that cars seemed to be stopped in front of me. Why couldn't I have anticipated this slowdown? I am still berating myself over and over, having made assumptions that didn't apply about my lane and about my safety.
I had a sickening, sinking and panick-stricken sensation that I would not be able to avoid the collision with the car in front of me. There was no time to look to either side of me to look for a clearing, I just had time to hit the brakes desperately, knowing as I did that I could only hope to minimize the impact, not avoid it. The tires let out a loud squealing sound, and I smashed into the car in front of me, propelled her (it was a woman in that car) into the car in front of her. It was an incredible banging impact like a thunder clap, and of course I felt the impact and a moment of terror. My airbag inflated, cutting off my vision. I did stop, but the collision had been severe, and the front of the car was caved in.
I sat in my car which was now without power. It was still in drive, but it somehow lost power. There was a whiff of smoke that was coming out of the steering wheel, and I remember feeling an intense feeling of annoyance about the radio program that was still emanating from my speakers. It was just after the NPR program "Marketplace", before "All Things Considered", thus placing the time of this accident at approximately 3:30 p.m. I wasn't thinking clearly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that I could actually turn the radio off.
I was worried as well by an intense pain I was feeling in my chest. I thought I might have hit the steering wheel but, upon reflection sometime later, and after viewing my chest in the mirror, I saw that the seatbelt must have restrained me and created that sensation of pain. I still have the bruise in the shape of the seatbelt strap along my upper chest.
It was terrible. I sat in the car, incoherent and in a state of immobile vulnerability. I couldn't step out, and found myself wondering in annoyance why the highway patrol was taking so much time to arrive. I was also looking at the car I had rear-ended, stopped a few hundred yards in front of me, and I felt an intense sense of shame. How could I do this to that person?
I didn't move until I saw the driver in front of me stepping out of her car to walk towards me. It was dangerous because we were exposed to traffic and, as one may well confirm, California drivers will stop for no one. My door would not open completely but I managed to step out and walked towards her, and she asked how I was doing. I told her I was not well, and had the presence of mind to ask her as well if she was injured. She said she was fine, but she was trembling, and I could not overcome my sense of shame, something compounded by what she told me.
It turns out that she had seen me approaching, and knew I would collide with her. I told her that I came upon her car all of a sudden, and I couldn't stop. I just couldn't anticipate what had happened. How could it have happened?! That was my despairing question that was echoing over and over in my mind, and that wouldn't leave me in peace. It was that question as well as the intense wish that I had stayed in my office, where I would have found myself in a cool environment, without having caused this suffering.
It must have been terrible for her to see a car approaching from her rear window and know that she was about to be rear-ended. I wonder if she tensed up, awaiting the impact. That would have been the worst experience for anyone, seeing approaching calamit and knowing that you couldn't avoid it. When I was rear-ended by a semi-truck seven years ago, I didn't see it coming and the impact was sudden, jarring, but ultimately not as damaging as it could have been if I had tensed up. What happens is that injuries can be compounded by settling into a protective stance, thus sacrificing the flexibility that better allows us to absorb an impact.
She was trembling, and I was incoherent. I couldn't even remember the word for "air bag", much less offer an explanation. Our illusion, especially for people who have been educated, is that we will always be able to express ourselves when we need to. We are trained to communicate, but I was stammering and could only answer after considerable hesitation. I felt bad for her and the other driver.
It took a long time for the police to arrive. In the meantime there were immature drivers who would take photos from their windows as I waited in the car. One held out his camera phone and said, "Say cheese!" as he drove right by me. Of course, people are crude and indifferent, especially at moments in which others are in need. Have I ever been that insensitive? I hope I haven't, I sincerely hope I haven't, although I know and must acknowledge shamefully that I have been annoyed when I have seen traffic stoppages due to accidents. I gave little thought to the people who must have been suffering as I and the other drivers were suffering.
I was becoming more and more desperate as the minutes passed, and I managed to dig out my phone and call home. I talked to a family member and explained my predicament, shocking her. It seemed as if the patrol would never send a car. Traffic was proceeding slowly on either side of me, and I have to confess that I felt even more fear that a car would rear-end me as I had done to the car in front of me. I caused an incredible traffic jam, right at the beginning of the perpetual calamity that is rush hour on California freeways.
Eventually, a patrolman arrived and parked behind me. He told me to see if I could move the car, and I told him I didn't think it would start. He was patient and told me to try, something I hadn't done because of my state of mental confusion. To tell the truth, I was also afraid that my car might erupt in flames if I tried to operate it, given the whiffs of smoke coming out of the steering wheel. I put it in park and did as he told me. It did start, and while he cleared traffic in the adjacent lanes (stopping the oncoming cars), I moved to the side.
They took a report, and I waited for a tow truck. Note to self: I need to upgrade my AAA membership. I was only covered for 7 miles, and the distance to my house from the accident site was 21 miles. That left 14 miles for which I was responsible, and the tow truck driver charged $10 per mile. The charge was $140, when I could have had that coverage by paying an additional $20 to AAA. My regrets compound my misery.
I was able to talk to the other gentleman involved in the accident, the one whose car was rear-ended by the car that I hit. He was an elderly Hispanic man with blue eyes, and we spoke quietly. He saw how shocked I was, and he tried to comfort me. I felt terrible as well about the impact that he had suffered, but most of my shame was caused by the plight of the woman whose car I had directly hit. Her rear bumper had been detached from her car and was still stuck to the front of my car.
As the man said, at least we weren't severly injured. My chest was still hurting, and I still found myself in a web of despair and regret that was and is clouding my thoughts, although writing always helps to provide more clarity and comfort. He said that we were all still walking, and I felt a little better. If I could have apologized I would have,but I didn't have the sense of mind (nor the propiety) to do so. He looked at my totalled car and said, "It is all material", in Spanish. We spoke in that language.
In the end, the tow truck arrived and we hitched the car. I was still feeling despair and shame about the other drivers, and would have approached them again, especially the woman (either a Latina or an Asian) who I had hit. How can I apologize to them? I never saw her car until the last few seconds before the impact. How could I have missed it, and why, why, why didn't I stay at work and wait until 6:30 p.m. to drive home, as was my custom? I wish I had stayed there, and am still blaming myself.
If I had stayed in my office it would have, hopefully, been another uneventful afternoon. I didn't need to stay there, since I teach, and I only need to remain until I finish my office hours. I had finished, but decided not to remain reading and waiting in boredom on campus until rush hour had passed. I decided to try to make it home, and it had been an uneventful drive until that last stretch.
The thing is that I am having difficulty understanding the concept of an accident, an occurence that takes place and is utterly unanticipated. The fact is, we are all fragile beings, and none of us can handle all the unanticipated conditions that we encounter. That is the definition of an accident, an unforeseen circumstance or condition that impinges on our life and which we are not able to accomodate in a successful manner. I have to resist the temptation to be judgemental even though I know that I will be assuming responsability for this accident, from a legal framework and economic framework. (Well, insurance will cover me, but I will pay the cost in terms of premiums that will be raised.) This is an accident and I was unfortunate enough to encounter conditions that I couldn't handle. Yes, accidents involve a crushing sense of humiliation, as if I wasn't humble enough already.
I'm not trying to dodge blame, but part of me doesn't accept it. Is it a matter of fairness? Who can I appeal to? There is no cosmic authority to which I may address my complaint, no judge although it is ideologically comforting to believe that there will be a tribunal to which I may address my argument. I should be grateful that I wasn't maimed, and that the other drivers appeared not to be injured, but I feel a strange sense of impotence. I am forced to admit that I blame myself, and I am having a hard time trying to shake this crushing sensation.
My despair comes from asking what I could have done to avoid this situation. I wonder if everyone involved in an accident engages in this type of reflection. What if? I would be much safer if I had not done what I did, but how many calamities may have been incurred in other instances when I had acted differently? How many times have I counted myself fortunate by unanticipated luck? The answer is, many, many times. I've had many near-misses these past few years, and many moments of shock and panic when I though something would happen to me but it didn't. It isn't about karma, that concept of some cosmic balance that we can't avoid. It is about chance and accidents.
I'm still obsessed by the thought of how I could have avoided my misfortune. This is a useless exercise because we aren't accepting that it has already occurred and, therapeutically, the healthiest thing we can do is move on and resolve the problem, rather than engaging in this fantasy speculation about a world in which this misfortune hadn't occurred.
People do it all the time. What if I had only said those last words to a family member who passed away suddenly? What if I had checked a seat belt, or checked the stove, or verified some item of information before I left and found myself with a grave problem because of a supposed oversight?
That is what I am feeling at this point. The burden of shame, regret and what if.
It turns out that I decided to modify my routine. Instead of staying in my office I left for home after finishing my work. Little did I imagine what would happen.
As I was nearing a major interchange where two freeways cross, I had no cause to suspect that I was entering into a dangerous situation. Traffic had been bunching up at times, alternately moving smoothly and at high speed, then slowing down before clearing up again. It was frustrating, but nothing I hadn't seen in decades of driving on California freeways.
In this case, I was on a speedy portion, having moved to the fast lane where I normally don't drive (why, why, why did I switch to that lane?) when I passed a turn in the highway, underneath an overpass that obscured somewhat my sight. I then saw with intense alarm that cars seemed to be stopped in front of me. Why couldn't I have anticipated this slowdown? I am still berating myself over and over, having made assumptions that didn't apply about my lane and about my safety.
I had a sickening, sinking and panick-stricken sensation that I would not be able to avoid the collision with the car in front of me. There was no time to look to either side of me to look for a clearing, I just had time to hit the brakes desperately, knowing as I did that I could only hope to minimize the impact, not avoid it. The tires let out a loud squealing sound, and I smashed into the car in front of me, propelled her (it was a woman in that car) into the car in front of her. It was an incredible banging impact like a thunder clap, and of course I felt the impact and a moment of terror. My airbag inflated, cutting off my vision. I did stop, but the collision had been severe, and the front of the car was caved in.
I sat in my car which was now without power. It was still in drive, but it somehow lost power. There was a whiff of smoke that was coming out of the steering wheel, and I remember feeling an intense feeling of annoyance about the radio program that was still emanating from my speakers. It was just after the NPR program "Marketplace", before "All Things Considered", thus placing the time of this accident at approximately 3:30 p.m. I wasn't thinking clearly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that I could actually turn the radio off.
I was worried as well by an intense pain I was feeling in my chest. I thought I might have hit the steering wheel but, upon reflection sometime later, and after viewing my chest in the mirror, I saw that the seatbelt must have restrained me and created that sensation of pain. I still have the bruise in the shape of the seatbelt strap along my upper chest.
It was terrible. I sat in the car, incoherent and in a state of immobile vulnerability. I couldn't step out, and found myself wondering in annoyance why the highway patrol was taking so much time to arrive. I was also looking at the car I had rear-ended, stopped a few hundred yards in front of me, and I felt an intense sense of shame. How could I do this to that person?
I didn't move until I saw the driver in front of me stepping out of her car to walk towards me. It was dangerous because we were exposed to traffic and, as one may well confirm, California drivers will stop for no one. My door would not open completely but I managed to step out and walked towards her, and she asked how I was doing. I told her I was not well, and had the presence of mind to ask her as well if she was injured. She said she was fine, but she was trembling, and I could not overcome my sense of shame, something compounded by what she told me.
It turns out that she had seen me approaching, and knew I would collide with her. I told her that I came upon her car all of a sudden, and I couldn't stop. I just couldn't anticipate what had happened. How could it have happened?! That was my despairing question that was echoing over and over in my mind, and that wouldn't leave me in peace. It was that question as well as the intense wish that I had stayed in my office, where I would have found myself in a cool environment, without having caused this suffering.
It must have been terrible for her to see a car approaching from her rear window and know that she was about to be rear-ended. I wonder if she tensed up, awaiting the impact. That would have been the worst experience for anyone, seeing approaching calamit and knowing that you couldn't avoid it. When I was rear-ended by a semi-truck seven years ago, I didn't see it coming and the impact was sudden, jarring, but ultimately not as damaging as it could have been if I had tensed up. What happens is that injuries can be compounded by settling into a protective stance, thus sacrificing the flexibility that better allows us to absorb an impact.
She was trembling, and I was incoherent. I couldn't even remember the word for "air bag", much less offer an explanation. Our illusion, especially for people who have been educated, is that we will always be able to express ourselves when we need to. We are trained to communicate, but I was stammering and could only answer after considerable hesitation. I felt bad for her and the other driver.
It took a long time for the police to arrive. In the meantime there were immature drivers who would take photos from their windows as I waited in the car. One held out his camera phone and said, "Say cheese!" as he drove right by me. Of course, people are crude and indifferent, especially at moments in which others are in need. Have I ever been that insensitive? I hope I haven't, I sincerely hope I haven't, although I know and must acknowledge shamefully that I have been annoyed when I have seen traffic stoppages due to accidents. I gave little thought to the people who must have been suffering as I and the other drivers were suffering.
I was becoming more and more desperate as the minutes passed, and I managed to dig out my phone and call home. I talked to a family member and explained my predicament, shocking her. It seemed as if the patrol would never send a car. Traffic was proceeding slowly on either side of me, and I have to confess that I felt even more fear that a car would rear-end me as I had done to the car in front of me. I caused an incredible traffic jam, right at the beginning of the perpetual calamity that is rush hour on California freeways.
Eventually, a patrolman arrived and parked behind me. He told me to see if I could move the car, and I told him I didn't think it would start. He was patient and told me to try, something I hadn't done because of my state of mental confusion. To tell the truth, I was also afraid that my car might erupt in flames if I tried to operate it, given the whiffs of smoke coming out of the steering wheel. I put it in park and did as he told me. It did start, and while he cleared traffic in the adjacent lanes (stopping the oncoming cars), I moved to the side.
They took a report, and I waited for a tow truck. Note to self: I need to upgrade my AAA membership. I was only covered for 7 miles, and the distance to my house from the accident site was 21 miles. That left 14 miles for which I was responsible, and the tow truck driver charged $10 per mile. The charge was $140, when I could have had that coverage by paying an additional $20 to AAA. My regrets compound my misery.
I was able to talk to the other gentleman involved in the accident, the one whose car was rear-ended by the car that I hit. He was an elderly Hispanic man with blue eyes, and we spoke quietly. He saw how shocked I was, and he tried to comfort me. I felt terrible as well about the impact that he had suffered, but most of my shame was caused by the plight of the woman whose car I had directly hit. Her rear bumper had been detached from her car and was still stuck to the front of my car.
As the man said, at least we weren't severly injured. My chest was still hurting, and I still found myself in a web of despair and regret that was and is clouding my thoughts, although writing always helps to provide more clarity and comfort. He said that we were all still walking, and I felt a little better. If I could have apologized I would have,but I didn't have the sense of mind (nor the propiety) to do so. He looked at my totalled car and said, "It is all material", in Spanish. We spoke in that language.
In the end, the tow truck arrived and we hitched the car. I was still feeling despair and shame about the other drivers, and would have approached them again, especially the woman (either a Latina or an Asian) who I had hit. How can I apologize to them? I never saw her car until the last few seconds before the impact. How could I have missed it, and why, why, why didn't I stay at work and wait until 6:30 p.m. to drive home, as was my custom? I wish I had stayed there, and am still blaming myself.
If I had stayed in my office it would have, hopefully, been another uneventful afternoon. I didn't need to stay there, since I teach, and I only need to remain until I finish my office hours. I had finished, but decided not to remain reading and waiting in boredom on campus until rush hour had passed. I decided to try to make it home, and it had been an uneventful drive until that last stretch.
The thing is that I am having difficulty understanding the concept of an accident, an occurence that takes place and is utterly unanticipated. The fact is, we are all fragile beings, and none of us can handle all the unanticipated conditions that we encounter. That is the definition of an accident, an unforeseen circumstance or condition that impinges on our life and which we are not able to accomodate in a successful manner. I have to resist the temptation to be judgemental even though I know that I will be assuming responsability for this accident, from a legal framework and economic framework. (Well, insurance will cover me, but I will pay the cost in terms of premiums that will be raised.) This is an accident and I was unfortunate enough to encounter conditions that I couldn't handle. Yes, accidents involve a crushing sense of humiliation, as if I wasn't humble enough already.
I'm not trying to dodge blame, but part of me doesn't accept it. Is it a matter of fairness? Who can I appeal to? There is no cosmic authority to which I may address my complaint, no judge although it is ideologically comforting to believe that there will be a tribunal to which I may address my argument. I should be grateful that I wasn't maimed, and that the other drivers appeared not to be injured, but I feel a strange sense of impotence. I am forced to admit that I blame myself, and I am having a hard time trying to shake this crushing sensation.
My despair comes from asking what I could have done to avoid this situation. I wonder if everyone involved in an accident engages in this type of reflection. What if? I would be much safer if I had not done what I did, but how many calamities may have been incurred in other instances when I had acted differently? How many times have I counted myself fortunate by unanticipated luck? The answer is, many, many times. I've had many near-misses these past few years, and many moments of shock and panic when I though something would happen to me but it didn't. It isn't about karma, that concept of some cosmic balance that we can't avoid. It is about chance and accidents.
I'm still obsessed by the thought of how I could have avoided my misfortune. This is a useless exercise because we aren't accepting that it has already occurred and, therapeutically, the healthiest thing we can do is move on and resolve the problem, rather than engaging in this fantasy speculation about a world in which this misfortune hadn't occurred.
People do it all the time. What if I had only said those last words to a family member who passed away suddenly? What if I had checked a seat belt, or checked the stove, or verified some item of information before I left and found myself with a grave problem because of a supposed oversight?
That is what I am feeling at this point. The burden of shame, regret and what if.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Masks and the lack of restraint
The idea of the face as the focus of identity is one that is pervasive. As a species we are programmed genetically for facial recognition, and the face seems to be the chief medium whereby we read the interiority (the identity) of the others whom we encounter. We find comfort in the detection of a familiar pattern, even though there is nothing intrinsically truthful about the face. In a sense, one can understand the ancient Greek impulse to rely on stylized masks in their drama to portray emotions and states, and not on the feigned realism of a face that is just another emblem of a changing reality, one that all too often misleads.
In this case, the chief character is one who finds himself facing a profound psychological crisis as he reflect on what it means not to have a face any longer. It isn't necessarily that he is lacking in a mouth or nose or lips or ears, it is only that he has been horribly disfigured and can no longer aspire to the anonymity that any typical individual enjoys when venturing out into a crowd. His disfigurement is such that he must need wrap his head in bandanges in order to venture out, thus drawing attention to the full scope of his tragic situation. He will be going through a pretense of interacting with others and continuing with a normal routine that is abundantly evident to him by the nature of the reactions that he provokes. Everyone seems to evade his look, and they become glum or unnaturally cheerful, patronizing or sympathic, refusing to say what they must undoubtedly feel: repulsion and fear. He has become hidden under the swathe of bandages, and he is thus a figure of pity as well as a threat.
He undertakes to acquire a new "face" by visiting a doctor who proceeds to manufacture one for him. This doctor seems all too easily seduced by the prospect of working with such a patient, for he is a psychologist who is furthermore given to philosophy. He recognizes this as a unique opportunity to test out his theories about social bonding and about how identity is, ultimately, an ephemeral characteristic. Everything is flux, and thus identity is momentarily stabilized precisely by the assumption of masks, those masks that escape detection but that are nonetheless pervasive. This mask implies a role, and the mask will dictate changes in the character of his patient. After all, the "ghost", so to speak, is in need of a material medium.
After manufacturing this mask, we do indeed see these changes manifest themselves in the protagonist. He is, if anything, more alienated than before, and we see this as well in the way the lighting of the film evolves. It seems now to take a stage-like character in which spotlights seem to pick out the character and follow him, and in which the we see this hidden dynamic of removal as well as assumption. The character supposedly will undertake a trip away from his home, but will instead rent an apartment, and he will venture in and out in excursions in which he assumes his mask and becomes ever more frenetic and unrestrained in his actions. The mask is removable and, after all, the parable at the heart of this story is that ethics as well as identity are also similarly assumed qualities, a currency of exchange that is rootless in the same way that he has become.
It is inevitable that he will succumb to violent impulses, for he feels the growing power of artifice, of the mask that takes over his life, as the psychologist predicted it would. It leads to self-destructive impulses, for it is leading to a frenetic search for constancy and moral grounding, and when he proceeds to "seduce" his wife using his new guise, he crosses a boundary that she is unable to accept.
It is notable as well that there is another secondary story in this movie, an episode involving a woman who is horribly disfigured in half of her face, and thus presents a Janus visage to the world. She is both unbearably beautiful (on her unblemished side) as well as horribly ugly, and she is also struggling to maintain a fixed social role in her society. In the end, she will seduce her brother and drive him to torment, while giving in as well to her self-destructive impulses as she submerges herself in the ocean in the final scene of the film.
The film, thus, constitutes an investigation character, ethics and the illusion of identity. Are we indeed condemned to a mask-like identity, without any hope of being able to express what we would like to imagine is a stable, authentic self? The self has been under attack during much of the 20th century, after all, with the rise of psychoanalysis, structuralism, communism and narrative theory, among many other schools of thought, but in this film we see what would seem to be a parable of despair, in which the characters seem to implode as they reflect the emptiness and the violence that they seem, incomprehensibly, to harbor. It feels like a very modern film despite the fact that it was released over forty years ago, and it reflects many of the anxieties of our modern age.
After all, who can stand to look at their reflection in the mirror for more than a few minutes before feeling an asfixiating sense of bewilderment and estrangement?
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Korean War a la Spielberg
It was, so to speak, a film that exemplified the Spielberg mode of manufacture, and it recalled the blockbusters of old such as the classic "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" that I remember watching as a child in the 1970s. Indeed, I had the overwhelming sense that I had seen this film before, and it did seem to shamelessly refer to its model, which was the Spielberg classic from the early 90s, "Saving Private Ryan".
This film was thus in many ways a conventional historical drama, but it was driven by a current mode that seems to afllict not only South Korea but also many of the developed countries that have accepted Western values. It seems to be responding to a yearning for cohesion, for the recapturing of a grand sense of mission that seems to be lacking and that is becoming accentuated in a bewildering period in which we see the rise of new superpowers. South Korean politics is fully as combative if not more so than American politics, and across the ocean we have received news from time to time of scandals that seem to recur with astonishing regularity and which indicate the lack of a vital consensus.
Yes, South Korea would seem to be almost as perpetually gridlocked as the United States, and we hear about scandals that touch the lives of famous politicians, leading indeed to the suicide of a previous Prime Minister who was accused of some form of conflict of interest. While not descending to the depths of the theatrical Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, a mercurial personality that Italy can't seem to "quit", if I may echo the words of the lonesome cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain", we do have the portrait of an unsettling state of affairs in which deals are negociated in a callous manner that ends up having harmful consequences.
We are no strangers to that here in the United States. For the past few weeks we have been bombarded by the news regarding the impass that seems to characterize negociations over the authorization of an increased debt limit. The consequences would be disastrous, according to Tim Geitner, and yet the Republicans in the House of Representatives are blinded by ideology and refuse to compromise. It seems as if the Ayatollas of the Right, such as Grover Norquist and his sacred text (the "Anti-Tax" pledge that he forced many Republicans to sign) are holding steadfast, and there is no appeal to reason. Morning after morning I hear the news and I feel disgust, and I yearn for a period when we were not so polarized, and in which there wasn't this pervasive sense of gridlock, demonization and the fear of an unknown threat that all sides invoke.
In the case of Korea, these threats assume a very visible shape. They are embodied by the unholy spectre of a dangerous and threatening North Korea, that pariah dictatorship ruled by a tinpot figure who insists on resorting to bluster in order to assert his demands. The economy of the Hermit Kingdom is in a state of meltdown and the prospect of mass starvation seems all too real and yet the regime engages in showdown (like the budget showdown in Congress but with real ammunition) that seem destined to bring about a real calamity.
That toxic dynasty to the north, bolstered as it is by the emerging superpower of the 21st century that is China, is in the midst of a dynastic succesion. North Korea has not of the economic vitality of China but has all the foreboding totalitarian impulses of a Cold War regime that lives under the perceived threat of attack, and this is fueling further conflict in the Korean penninsula, one that has repercussions in the domestic politics of the South, as well as in the perceptions and values of its people.
Thus, perhaps, it is possible to speculate that this wartime epic is fueled by an appetite for resolution that takes the form of ideological clarity. The muddle that is the penninsula, with two hostile countries that face off in a permanent standoff that is punctuated by episodes of war (such as the sinking of the South Korean ship and the bombing of an island) underlies the need to investigate questions of identity and of what, precisely, constitutes a family. We have, thus, an epic about two brothers who go to war and who manage to resolve, albeit in a painful way, some of these differences. It is a wish for reconciliation when politics offers no recourse for action other than to continue with an intractable belligerent stand.
From the very beginning the film felt oddly disjointed and incongruous. We open up to an urban setting in which people are bustling about in a stage that seems all too perfect. There is none of the grit and grime that one would expect to see in a poor country. We have, instead, a lens that is idealized and that softens the portrayal of these people, divesting them of any hard edges. The people seem to be quite evidently actors in a period piece, and we have the thoroughly unconvincing portrayal of two brothers by actors who have a physical aspect that is thoroughly at odds with the conditions one would expect to hold during this moment.
The elder brother who is a shiner of shoes is walking along happily in the middle of the street and seems to have none of the physical afflictions of the poor. He has a perfect skintone, has movie-star good looks, and he is furthermore a tall, rangy and athletic young man whose comportment would seem to suggest more an athlete or music idol than a poor South Korean from a period in which the nation was emerging from the brutal experience of Japanese colonialism.
The younger brother is a avid scholar who is seen returning from school, and he hears the cries of his brother, and echos them in a playful scene in which there is much calling to each other. This younger brother also seems to have been unscathed by poverty and all too obviously conforms to the stereotype of the student who has a promising future, being awkward but nonetheless very sincere. He may not know how to fight but he is defined by good sentiments, and is a little too innocent.
We have, thus, a study in opposites, where we are presented with two brothers who are meant to suggest the poles of an average Korean family. The tragedies that they have lived through and that have resulted in a deceased father and a mother who is unable to talk are conveniently glossed over, and we would seem to have a relatively stable family unit. Perhaps those details would have been too inconvenient or distracting, for this is meant to be a fable for the nation, in which pains are taken to demonstrate that the values (the loyalty, commitment and affection) that characterizes them is somehow emblematic of an entire nation before it is engulfed by the war. Even the announcement of the first conflict doesn't seem to worry the characters who smugly predict a short conflict in which the South will win. Was the existance of the North only a foreign intervention, such as the painful epoch of Japanese colonialism? Were they ever as truly unified as this film would purport to demonstrate?
The grit and realism of a true historical piece is ultimately superfluous here, although a stable of characters conformed by gruff and memorable characters will ultimately be presented. This too, seems to be a formula necessary for an military epic, and we are meant to see how another family unit will be formed on the front lines as these characters face the dangers of war. We are meant to feel empathy for these characters, and we know full well that many of these secondary characters will meet gruesome ends. And it is indeed a film about bonding and about unity, a wish fulfillment that alludes to the perception of the precise lack or threat to these values from the contemporary perspective of the film makers. It is a product emanating from suburbia but wishing somehow to cauterize the contemporary wound by a temporal displacement to the past, a displacement that has long been superseeded by the economic transformation of South Korea.
The ending was thoroughly predictable, and the motivations of the characters somehow seemed much too pure and, somehow, uniform. There was little of a sense of evolution, of events that changed the perception of these characters, even in the face of repeated scenes of death and dismemberment. One brother, he of the glamour idol looks, is trying to protect the younger one, and in the process he discovers something about himself, a message that seems astonishingly contemporary: he actually craves attention.
The elder brother has the looks and he want to conform to the role of a star, and if he needs to fulfill the role of a hero while justifying it as an attempt to protect his brother, then he will do so craftily. He seems to have entered into an ethereal realm in which bombs and bullets don't touch him, and in which he is seemingly impervious. He is the star, isn't he? Reality can't touch him for it is all illusion, and perhaps this constitutes the true scope of the madness that seems to be affecting much of contemporary life in the modern, developed world. We are all seduced by fiction, and we believe in the power of narratives of fulfillment and accomplishment, but we seem hardly to appreciate that we can't all aspire to these neat Hollywood endings. Reality will intervene although in this film, the story is resolved along the lines of precisely this type of Spielberg ending, and a wistful and tragic reunification is achieved but at a cost.
This madness affects both brothers and drives them ever further apart. The house divided cannot stand, and it is inevitable that there will be a break, some action or episode that will symbolize the loss of cohesion and interrupt the fantasy that is being presented. In the end, the elder brother will be traumatized by an episode in which his fiancee is accused of being a communist and is killed, and he will join the other side, giving way to a renewed frenzy of destruction. The perception of illustion tends to have that effect upon those who have been summarily awoken from their dream.
This was, then, a movie that was formulated from a suburban, relentlessly prosperous and commercial vantage point meant to ennoble what was a much more complex and ambiguous historical episode. This was the war as imagined and filmed by a Korean version of Steven Spielberg, and as such, it was given over to spectacle and cheap emotional manipulation under the guise of a true historical piece. One suspects that the problem of unity will continue to haunt the Koreans for the foreseable future, and will find expression in other similar cultural products.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Friday, July 1, 2011
Capitalism and its Discontents (Giants & Toys)
There is a long-standing line of cultural products that critique capitalism and the changes that are wrought in the cultural values of the populace. Once can certainly say that there is nothing incendiary or truly revolutionary about them. Dissent has become commodified and channeled, and it is possible to say that this is precisely the way in which it becomes shorn of any potential for true change. Hegemony reasserts itself by this exercise in which free speech is manifest, but any real mechanism for change never moves foreword. How can it, when it has become so deeply institutionalized?
After seeing this Japanese film from 1958, directed by Yasuko Masumura, I wasn't particularly impressed by the message. It is part of what we all know about how traditional codes are supplanted by capitalist values, and in the 1950s, as Japan was taking off economically, it was inevitable that such a film should appear. These issues of how capitalist values distort traditional codes of behavior and serve to undermine the collective ethos of harmony as well as personal codes of honor strike one as old and rather out-dated. I wonder at times how this film and others such as Akira Kurosawa's suspense thriller "High and Low" (from the same era) might have affected the public at the time. Did it strike them with a shocking force of ice-cold condemnation?
In this film we have the saga of a young and idealistic advertising agent (Nishi) who works for a firm (World Caramels) that manufactures candy. They are in competition with two other firms, Giant and Apollo, and they strike desperately to come up with the most effective advertising campaign to corner the market. The film strikes one with a certain innocence, especially with regards to the motives of the agent, who admires the decisiveness of his ruthless chief, Mr. Goda, but who also becomes progressively disenchanted with the detritus of a culture that manufactures and discards human capital. In this case, this "capital" will take the form of a poor, lower-class teenager by the name of Kyoko Shim, she of the bad teeth and the childish manners who will become a spokemodel for the quality that a company such as his seeks to associate with their product, which is innocence and irrepressability.
It is inevitable that Kyoko will be consumed by this culture, and will be transformed into yet another conniving character. Innocence has no chance in this business, and it must be said, in any business. That is not the nature of modern-day capitalism, and even as these campaigns have been transformed to expouse a new form of social concern and preocuppation for ecological sustainability (think for example, of Starbucks), these are self-concious campaigns that proceed from a need to influence consumers into believing that their patronage is part of a grander humanitarian gesture. It is a false gesture, nonetheless, and this cynicism has been deeply ingrained in many of us.
Inevitable the whole scheme will devolve into a catastrophe where the shortcoming of desperate capitalism and faith in the advertising medium will be challenged. The factory of one of their rivals, the one with the better campaign (a "subsidized life from crade to marriage" contest) burns to the ground, and World Caramels is unable to capitalize on this temporary absence. The market cannot be relentlessly expanded, as is the expectation and item of faith of all fervent capitalists, and sales are on the verge of plummeting. And this precipitates as well a moment of crisis where Nishi is able to appreciate how human values have been systematically subverted by the need for illusion. His admiration for Mr. Goda will suffer, becoming as evident at the blood that his mentor coughs up under the pressure he finds himself.
Nishi tries to remain true to his convictions, and can't force himself to become another human cog. He is cynically told to seduce the young spokesmodel his chief discovered and molded, only to behold how she has become as self-serving and conniving as any of his colleagues who work at the other competing firms and who have chosen to betray his personal confidence in order to further their own career. The model herself, Kyoko, hardly resembles the young and defenceless urchin we had seen in the beginning, and she herself recognizes this in a scene towards the end.
Perhaps the meaning of this film is most powerfully transmitted in the final scene, where Nishi is forced to take up the mantle from his fallen idol, the incapacitated Mr. Goda. He will be forced to don the costume of a spaceman who will be hawking caramel, and he does it with a bitter expression that elicits laughter from the public at a big commercial event, until he is told by his sometime lover and competitor to smile as he sells his honor and dignity. And he does, walking through the crowded streets with a toy space gun, having given in to the dictates of this new commercial society. He has, so to speak, left the planet and the values he recognized, to now live in a realm that is, ironically, less ethereal than he had hoped.
Mr. Goda presents his views about how publicity and advertising constitute modes of control.
Mr. Goda reveals a willingness to break sacred family bonds by confronting and critiquing the chief of advertising, a man who tellingly is his father-in-law. Mr. Goda is an intensely arrogant and ambitious individual, recalling Gorden Gekko from Oliver Stone's 1980s film, "Wall Street".
Nishi, the idealistic advertising agent, and his lover from a competing company who tries to convince him about the necessity of the new values that accompany modern capitalist society.
The transformed spokemodel, Kyoko, who is no longer an exploitable, lower-class girl, but has become suffused with a sense of her power, even if it is doomed to be temporary.
Mr. Goda, in his desperation, demands that Nishi seduce Kyoko. He resists, although he makes a token effort to do so.
The dance of modern capitalism, likened to another spectacle of desperate competition and adversity. It is the new "Law of the Jungle".
After seeing this Japanese film from 1958, directed by Yasuko Masumura, I wasn't particularly impressed by the message. It is part of what we all know about how traditional codes are supplanted by capitalist values, and in the 1950s, as Japan was taking off economically, it was inevitable that such a film should appear. These issues of how capitalist values distort traditional codes of behavior and serve to undermine the collective ethos of harmony as well as personal codes of honor strike one as old and rather out-dated. I wonder at times how this film and others such as Akira Kurosawa's suspense thriller "High and Low" (from the same era) might have affected the public at the time. Did it strike them with a shocking force of ice-cold condemnation?
In this film we have the saga of a young and idealistic advertising agent (Nishi) who works for a firm (World Caramels) that manufactures candy. They are in competition with two other firms, Giant and Apollo, and they strike desperately to come up with the most effective advertising campaign to corner the market. The film strikes one with a certain innocence, especially with regards to the motives of the agent, who admires the decisiveness of his ruthless chief, Mr. Goda, but who also becomes progressively disenchanted with the detritus of a culture that manufactures and discards human capital. In this case, this "capital" will take the form of a poor, lower-class teenager by the name of Kyoko Shim, she of the bad teeth and the childish manners who will become a spokemodel for the quality that a company such as his seeks to associate with their product, which is innocence and irrepressability.
It is inevitable that Kyoko will be consumed by this culture, and will be transformed into yet another conniving character. Innocence has no chance in this business, and it must be said, in any business. That is not the nature of modern-day capitalism, and even as these campaigns have been transformed to expouse a new form of social concern and preocuppation for ecological sustainability (think for example, of Starbucks), these are self-concious campaigns that proceed from a need to influence consumers into believing that their patronage is part of a grander humanitarian gesture. It is a false gesture, nonetheless, and this cynicism has been deeply ingrained in many of us.
Inevitable the whole scheme will devolve into a catastrophe where the shortcoming of desperate capitalism and faith in the advertising medium will be challenged. The factory of one of their rivals, the one with the better campaign (a "subsidized life from crade to marriage" contest) burns to the ground, and World Caramels is unable to capitalize on this temporary absence. The market cannot be relentlessly expanded, as is the expectation and item of faith of all fervent capitalists, and sales are on the verge of plummeting. And this precipitates as well a moment of crisis where Nishi is able to appreciate how human values have been systematically subverted by the need for illusion. His admiration for Mr. Goda will suffer, becoming as evident at the blood that his mentor coughs up under the pressure he finds himself.
Nishi tries to remain true to his convictions, and can't force himself to become another human cog. He is cynically told to seduce the young spokesmodel his chief discovered and molded, only to behold how she has become as self-serving and conniving as any of his colleagues who work at the other competing firms and who have chosen to betray his personal confidence in order to further their own career. The model herself, Kyoko, hardly resembles the young and defenceless urchin we had seen in the beginning, and she herself recognizes this in a scene towards the end.
Perhaps the meaning of this film is most powerfully transmitted in the final scene, where Nishi is forced to take up the mantle from his fallen idol, the incapacitated Mr. Goda. He will be forced to don the costume of a spaceman who will be hawking caramel, and he does it with a bitter expression that elicits laughter from the public at a big commercial event, until he is told by his sometime lover and competitor to smile as he sells his honor and dignity. And he does, walking through the crowded streets with a toy space gun, having given in to the dictates of this new commercial society. He has, so to speak, left the planet and the values he recognized, to now live in a realm that is, ironically, less ethereal than he had hoped.
Mr. Goda presents his views about how publicity and advertising constitute modes of control.
The dance of modern capitalism, likened to another spectacle of desperate competition and adversity. It is the new "Law of the Jungle".
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011
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