The Matrix: Reloaded
by Diana Walsh-Pasulka
Universsty of North Carolina, Wilmington
Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix: Reloaded
Vol. 7, No. 2 October 2003
The Matrix: Reloaded
[1] If there were a postmodern messiah, Neo, the protagonist of The Matrix: Reloaded, would surely be it. The Matrix and its sequel The Matrix: Reloaded, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, are an eclectic mix of Gnostic Christian and Buddhist elements mixed with postmodern reflection, most notably that of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Religious symbolism is what accounts, in part, for The Matrixs massive appeal. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is the One, potentially a savior for the human race. In the first movie he endures a series of transformations in which he awakens, dies and is resurrected as the deliverer of the human race who is at war against an insidious conglomerate of smart computers, or artificial intelligence. The matrix is a program created by these computers, and is somewhat like a mass movie that the whole human race is plugged into and by which it is deceived. Neo is charged with the destiny of waking people up to this deception and to the fact that there is a real world outside of the matrix. Many critics have identified parallels between the movie, Buddhism and Christianity, concluding that the movie seems like an old story revived in contemporary, cyber punk clothes.
[2] Reloaded, however, defies this simple assessment. If the first movie posits a dual-world reality, one in which there is a real world over against one of false representations, the second movie questions this assumption. As Neo penetrates the many levels of the matrix, he finds that the very idea of a messiah may actually be programmed. Determinism vs. free will is examined in light of Neos awakening, which in the first movie was portrayed as an act of freedom. Reloaded questions the very notion of freedom, as well as the dual construction of a real world vs. a world of illusion.
[3] This issue is dramatized in a scene in which Neo is confronted with the realization that the teleology on which the movie is based, the salvation of humankind from evil computers and false representations, is perhaps itself another false representation. If this is the case, there would be no free will, something Neo realizes in a horrifying instant. This is a shocking moment in the movie, as the audience has so far been following a salvation narrative typical of many Hollywood movies. The Wachowski brothers, however, do not simply deliver what the audience wants, or expects. An implicit criticism of traditional religious teleology--the notion of progress and ultimate salvation--runs throughout this film. On another level this film serves to complicate the formulaic adaptations of religious and mythic elements that have permeated Hollywood films since the 1970s. There is no easy summation of this film into clear religious categories, unless one termed the film a koan, or a performative paradox, meant to tease the audience into active thought.
[4] Reloaded tackles head-on the premise of the first movie, which is the notion of salvation. What is the meaning of salvation if it is pre-programmed, and of a savior, if he is part of a computer template? These questions and others are pondered in sporadic dialogues interspersed with spectacular action scenes, the combination of which makes this movie unique. Just before Neo embarks on his journey to overthrow the offending computers and save a small portion of humankind who are freed from the matrix and living in a city in the middle of the earth (aptly named Zion), he reflects on the nature of technology with the counselor, (Anthony Zerbe). The counselor questions the irony of humankinds dependence on machines and computers, which generate the basic conveniences of modern life, while in the midst of a war with wayward computers. Neo claims that the difference is that the computers they use can be turned off, which is not true of the offending computers. The counselor, however, has the last word. Can we turn our computers off?
[5] Beyond notions of freedom and determinism, the film reflects on the moral issues involving mass production and technology. There are blatant references to Baudrillards work, which is a criticism of contemporary representation. Whereas in modern times images were thought to represent something real or tangible, in the present (postmodern) era images, or simulacrum, bear no resemblance to reality at all. The appeal of The Matrix: Reloaded is that it posits these abstract concepts through the medium of dynamic action science fiction, which makes it a movie for everyone. The critique of representation is illustrated in a real way through the costumes of the characters. In Zion, the humans freed from the matrix don multiculturally diverse garb, from retro 60s to saris to Buddhist-style robes, whereas those still in the matrix look like contemporary Westerners. The contrast is telling, perhaps, of the overall message of the Matrix trilogy. The good guys are critical of technology and yearn for a more traditional connection to the earth and reality.
[6] While utilizing religious themes of resurrection and salvation, Reloaded nonetheless subjects these concepts to interrogation, and thoroughly entertains its audience at the same time. Neo is not a modern savior, confident in his status and destiny, but rather a postmodern messiah, unsure, confused, eminently sympathetic.
Robot Heavens and Robot Dreams:
Ultimate Reality in A.I. and Other Recent Films
by Frances Flannery-Dailey
Hendrix College
Vol. 7 No. 2 October 2003
Robot Heavens and Robot Dreams:
Ultimate Reality in A.I. and Other Recent Films
by Frances Flannery-Dailey
Hendrix College
Abstract
[1] Numerous recent films understand ultimate reality to be multi-layered. This article examines the various formulas films use to express this idea, such as heaven, dreams, technology, temporal loops and altered mental states, while also exploring the various religious and philosophical traditions on which these ultimate reality films draw. Next, I suggest a postmodern framework as a way of accounting for the ubiquity of the reality theme across filmic genres and I argue that film is a unique medium for expressing this epistemology. Finally, I turn to an extensive analysis of A.I. as a case study of a postmodern, multivalent ultimate reality film and illuminate nine possible endings that combine myth, religion, Freud and Jung with themes of technology and ontological identity.
Article
[2] Every age has its anxieties. Ours has produced a particular shade of angst, one colored by apocalyptic fervor over the millennium as well as by postmodern specters that have crystallized in the last century like never before in history. We are now on familiar grounds with terrorism, war fought with weapons of mass destruction, worldwide environmental devastation, rampant consumerism, technological advancement without ethics, and globalism without community. Whether an attempt to foster escapism or to offer a genuine solution, Hollywood has responded with a particular epistemological answer: this material world of suffering that we perceive is not the only world. Drawing on an array of both Eastern and Western religious and philosophical traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Neo-Manichean dualism, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Descartes mind / body dualism, and Jewish Kabbalah several recent cinematic releases articulate an understanding of true reality as a multi-layered one, sometimes with and sometimes without an identifiable ultimate level.
[3] In the article that follows, I argue this orienting (or disorienting) worldview of a multi-layered reality lies at the core of numerous recent films, although the formulas for articulating the scheme vary widely.1 I further submit that although many of the films draw on ancient religious and philosophical themes to express this notion, at its root, the cinematic focus on questions of ultimate reality constitutes a postmodern response to a troubling period of modern progress. I also suggest that film is a uniquely qualified medium for expressing this cosmology. Finally, I explore A.I. as an illustration of intelligent, postmodern myth-making that constructs a multi-layered reality by interweaving dreaming, technology, ontological confusion, non-linear time, religion and myth.
Formulas for Ultimate Reality
[4] Depending on the film at hand, the formula for what constitutes ultimate reality varies, as does the mechanism for accessing alternate levels. A short illustrative survey of the presence of these themes in thirty films, mostly from around the turn of the millennium, suffices to demonstrate the pervasiveness of these notions in recent cinema.
[5] Several films frame reality as untrustworthy from within the subjective vantage point of the human mind, as in Fight Club (1999), Memento (2000), Minority Report (2002), Waking Life (2001) and Vanilla Sky (2001). In these cases, the gateway to accessing another reality could be mental illness (Fight Club), mental defect (Memento) or dream states (Minority Report, Waking Life and Vanilla Sky). Other films present ultimate or alternate planes of existence in a more literal fashion. In Pleasantville (1998), a television and a deus ex machina Don Knotts facilitate entry into a parallel sitcom universe, while in Dark City aliens conspire to keep a group of humans imprisoned in a false world which repeatedly changes while they are asleep (cf. The Truman Show [1999] and EDtv [1999]). In time-travel films such as Kate and Leopold (2001)2 and the remake The Time Machine (2002), technology offers a way into our world set in another time, which thus becomes another world. The theme also pervades childrens films: Monsters, Inc. (2001)3 explains that closet doors are really portals into another dimension filled with capitalist monsters.
[6] However, most ultimate reality films go further, massaging the boundary between our seemingly objective, external reality and internal, subjective reality. Sixth Sense (1999), Spirited Away (2002) and similar films assert that another ontological reality is nestled in amongst ours; this Land of Spirits is accessible by a shift in consciousness (as well as by death). Jesus Son (2000) offers hallucinogens as the gateway to altered mental states and, apparently, to genuine glimpses of the future. In scenes that resonate with The Matrix (1999), The Thirteenth Floor (1999) depicts simulated parallel universes within space-time that are created by technology and accessed through technologically induced shifts in perception. Being John Malkovich (1999) presents another twist by entertaining the possibility of literally entering another persons mind, thereby intertwining certain characters external reality with John Malkovichs internal reality. Still another of Charlie Kaufmans films, Adaptation (2002), ingeniously calls attention to the falseness of reality as well as of film itself by cleverly conflating the filmic narrative, the mind of the screenwriter, and real life outside of the film. Furthermore, films such as Defending Your Life (1977), A Life Less Ordinary (1997), What Dreams May Come (1998) and Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth (1997) completely collapse ultimate, exterior reality and subjective reality by asserting that heaven is a mental projection of whatever one imagines. Finally, some films create a multi-layered perspective that defies the identification of any definitive ultimate level. Whereas The Matrix (1999) ended by calling into question the illusory material world that human minds make real by virtue of the software program of the matrix, The Matrix: Reloaded (2003) ends by calling into question the boundaries of the matrix itself, as Neo is able to manipulate the material world in what the viewer thought was the real world of Zion and the Nebuchadnezzar.
[7] The most popular formula for suggesting that material reality is an illusion entails the metaphor of dreaming. Films such as A.I. (2001), the visionary Kurosawas Dreams (1990), Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, A Waking Life, Jesus Son and Mulholland Drive (2001) explore dream life and waking life and conclude that distinctions between the two are often blurry or indiscernible. Other films play on the epistemological trope by suggesting that insomnia brings an alternate understanding of reality not available to those who sleep (Fight Club, Dark City). The dream metaphor is so apt for expressing the wavering nature of reality that numerous films have employed it more subtly through incorporating images of sleeping or beds in the mise en scene (apparent in numerous films, e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], Eyes Wide Shut [1999], Blade Runner [1980], and of course The Matrix).
[8] Films which adopt a multi-layered perspective of the cosmos often draw on a host of ancient religious and philosophical traditions both Eastern and Western in order to articulate their epistemology. A relatively great deal of attention has been paid to one facet of the ultimate reality issue in film, namely the Body and Soul aspect,4 particularly in terms of Descartes mind-body dualism.5 But a philosophical framing of the question of reality is not the only possible one. Most recently, The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded have received public and scholarly attention for their thoughtful syntheses of Neo-Platonism and Baudrillards postmodern philosophy with Gnosticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jewish mysticism, Christianity, Neo-Manicheanism, and the theology of the Cathars.6 Other ultimate reality films utilize similar syncretism (albeit without the uber-successful fusion of cyberpunk, computers and slick leather). For example, Neon Genesis Evangelion utilizes Christian, Kabbalistic and Gnostic themes in a heavy-handed but interesting way; Jesus Son combines overt Christ figure imagery with more restrained Buddhist and Hindu themes of karma, temporal loops and reincarnation;7 and Susan Schwartz has noted that What Dreams May Come fuses a European appearing heaven with South Asian religious themes, particularly the concept of maya or the illusion of the material world.8
[9] What these various films have in common is a distrust of the senses in favor of some essence that makes us human be it called mind, spirit, intuition, non-rational perception, or soul. It is this essence, they suggest, which allows us to access alternate realities. For instance, The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded proclaim the slogans, Free your mind, which allows one to perceive the false reality of the matrix and, judging from the second film, of successive layers of the matrix.9 Like several films that precede them, the series also gestures towards the question of whether humans alone possess this capacity. Since mind is not equivalent to the brain or organic flesh, (as expressed so beautifully by Cuba Gooding, Jr. in What Dreams May Come), artificial intelligence such as computers or robots might also possess mind. Beginning with Robert Wises The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and catalyzed by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), numerous films have explored this nexus of technology, ontological identity, and multi-layered reality, including: BladeRunner, Tron (1982), Iron Giant (1999), Pi (1999), The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded, Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth and The End of Evangelion, A.I., and Tezukas Metropolis (2001).
[10] In sum, whatever formulas they utilize - be they heavens, dreams, matrices, split personalities, hallucinations, time travel or artificial intelligences - and whatever religious and philosophical referents they make, the many aforementioned films share the assertions that reality is multi-layered, that our sensorial reality is unreliable, and that we are able to transcend our immediate perceptions in order to access ultimate reality.
Postmodernism, Film and Ultimate Reality
[11] This survey surely elicits the question of what drives these myriad formulations of a multi-layered reality in recent cinema. On his website for Christian spirituality and film, Doug Cummings comes closest in my view to seeing the larger picture when he states, the rejection of reality, the breaking through to the real, and the mind/body problem are all interrelated to our cultures desire to establish new paradigms for living.10
[12] In other words, the cinema is positively exuding postmodernism and offering up multiple realities as one solution, as several scholars have noted in the case of The Matrix series11 There are as many definitions of postmodernism as there are scholars of postmodernism, but I find most helpful that of Terry Eagleton, who describes postmodernism as a style of thought which is suspicious of classical notions of truth, reason, identity and objectivity, or the idea of universal progress or emancipation, of single frameworks, grand narratives or ultimate grounds of explanation.12 Postmodern sensibilities arise out a supreme dissatisfaction with the idea of modern progress and often result in not only a severe critique of modern hallmarks such as technology, capitalism, nationalism and urban life, but also in a deeper suspicion of any given absolute. When Eagleton notes that postmodernism rejects the very notion of singular perspectives and ultimate grounds of explanation, he may as well be describing the plots of Hollywoods most recent offerings. In terms of semiotics, each sign (or object depicted on screen) points to multiple signifieds (or meanings construed by the viewer). Moreover, the viewer actively participates in creating meaning in a layered text, but the postmodern viewers psyche is fragmentary, thereby adding layer upon layer.13
[13] Of course, it is not the case that filmmakers are universally versed in semiotics, postmodernism, or Baudrillard. Rather, the best myths express what a society already feels but has perhaps not yet fully recognized - and films both utilize and create myths. Our public at large senses the disjointedness of the easy answers modernism presents, particularly around the turn of this millennium. Filmmakers sense this brokenness, too, and articulate our collective unease and displeasure by pressing postmodernism to its logical extreme, rejecting a singular, flat reality in favor of other planes of perception, existence or being.14 This can be a post-postmodern stance, in that the ultimate ground of explanation has shifted, but remains; some films defy pinning down the ultimate nature of reality, a truly postmodern move.
[14] Although postmodern expression abounds in literature and art of this century, I would argue that among the arts, film has a unique capacity for expressing a postmodern framing of a multi-layered reality in a manner accessible to the general public. Film is able to alter space through mise en scene, lenses, special effects and so forth. Like paintings, film can visually insert symbols that convey the idea of multiple planes of reality. For instance, Vanilla Sky, A.I. and The Matrix are each sprinkled with reflective objects such as mirrors, reflective sunglasses, windows, spoons and mirrored buildings. The Matrix, The Truman Show, EDtv and Pleasantville utilize televisions as a symbol of unreality with The Matrix Reloaded employing them as representations of all possible space/time vectors of choice in the Architects Room.
[15] In addition to altering space, though, film can, like literature and music, create surreal perceptions of time an important dimension of reality - by repeating or foreshadowing themes that refer the audience backwards or forwards. Moreover, film alone is able to manipulate time through montage, using juxtaposition of shots, dissolves, double exposure or multiple images. Audiences have become savvy at grasping cinematic codes that bend time backwards (flashbacks) and forwards (accelerated montage, a change in lenses or filters) or that slow time (slow montage) or stop time altogether (freeze frames). All Hollywood films in fact construct an altered perception of time, in that the plot does not proceed in real time over a period of two hours.15
[16] Finally, film has an array of unique special effects allowing it to create multiple planes of reality and of time. The Matrix series has made Bullet Time famous, and these and other films may employ a host of special effects (computer animation, digitization, blue screen, matte shots, pixilation, and so forth) to convey the notion of a multi-layered reality. Thus, the fact that film is able to suggest multiple planes of existence in such effective ways accounts in part for the explosion of this theme in postmodern cinema.
[17] I turn now to an extended example of one of the most complex and widely misunderstood films to treat the theme of a multi-layered reality - Spielberg and Kubricks fantastical A.I.16 This film employs many of the motifs utilized by other ultimate reality films, including dreams, technology, ontological confusion, altered mental states, and heaven. Moreover, it interweaves these themes with specific referents from myth (Pinocchio), religion (Judaism and Christianity), and dream theorists (Freud and Jung) in order to present a construction of the world that defies any attempt to pin down reality definitively. In this film, reality is not merely nuanced in terms of the hard reality of waking life versus the soft reality of dreams,17 rather, all reality is soft. Each viewing reveals conflicting and complementary layers of reality or strands of the plot.
[18] Perhaps the most obvious religious referent in the film is the creation story in Genesis.18 The plot shows humans thoughtlessly acting as God / the Creator by constructing a robot boy, David, who can love,19 without due regard for the responsibility that creation entails. The principle Creator is named Dr. Hobby, pointing to the capriciousness of his act, since he ignores the fact that the human object of Davids affection is destined to be incapable of loving a robot unconditionally and will die long before the robot wears down, leaving David alone and fractured for eternity. Abandoned by his mother in the woods, alone except for a Supertoy named Teddy, David goes on a journey to become a real boy like Pinocchio and thus win mommys love. Further conflict ensues when he is captured in a Flesh Fair in which humans destroy mecha for entertainment. Here his storyline meets up with another mechas, Gigolo Joe, Whaddya Know, a love mecha or mecha designed for prostitution who is unfairly framed for murder.
[19] This portion of the plot serves merely to introduce the film up to the point at which reality becomes soft and undulating. In fact, A.I. presents at least nine possible endings, several of which send the viewer back to the beginning to reinterpret the plot synopsis just provided. Each strand of the film interprets Davids quest to find the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio who will make him a real boy so that his mommy will love him; thus the question of reality is articulated in terms of technology, ontology, moral capacity and relationships. The film rejects a definition of realness based on organic flesh, pointing instead to mind as the essence of genuine existence. In Cartesian fashion, A.I. gives the impression that brains (whether organic or mechanical) are merely the host for mind / soul which in turn gives real boys the capacity to love, dream, intuit and hope. Thus, myths captured in stories such as Pinocchio may be more real than material reality especially if Rank is correct in asserting that myths are collective dreams.20
[20] Like a dream itself, the film offers a pastiche of possibilities along multiple narratival pathways, explicitly calling on the viewer to participate in constructing the reality of the film itself. I will discuss nine proposed endings in turn, with a focus on the question of ultimate reality.
A.I. - Ending One: One Perfect Day in a Reconstructed Material Reality
[21] Even in the most obvious thread of the film (if anything about this film may be said to be obvious), the questions of reality, mind and ontology are central. David, Teddy and Gigolo Joe escape the Flesh Fair, proceed to Rouge City, and journey to Dr. Hobbys office in Manhattan. There David learns he is one of many David robot boys, causing him to jump off a building into the sea. After being rescued by Gigolo Joe and Teddy in an amphibicopter, David must escape once more with Teddy underwater. There he finally discovers Pinocchios Blue Fairy underwater in a flooded Coney Island, where he and Teddy remain in the amphibicoptor for two thousand years. During this time, the earth freezes and all humans perish, including Davids mommy, while mecha (robots) continue to evolve. Several beneficent mecha find David, revive him, and in a display of apparent mechanical telepathy, collectively use their mechanical minds to access the contents of Davids mind.
[22] Unlike the extinct humans in the film, the mecha have evolved into caring, moral beings, begging the question of who ever had authentic existence in the film humans or mecha. These loving mecha want to provide David with fulfillment. Using his mental files, they simulate the Blue Fairy, and in this form they grant Davids wish and reconstruct his ideal reality: his home with mommy and Teddy, without Henry or Martin. Although in the logic of this ending of the film Monica has long since died, the evolved mecha are able to revive her by using a strand of her hair that Teddy had preserved. This version of Monica, a clue to the multiple possibilities of the film, can only live for one perfect day. She lavishes David with affection and declares her love for him, only to die as night falls. David then lies beside her to sleep and to dream for all of eternity, fully satisfied in this level of nested dream reality, while Teddy the faithful companion keeps watch by his side.
[23] This level of the plot explicitly draws on Judeo-Christian motifs of Creation from Genesis. Like David, the advanced mecha crave contact with their Creator; thus they developed the technology to resurrect the bodies of humans for one day from samples of DNA, in the hopes that humanitys essence or spirit will somehow appear as well.21 This points the viewer back to an earlier scene in which Gigolo Joe, standing in front of the Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart church, asserts that humans are always trying to find the One who created them. In fact, the Blue Fairys costuming is close to the iconography of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. Thus, Ending One is far from simple, interweaving mommies (Virgin Mary, Monica), Creators (God, Virgin Mary, Dr. Hobby, humans, and the mecha who create Monica), myth (Pinocchios Blue Fairy, Genesis, dreams), and technology of different sorts (David, Teddy, the evolved mecha, the reconstituted Monica and the simulated Blue Fairy) - all of which are centered around questions of ultimate reality. Although the denouement of Ending One declares that the mecha, David and Teddy are all real because of their capacity to love, the means by which the mecha help David explicitly involve an illusory world with a duplicate mommy, a Virgin Mary-esque simulated Blue Fairy, and Davids endless dreaming multiple layers of reality.
A.I. Ending Two: One Perfect Day in a Dream
[24] Ending One, although the patent conclusion to the plot, contains a number of loose ends. Only the most unobservant, non-critical viewers were left satisfied with the saccharine fairy tale ending of happily ever after, since David lies sleeping next to his deceased mother as Teddy watches on for eternity. The otherworldly, disembodied, fairy tale voice-over by Ben Kingsley merely increases the inherent tension of this ending. As I heard one woman remark in bitterness upon leaving the theatre, That was no E.T.
[25] At the outset of the film, David is created to be the ultimate robot, a mecha with a mind, with neuronal feedback. Dr. Hobbys detailed description of the robot series provides a clue to the proper lens for viewing the film:love will be the key by which they acquire a kind of subconscious, never before achieved, an inner world of metaphor, of intuition, of self-motivated reasoning, of dreams.
[26] Ending Two is a dream sequence, available to more perceptive viewers through Spielbergs use of a cinematic code for unreality. The transitory scene occurs with the fade to white space that frames Davids slowly opening blue eyes, which appear to float unnaturally in white space. This key scene is the one that appears most on the films posters and trailers. Before the point at which the mecha close Davids eyes in order to read his mind, an eerie David (acted to perfection by Haley Joel Osment) had never before closed his eyes, not even to blink. This symbol represents an awakening to a new plane of perception, a waking dream.
[27] Serious glitches present themselves that deconstruct Ending One and point to Ending Two. Since the final sequence in Davids home takes place within his mind, Monica cannot actually be revived from DNA. Similarly, the question of how Teddy is able to be present in Davids mental construction arises. In fact, we do not actually see Teddy revived; he may be dead or broken down in the amphibicopter.22
[28] Given the mechas decision to give [David] what he wants and the Blue Fairys declaration that Your wish is my command, the entire linear explanation within the house sequence becomes unreliable wish-fulfillment. From the moment we see Davids blue eyes in white space we witness his Freudian Oedipal fantasy made true:23 he does away with the father (Henry) and sleeps with his mother (Monica). Teddy is only as real as the Blue Fairy or the house; they are present in Davids dream only through the manipulation of the minds of the advanced mecha.24
[29] Much in the way our own dreams replay images from the past, so too Davids dream recasts problematic images. 25 Whereas formerly Monica shut David in a closet out of fear, with David asking, Is it a game?, now David and mommy hide playfully together in the closet because it really is a game that they play on Teddy. Earlier Monica had feared David when he cut off a lock of her hair; in the dream the secret lock of hair is the means of reviving mommy. Again, whereas formerly Monica avoids helping him change clothes and becomes angry when David sees her on the toilet, she now helps groom him after his shower (echoes of Freud). In the first part of the film, David declares he has no birthday, but in his dream his mommy throws him a birthday party complete with cake, thereby also transforming his earlier trauma in which he broke when he tried to eat food. Earlier in the story, children taunt him by asking him if he can pee, which he could not do; now, however, David is able to shed a tear. In fact, the entire perfect day is an oneiric healing of that final day when Monica abandoned him, about which she promised, Tomorrows going to be just for us, okay? In his dream, David fulfils his last words to Monica: Mommy, if Pinocchio became a real boy and I become a real boy can I come home? All healing is complete when mommy can finally say I love you David. I do love you. I have always loved you.
[30] This dream, then, shapes the entire plot in terms of a gigantic temporal loop. The lighting in the dream house itself is slightly different than the first, and reflections and fractured images symbols of nested layers of reality - abound. Interestingly, the real house was also full of reflective images (fractured glass doors, the lids of coffee jars, mirrors, countertops), both evoking the dream house to follow and perhaps suggesting that the first house is also not the ultimate one. Monica, whom we see studying herself in a mirror, is symbolized by a reflective image a mobile containing a mirrored woman with what can be considered either a heart or the negative space where a heart should be.26 Similarly, she last sees David in her cars mirror after she abandons him. These two reflections of Monica and David, like the reflections in the house, both point forward to the dream David and the dream Monica and suggest that the outward appearances of orga (organic humans) and mecha (robots) are illusory. By beginning the dream sequence with Davids opening eyes the film asserts that we wake up to reality, which is an imagined one.
A.I. Ending Three: One Perfect Day in a Dream within a Dream
[31] A.I. explicitly evokes not only the dream theories of Freud, but also of Jung, who argues that dreams, myths and childhood thinking are all examples of non-directed, associative thinking that shed light on one another.27 Mythic referents from Disneys Pinocchio28 structure much of the imagery beginning with Davids plunge off Dr. Hobbys building into the water, suggesting that David has a mental disassociation from reality when he finds the multiple copies of himself hanging on pegs. The mental stress of meeting a version of himself29 makes David comment my brain is falling out;30 subsequently he creates a waking dream or inner-world of metaphor.
[32] Carl Jung maintained that in dreams the sea is a symbol of the unconscious that carries a maternal aspect.31 Accordingly, just after saying mommy, David dreams of being immersed in the water his subconscious and the mother of all and weaves a mythic dream out of scenes from Disneys Pinocchio. The plunge off a high place into the sea, the school of fish that fantastically transports him along and, of course, the Blue Fairy all echo scenes from the film. Again, whereas Pinocchio remains in the belly of a whale with Jiminy Cricket, David is imprisoned underwater with Teddy in the belly of an amphibicopter, in front of the Blue Fairy in the Pinocchio exhibit at Coney Island.
[33] The dream also draws on earlier events in Davids life. The underwater scene recalls Davids earlier trauma in the swimming pool, an insertion of troubling memory into dreams in the sense that both Freud and Jung describe.32 Further, the global freezing recalls the cryogenesis of Martin, the prototypical real boy like whom David aspires to be.33 When David is defrosted like Martin, he is on his way to becoming real as well.
[34] As in his other Freudian dream (which occurs within this dream), David kills the father - humans who all become extinct, and self-projects himself in the evolved mecha. He then plunges deeper into his subconscious in the scene where the mecha read his mind. When the evolved mecha are able, in the form of a conflated Mary Mother of God /Blue Fairy Jungian archetype, to revivify his mommy, the wish-fulfillment is complete.
A.I. Endings Four and Five: One Perfect Day in Heaven
[35] As if this astute layering of myth, religion, technology, Freud and Jung were not enough, Spielberg adds another layer, thus creating more possible strands of narrative. The dreams that David experiences are also depicted in codes normally reserved for heaven, suggesting that Davids mechanical body has expired and that his mind/soul has proceeded to robot heaven.
[36] Ending Four commences with the scene of the fade to white/opening blue eyes, which is flooded with a bright light that steadily infuses portions of the following scenes in Davids home. The code of glowing white light has consistently been the most common filmic depiction of heaven regardless of genre (e.g. the scenes of heaven in The Littlest Angel [1969], Defending Your Life [1977], Defending Your Life [1991], Bill and Teds Bogus Journey [1991], My Life [1993], A Life Less Ordinary [1997] and too many more to mention). Within Davids dream house, the use of extremely strong backlighting suggests an unreal moonlight that appears to flood in from the windows, while bright key lights above David and Teddy add to the sense of a heavenly dimension. Many films depicting heaven also employ a blurry, fuzzy effect to indicate an altered reality, and the house scenes are shot with a soft filter. Another standard code for heaven is the metonymic use of the color white to indicate celestial purity, and David wears a white bathrobe while Monica sleeps on glowing white sheets.
[37] Thus, in the logic of this ending David (and perhaps Teddy) did not survive the two thousand years underwater and his good soul has been transported to heaven, where sparkly, angel-like mecha care for him as celestial sounding music fills the air. Indeed, David even says of this perfect day that maybe it will be like that day in the amphibicopter. Maybe it will last forever.
[38] Ending Five simply places heaven earlier in the plot, after David set against the bird/human/mecha/angel logo of Cybertronics - plunges into the water. Can a robot commit suicide? Apparently so, and the film has consistently asserted that Davids true essence is not his mechanical body, which is subject to breakage, but rather his mind/soul. Brightly lit sparkles under the water, extremely strong key lighting above Davids silhouette, soft focus and celestial sounding choirs tell us that for David, robot heaven takes place under the water, where he finds the Virgin Mary/Blue Fairy icon, and so the story goes.
Of course, these heavenly endings complement rather than exclude the dream sequences. As in traditional Eastern religions e.g. Buddhism and Hinduism and as in some non-traditional Western religions e.g. Gnosticism, Jewish Kabbalah - heaven or bliss or nirvana or the pleroma is a state of perception, not a material place located in space.
A.I. Ending Six: It is All Davids Dream
[39] Several clues suggest that Davids dream begins much earlier in the film, perhaps even at the beginning, which opens with the crashing sea Jungs symbol of the unconscious in dreams.34
[40] If the entire film is Davids dream, he has woven within it a clue to the narrative - Disneys Pinocchio. The plot is driven by Davids design and desire to be a a real boy in the fashion of Pinocchio the puppet, but other characters and motifs also have their parallel in the Disney film: the guide and companion Jiminy Cricket/Teddy; Geppetto/Dr. Hobby; imprisonment in Strombolis Marionette Circus /Flesh Fair; a singing and dancing Honest John/Gigolo Joe;35 Pleasure Island/Rouge City (where boys go to party); Pinocchios plunge into the sea to find his father/Davids plunge into the sea to find the Blue Fairy in order to find his mother; and of course the Blue Fairy herself.36 David may actually be dreaming his problems by expressing them in the language of the myth of Pinocchio. This possibility is signaled further to the audience by the murals of fairy tales that adorn the walls of the cryogenics hall, particularly The Emperors Clothes a classic Freudian naked dream.37
[41] An additional clue that the entire film is a dream is that depictions of the moon a common symbol for dreams and a Jungian archetype of the mother and the abode of souls38 abound throughout the film. The moon appears in the logo of the cryogenics firm, over David and Martins bed, in the form of the Flesh Fairs Balloon, on the sign of the Flesh Fair itself, over the horizon of the forest through which David runs with Teddy and Gigolo Joe, and prominently outside the windows in Davids dream house. Consider the following dialogue between David and Teddy after having escaped the Flesh Fair:
Teddy: I see the moon.
David: Is it real?
Teddy: I dont know, David.
Subsequently, Gigolo Joe informs David that to get to Rouge City, We will have to journey towards the moon. Perhaps, then, we have dreams within dreams within dreams.
Ending Seven: David Does Not Survive the Flesh Fair
[42] A complement to Ending Six is the idea that at least after the Flesh Fair Davids essence is within heaven, which is a dream.39 Gigolo Joe cocks his head a song plays - Heaven, Im in Heaven perhaps signaling that David did not survive the tortures at the Fair after all.40 In this heavenly dream, David and Joe enter Rouge City/Pleasure Island by driving into giant heads symbols for accessing deeper layers of the psyche. Once there, the sky flashes advertising reading Angels and Demons, raising the question of whether David is in heaven or hell. Finally, David will ultimately travel to Manhattan a mythical never-never land in the film where lions weep and where dreams are born. It is there he meets his Creator in the sky, further evoking heavenly imagery. However, given the moon symbolism explained under Ending Six, this heaven is at the same time a dream. Fittingly then, David encounters versions of himself that send him into more complex soul-work.
Ending Eight: More Ontological Realities: Teddys Point Of View
[43] All possible endings change if David does not provide point of view in the film, a serious possibility given that the final scene of the film concludes with David asleep and Teddy awake.
[44] Teddy is by far the most complex character in this layered film. Although Teddy is called a Supertoy by Monica, Davids mother, he himself declares I am NOT a toy.41 Numerous clues in the film reveal that he is the character most capable of moral reasoning, love, loyalty, and self-actualization, the films definition of a real boy.
[45] Genesis 2-3 maintains that being like the gods or being self-actualized entails having the capacity to choose between good and evil, that is, to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In A.I., an extended allegory of Genesis, humans normally choose evil, but Teddy consistently chooses the good. He displays this quality in his unswerving loyalty to and concern for David in all possible endings of the film, although David treats him as Monica did David as a sometimes useful toy or occasional object of affection. But Teddy has free will and is a complex moral being. He calls Monica mommy, which David is unable to do without his love-programming being activated. He may have the capacity to lie, if it is a lie to tell people at the Flesh Fair that David is a real boy. He obviously loves David, and thus like David should have the capacity to hate.42 We see a hint of this when he growls menacingly at the woman at the Flesh Fair who refers to him as a doll. Moreover, Teddy understands more about the world than any other character in the film, which enables him to teach David (Teddy made me write this), to rescue David from the flesh fair (although no one in turn tries to carry Teddy, who must run to save his own life afterwards) and to explain the dangers of the world to David (e.g., he warns him about flying the amphibicopter by stating, This is not a toy, David). In addition to moral capacity, Teddy even apparently shares with organic beings an ability to feel pain and to die. For instance, he says ow as he falls through the trees, protects himself from sunlight by sitting underneath the shade of an umbrella, and constantly repairs himself with needle and thread. He is keenly aware that he can break, and his voice and demeanor are of an old being.43
[46] The lens of Teddy as the most moral, feeling and sentient being in the film presses the question of ultimate reality further in terms of ontology. It also recalls Harry Bates 1941 short story, Farewell to the Master (on which was based The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951]), which has striking parallels to A.I.44 In the short story, a humanoid alien named Klaatu and a robot called Gnut come to Washington, D.C. Klaatu relays a message of peace, but is shot by humans. A journalist named Cliff describes Gnut as a dog who stands vigil over the body of his master. After Gnut resurrects Klaatu, Cliff tells Gnut: I want you to tell your master ... that what happened ... was an accident, for which all Earth is immeasurably sorry. Gnut tenderly replies, You misunderstand. I am the master.
[47] The lens of Teddy as the master makes several of the endings more poignant; Teddy sees David commit suicide by plunging off a building, Teddy slowly dies seated next to David in the amphibicopter underwater, or Teddy watches David dream peacefully for all eternity. This latter scene, one of the last scenes of the film, suggests that Teddy is the actual dreamer from beginning to end. This accords well with Disneys Pinocchio, in which Jiminy Cricket Teddys obvious parallel tells the entire story by opening up a book and jumping into the pages, thereby inserting himself into the story. If ultimate reality is a state of perception, it indeed matters who is doing the perceiving.
Ending Nine: Someone Else is the Dreamer
[48] Finally, since the film does seem to reference both Freud and Jung, I would like to raise the possibility that the entire film is the dream of a dreamer whose identity can only be gleaned in fragmentary ways. The first and last scenes suggest this may be the case. As I mentioned earlier, the film opens with the crashing sea Jungs symbol of the unconscious. In the final scene, the camera pulls back to reveal David, Monica and Teddy in a house, which in Freudian terms represents the person who is dreaming.45 Indeed, the house looks somewhat like a face, recalling the mask into which David places his face in Dr. Hobbys lab.
[49] Moreover, I suggest that the ego is represented by David, the moral compass or super-ego by the Supertoy Teddy, and the capricious, uncontrollable id by the manipulative Martin and sexually obsessed Gigolo-Joe. The case is most clear for Teddy, who resembles Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio to no small extent. Those who have not recently seen the 1940 film may be surprised to recall that the Blue Fairy dubs the Cricket, Pinocchios Conscience, Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong,46 Counselor in Moments of Temptation and Guide along the Straight and Narrow Path. Hardly a better description of Freuds super-ego exists! Thus this super-ego/Supertoy transcends the story that the viewer sees, pointing to a dreamer outside of the film.
[50] There are other hints that David and Gigolo Joe also transcend the film. Early on, a scene in which Monica, Henry and David eat dinner is shot from a high-angle in such a way that David is framed by a halo-like white, glowing light. I take this reference to Davids divinity to point to the transcendent dreamer outside of the film. Similarly, when Gigolo Joe is hoisted up to the police helicopter, (thereby repressing the troublesome id), his last words are Remember I am, I was, which eerily evoke the secret name of God in Exodus 3.
[51] In this case, positing David as ego does not mean that David is the dreamer; rather David is a character (Jungs child archetype) who expresses in the main the ego of the dreamer. Thus, David, Teddy and Gigolo Joe / Martin all represent the dreamer, and other characters might as well. I am not an expert on psychoanalysis, but seen from this perspective, the many conflicts and instances of cooperation between these characters drive the plot in different, interior, psychological ways. The mural of The Emperor Has No Clothes that prominently appears early in the film is, then, a metaphor for the film itself, recalling the passage in The Interpretation of Dreams in which Freud elucidates the meaning of this fairy-tale symbolism: the imposter is the dream and the dreamer is the Emperor.47
[52] Thus the identity of the dreamer of the film remains occluded. Freuds analysis may shed light: If a dreamer has a choice open to him between a number of symbols, he will decide in favour of the one which is connected in its subject-matter with the rest of the material of his thoughts.48 Given this truism, the dreamer apparently struggles to understand some inner conflict, and therefore may first appear as Sheila, a robot who does not understand emotion. Indeed, Sheila is told to undress in public, a famous naked dream.49 The scene of Sheila looking into a mirror (i.e. the dreamer dreaming) is juxtaposed with Monica looking into a mirror. Thus Monica someone who has lost a child or experienced other severe loss may represent the primary issue driving the dream, one which also motivates the character of Dr. Hobby, who has lost his son, to make copies of him.50 If the theme of loss indeed drives the film, then the projection of the abandoned child as the ego is particularly poignant, as is his final reconciliation with his mommy. When viewed from this perspective the film is ultimately a tale of healing that brings the fractured parts of the dreamer back together again, resolving inner turmoil. Thus, the dreamer is no longer a robot but a real person who can love, who has and understands complex emotions and relationships.
[53] I conclude with one final addendum to this ending. Jung maintains that the theatre might be understood as an institution for working our private complexes in public.51 To the extent that this is true, it may well apply both to the creators of film and to audiences. Ronald Roschke, in addition to showing how all textual readings (including film) involve a kind of trance, has pointed out that the dimming of lights in a theater or a movie-house signals a liminal transition to a dreamlike state.52 Perhaps then, we are the dreamers, whenever we the audience resonate with parts of the mythic, religious and psychological motifs of the film.
Final Reflections
[54] A.I. is a paradigm of the postmodern allegory in that signs/signifiers (objects the viewer sees) point to multiple significations (meanings the viewer construes from this viewing). Each strand of possibility points the audience not only in clever but also in meaningful ways towards important questions worthy of deep consideration regarding technology, ontology, the nature of the real, and morality. It would be impossible for me to delineate all interpretations of the film, since each viewer actively and repeatedly participates, if only unconsciously, in constructing the narratival flow of the film as well as its meaning. In my subjectivity, A.I. is a supremely intelligent film that successfully articulates the theme of ultimate reality as a nested, multi-layered one by using the language of hypertexts: religion, myths and dreams.
[55] However, this serious study of A.I. cannot fail to note the broad dislike that some critics and viewers in the general public feel for the film, as any search on the internet will demonstrate. I wonder if this is due to the complexity of this film. Ending Nine is no more definitive than the other eight, and there may be others that I have not considered. Yet, many viewers who dislike the film are savvy interpreters and I think there is another explanation to their unease. The film draws on ancient traditions such as Genesis and on mythic archetypes, but recasts them in a postmodern way: there is no God that watches over us once we are expelled from the garden and the moon is not really the mother of the world. We are left only with our own psyches as the transcendent referent to repair profound loss, with a pastiche of possible interpretations of our past at hand. I believe many people find this message unsettling, and A.I. further exacerbates the tension by falsely casting this complexity in a fairy-tale ending. That is, postmodern films that wrestle with ultimate reality have succeeded in deconstructing reality for us, in turn also deconstructing many of the religious and mythic referents on which they draw. The ultimate constructions of reality in film, however, remain vague, elusive, puzzling, and often unsatisfying in the end.
[56] Finally, having sketched at least nine possible endings to A.I., I would like to note that even Freud repeatedly warned about the possibility of the over-interpretation of dreams and I recognize this could be the case here.53 Over-interpretation is always a possibility when exploring symbols and myth, given their multivalent nature. But it is also the case that dreams and art frequently contain motifs of which the creators are unaware until they are noted by others. The Talmud succinctly states: A dream follows its interpretation. Stanley Kubrick similarly concluded, I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offer any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself.
GROUPED FOOTNOTES
FILM CREDITS
2001: A Space Odyssey A.I. Adaptation Being John Malkovich Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey Blade Runner Dark City The Day the Earth Stood Still
Defending Your Life (1977)
Defending Your Life (1991)
Dreams aka Yume EdTV
Eyes Wide Shut Fight Club The Iron Giant Jesus' Son Kate and Leopold A Life Less Ordinary The Littlest Angel The Matrix The Matrix: Reloaded Memento Metropolis
Minority Report
Monsters, Inc.
Mulholland Drive My Life
Neon Genesis Evangelion:
Death and Rebirth
Neon Genesis Evangelion:
The End of Evangelion
Pinocchio
Pleasantville Sixth Sense Spirited Away
The Thirteenth Floor
Tron The Truman Show
Vanilla Sky Waking Life What Dreams May Come
questions.
Angels Carrying Savage Weapons: Uses
of the Bible in Contemporary Horror Films
by Mary Ann Beavis
Vol. 7 No. 2 October 2003
Angels Carrying Savage Weapons: Uses
of the Bible in Contemporary Horror Films
by Mary Ann Beavis
Abstract
[1] As one of the great repositories of supernatural lore in Western culture, it is not surprising that the Bible is often featured in horror films. This paper will attempt to address this oversight by identifying, analyzing and classifying some uses of the Bible in horror films of the past quarter century. Some portrayals of the Bible which emerge from the examination of these films include: (1) the Bible as the divine word of truth with the power to drive away evil and banish fear; (2) the Bible as the source or inspiration of evil, obsession and insanity; (3) the Bible as the source of apocalyptic storylines; (4) the Bible as wrong or ineffectual; (5) the creation of non-existent apocrypha.
Article
Introduction
[2] As one of the great repositories of supernatural lore in Western culture, it is not surprising that the Bible is often featured in horror films. Without the biblical repertoire of Satan, demons, exorcisms, plagues, curses, prophecies, apocalyptic signs, false messiahs, pagan sorcerers, evil empires, etc., horror movies would be impoverished. In the academic literature on the horror film, however, the role of the Bible has gone virtually unnoticed.1 This paper will attempt to address this oversight by identifying, analyzing and classifying some uses of the Bible in horror films of the past quarter century.
[3] Of course, not all horror films have explicitly religious, let alone biblical, content. Movies in which the horror is the result of violent insanity (psycho-horror/slasher films), science-fiction inspired horror (alien possession/metamorphosis movies), films with mad-scientist themes, ecological horror (where the danger is the unintended consequence of human activity), and alien invasion films are generally what Andrew Tudor classifies as secular horror.2 With the exception of the psycho-horror subgenre, non-supernatural horror films are relatively unlikely to refer to the Bible. However, according to Tudors 1989 study, at least one-third of horror movies made in the 20th century belong to the genre of supernatural horror, which reached its peak in the early 1970s, but is still very much with us. To this category belong vampire movies, films with apocalyptic/Satanic/demonic themes, haunted house movies, etc.all of which might be expected to refer to the Bible in some way. In addition to the many horror themes identified by Tudor, I would suggest the category of spiritual horror movies; films in which the most fundamental and cherished religious beliefs of a character or group are undermined by some new discovery or insight, threatening spiritual damnation or chaos; the latter can be classified as religious psycho-horror films.
[4] Supernatural and spiritual horror movies (which could be lumped together under the rubric of religious horror), then, are the horror sub-genre that would be most expected to feature the Bible in some guise. Adele Reinhartz has identified some of the roles played by the Bible in recent Hollywood films:3
- as an artifact or prop (Reinhartz cites such diverse examples as Coneheads, The Apostle, Slingblade and The Shawshank Redemption; a more recent addition would be Memento, in which a two shots of a Gideon Bible in a motel-room drawer are featured);
# Bible-related dialogue, i.e., conversations about the characters beliefs about the Bible, or where the Bible is quoted (e.g., Sling Blade, Dead Man Walking, Nell, Pulp Fiction; and more recently, Chicken Run and O Brother, Where Art Thou?: consider the goddam lilies of the field);
# biblical plot structures, where biblical narratives more or less explicitly structure a film, from biblical epics (The Ten Commandments, Jesus of Nazareth), to contemporary retellings of biblical stories (Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus of Montreal), to plot structures with an underlying biblical source, e.g., The Lion King (where a Moses-like hero . . . flees the land of his birth, wanders in the desert, begins life anew in a foreign land . . . and is persuaded to return as leader after experiencing a theophany,4 or Deep Impact, which Reinhartz calls a modern day rendition of the flood story, animals, ark and all, with the priestly blessing, apocalypticism, and a messiah rolled in for good measure.5
[5] As the following pages will show, all of these uses of the Bible are found in contemporary horror films: Bibles often appear as props; the Bible is frequently quoted (or misquoted) and its meaning is discussed; biblical narrativesespecially eschatological timetables alleged to be from the Biblestructure the plots of many horror movies. However, due to the supernatural and horrific nature of the genre, the Bible is used in several distinctive ways in horror films:
1. In a minority of films, the Bible is seen purely positively, as the divine word of truth with the power to drive away evil and banish fear.6
2. One of the most frequent uses of the Bible in films of the past 25 years has been as the source of apocalyptic plots; in such films, the Bible both structures and explains the terrors of the end time as they unfold.
3. Some horror movies represent the Bible as the source or inspiration of evil, obsession and insanity.
4. In opposition to those films which hold up the Bible as the source of eternal truth and goodness, several recent horror films question the reliability of the biblical account of the supernatural world, or reject it as ineffectual.
5. Finally, an interesting horror phenomenon is the appeal to non-existent scriptures to buttress cinematic plots.
Below, a selection of horror films from 1970 to the present that relate to the Bible in one or more of these ways will be discussed and analyzed: (1) in order to explore an important medium in which the Bible is frequently represented in popular culture, horror film; and (2) in order to identify trends or changes in portrayal of the Bible in horror films, and to correlate them, if possible, with broader cultural developments.
1. The Bible Against Horror: Scripture as a Weapon against Evil
[6] In Western culture, the Bible has long been considered to be a unified text, Gods eternal, infallible, and complete word,7 and, as such, the epitome of goodness, able to dispel false doctrine and repel the attacks of the evil one (see Eph 6:16-17; Heb 12:12-13; 2 Tim 3:15-17; 2 Pet 3:16). The classic horror film Alias Nick Beal (1949), in which a politician sells his soul to the Devil, expresses this conventional understanding of the Bible when the title character Nick Bealreally the Old Nick, Beelzebub, in human disguiseis unable to read a passage from the Psalms at the invitation of the director of an orphanage. In the end, Beal is prevented from collecting the soul of a compromised politician when a Bible is accidentally dropped in his path. The minister to whom the Bible belongs concludes the film with an assertion that the Bible will always be there to drive away evil.
[7] In more recent horror films, the Bible continues to be portrayed as a prophylactic against horror, albeit a less effective one. In the first Omen movie (1976) , the priest (Father Spiletto) who tries to warn the Thorns that their adopted son, Damien, is the antichrist, papers the walls of his room with pages from the Bible to ward off the evil outside. A similar scene in the more recent The Body (2000) shows the archaeologist-priest Father Lavelle, his mind unhinged by the apparent discovery of the remains of Christ, in a room plastered with Catholic devotional items and pages of scripture to protect him from the unthinkable truth that the resurrection never really happened.
[8] In Children of the Corn (1984), the true interpretation of the Bible is held up as a foil for the false interpretation promoted by the evil child-preacher Isaac. Isaac, along with his disciple Malachai, is the leader of a demonic cult who has incited the children of Gatlin, Nebraska to murder their parents and bury them in the cornfields to appease the mysterious he who walks behind the rows. When the young doctor who ultimately destroys the cult (at least until the sequel) confronts the children in a desecrated church (with biblical verses like And a child shall lead them8 and Ye shall worship no other gods9 scrawled on the walls in blood), he challenges their assertion that they are doing as it is written in the Bible: So what do you mean, as it is written?, Dr. Stanton cries, Written where? Are you rewriting the whole thing, or just the parts that suit your needs? The hero finds the key to stopping the demon of the cornfields in Rev 20:10: And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever;10 the evil is turned back by a conflagration fueled by ethanol from the local distillery.
[9] Left Behind (2000) is the cinematic version of the bestseller11 by popular Christian novelists Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The premise of the story is that the Rapture has occurred,12 and the Christian faithful have been caught up to be with Christ in heaven before the appearance of the Antichrist and the end-time tribulations. For the four core characters (airline pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, journalist Buck Williams and minister Bruce Barnes), all of whom have been left behind with the rest of unsaved humanity, the Bible is not only the key to the unfolding of world events, but the infallible source of information on how to attain personal salvation.
2. The Bible as Horror: Apocalyptic Films
[10] In a movie like Left Behind, made for the purpose of publicizing Christian truth, apocalyptic timetables derived from the prophetic and apocalyptic books of the Bible (especially Daniel 7, Ezekiel 38, and Revelation) not only structure the plot, but are believed in implicitly by at least some of the filmmakers and viewers. However, in the vast majority of the apocalyptic films that have been produced since The Omen (1976), most of which feature events surrounding the appearance of the Antichrist, the Bible is simply the alleged source of lurid and horrific storylines.
[11] Contrary to pop culture tradition, no figure called the Antichrist is mentioned in the Book of Revelation (almost invariably called Revelations in the movies). The term actually appears four times in the New Testament, in two of the letters of John (1 John 2:8, 22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7). In these references, an antichrist is one whose doctrine of Jesus Christ is defective (one who denies that Jesus is the messiah; one who does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh). Elsewhere in the Bible, monstrous opponents of God expected to appear in the end times include the little horn (Dan 7); the lawless one (2 Thess 2:8); Belial (2 Cor 6:15); Gog and Magog (Rev 20:8); the Dragon, the Beast and the False Prophet (Rev 13:2-14:11; 16:13; 19:20; 20:10). In The Omen, where the newborn Antichrist (Damien) is adopted by the unsuspecting Robert and Katherine Thorn, there is only one actual quotation from the Bible at the end of the movie, where the words of Rev 13:8 appear on the screen, allegedly explaining the identity of the evil child, who bears the mark of the Beast13: And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him [the Beast], whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (KJV).
[12] Two other representatives of the apocalyptic genre are The Seventh Sign (1988) and, more recently, Lost Souls (2000). The former film is creative and original in its use of the Bible, which is interpreted through the lens of Jewish folklore regarding the pre-existence of souls. A stern and mysterious man named David Bannon appears in the first scene of the movie, where he opens a sealed scroll, and drops it into the ocean on the coast of a small Haitian village; the water begins to boil, and dead fish are washed up on the shore, alluding to Rev 16:3: The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a dead man, and every living thing died that was in the sea (RSV). The man, who is not an angel but the second coming of Christ, has returned--not as a lamb but as a lion14 to initiate the events of the end-time. The last sign of the end will be the birth of a child without a soul; this child has been conceived, and his mother, Abby Quinn, is nearing the end of her pregnancy. The idea that the birth of a soulless child will be the end of the world is, of course, not a biblical doctrine, but an obscure bit of Jewish folklore, which teaches that when the number of the pre-existent souls of the righteous (the guf) is exhausted, the messiah will appear (Syriac ApocBar 30:12; Yeb. 62a).15 With the help of a teenage yeshiva student called Avi, Abby unravels the mystery of the apocalyptic events that are taking place around them, and brings about the replenishment of the treasury of souls by sacrificing her own life for her newborn sons.
[13] A more recent offering in the antichrist/apocalyptic genre is Lost Souls (2000), which opens with an ominous prophecy purported to be from Deuteronomy, Book 17", which appears on-screen:
A man born of incest
Will become Satan
And the world as we know it
Will be no more.
Any viewer with even a vague knowledge of the Bible would easily recognize that the quotation bears no resemblance to anything in the fifth book of the Pentateuch, or to any other part of the canon. The invented prophecy introduces the story of a young Catholic woman named Maya Larkin who discovers that Peter Kelson, a psychologist famed for his research on serial killers, is destined to be possessed by Satan on his thirty-third birthday. Like Abby Quinn in The Seventh Sign, Maya takes it upon herself to prevent the final cataclysm, although in a less benign way. After convincing the unsuspecting Peter that he is due to become the Antichrist, she shoots him in the instant before the transformation.
[14] As Carl Greiner argues,16 Michael Tolkins film The Rapture (1991) can be interpreted either as a tale of madness, or as a tale of apocalyptic prophecy.17 Either construal can be defended; the psychological interpretation will be presented in the next section of this paper. Greiner argues that when interpreted as a prophetic narrative of a womans encounter with the divine rather than as a tale of religious obsession, The Rapture has challenging theological implications because it portrays God as malevolent and destructive,18 a perspective that is alien to mainline Christianity. As illustrative of divine malevolence in the Christian tradition, Greiner cites the example of Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling and the problem of Gods call to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac;19 to this list, dozens of biblical examples could be added: the cursing and expulsion of the primal couple from Eden; the plagues of Exodus; the sacrifice of Jephthahs daughter; the rape and dismemberment of the Levites concubine; the meaningless sufferings of Job; the horrors of Revelation and other apocalyptic writings. Greiner observes If the prophetic version is accurate, we confront a horror more devastating than the psychiatric one. One might be reassured that a psychiatric illness is limited to a life time and that the afflicted one would be released by death20in the apocalyptic version, Sharons punishment is eternal. While Greiner tries to moderate the harshness of this interpretation by observing that great religious symbols have profound elements that require extended meditation, reflection, or practice to approach,21 the idea of eternal torment for the damned is not, alas, alien to Christianity.
3. The Bible and Psychological Horror
[15] The portrayal of the Bible as the source of murderous obsession is not new; in the Gothic comedy The Old Dark House (1932, remake: 1963), the mad Saul Femm believes that he is possessed by the spirit of the biblical King Saul, and attempts to kill the hapless Roger Penderell, whom he mistakes for David, while paraphrasing 1 Sam 18:10-11: But Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him and was departed from Saul. And it came to pass on the morrow that the evil spirit came upon Saul and he prophesied in the midst of the house. And David played upon the harp with his hand. And there was a javelin in Saul's hand.
[16] Several more recent films feature characters who commit acts of horror inspired by the Bible. For example, psychologically interpreted, The Rapture is a film in which the main character, Sharon, is a mentally unstable woman who seeks relief in sex, excitement, and, finally, dangerous religious obsession. At the end of the film, Sharon flees to the desert with her daughter to await the Rapture, and when it fails to materialize, she murders the child in despair. On this interpretation, Sharons erratic and violent behaviour, her vision of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rev 6:1-8) and her final encounter with an unjust and unsatisfactory God are a psychiatric horror storygenerated by Sharons familiarity with the Bible.22
[17] In the classic Stephen King film Carrie (1976, 2002), the title character is abused, isolated and manipulated by a mother whose shame over the birth of her illegitimate daughter is grounded in a religious obsession supported by the Bible. For Carries Whites Bible-toting mother, menstruation is the curse of Eve, the original sin was intercourse, and Carries plan to go to the senior prom is the act of a Jezebel: As Jezebel fell from the tower, let it be with you . . . And the dogs came and licked up the blood. Its in the Bible!, mother screams. In the 1976 movie, Carries mother both physically and verbally assaults her daughter with an otherwise unknown scripture called The Sins of Women:
And God made Eve from the rib of Adam,
And Eve was weak and loosed the raven upon the world,
And the raven was called sin,
And the first sin was intercourse.
And Eve was weak,
And the Lord visited Eve with the curse,
And the curse was the curse of blood.
Of course, Carries telekinetic powers are interpreted by her mother as witchcraft, forbidden by Exod 22:18: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
[18] Thomas Harriss thriller Red Dragon23 has been made into two films, Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002). The plot revolves around the hunt for a serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde (the Tooth Fairy) who is obsessed with William Blakes painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun24, based on Rev 12:3-4:
And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth.
Dolarhyde has an image of the Dragon tatooed on his back, and his prized victims are women with young children. He is killed after a pursuit reminiscent of Rev 12:13-17, where the Dragon chases the woman in the wilderness after being thrown down from heaven.
[19] The FBI investigation of the Dragons crimes includes a newspaper ad placed by Hannibal Lecter from prison to communicate with the murderer. The ad is made up of a series of biblical references: Gal 6:11; 15:23; Acts 3:3; Rev 18:7; Jonah 6:8; John 6:22; Luke 1:7. The detectives soon realize that the biblical verses are a red herring: Galatians only has six chapters; Jonah only has four. FBI codebreakers discover that the bible verses really refer to p. 100 in The Joy of Cooking, a book that Hannibal the Cannibal could be expected to have in his cell, and the chapters and verses refer to lines and words on the page, spelling out the home address of the lead investigator, Will Graham.
[20] The most graphic, gruesome and gory of the films considered here is Resurrection (1999), whose biblical tagline is: There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men (Eccl 6:1). The serial killer, Demus, is a descendant of Judas Iscariot, trying to atone for the sin of his ancestor by reconstructing the body of Christ from the severed parts of his victims. The murderer leaves behind a series of bible verses which allude to the names of the victims (Peter, James, John, Andrew, Matthew, Mark, Thomas). John Prudhomme, a burnt-out police detective who has lost his faith in God after the death of his son and played by Christopher Lambert, leads the race to stop the murderer before he reaches his last victim, a baby about to be born (to a mother named Mary) whose innocent heart, the madman believes, will bring the body to life on Easter Sunday.
4. The Bible as Wrong or Ineffectual
[21] Several recent horror films explore the idea that the biblical account of God, humanity and salvation might simply be wrong. Stigmata (1999) is the story of a young, atheist woman named Frankie who is possessed by the spirit of a dead priest who wants the existence of a new Gospel, containing the authentic words of Jesus, to be revealed to humankind. Because of the powerful spiritual secret she harbours, Frankie is under attack by a demon who only oppresses the holiest and most devout of saints with the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ. With the help of a sympathetic priest sent from Rome to investigate her case, Frankie learns that there are dozens of ancient Gospels in addition to the four canonical ones, and that the Roman Catholic church has systematically suppressed them because of their revolutionary implications for Christianity. The film ends with the ominous notice that:
In 1945 a scroll was discovered in Nag Hamadi, which is described as The Secret Sayings of the Living Jesus. This scroll, the Gospel of St. Thomas, has been claimed by scholars around the world to be the closest record we have of the words of the historical Jesus. The Vatican refuses to recognize this gospel and has described it as heresy.
Ironically, according to Stigmata, the truth about Jesus is contained not in the church-sanctioned Bible, but in a scripture that has been maligned and censored by cynical religious authorities throughout church history. Of course, in real life there is a Gospel of Thomas which may even contain some authentic sayings of Jesus, but it is hardly considered by biblical scholars to be the closest of the gospels to the historical Jesus; nor has it been covered up by the Vatican!
[22] In The Prophecy (1995), the bible is not rejected as a source of truth about cosmic realities, but it is represented as incomplete and misinterpreted. The film is based on the premise that the primeval war between God and Lucifer/Satan has broken out again, this time led by the archangel Gabriel, who resents Gods decision to elevate human beings (talking monkeys) above the angels. The police detective Thomas Daggatt discovers a second-century manuscript of the Bible among the effects of a mysterious, eyeless corpse. Fortuitously, Daggatt is also a former seminarian and the author of a Thesis on Angels in Religious Scripture. The newly-discovered Bible contains a 23rd chapter of Revelation, which reads:
And there were angels who could not accept the lifting of man above them, and like Lucifer rebelled against the armies of the loyal archangel Michael, and there rose a second war in heaven. . . . And there shall be a dark soul, and this soul will eat other dark souls, and so become their inheritor. This soul will not rest in an angel but in a man, and he shall be a warrior.25
The angelologist-cop Daggetts exegetical comments on the role of angels in scripture are striking:
Did you ever read the bible . . .? Did you ever notice how in the bible when God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but with one wing dipped in blood. Would you really want to meet an angel?
Together with a small-town schoolteacher named Catherine (and with some help from Lucifer himself), Thomas uses the new-found biblical prophecy to unravel the cosmic mystery behind a series of bizarre murders, and the mysterious illness of one of Catherines young pupils.
[23] In the understated haunted-house film The Others (2001), the very accuracy of the biblical account of the afterlife is radically questioned. Grace, the deeply religious young mother of two children afflicted with a severe sunlight allergy, teaches them about the three hells of the Bible: Sheol, Gehenna and Hades. The children, Anne and Nicholas, later reveal to a servant that they only believe some of the things that the Bible teaches, but not all. The childrens suspicions are confirmed at the end of the film when it turns out that the ghosts who have been haunting the mansion are really living human beings; it is Grace, Anne and Nicholas and their servants who are dead, and destined to haunt the house forever. The biblical hells do not exist; nor does the Christian heaven.
5. Pseudapocrypha: Invented Scriptures in Horror Films
[24] While the claims made about it in Stigmata may be false, the Gospel of Thomas exists, and it is quoted accurately in the film. However, as in The Prophecy, with its extra chapter of Revelation, movies sometimes refer to scriptures that are not only non-canonical but non-existent. In Carrie, Mrs. Whites appeal to the Book of the Sins of Women reflects on her diseased mental state, and on her warped desire to control her daughter; the author, Stephen King, is obviously well-versed in the contents of the Bible, and makes use of them quite frequently in his work. The campy A Return to Salems Lot (1987), where a town inhabited by vampires hires an anthropologist to write them a bible of their own, speaks to the ongoing respect for scriptures in 20th century America, where even vampires need an inspired text to legitimate their culture. The fake quotation from Deuteronomy in Lost Souls may simply be a device on which to hang a storyline, but it reflects negatively on the biblical literacy of the intended audience of the film, and perhaps also of the filmmakers. However, even in a film that shows no real knowledge of the content of the Bible and expects its viewers to be equally uninformed, there is still an appeal to a scriptural basis.
[25] Of all the movies examined in this paper, the two that make the most extensive and creative use of invented scripture are The Prophecy (discussed above) and The Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981). The Omen III is notable, among other things, for being the movie where Sam Neill made his cinematic debut as the Antichrist Damien Thorn. Although canonical scriptures are quoted throughout the film (e.g., 2 Thess 2; Rev 21:4), Damiens main key to the events preceding the dreaded second coming of Christ is the (non-existent) Latin Book of Hebron, which he calls one of the more obscure backwaters of the Septuagint Bible. The book predicts that the Messiah will come from England (the Angel-Isle), and Thorn quotes the prophecy at length:
And it shall come to pass
that in the end days
the Beast shall reign one hundred score and thirty days and nights, And the faithful shall cry unto the Lord Wherefore art thou in the day of evil?
And the Lord shall hear their prayers,
And out of the Angel Isle he shall bring forth a deliverer, And the holy Lamb of God shall do battle with the Beast And destroy him.
Unhappily for the Antichrist, he misinterprets this prophecy (which compares favorably to many extant apocalypses) to mean that Christ will be reborn as Damien was, in the form of a human child. Thorns evil plot to murder all of the male babies born on the day calculated to be the date of the rebirth is foiled when the Messiah returns not as an infant, but as an invincible supernatural hero. If only Damien had read further in the Book of Hebron, presumably the source of the quotation that appears at the end of the movie, he would have been better prepared:
Behold the Lion of Judah
The Messiah, who came first as a child
But returns not as a child
But now as the King of Kings
To rule in power and glory forever!
Conclusions
[26] If the 15 or so films covered in this paper are any indication, the Bible is alive and well in contemporary horror movies. The 21st century has even seen the emergence of a new subgenre: the Christian horror film, as typified by the Left Behind series, designed to promote a fundamentalist, millennialist interpretation of the Bible.26 Within the narrative world of most of these movies it is assumed that the Bibleincluding imaginary scripturesis a reliable source of information about the supernatural world, and contains accurate predictions of eschatological events. In most of the supernatural horror films, knowing and understanding the contents of the Bible is regarded as a way of warding off evil, or of dealing with the dreaded events that its pages foretell. Although the emphasis is on the Bibles horrific aspects, the assumption is that God, goodness and truth will ultimately prevail (if only the cinematic antichrists would read to the end of Revelation, they would realize that their causes are lost).
[27] Some supernatural horror films, like Children of the Corn, recognize that the Bible, while essentially benign, can be used for perverted ends. However, most of the horror movies that portray the Bible in this way belong to the psycho-horror genre, where mentally unstable characters like Carries mother, Demus or Frank Dolarhyde are obsessed by a distorted view of scripture. Psychologically interpreted, The Rapture also belongs to this group. In such films, the authority and basic goodness of the scriptures are not questioned; it is human error or psychosis that makes the Bible dangerous (to rephrase a slogan from the U.S. gun lobby, the Bible doesnt kill people, people do).
[28] More radical views of the Bible are expressed in films where the scriptures are seen as fundamentally and ultimately, as opposed to partially and temporarily, horrific (The Prophecy, The Rapture, prophetically interpreted). Interestingly, the explicitly Christian Left Behind belongs to this group, insofar as the vast majority of humanity is consigned to eternal damnation according to the supposedly biblical vision of the Rapture that it espouses; the idea that Gods love is universal is represented as a comforting liberal fantasy27. Other films, like Stigmata and The Others, question the completeness or accuracy of the Bible, as opposed to alternative scriptures (the Gospel of Thomas) or religious philosophies (spiritualism).
[29] Finally, the cinematic penchant for citing non-existent scriptureseither spurious quotations from actual biblical writings (e.g., Lost Souls Deuteronomy Book 17", the non-existent quotation from Paul about angels with savage weapons in The Prophecy), imaginary apocrypha (e.g., The Book of Hebron, The Sins of Women), or lost chapters (Revelation 23)speaks to an ongoing fascination with, and credulity about, biblical writings in popular culture. As a biblical scholar, I am delighted by the postmodern playfulness of these invented scriptures. However, as a teacher of biblical studies, the imaginary apocrypha of the horror movies also evidence a horrifying lack of knowledge of the basic contents of the Bible on the part of their intended audiences, and/or their willing suspension of disbelief when it comes to the Bible and horror.
GROUPED NOTES
FILM CREDITS
Alias Nick Beal
The Body Carrie
Carrie (TV) Children of the Corn Left Behind Lost Souls Manhunter The Old Dark House (1932) The Old Dark House (1963) The Omen The Omen III: The Final Conflict The Others The Rapture Red Dragon Resurrection A Return to Salems Lot The Seventh Sign Stigmata
Filmography
A Return to Salems Lot (1987; dir. Larry Cohen)
Alias Nick Beal (1949; dir. John Farrow)
Carrie (1976; dir. Brian De Palma; 2002; dir. David Carson)
Children of the Corn (1984; dir. Fritz Kirsch)
Left Behind (2000; dir. Victor Sarin)
Lost Souls (2000; dir. Janusz Kaminski)
Manhunter (1986; dir. Michael Mann)
Red Dragon (2002; dir. Brett Ratner)
Resurrection (1999; dir. Russell Mulcahy)
Stigmata (1999; dir. Rupert Wainwright)
The Body (2000; dir. Jonas McCord)
The Old Dark House (1932; dir. James Whale; 1963; dir. William Castle)
The Others (2001; dir. Alejandro Amenabar)
The Rapture (1991; dir. Michael Tolkin)
The Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981; dir. Graham Baker)
The Omen (1976; dir. Michael Donner)
The Seventh Sign (1988; dir. Carl Schultz)
Mystic River: A Parable of
Christianitys Dark Side
by Charlene P. E. Burns
Vol. 8 No. 1 April 2004
Mystic River: A Parable of Christianitys Dark Side
by Charlene P. E. Burns
Human pathos is the worlds pathos become self-aware"1
Abstract
[1]This paper examines Mystic River through the hermeneutic of visual story. When read as parable, the film becomes a powerful indictment of Christianitys complicity in the structural character of sin and evil in American culture. This claim is supported through examination of the films use of Christian symbols and the function of women in the plot. Article
[2] Mystic River is a dark, disquieting film. Critical responses from media-based reviewers underscore its disturbing nature. Some proclaim it conveys something classical or even biblical, that it takes a piece out of you.""2 Others are more negative, interpreting its ideological and psychosexual program [to imply] that the thirst for revenge is an honorable adult emotion.""3 Additionally, I found through informal survey that the film unsettles the average moviegoer, although few are able to clearly account for their uneasiness. Even so, viewers and reviewers give it high praise. This intuition of the films high quality floating above an undercurrent of disquiet can be accounted for by analysis of the film through the hermeneutic of visual story."4 Viewed through this lens, the film can be seen as a parable of the moral failure of Christianity in the modern world.
[3]John R. Mays application of J. D. Crossans work on myth and parable to film analysis serves as my model here. Myth and parable are distinctly religious forms of story that sit at opposite ends of the communicative spectrum. Religious myth functions to reassure us. Myth tells us our world is grounded in a transcendent reality, and although we experience alienation from this ground, myth establishes the possibility of reconciliation. But parable is subversive; change, not reassurance, is the goal."5 As Crossan says,
The surface function of parable is to create contradiction within a given situation of complacent security but, even more unnervingly, to challenge the fundamental principle of reconciliation by making us aware of the fact that we made up the reconciliationYou have built a lovely home, myth assures us; but, whispers parable, you are right above an earthquake fault."6
[4] Both forms of story deal with conflict, but myth differs from parable in that the promise of resolution is always part of the message of myth. God is almost always one of the characters of myth and almost never so in parable. Jesus parables dramatize conflict in human life, dealing with transcendent reality not directly but in the mode of fictionindirectly, figuratively, symbolically...[they] subvert world by challenging the listener to attend to mercys unpredictability, to our impotence due to the demon within, and to the anguish of unrequited love.""7 In parable there is no resolution to the conflict. Parable is unsettling precisely because its message is this: There is something wrong in your world, and the way things are is not the way they ought to be. Parable is meant to transform us, not to comfort us. Synopsis of the film
[5] Mystic River is set in a working class Irish Catholic neighborhood of Boston. In the opening scenes we see three boys playing street hockey. When the ball is lost down a gutter, Jimmy and Sean decide to write their names in wet sidewalk cement. Dave somewhat reluctantly follows along. As Dave begins to write his name, a car pulls up. Two men claiming to be police confront the boys. When they discern that only Dave is not from the neighborhood, they take him away, ostensibly to confront his mother with his delinquency. In truth, they are sexual predators who abduct and abuse Dave until he escapes several days later.
[6] We next meet the boys as adults. Dave (played by Tim Robbins) is a husband and father. There is an air of dysfunction about him, but he seems to have coped with his earlier tragic experiences. Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a police detective whose wife has left him. She telephones periodically but says nothing. Jimmy (Sean Penn) has done time in prison but now owns a corner grocery, is a husband and father, and ring-leader of a group of petty criminals.
[7] The story centers on the brutal murder of Jimmys teenaged daughter, Katie. She goes out with friends one Saturday night, and doesnt show up for her younger sisters first communion in the Roman Catholic Church Sunday morning. Dave becomes a suspect, as does Katies boyfriend, whose father disappeared many years ago. As the plot unfolds we come to suspect that Dave is indeed guilty of murder. Daves wife, Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), overwhelmed with fear and guilt, tells Jimmy that the night Katie died Dave came home covered in blood. He claimed to have been mugged. But Celeste believes he is Katies murderer.
[8] As the plot moves toward its climax, the viewer is moved back and forth between scenes of Jimmy and his thugs confronting Dave, and Sean and his partner confronting Katies real murderers. Lusting for vengeance, Jimmy demands a confession from Dave and promises, Admit what you did and Ill let you live. Dave falsely confesses in hopes of saving his own life. Jimmy stabs him and then shoots him in the head, saying We bury our sins here, Dave. We wash them clean. The body is dumped into the river at the same spot where Jimmy committed his first murder, the one that has inexorably led to his own daughters death. We do not learn until the end of the movie that Dave was indeed guilty of murderof a pedophile he saw having sex with a child prostitute on the same night Katie died.
[8] The next day Sean tells Jimmy the murderers have been arrested, and that Dave is missing. Sean asks, Whens the last time you saw Dave, Jimmy? Drunk and apparently racked with guilt, Jimmy walks down the middle of the street and says, Twenty-five years ago, going up this streetback uh that car. With dawning awareness, Sean asks, Jimmy, What did you do? He knows, but without proof, he cannot arrest Jimmy, and so he leaves. As Sean drives away, the phone rings. It is his silent wife. He breathes deeply, says, Im sorry. I pushed you away. This is apparently all his wife has wanted from him, for now she speaks, telling him his daughters name and agreeing to come home.
[9] In the final scenes, we see Jimmy, his bare back exposed to us, looking out the bedroom window. He has a large tattoo on his back: a Christian cross. I killed the wrong man, he says to Annabeth, his wife (Laura Linney). She comforts him, saying he has a big heart, he is a king, he did what he had to do for those he loves, and that is never wrong. The movie ends with no clear resolution. The neighborhood is gathered on the streets to watch a parade. Daves guilt-ridden widow is there, as are Sean (with his wife and child) and Jimmy. It seems that Jimmy has gotten away with murder.
The Parable of Mystic River
[10] Since film is primarily a visual medium, any attempt at religious interpretation that respects films autonomy as an art form must examine the elements of its formal structure that correspond to the visual analogue of basic religious questions: the nature of God, the problem of evil, and salvation."8 Mystic River, when viewed as parable, confronts the viewer with each of these questions. Religious language is (except for Jimmy's reference to washing away sins through murder) absent from Mystic River. However, there is explicitly religious visual imagery that insists the viewer make cognitive and emotional connection between the events portrayed and Christianity.
[11] Because the religious allusions are nonverbal, unless the viewer consciously reflects on the film as a whole, the tendency will be to focus on the most cinematically-striking of these scenes and to misinterpret it. In the scene in question, Jimmy stands shirtless looking out the bedroom window, and we see tattooed on his back a large Christian cross that extends from his neck to the middle of his back. Taken in isolation, this scene could mean that the viewer ought to see Jimmy as a Christ-figure. He is, after all, a suffering man with a cross on his back, albeit made of ink rather than wood. But Jimmy does not fit the bill as a Christ-figure. A Christ-figure is an innocent victim for whose suffering we are responsible and through whose suffering we are redeemed. No one in the film, much less Jimmy, meets these criteria. The scene (indeed the entire story) is tragic, but the character is not a hero; he is a vengeful murderer and thief: His suffering here is from the guilt of having killed the wrong man. The tragic nature of the scene is located in the obscenity of it; the Christian symbol of redemption has been co-opted by the evil-doer. And this is not the only time a Christian cross draws the viewers attention.
[13] When the cross does appear most visibly, it is worn by the most heinous of the victimizers: Jimmy and one of the men who sexually abused Dave."9 In the movies opening scene one abductor waits in the car while the other gets Dave into the back seat. As the first abductor turns around to smile at Dave, he puts his right hand over the seat. On the hand is a gold ring decorated with a cross. In a later scene, this pedophile approaches Dave in the semidarkness of the hide-away and we briefly glimpse a cross on a chain around the mans neck.
[14] These scenes are disturbing because they simultaneously raise questions about the nature of God, evil, and salvation. Where is God in a world of sexual predators who feel no discomfort wearing the symbol of Christian redemption? Is it not evil that a cold-blooded murderer so identifies with Christian symbolism that he has it permanently inked into his skin? What is salvation in a world such as this? These scenes nonverbally convey the truth that the cross has become an empty symbol at best, an instrument of domination at worst."10 The molesters ring and Jimmys tattoo call to mind Dorothee Solles story of a friend who was arrested by corrupt police in Argentina. During her arrest, the woman was blindfolded and interrogated for two nights by several men. At some point, she pled for mercy and said she was a Christian. One of her interrogators began to laugh and said Why are you telling us that? I too am a Catholic. He then put her hand on his bare chest so that she could feel the cross he was wearing. It was a profound shock for my friend, Solle says, that a sadist, a torturer should claim the cross as his symbol."11 What was once a symbol of triumph over tyranny has itself become a symbol of oppression.
[15] The film also raises issues related to the complicity of Christian teachings in undermining the moral agency of women."12 Dependence and submission are the primary modes of being for the women of Mystic River. The only strong women in the film are Katies boyfriends mother, who (as befits the cultural reading of strength in women as bitchiness) is a shrew, and Seans wife, who is invisible. The ideal of feminine virginity fused with masculine violence is symbolized in the first communion scene: the murderers daughter walks down the aisle dressed in white dress and veil, symbolically to be wedded to the churchs teachings. The ideal of wifely submission is artfully portrayed in the relationship between Jimmy and his wife. She knows that her husband is a murderer, yet she does not turn away from him. Annabeth encourages and comforts Jimmy, telling him he is a good man who has done what any loving father would. In the only sexual scene of the movie, Annabeth, the Ideal Wife, gives her body to her man as the ultimate form of solace for his murderous guilt.
[16] Oddly, it is only through the actions of an invisible woman that we see any hint of refusal to be subject to the traditions expectations of women. Seans wife, not visible until the final scene, has refused to accept a secondary role in her husbands life. She left Sean while pregnant with their first child. In recent weeks she has begun calling but saying nothing. Sean recognizes the silent caller as his wife. Near the end of the film he finally realizes that she is waiting for him to humble himself. She iswithout saying a wordinsisting that he treat her with dignity, that he acknowledge his treatment of her was wrong. Her invisibility can be read as a symbol of the fact that Christian culture has yet to accept the full dignity of women. Or, perhaps her pres-absence is an invitation to the viewer to identify with her rather than with any of the more enfleshed, traditionally-portrayed female characters. Her shadowy presence creates a space into which the female viewer is invited, thereby offering identification not with the traditional wives but with the one who refuses the victimization and limitation inherent in her socio-religiously prescribed role. Christianity and the Structure of Social Evil
[17] In Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition Edward Farley explores the dynamics of complicity in evil among social entities."13 The church, as a social institution, has both primary and secondary aims. A social institutions primary aims lead to its specific agendas and organizational patterns. The churchs primary aim theologically is to be the Body of Christ in the world. And so its specific agendas ought to be oriented toward making Jesus teachings a living reality. If following Jesus example, the church will be at work directly confronting evil at all levels and working to uphold the dignity of all human beings. But, because institutions necessarily are made up of individual human agents within a specific cultural matrix, secondary aims evolve that promote the aims of the societal environment. Secondary aims, influenced by personal and societal agendas, feed back onto the agendas for primary aims. In this way, an institution can become complicit in social evil. When secondary aims become infected with self-absolutizing goals, the primary aim is co-opted in service of victimization and subjugation of other groups: When a social entity maintains self-preserving functions through absolutizing imageries, it will do anything and everything to establish its place, power, and status.""14 If the institution (as in the case of the church) is a powerful one, this agenda of evil can spread from the institution into normative culture. The normative culture then takes on and perpetuates symbolismand traditions of interpretationthat mask subjugation by euphemistic symbols that render subjugated populations marginal if not invisibleThe symbolisms and organizational structures of religions legitimate the status quo of subjugating power.""15 For Christianity this subjugating power manifests itself in many ways, among them in defining roles for women and in maintaining the trappings of the faith without embodying the work of Christ.
[18] The cross figures largely in Mystic River, but the church does not. Where are its representatives when our characters suffer tremendous personal losses? For these people the church is nothing more than a social institution; its teachings have no impact in their lives. Annabeth and Jimmy are proud parents when their daughter partakes of the Body of Christ for the first time. Were the church adequately manifesting its primary aims in the world, we anticipate that the emotion attached to this spiritual event ought to spill over into a lived spirituality for these people. And yet, although Jimmy feels guilt at having murdered, it is only guilt for having killed the wrong man. Further, Annabeth, is a willing accomplice to murder. The Eucharist is for these people nothing more than a rite of passage. The primary aims of the church in offering communion have been so infected with absolutist claims that they no longer operate to make Christ a felt-presence.
[19] When we interpret Mystic River as parable, we make audible its subversive whisperings: The lovely home built from your Christian myth is situated on a most dangerous earthquake fault. The foundations are likely to give way at anytimeUnderstand and be transformed! The Parable of Mystic River tells us that the symbols of Christianity have been adopted by our culture, but its substance has not. Christianity has become so culturally conditioned that it verges on moral bankruptcy. If transformation is to come, it must take on the shape of social redemption. Social redemption is political and thus calls for strategies that address entrenched institutional power but in order to be effective it must reach the social world of shared meanings. It is only through radical criticism to expose and discredit the subjugating structures of the church and their displacement through the founding of theonomous communities of liberation that full redemption might come."16
[20] There is no happy ending here. It is only through Sean that we see the slightest hint at redemption. In the final scene, the neighborhood is gathered for a parade. We see pathetic Celeste running alongside her sons float, calling out to him in an attempt to cheer him. We see Jimmy, supported by his loving wife, surrounded by his faithful thugs. And we see Sean, reunited with his family. On the surface, it seems that Jimmy has gotten away with murder once again. But Sean, standing across the street, catches Jimmys eye, raises his hand and signals. Sean, police detective and cultural symbol of the good, aims his fingers in the classic masculine imitation of a gun. He winks at Jimmy and completes the gesture, squeezing the imaginary trigger. In the gesture there is perhaps a glimmer of hope. Sean seems to be saying Ive got you in my sights.
[21] We are left with the visual promise that striving for justice has not ceased. Like Jesus disciples who heard but did not understand, who sensed the meaning of his parables but could not articulate it, the viewer leaves Mystic River disturbed, hearing the faint whisper of parable: In the evils portrayed here, you too are implicated.
GROUPED FOOTNOTES
FILM CREDITS
Mystic River
JR & F
Home Page
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Film Review
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Reviewed by Brannon M Hancock
Vol. 9, No. 1 April 2005
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
[1] The latest film from Charlie Kaufman, the rare screenwriter whose reputation equals, if not exceeds, that of stars and directors, transports us once again into the innermost realms of the mind. As with Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (both 2002), Kaufman demonstrates his preoccupation with the rupture of identity, memory, and the human psyche.
[2] Imaginatively constructed and beautifully filmed, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a collaboration with director Michel Gondry) is on one level simply a case of 'boy meets girl,' following the conventional typology of the romance tale: encounter, attraction, excitement, relational growth, conflict, dissolution, despair, eventual reconciliation and the possibility of reunion. However, what unfoldsA\a fantastically-Freudian journey through the psychic jungle-gym of Joel Barrish's (Jim Carrey) mindA\completely eschews this sort of conventional linearity.
[3] Joel and Clementine (Kate Winslet) meet unexpectedly; a lengthy and tumultuous romance ensues. When relationship ends painfully, Clem, with the help of cleverly-named "Lacuna, Inc," erases Joel from her memory. Lacuna's Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) assists clients by eradicating unwanted memories through a high-tech neurological procedure. That Clem has completely forgotten him leaves Joel devastated. He decides to undergo the procedure himself. Yet, even as his memories of Clementine are being systematically wiped-out, he comes to his senses, admitting that, despite his pain, these memories are precious to him and worth keeping.
[4] The majority of the film involves Joel and his mental construction of Clementine frantically fleeing the "eraser guys," hiding out in the most remote, suppressed parts of Joel's memoryA\his childhood, his humiliationA\although they are always eventually caught. He cannot "call it off;" his memories of Clem will all soon be gone. As his memorial world crumbles around him, Joel realizes the folly of forgetting. He and Clem say their previously unfinished goodbyes, but, in the end, memory prevails over the machine, and hope remains.
[5] The film takes its title from Alexander Pope's 18th-century poem, "Eloisa to Abelard," the two star-crossed lovers Kaufman also employs in Being John Malkovich's puppet show. In the poem, mourning the loss of her fallen Abelard, Eloisa learns that it is "the hardest science to forget!" She longs to replace her lingering love for Abelard with "God alone, for he / alone can rival, can succeed to thee." But memories of Abelard still haunt Eloisa, separating her from God and driving her to suicidal despair, for as she expresses, "If I lose thy love, I lose my all."
[6] The notion that a person's being is ultimately grounded in relationality has been explored by various philosophers and theologians (Buber, Bonhoeffer, Levinas). In light of this construction of the self according to the other, the film's idea of erasing another from one's memory becomes a metaphoric act of murderA\the subject's desire to be freed from the other is essentially to will the other's death. But, like Eloisa, this becomes an act of suicide, for to vanquish the other is to vanquish oneself. In this way the service Lacuna provides its clients is a curse disguised as a blessing, for these images and narratives are the constituent parts of our very being and cannot truly be expungedA\memory wins out, on more than one occasion. The film reflects on this theme, ironically employing a Nietzschean aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil: "Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders."
[7] Worthy of theological reflection is the film's theodical position that even negative, painful experiences contribute to the greater scheme of the universe or to our overall personhood in an incomprehensible way. If, following Augustine, we are but the sum of our memories and can only know ourselves as such, might we over time come to equally appreciate both our good and bad experiences, and allow that they might all be either redemptive or redeemed? As when Dr. Mierzwiak's secretary, Mary (Kirsten Dunst), "returns" to Lacuna's clients their files of erased memories, might we conclude that one is able to truly move on only by facing, not erasing, these memories?
[8] Eternal Sunshine speaks to the insuppressible power of memory, even subtly suggesting that while we are custodians of our memories, we neither choose nor own them, but rather they own and choose us, making us who we are. Like the Jewish child at the Passover meal asking to be told once again the story of his ancestors' flight from Egypt and of God's miraculous actsA\like the Christian who, baptized in infancy, is told in adulthood to "remember" her baptismA\often our most significantly shaping memories are given to us, gifts of an O/other. In diverse ways, people of faith recall past events with which they have no immediate contact, and simultaneously look ahead to the telos of their faith: the Kingdom coming, peace, liberation, the "real presence" of the object of love and devotion, hope and desire fulfilledA\in Pope's words, "every pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd."
The Journal
of Religion and Film
The Devil We Already Know: Medieval Representations of a Powerless Satan in Modern American Cinema
by Kelly J. Wyman
University of Missouri Kansas City
Vol. 8, No.2, October 2004
The Devil We Already Know: Medieval Representations of a Powerless Satan in Modern American Cinema
by Kelly J. Wyman
University of Missouri Kansas City
Abstract
[1] The character of Satan has been explored repeatedly in American films, although neither film nor religion scholars have extensively investigated the topic. This article examines the medieval Christian roots of Satan as seen in American cinema and proposes that the most identifiable difference between the medieval Devil and the Satan shown in American films is his level of power over humanity. Hollywoods Satans echo medieval depictions of Satan in form, appearance, and ways of interacting with humans. Although less frightening, pop cultures view of Satan even when he is treated humorously is thus linked through movies to medieval religious beliefs.
Introduction
[2] From George Melies 1896 film La Manoir Du Diable (The Devils Manor), to more recent productions such as Roman Polanskis Rosemarys Baby (1968) and The Ninth Gate (1999), diabolism has been a significant foundation for films which explore religious subject matter. Within religious films, Satan, or the personification of evil, is often a prominent character. Because of his deep and established history in Western religion, namely Christianity, Satan is the ultimate antagonist. The debate over his role within Christianity is in constant flux, and film serves as a medium in which to explore the character of the Devil. Ultimately, western cultures view of the Devil is remarkably unchanged since pre-Reformation European Christianity. In American films, as in medieval Catholicism, Satan has been represented as human, as the creator of the Antichrist, as a beast, as a spirit or abstract figure, and also as a comedic hero. At the movies at least, when we confront the Devil, it is the Devil we already know.
[3] To date, there has been little scholarly investigation into the subject of Satan in film. Since there are few published studies on the topic, a review of literature is nearly impossible. For example, no articles available through The Journal of Religion and Film focus on portrayals of Satan in film. Bryan Stone briefly discusses Satan in horror movies, but devotes only three paragraphs to the idea of the diabolical.1 Two books that investigate Satan in film contain useful general information, but neither delves deeply into the subject. Schrecks The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema2 serves as a directory of films with diabolical themes. The author lists nearly every movie made between 1896 and 2000 which includes references to Satan. Schreck also gives background information and synopses of most of the films he lists, but does not attempt to make any connections between the films, nor does he discuss the philosophical or religious nature of the representations of Satan. Mitchells The Devil on Screen: Feature Films Worldwide, 1913 Through 20003 is more focused than Schrecks book. However, while Mitchell lays out defined terms for his investigation, he still does not provide any scholarly insight, except in the introduction.
[4] By contrast, a vast number of articles and books explore the role of religion in society and the representations of God in cinema. The Journal of Religion and Film includes many articles that discuss the theme of God in film including Mahans Celluloid Savior: Jesus in the Moves, Kozlovics Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah, and Mercadantes The God Behind the Screen: Plesantville & The Truman Show.4 Several books on the subject also exist, including God in the Movies: A Sociological Investigation; Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema; Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture; Savior on the Silver Screen; Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film; and Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years.5 This wealth of materials makes the absence of comparable studies on diabolism even more apparent.
[5] The imagery of the Devil in American films has created representations of Satan which closely resemble those presented in the medieval6 development of Christianity.7 Russell writes that there are no artistic representations of Satan before the sixth century.8 A possible reason can be found in Finleys Demons: The Devil, Possession, and Exorcism.9 He writes that belief in Satan was made official by the Council of Constantinople in AD 547. He was declared eternal...From now on it was heresy not to believe in him.10 Finley simplifies the point, but if the Devils existence was not official before the sixth century, the Church would have had little reason to commission artistic representations of him before then.
[6] In The Devil: The Archfiend in Art From the Sixth to the Sixteenth Century,11 Luther Link traces the development of the representations of Satan. Concluding that depictions of Satan and Jesus Christ were modified throughout the medieval period, he writes that the changes in Jesus can be plotted; those of the Devil are more difficult, because the iconography of Jesus was defined whereas that of the Devil was not.12 Illustrations of the Devil are difficult to place because he is seen as a vicious demon in various guises at any time.13 There were no established portrayals Satan. Consequently, images of the Devil are often wide-ranging. Link points out that the lack of a pictorial tradition combined with literary sources that confused the Devil, Satan, Lucifer and demons are important reasons for the lack of a unified image of the Devil and for the erratic iconography.14 For some people, Satan can be an ambiguous character, and the images of the Devil seen today are just as varied as they were in the early Church; they range from human to beast to non-human.
[7] The differing definitions of Satan in movies, literature, academe, and religion contribute to a widespread ignorance about the Devil, who he is, what he stands for, and what he looks like. The overall debate about Satan and popular ignorance of him allows filmmakers the opportunity to illustrate varying interpretations. Films become a way to investigate the Devils character. Popular cinema has the ability to fill the void of knowledge about the Devil. These inconsistent portrayals also have the ability to infuse a lack of meaning into the Devil by representing him in so many ways that one becomes confused about his place in Christianity. In the Bible, Satan plays a minor role, and his personality is not discussed in its text. The Devils character is not well-developed in the Bible. He plagues humankind with temptations and hardships, and he tests basic belief in God, but not much more is known about his person.
[8] In his series of books, J.B. Russell traces the history of the Devil from antiquity to present day. In Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, Russell writes that the best system of defining and explaining such human constructs as the Constitution or the Devil is the history of concepts.15 This history of concepts should include an analysis of the portrayals of the Devil in film because they can be traced as cinematic artifacts. For some people, films can create and/or reinforce beliefs and perceptions. Therefore, movies and filmmakers become the creators of images and beliefs people adopt about Satan. Cinema not only reinforces values and conceptions, it also creates standards. Since what people watch and experience works to define their perceptions, the power of film and its representations of Satan should be an important consideration in the study of religion and film.
Satan as Human
[9] When he originally appeared in early medieval art, the Devil was pictured as human or humanoid.16 In many films such as Oh, God! You Devil, The Witches of Eastwick, Angel Heart, Devils Advocate, End of Days, and Bedazzled,17 Satan takes the form of a human, sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically. Russell states that this type of image dominated the period from the ninth through the eleventh18 centuries. The Devil could appear as a regular person such as an old man or woman, an attractive youth or girl, a servant, pauper, fisherman, merchant, student, shoemaker, or peasant.19 Further, some of the characteristics of the humanoid Devil were glowing eyes, spewing mouths, spindly arms and legs, bloated torsos, and long, hooked noses.20 These images are still present in American popular culture and can be seen in movies such as the ones mentioned above.
[10] In American films, the humanoid Devil is usually portrayed as male. The representation of Satan during the Middle Ages was always male because the popular imagination made the Devil, like God, masculine.21 Except in obvious cases like Bedazzled where the Devil is clearly a woman, female demons are usually identified with succubi. This identification of Satan as male is so strong that the female figures are rarely recognized by modern viewers as the Devil. In The Ninth Gate, Satan is portrayed as female; however, most reviewers confused her with a succubus.
Creating the Antichrist
[11] Similarly, by suggesting that in order to create the antichrist the Devil must have sex with a woman, the male Satan is often represented in American cinema as a type of incubus. Russell contends that the idea of demons or the Devil having sex with women was accepted by the Church because they could draw upon the old tradition of the fallen angels lusting after the daughters of men.22 It was also thought throughout the medieval period that witches engaged in ceremonial sex with demons and even Satan himself.23
[12] Naturally, sex with humans can result in offspring. Written during the medieval period, the Old English poem Christ and Satan mentions the theme of Satan and his son reigning over humanity.24 In Lucifer, Russell writes that among the other lies of the Devil, the demons [in the poem] complain, is that his own son would become the ruler of mankind.25 Clubb writes that the conception of Antichrist as Satans son was [also]provided by passages in Wulfstan.26 Russell explains that throughout the Middle Ages, the antichrist was thought capable of taking several forms including an incarnation of Satan himself, or Satans son, or the chief of Satans armies.27 The idea of the antichrist being half human is explored in films such as Rosemarys Baby, The Omen, and Devils Advocate.28 These films are also based on the idea that Satan needs an heir in order to continue his assumed reign a legacy motif.
Satan as Beast
[13] When many people think of the Devil, they picture a satyr-style figure with horns and a tail, usually colored red and carrying a pitchfork. The best example would be of Tim Currys character in the 1985 film Legend29 In later medieval art, around the turn of the eleventh century, Russell points out that Satan became a monster and was symbolized by the color red.30 The most common animalistic characteristics assigned to the Devil were horns, a tail, and wings,31 and the most recurrent creature forms were serpent (dragon), goat, and dog.32 Russell further explains,
[14] Animal and monstrous demons tended to follow the forms suggested by Scripture, theology, and folklore, such as snakes, dragons, lions, goats, and bats. Often, however, artists seemed to select forms according to their fancy: demons with human feet and hands, wild hair, and animal faces and ears; demons with monstrous, hideous bodies, lizard skin, apelike heads, and paws. The symbolism was intended to show the Devil as deprived of beauty, harmony, reality, and structure, shifting his shapes chaotically, and as a twisted, ugly distortion of what angelic or even human nature ought to be. The didactic purpose was to frighten sinners with threats of torment and hell.33
[15] The color red was used to indicate both the fires of hell and the blood of humanity. The Devils skin was sometimes red, or he was dressed in red, or his hair was flaming like fire.34 The films Legend and Little Nicky35 are examples of the Devil in this beastlike form. In both of these films, Satan has horns and is satyr-like. The beastlike Satan can also been seen in End of Days when Satan takes his true form at the end of the film.
[16] Another use of the beast signifying evil is seen in the films The Exorcist and The Omen. In these movies, dogs (the beasts) represent servants of evil. The Exorcist uses dogs at the beginning of the film when Father Merrin is in the Iraqi desert. The dog fight symbolizes impending doom, and Father Merrin recognizes this as a signifier of the Devil, a portent of evil. In The Omen, Damien is protected by an evil Rottweiler. The dog not only symbolizes evil, but also serves as a protector for Damien. Little Nicky contains a diabolical dog as well. Mr. Beefy (the dog) serves as Nickys guide on Earth.
Possession and Satan as Abstract
[17] Although human and beastlike representations were the most common in the Middle Ages, many religionists believed that the Devil was a spirit who could possess humans. Pagels writes that thousands of years of tradition have characterized Satanas a spirit.36 Graves explains that at one time, the Devil, it was thought, could not influence the actions of men unless bodily present within them.37 The Catholic Church, as Corte describes, believes most cases of possession are inflicted on the victims by their own doing, either by worshipping Satan or practicing sinful lifestyles. The Church does admit, however, that there have been many documented cases of possession where there has been no fault or blame placed on the afflicted individual.38
[18] As illustrated in The Exorcist and End of Days, American films often show the Devil possessing a human. In End of Days, the Devil starts out as an abstract entity, but quickly takes over the body of Gabriel Byrnes character. At the end of the film, Satan becomes beastlike. The Devils reason for choosing to inhabit Byrnes body is never explained in the film. However, in The Exorcist, it is suggested that Regan contributed to her own possession by playing with a Ouija board.
[19] Possession and exorcism themes are certainly prevalent in American movies. Cueno argues that the biggest promoter of Catholic exorcism remains the popular entertainment industry.39 A thirteenth-century Armenian painting depicts God performing an exorcism. One can infer that this shows that anyone who has the power to exorcize demons may be God-like. A Catholic priest (as seen in The Exorcist and The Omen) who has the knowledge of and power to perform an exorcism is somewhat Christ-like. Russell writes that Christs powers of exorcism were a sign of his power to replace the Kingdom of this World, which is the Kingdom of Satan, with the Kingdom of the Lord.40
[20] Satan as abstract is a theme which is derived from the Middle Ages. Some theologians in the Catholic Church believed that the Devil is not tangible, and is therefore illustrated as a spirit or angel. According to Russell, between 1140 and 1230, Satan was often thought of as a spirit. He explains, the eternal Principal of Evil walked in solid, if invisible, substance at ones side and crouched when one was quiet in the dark recesses of room and mind.41 Russell also notes that in Dantes Divine Comedy Satan was specifically intended...to be empty, foolish, and contemptible, a futile contrast to Gods Energy, and that Satans true being is his lack of being, his futility and nothingness.42 In Chaucers Canterbury Tales, the Devil seldom plays an important role other than as metaphor.43 Link suggests that the Devil cannot have a true physical form. He deduces that since the Devil could be a microbe as well as a fallen angel, how could the Devil have a face? He could not because he was not a character, only an abstraction.44 Hell could also not have a true physical form, but one depiction Link offers is the Leviathan Hell Mouth of the Last Judgment.45 This is a close parallel to the Leviathan in Hellbound: Hellraiser II.46 Link states, Hell Mouth is a powerful, primitive force, a denizen of the deep who receives what Satan casts in.47 The Leviathan in Hellbound is also a hell where souls are thrown and collected.
Satan in Comedy
[21] Another representation of Satan which is seen in both the Middle Ages and American cinema is that of the Devil as comedic hero. In Lucifer, Russell writes that the popular opinion of Satan during the time of the Middle Ages oscillated between seeing him as a terrible lord and seeing him as a fool.48 In The Witches of Eastwick, Daryl Van Horne is shown as both. In Bedazzled, most of Satans actions are performed for comedic relief. Russell continues, the Devil could be a silly prankster, playing marbles in church or moving the pews about.49 He also notes that throughout the medieval period the Devilbecame more ridiculous and comic in sermons, art, exempla, and popular literature from the end of the thirteenth century, perhaps a logical result of reducing his theological significance while increasing the sense of his immediacy.50 Comedic Satans can also be seen in films such as Little Nicky, and Oh, God! You Devil.
Faustian Themes
[22] The Faust legend also has its roots in the Middle Ages. At some point, there is a Faustian aspect to most diabolical films in America. Russell writes that the idea of a formal pact [with the Devil] goes back to a story about Saint Basil circulated by Saint Jerome in the fifth century and an even more influential story of Theophilus of Cilicia dating from the sixth.51 Diecknamm points out that the Faust story has been told and retold under different names dating from antiquity, but was especially prevalent during the medieval period.52 Oh, God! You Devil, Devils Advocate, and Bedazzled have clear Faustian themes. According to Russell, William Langlands Piers Plowman explores the idea of salvationthrough love more than intellect.53 At the end of Devils Advocate, Kevin Lomax is ultimately saved by love, as his wits are of no use against the Devil. Russell continues, influenced by the nominalism and voluntarism common in late fourteenth-century theology, Langland asserted the freedom of the human will.54 In Devils Advocate, Kevins free-will decision at the end of the film restores order.
Conclusion
[23] As the medieval church changed, the conceptions of Satan changed with it. The Devil moved from being presented as a naked man surrounded by darkness, to a beast with animalistic properties or a brightly colored creature that carries a pitchfork, to an abstract entity with no physical form. Of these representations of Satan, Link writes that no other creature in the arts with such a long history is so empty of intrinsic meaning. No other sign or supposed symbol is so flat.55 For many Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, the Devil is certainly not meaningless. However, the variety of images and conceptions of him does make the character of Satan rather vacant. Link says of early Christian art and its illustrations of the Devil, [it] was the medium and message for the illiterate masses.56 Americans are generally literate, but the accessibility of movies makes them one of the mediums most available to the masses. Many Americans watch television and go to the movies more than they read or view art, so what they see on screen has the possibility of becoming the only visual representation they have of Satan.
[24] A commonly held view by religious scholars in the late 1960s was that America was rapidly becoming secularized. As an overall view of religion, this belief has been reexamined in recent scholarship, but the principle can still be applied to the representations of Satan in American film. Peter L. Berger states, the religious legitimations of the world have lost their plausibility not only for a few intellectuals and other marginal individuals but for broad masses of entire societies.57 Berger was speaking in terms of the presence of religion as a whole in society, and he has since recanted this notion.58 However, the Devils incorporation into American popular culture has worked to lessen his status as the ultimate source of evil because when Satan is represented on screen, one can dismiss the portrayal as a fabrication. Satan will never become secularized because his existence is based in religion, but the possibility still exists that his incorporation into American popular culture has weakened the Devils terrifying qualities as assigned to him by the early Church. Regardless of the representation offered, films about Satan usually go unnoticed by the public, theologians, and, as mentioned before, most academics.
[25] The Devil and what he signifies can become meaningless to people because of the varying interpretations of him in cinema. In the majority of Satan films, the Devil is not offered as a particularly frightening force in American culture. The most fear-provoking representation of Satan is when he is portrayed as an abstract entity. The idea of Satan entering a human body or being a presence unseen is intrinsically more scary that a Devil who is personified, but in most of the films where the Devil has no physical form, he is still shown as easily downcast because he possesses humans. After all, a Devil who manifests himself in human form, or even as a beastlike figure, can be killed and disposed of, and the comedic Devil is never frightening. In addition, when one sees something over and over again, it becomes mundane and arguably holds less significance for him or her. The same argument has been made concerning violence, sex, and profanity in the movies.59 If people repeatedly see representations of Satan in films, he too, may become less important or less powerful in the eyes of the public.
[26] Aries writes that there is a complete disappearance of hell. Even those who believe in the devil limit his power to this world and do not believe in eternal damnation.60 Finlay argues that the Devil of today has lost his terrifying aspect, being mostly a disembodied evil spirit.61 The representations of Satan in American cinema have certainly worked to help develop and enforce the Devils loss of power. Satan rarely wins, and he is shown as relatively easy to battle. The portrayal of the Devil in this fashion diminishes his power within the framework of religion. Many Christians would probably disagree with representations that illustrate the Devil as a being who is easily downcast. In the end, they might agree that the Devil will not win the fight for humanity, but they would most likely say that he is not so effortlessly overpowered. If people believe in the representations of Satan that are so frequently presented in movies, he becomes a less frightening entity. There is then no need to be concerned because there will always be a Catholic priest to perform an exorcism, or an Arnold Schwarzenegger to save humanity from ultimate disaster. And if Satan has a sense of humor and looks like Elizabeth Hurly, or Gabriel Byrne for that matter, why not go to hell? Adam Sandler makes it look fun. Finley continues to write that the character of Satan is definitely intriguing.62 If he were not a compelling figure, there would not be as many films about the Devil as there are. This much is true.
Grouped Notes
FILM CREDITS
Angel Heart Bedazzled Devil's Advocate End of Days The Exorcist Hellbound: Hellraiser II Le Manoir du diable (The Devil's Manor) Legend Little Nicky The Ninth Gate Oh, God! You Devil The Omen Rosemary's Baby The Witches of Eastwick
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Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded
by Julien R. Fielding
Vol. 7 No. 2 October 2003
Reassessing The Matrix/Reloaded
by Julien R. Fielding
Abstract
[1] Much has been written about Larry and Andy Wachowskis film The Matrix and on practically every angle.1 from philosophical precedents to the realities of artificial intelligence. Religious scholars, too, have thrown their hats into the academic ring, expounding on the Gnostic, Buddhist and Christian aspects found therein. But as many have discovered, the Wachowski brothers are syncretists, pulling bits from here and there and then mixing it all together in a science fiction-martial arts stew. They do this so thoroughly that when one tries to impose a singular religious paradigm on top of the film(s), slotting in the characters one-by-one, it seems to work only until put back within the context of the film(s). It is then when everything begins to unravel. Even though scholars have done it time and time again employing one religious worldview to understand The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded simply does not work. Its almost too simplistic a method for a film this complex. And this paper will demonstrate why. Article
[2] The Matrix: Reloaded opened May 15 with much anticipation and fanfare. Not only did it vanquish its competition, knocking X2: X-Men United from the No. 1 spot, but on its opening weekend it also earned $93.3 million, making it the second-highest first weekend grossing film of all time."2 It has been four years since part one of the trilogy opened and many wondered how, now that Neo (Keanu Reeves) was freed from his artificial intelligence slave masters, the saga would progress. Now we know not well. Two hundred and fifty thousand sentinels are rapidly drilling into Zion, the last human outpost, and Neo cant sleep, for his dreams contain unsettling images of Trinitys (Carrie-Anne Moss) fate.3 But its worse than that. When he encounters the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis), the Godlike creator of the Matrix.4 Neo learns that the prophecy might end the war but not in the way Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) has envisioned. In the final reel the films spiritual leader is left a broken man, I dreamed a dream, and now that dream is gone from me."5
[3] A number of scholars have looked to The Bible to understand The Matrix, and rightly so. The basics seem to be there. Neo/Thomas Anderson is the One, the predetermined messiah who has the innate purpose of and ability to save humanity. His name says it all as so many have pointed out - Neo is an anagram for the One. This Greek word also means new with the additional mantle of being something in a different or abnormal manner. 6 This certainly fits Neo, who really is a new and improved human; hes superhuman. Unlike his shipmates, he can read the raw code without need of a computer monitor. By Reloaded he can fly, dodge and stop bullets and move at unimaginable speeds; hes Superman in a dystopian milieu.7
[4] Before transforming into Neo, his hacker alter-ego, he is Thomas Anderson, the respectable corporate programming drone. Even when he is enmeshed in the dream world his name hints at greater things. When broken into its components, Anderson becomes Son of Man." 8 The name Thomas also furthers ties The Bible to The Matrix, for in the beginning this character suffers from doubt. No! I dont believe it. Its not possible, he tells Morpheus once hes learned the truth that human beings are grown in fields so that their body heat can be converted into batteries to run the master machine. Put all of this into a Christian context and it is not difficult to envision Neo as Christ, the man-God sent to save humanity from evil forces. Building on this connection, in Reloaded when Neo and Trinity come out of the elevator into Zion, a large group of followers have assembled; waiting for the messiahs return. Many extend offerings or ask for help. I have a son Jacob, please watch over him, one woman pleads. Another begs Neo to watch over her daughter on the Icarus."9
[5] Other scholars have turned to Buddhism to understand Neo, casting him as the Buddha or a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who forsakes nirvana to stay behind and help humanity. And evidence in the film(s) supports this, too. Morpheus wakes Neo to the fact that the world he has taken to be real is anything but. It is maya, literally deception, illusion The continually changing, impermanent phenomenal world of appearances and forms, of illusion or decision, which an unenlightened mind takes as the only reality." 10 Only by seeing the truth will Neo be released from this prison for your mind. One visual hint in The Matrix that Neo has surrendered himself to his new life takes place after his muscles have been rebuilt.11 When he goes to meet the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar his head is still covered with a dark stubble and his shoulders are wrapped in a blanket, making this recent initiate resemble a Buddhist monk. And life on the ship is anything but luxurious. Like the monks of so many traditions, these prophecy-followers subsist on a single bowl of bland gruel and cope with cold, cramped accommodations.12 In addition to Buddhism, Flannery-Dailey and Wagner look to Gnosticism for elucidation and conclude that Neo must be the redeemer figure who willingly enters the world in order to share liberating knowledge, facilitating escape for anyone able to understand."13
[6] All of these approaches work on a certain level but are far from decoding The Matrix trilogy. The problem with associating Neo with Jesus, the Buddha or the Gnostic redeemer is that all these traditions have negative attitudes toward the physical body. In Matthew 16:21, Jesus tells Peter, You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. In Galatians 5:16 Paul writes, live by the spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness envy, drunkenness, carousing I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And in 1 Peter 11, the author writes I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against your soul. Finally consider what God did to the wicked cities Sodom and Gomorrah 14 in Genesis 19:15-22. Even today Christians think of Jesus as celibate and when anyone tries to present him as anything else The Last Temptation of Christ springs to mind the placards come out and the teeth gnash.
[7] Before he became the Buddha, the enlightened one was Siddhartha, a married prince who also had a son, appropriately named Rahula or fetter. When he woke up to reality that sickness, old age and death wait for us all he cast off his family, becoming an ascetic. Even when he found the Middle Way, he didnt go back to being a householder. At the core of his teachings is the fact that not only is craving or desire, the thirst for sensual pleasure and the becoming and passing away, the root of suffering but it is the very thing that keeps us shackled to the wheel of birth and rebirth.
[8] As for the Gnostics, they were dualists who had a revulsion of the human body. To them the spirit was everything. The majority of the sects demanded an ascetic life with rules for the mortification of the flesh and a special prohibition on marriage (or at least on procreation), so that the divine soul might be liberated from the bonds of sense and bodily appetite and assisted to turn itself toward higher things. 15
[9} So what does all this have to do with Neo? Although he may seem to be celibate in The Matrix, by Reloaded his lust is clearly a driving force. The first time we see that the love between Trinity and Neo is far from a Platonic ideal is in a Zion elevator, when alone the two grapple passionately. Their relationship escalates to an almost five-minute sex act intercut with images of sweat-drenched Zionists bumping and grinding in the Temple. Those who have equated this serene messiah with the chaste Jesus and Buddha might be left scratching their heads.
[10] Whats more puzzling is how does this make us reassess Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), the supposed Judas Iscariot of the piece. In The Matrix he meets with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) at a cyber-created restaurant where he drinks fine wine, smokes a cigar and eats a juicy steak. 16 He will give up Morpheus if the Agent will reinsert him into the Matrix. Ignorance is bliss, Cypher says. From this scene, scholars have shouted a mighty aha. Cypher, who embraces the sensual world and its distractions, must be the villain. Then we remember what Mouse (Matt Doran) tells Neo while he and the crew of the Nebuchadnezzer are dining on their bland bowl of synthesized aminos, vitamins and minerals: To deny our impulses is the deny the very thing that makes us human. Mouse refers here not only to the woman in the red dress17 but also to those things that give a person pleasure. The only significant difference between Cypher and Neo is that one responds to his impulses in the dream world and the other acts on them in the real world.18
[12] Those using Buddhism to understand The Matrix cast Morpheus as a sort of Zen dogen or master. Unfortunately, hes neither an expert warrior nor very enlightened. 19 At the end of Reloaded his prophecy has been revealed to be nothing more than a trick; a way to control the humans. Although the freed humans believe they can make a choice, their choices only lead them closer to their obliteration. When looking at Morpheus through a Christian lens, some scholars have labeled him the storys John the Baptist, the desert prophet who in John 3:28-30 said, I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him He must increase, but I must decrease.20 Since being freed from the construct by the original man born inside that had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit Morpheus has been on a zealous quest for the One. Not everyone believes in the prophecy, though. The camp is split between those who label him crazy and those who treat him like an uber-cool rock star. I would suggest he is more like Moses, the Biblical prophet who leads the Israelites out of bondage, in this case the Matrix could stand in for pharaoh.21
[13] For scholars the most problematic character in The Matrix trilogy has been Trinity. And for good reason. This warrior maiden who fights alongside the men and several times rescues them even our savior Neo really has no equal in Christianity or in Buddhism. Her name signifies the coequal triune elements of the Godhead, which consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, 22 which is interesting because this character also functions on a variety of levels. As Neo's eternal, predestined mate, who also proves nurturing and protective, Trinity has been interpreted by some as Mary Magdalene, the woman who waits near Jesus tomb to attend to his body and who witnesses his resurrection. Trinity, too, hovers protectively over Neos body when he goes into the Matrix. After hes been fighting the Agents, at the end of the first film, and he flatlines, she says to him, Neo, please, listen to me. I promised to tell you the rest. The Oracle, she told me that Id fall in love and that man, the man I loved, would be the One. You see? You cant be dead, Neo, you cant be because I love you. You hear me? I love you? She kisses him lightly on the mouth then commands him to get up, which he does. In this capacity not only is she the divine spark that resurrects Neo it also is her love that transforms him from the confused and lost Thomas Anderson into the still-conflicted-but-getting-there, ready-to-get-the-job-done Neo. This raises the question then, as one of my students asked, is Trinity God? She certainly watches over Neo and on several occasions seems to be directing his actions. For instance, in Reloaded Neo meets 100 copies of Agent Smith and Trinity, who is watching the code, tells him to get out of there, which he eventually does, Superman style. More importantly, though, at the end of the film she goes into the Matrix disobeying Neo in the process to tear the whole goddamn building down and, as so many times before, ensures that the mission is a successful one.
In the ships hierarchy Trinity also out ranks the chosen one and even refuses to let him single-handedly rescue Morpheus. Incidentally, she is the first freed human to make face-to-face contact with Neo. 23
[14] In this paper, Ive suggested that no one religious worldview helps to connect the dots. And, in some ways, as exegetical tools Christianity, Buddhism and Gnosticism dont always offer the truest interpretations. Hinduism is one worldview that has not yet been applied to the trilogy and, depending on the curve ball thrown by the Wachowskis in Revolutions, it may or may not be helpful in the end. Despite that, lets press on. In The Matrix, Morpheus explains theres a problem with the date. Neo might think its 1999, when in fact its much later, sometime in 2199. In Reloaded, during his rousing speech at the Temple, Morpheus reminds the Zion inhabitants that after 100 years of fighting they are still standing. But then the Architect throws a spanner in the works. He explains that the current Neo is the sixth One to navigate the Matrix. We can surmise that when this messianic anomaly chooses the (wrong) door that supposedly saves humanity, the whole process starts over again. Now provided this simulated video game resets itself every 101 years an important number in the Matrix then that means that existence is an unending cycle of creation, growth and death. Although the numbers dont match up exactly, this concept of cyclical time comes close to the Hindu idea of yugas or epochs, which start out with everyone doing his or her duty and obeying one law but ends with people becoming weak and lazy and morality disappearing completely. Both Agent Smith and the Architect suggest that the first Matrix was perfect; a kind of Eden. However, when the human minds refused to accept it, the Architect had to look to an intuitive program, the Oracle, to solve the problem. Her solution to offer the slaves a choice. 99 percent of the subjects accept (the program) if given a choice, the Architect tells the bewildered Neo.
[15] Hinduism also explains how our savior can copulate with Trinity. As in the Greek tradition, Hindu deities typically have a consort Shiva has Parvati; Vishnu has Lakshmi and Brahma has Sarasvati and their relationship is often a physical one. Of these three male deities, Neo has more in common with Vishnu, who throughout history has assumed a certain shape or avatara. 24 According to Jan Knapperts An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend, what distinguishes Vishnu from the other gods, it is his sattyaguna, his virtuous character, i.e. the kindness and mercy for human beings. This quality is sometimes described as narayana moving the waters, i.e., granting rain on the desert of human needs. The entry goes on to explain that Vishnu often gets compared to Jesus Christ, who also was born in human form to take on evil. In these stories whenever Vishnu descends to earth his wife Lakshmi will also arrive to grow up, meet him, destined to be his wife on earth as well as in heaven."25
[16] Unlike the majority of orthodox religions, Hinduism is populated with strong and powerful female deities. In fact, in one of the branches of Kali-puja, adherents worship the powerful tripartite goddess as exemplified by Kali-Durga-Shakti. In this doctrine Brahma and Shiva are inactive, but Kali is the Shakti, the fountain of energy. 26 Kali is a ferocious, blood-thirsty world-ruler who leaves behind her a trail of death and destruction.27 Devi Durga, comprised of aspects from the 12 gods in the Hindu pantheon, is depicted with eight hands, each one holding a weapon. She is, as Knappert said, the goddess of defense, warfare, wisdom and knowledge The goddess promised that she would arise and intervene each time the Asuras (demons) returned to the world to resume the fighting in their efforts to revive the forces of evil in the cosmos.28 Trinity, the black leather wearing warrior, who can more than hold her own in battle, perhaps owes more to this tradition than any other.
[17] Finally, Hinduism might help us fathom how a messianic figure could unflinchingly murder countless innocents (as evidenced during the rescue mission in The Matrix.)29 In the Mahabharata, there is a 606 verse poem called the Bhagavad-gita, which means the song of God. In this section, Arjuna, an archer from the kshatriya class, has doubts about going into battle against his family. Krishna, who is his charioteer, explains why Arjuna must fulfill his dharma or duty. Do not fear to kill, the God says, I have already killed them. As Knappert explains, Hinduism teaches that everything that happens is the manifestation of immutable universal laws. The warriors must kill, the victim must die, both should do so resignedly, since it is their destiny.30 Gavin Flood further elucidates the lessons taught in the Gita, writing that dharma and renunciation are compatible: action (karma) should be performed with complete detachment; the soul is immortal and until liberated subject to rebirth The soul is not killed nor does it kill. The crucial element here is to perform ones dharma without attachment, which is why, even if the movie audience feels uncomfortable at how quickly and without remorse Trinity and Neo blow away the policemen and soldiers, no action accrues to a person who acts with a controlled mind, without expectation and contented with whatever comes his way. Through non-attachment to action, and knowledge of the Lord, a person will be liberated and be united with the Lord at death.31
[18] Although Hinduism elucidates some elements contained in The Matrix, its also far from the perfect key. Taoism, Shintoism, popular literature, anime and manga, and even popular films from Star Wars to Vertigo help us peel away more and more layers. Why this film has been so frequently discussed is undoubtedly because of its innovative, and often unconventional, use of myth and religious thought. The question that drives many of us truly is What is The Matrix?
GROUPED FOOTNOTES
FILM CREDITS
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Matrix The Matrix: Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions Star Wars
X2: X-Men United Vertigo
questions.
Any Gods Out There?
Perceptions of Religion from Star Wars and Star Trek
By John S. Schultes
Vol. 7 No. 2 October 2003
Any Gods Out There?
Perceptions of Religion from Star Wars and Star Trek By John S. Schultes
Abstract
[1] Hollywood films and religion have an ongoing rocky relationship, especially in the realm of science fiction. A brief comparison study of the two giants of mainstream sci-fi, Star Wars and Star Trek reveals the differing attitudes toward religion expressed in the genre. Star Trek presents an evolving perspective, from critical secular humanism to begrudging personalized faith, while Star Wars presents an ambiguous mythological foundation for mystical experience that is in more ways universal.
Article
[2] Science Fiction has come of age in the 21st century. From its humble beginnings, Sci- Fi has been used to express the desires and dreams of those generations who looked up at the stars and imagined life on other planets and space travel, those who actually saw the beginning of the space age, and those who still dare to imagine a universe with wonders beyond what we have today. In all of science fiction displayed on theater and television screens, none are more popular or mainstream than Star Wars and Star Trek. These two influential franchises are the focus of this brief comparison study of their perceptions of religion.
[3] I have chosen Sci Fi to look at religion because the genre discusses the problems and blessings of the future. It also discusses the problems of today in fantastic settings, using symbol and allegory. In this discussion of perspectives on religion, I have decided to narrow the subject matter down to the film canons of the two franchises, as the other source material is so vast as to require an entire book. Some references must be made to other material (such as the Star Trek television shows, which form the basis for the films) where applicable.
[4] In the case of Star Wars, we have the five (soon six) films, including the first trilogy (1977-1983) and the prequel trilogy (1999-to the present). The Star Trek canon is a little more complex and much larger. Unlike George Lucass Star Wars, Star Treks founder, Gene Roddenberry has passed away, with other writers and directors taking over his legacy. Roddenberry originated the series, though he is said to have exercised less creative control than he would have liked over the material created before his death in 1991, with the exception of the first film, and The Next Generation. Later incarnations of Star Trek provide interesting contrasts and developments that shall be examined later in the discussion.
[4] Star Trek encompasses five live-action television shows: the first affectionately known as The Original Series, (1966-1969) followed by The Next Generation (1987-1993), Deep Space Nine (1992-1999), Voyager (1995-2001), Enterprise (2001- ) which is in its third season as of this writing; and ten theatrical films: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyager Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Star Trek Generations (1994), Star Trek First Contact (1996), Star Trek Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek Nemesis (2002).
[5] The tales of the Original Series featuring Captain Kirk, Mister Spock, and Doctor McCoy with supporting characters Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, and Scotty are continued in the first six films, followed by a passing of the torch story to the new crew of the Next Generation in the seventh film. The Next Generation (TNG for short) series tells the story of a new cast of Federation explorers, with the primary focus on Captain Picard and Lt. Commander Data, with supporting characters Commander Riker, Doctor Crusher, Counselor Troi, Worf, and Geordi LaForge.
[6] Star Trek first debuted in the mid 1960s and embodied what many considered progressive and liberal social values such as inter-racial equality represented by the multi-cultural crew and the ideas of fighting for freedom against injustice even when it meant disobeying orders. This was accomplished on the backdrop of the bold exploration of space and the expansion of the human mind. The Next Generation is said to have embodied more of Gene Roddenberrys vision of what he considered humanitys ideal future and put more emphasis on secular humanism and socialist collectivist values. These values were slightly modified and take on a new direction in later shows (Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise) after Roddenberrys death, though the films seem to retain much of his original emphasis in The Original Series and The Next Generation.1
[7] The various crews encounter aliens and new civilizations and try to make peaceful exchanges with them, though sometimes they have to fight against injustice or confront their own weaknesses.
[8] Star Wars, in the first trilogy, in contrast to Star Treks band of explorers and diplomats, follows the tales of a band of rebels fighting against the evil Galactic Empire: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, and the sentient robots R2-D2 and C-3PO. The Empires oppression is personified in Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, a figure in black armor, mask and cape. The second trilogy travels back in time to the period before the Empire, when Darth Vader was a young man, then known as Anakin Skywalker, tracing his fall from grace to evil. Ultimately, the films are about the cosmic Force, which guides the destinies of the main characters, with the effect of leading Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker to redemption after his fall.
[9] In order to understand the philosophies and values conveyed in Star Trek and Star Wars, it may help to first examine the backgrounds and beliefs of the creators, Gene Roddenberry, and George Lucas respectively.
[10] Both men were raised in American Protestant households, Lucass parents were Methodist, Roddenberrys Baptist. Lucas disliked Sunday school and enjoyed the Lutheran services of his familys German housekeeper far more. His religious inspiration2 was perhaps sparked by his survival of a near fatal car crash when he was a young man.3 After this he went on to study film and myth (following the works of Joseph Campbell). He also had a love of science fiction, comic books, and other fantasy, a hunger for stories that had meaning.
[11] Roddenberry on the other hand was greatly inspired by his father, who urged him to be skeptical of everything, including preachers. As a teenager Roddenberry paid more attention in church, and came to realize he thought that religion, especially Christianity, was superstition and nonsense.4 He also continued to observe in life that religion itself seemed to cause divisions and problems for mankind,5 reinforcing his rejection of it. This rejection seems to have led him to substitute a humanist philosophy, one that inspired people to bond together and to improve themselves through their own efforts putting aside dangerous or limiting beliefs.6
[12] On the surface the two men sound very different, but their beliefs are too complex to summarize in a few sentences. Suffice to say that both were seeking men, who did not take what they grew up with for granted. Instead, they had to re-invent their own belief systems and attempted to put that message out in the forum of science fiction. Sci Fi, being a form of fantasy, allows for difficult subjects and controversial topics to be put into terms that are easier to understand, allowing the imagination to fill in the blanks and propose solutions that we may not have considered. Both Lucas7 and Roddenberry8 claimed to believe in God but they understood God differently, as their works help to illustrate.
[13] First let us examine the attitudes toward religion expressed in Star Trek. In the Original Series, the principle ship, Enterprise had a Chapel. This was seen twice on the show.
[14] The first time was in the episode Balance of Terror in which Captain Kirk was about to perform a wedding ceremony for two of his crew members. This chapel was unadorned with familiar religious icons. It featured a podium rather than an altar, decorative yet strange glyph designs (not recognizable from any modern day tradition) and an infinity symbol on the door as one entered. The service was attended by all the crew in their standard uniforms, but not their dress uniforms (seen later in the show at formal hearings and on diplomatic galas). It was of note that no clergy persons were present, but Kirk himself was the celebrant, evoking popular maritime tradition. Before the ceremony is interrupted by an emergency, he mentions our many beliefs evoking an ecumenical flavor to the proceedings. Indeed the future bride is seen kneeling (we assume in silent prayer) while the groom is not. The second time we see the Enterprise chapel occurs in an episode where Kirk is thought to have died, and Spock and the others are gathered for a memorial for him there. Again, the chapel is an inclusive symbol of non-denominational ecumenism. However rather than express any common beliefs, we assume the crew is allowed to express themselves silently to themselves, while sharing the common bond of being human beings (with the exception of Spock of course).
[15] The ships chapel would not return in future series; leading us to speculate that religion itself has been largely phased out from human society in the next century (the later shows take place in the 24th century). In The Next Generation we have Counselor Troi, who is not a clergy person but an empath (one who can read a persons emotions) and a psychologist/psychoanalyst. Clergy persons have apparently been replaced by secular self-help gurus in the 24th century.
[16] Another important encounter with religion occurs in the Original Series episode Bread and Circuses, where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discuss the Prime Directive of non-interference in primitive cultures and encounter a group of proto-Christians. In dialogue with them, one of the Christians states that all men are brothers, to which Kirk agrees yes, all men are brothers. This seems to be Roddenberrys way of saying that he agrees with certain aspects of religious belief, when they affirm human dignity. Of course, theology is not examined too deeply, and in fact by episodes end, Kirk and company are still confused as to why the group worships the Sun (as the Christians refer to themselves). Lt. Uhura informs Kirk that she has been listening to further broadcasts from the planet and believes that they are actually followers of the Son of God. One could interpret this to mean that Christianity does not exist in the 23rd century leading to their confusion. However, Kirk expresses the sentimental wish to be there to see how it all began. In its primitive, non-threatening (and in this case persecuted and underground) state, Christianity has some sentiments and aspects that Roddenberry agrees with.
[17] A more important and recurring theme in the Star Trek shows is that of the False God or the Strongman.9 The crew encounters a being that at first appears to have incredible powers, perhaps even god-like abilities, but end up being exposed as a fraud. While the being may dazzle even some of the crew with showy tricks and apparent miracles, one person (usually the Captain) will see through the illusion and expose flaws in the society this god has setup or the plan they have in mind. Let us look at some of the examples of this scenario from the various shows.10
[18] In the Original Series episode, Return of the Archons, the crew encounters a society that is rigidly controlled and puritanical (with bouts of hedonism and wildness at certain times of the day). They discover that Landru, a powerful computer, reads the thoughts of the people and makes them of the Body. Clearly this is a reference to the mind control nature of certain cults and oppressive social codes enforced by religious authority. Members who try to defy the will of Landru are punished severely, and brainwashed to obey without question while turning on those who disobey. Kirk discovers the central control center and talks Landru into destroying himself. The Prime Directive forbids interference with primitive cultures, but in this case the culture is stagnant and will never grow while it is kept under the thumb of the theocracy. Landru sees the logic of helping the culture by removing his destructive influence and the people are left to fend for themselves.
[19] Who Mourns for Adonais picks up the motif again by having the crew of the Enterprise forced to land on a planet where the god Apollo from ancient Greece resides in his temple. Apollo welcomes them and invites them to live with him forever and worship him. Kirks initial statement of defiance towards Apollo is telling but qualified, Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one sufficient. Scotty and the others resist but are painfully subdued by Apollos powers. While impressed, they speculate that Apollo is an alien who visited Earth long ago masquerading as a god. When mankind stopped believing in him and his brethren, they fled to this planet and now Apollo is the only one left. Kirk and the others formulate a plan to defeat Apollo. They get the attractive female crewmember that Apollo has fallen in love with to reject him and make him angry. Then they trick Apollo into straining his power. Finally, the Enterprise destroys Apollos temple. Devastated that his children reject him, Apollo spreads himself on the winds to join his fellow gods in oblivion. At the end of the show, Kirk expresses some regret about what they had to do. Perhaps it would not have hurt to gather a few laurel leaves, says Kirk. To allow human progress to move forward it seems that sometimes painful steps have to be taken, even to destroy the gods.
[20] In the fifth Star Trek movie The Final Frontier the cast of the Original Series encounters Spocks long lost brother Sybok. He is atypical of Vulcans, Spocks stoic people who suppress all emotion. Instead Sybok believes that embracing emotion is the key to enlightenment and he uses his mental powers to brainwash the crew (except Kirk) into allowing him on a mad quest to seek after God. Hijacking the Enterprise and kidnapping the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ambassadors they head through the Great Barrier of the galaxy to a mysterious planet. The ambassadors call it names for Heaven and Eden, but the planet itself is desolate and forbidding.
[21] Once on the surface, Spock, Kirk, Sybok and McCoy encounter a being identifying himself as God. This being appears in the stereotypical Westernized figure of the Father God as depicted in art. He has a giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white hair and booming voice. This God claims to be all of the gods that mankind has believed in and is the one that Sybok seeks. God wishes to carry his glory to the universe in the Starship Enterprise. Kirk is punished when he asks, What does God need with a starship? This shocks the others out of their delusion and they see Gods true colors. Sybok is the last to catch on when he sees his God appear with a face identical to his own. God is merely an alien who has been imprisoned in this far-away place and used the ruse to get himself out. Vengeful and angry, God tries to destroy our heroes, but is gunned down by a Klingon warship, with Spock at the controls. Formerly the villains of the series, the Klingons form a temporary alliance in order to stop the alien menace. Indeed, in later shows we learn that the Klingons in their mythology killed their own gods, as Worf says in Deep Space Nine, They were more trouble than they were worth.
[22] The idea of the Strongman ties in with the idea of the False God as a recurring theme in Star Trek. The Strongman is a being that is not a god per se but highly advanced and self important, who, despite his power, is flawed and a menace to be defeated or outwitted by his supposed inferiors. The character of Q in The Next Generation is such a character, although he overlaps into both categories.
[23] Q is a super-being encountered by the new Enterprise crew in the pilot episode of The Next Generation Encounter at Farpoint. Humanoid in appearance, Q can snap his fingers and do all sorts of incredible things like change his shape, create illusions, transport the ship halfway across the galaxy and time travel. He is part of a Continuum of super beings that act like Cosmic Tricksters. Q expresses his contempt for humanity and its failings, to which Captain Picard protests that rapid progress is being made. It is later revealed that Q secretly envies humanity, having grown bored with his own omnipotence. The Q Continuum as a society is in decline and values human beings and their adaptability, individuality and creativity. Though Q constantly threatens and provokes human beings, he also seeks to protect them and challenge them to be better. In a way Q is more like Satan in the Biblical Book of Job an agent of God that provokes people to face their personal problems head on and test their faith. In Star Trek, the faith being tested is in the goodness of human beings and their potential to overcome problems. Q himself is flawed, and despite his claims to the contrary, not nearly omnipotent.11
[24] Khan Noonien Singh, Kirks nemesis from the Original Series episode Space Seed returns in the second Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan. Khan is a genetically engineered superman from Earths past when the Eugenics Wars were fought between normal human beings and genetically enhanced men like himself. Khan is consumed with his desire for revenge against Kirk, whom he blames for the death of his wife and being marooned on a desolate planet. Khan uses a doomsday weapon, the Genesis Device (originally intended as a terraforming project to create habitable worlds from barren planets), to try to destroy the Enterprise. Mr. Spock sacrifices his life to save his shipmates by fixing the Enterprises reactor in time for them to escape destruction. Khan is finally defeated, and Kirk and company perform military burial in space as tribute to their fallen comrade.
[25] Khans character is mirrored in The Next Generation film (the tenth overall in the series) Nemesis in the person of Shinzon of Romulus. Like Khan, Shinzon is a genetically engineered man, who considers himself superior to everyone else. He blames the Federation for his predicament, a genetic disease he inherited as part of an experiment by the Romulans to clone Captain Picard for purposes of political intrigue. Shinzon hates everyone, including himself, tries to rape Counselor Troi and destroy the Enterprise, Picard, and the Earth. Ultimately Picard defeats him, and Data is forced to sacrifice himself to save the Captains life, transporting him out of Shinzons ship before it explodes.
[26] In The Next Generation series we encounter Lore, the identical but evil twin brother of Data, the android Starfleet Lieutenant. While Data respects human beings and seeks to imitate them (in order to become "more human"), almost to the point of worship, Lore seeks instead to gather power for himself. He tries several times to commit genocide against human beings and anoints himself as an overlord among a group of renegade Borg.12 Lore sets himself up as a messianic leader of a fascistic cult. As a complete machine, Lore is worshipped by the Borg (who are only partly machine) as an example of the perfection and purity they can seek to emulate. Data rejects his brothers nefarious ways and reaffirms the dignity of serving and embracing mankind rather than attacking it.
[27] In Deep Space Nine, the third television series of Star Trek, produced after Roddenberrys death, more Strongmen and False Gods appear. A race of aliens known as The Founders who rule a portion of space called the Dominion is encountered by Captain Sisko and the crew of the Federation Space station Deep Space Nine. The Founders are shape shifting aliens (whose ability to change form at will could be viewed as truly godlike if it werent such a common thing in the Star Trek galaxy) who rule their sector of space with an iron fist. They hold other alien species, the Vorta and the Jem-Hadar as their slaves. These two slave races worship the Founders as gods. Both races are genetically bred for servitude. The Jem-Hadar are ruthless soldiers kept under control through the use of drugs (Ketracel White) that they are addicted to from birth. Both the Vorta and the Jem-Hadar are genetically programmed to lay down their lives for their gods. The Founders are obviously not gods in the true sense, but they, the leaders of their society, use religion as a means to control their subjects and act much like the Strongmen seen elsewhere in Star Trek with their megalomania and racism.
[28] The Klingons,13 a race of violent warriors and the foil for the Enterprise crew throughout the Original Series have their religion further developed in The Next Generation and beyond. It is revealed that the Klingons have a patriarchal culture based on the worship of Kahless, a male Klingon prophet. In Klingon belief there is an afterlife, a devil figure, and various blood rituals and other ceremonies. They glorify suffering, battles, and honorable death. In contrast to the enlightened principles of Federation secular humanism, the Klingons appear barbaric and backward with their warrior religion. The character of Worf on The Next Generation Enterprise finds himself culturally conflicted, having been raised by human parents after he was orphaned in a Romulan attack on his home at a young age. He wishes to become more Klingon but doubts his faith. Finally he seeks a vision of Kahless and meets him face to face. Worf doubts his senses until the man challenges him to a fight. Worf accepts that Kahless is indeed real, but has lingering doubts about his religion. Finally it is revealed that Kahless is in fact a clone, created by the Klingon priests using blood from an ancient artifact of the historical Kahless. Worf agrees to keep the secret for the good it may do in uniting his people and the clone Kahless is crowned Emperor of the Klingons. While technologically similar to the advanced Federation, the Klingons are portrayed as morally backward, and in keeping with a theme of post-Roddenberry Trek shows, it expresses the notion that religion is a crutch for backward peoples. Apparently, faith in something is better than faith in nothing. Of course the more rational and enlightened faith of the Federation humans is faith in the goodness and potential of humankind, not in external deities, prophets, or ancient texts and rituals. Human beings do not convert to the religions of other aliens, but aliens may become more human by imitating their philosophies. Thus so-called Human Values such as compassion, self sacrifice, generosity, and notions of individual liberty (tempered by social collectivist values) begin to rub off on certain worthy aliens, such as Spock, Worf, and others.
[29] Deep Space Nine, in addition to further exploring Klingon religion, introduces us to the religion of the Bajorans, a humanoid race seeking Federation membership. Like many of the alien species portrayed in Star Trek, Bajorans certainly look and act very human, but they are portrayed as monocultural. Their society is many thousands of years old, yet their technology has only recently caught up with the Federation and others. They worship gods known as the Prophets who reside in a wormhole (which the Bajorans refer to as The Celestial Temple) in space near their home planet of Bajor. The Federation dismisses their gods as powerful aliens. Captain Sisko goes through the wormhole and has an encounter with the aliens. At first the aliens dont seem to realize that they are being worshipped and indeed do not understand humans at all. Sisko does not believe in them and yet he comes out of the wormhole hailed as The Emissary of the Prophets by the Bajorans. As the show goes on, more and more Sisko comes to accept his religious role (much to the chagrin of his Star Fleet superiors) and the Prophets become increasingly integral to the plot. This turning away from the secularism of past shows demonstrates the waning influence of Roddenberrys philosophy on the franchise. However, it should be noted that the Prophets (and their demonic counterparts the Pah-Wraiths) are ultimately advanced aliens that some backward people perceive as gods. The Bajoran religion is seen as limited to the cultural life of the Bajorans rather than a universal faith. Sisko would seem to be the exception, until it is revealed that his mother was possessed by a Prophet when he was conceived and when he dies, he goes to live with the Prophets in the wormhole.
[30] Another issue brought up by Deep Space Nine is its treatment of clergy. In the Bajoran religion they have a leader called the Kai: essentially the Bajoran equivalent of a Pope. This religious leader is always shown as female (although a man runs for the office, he loses). The first Kai who shows faith in Sisko as Emissary is a good and wise woman. She gives herself in the cause of easing the suffering of others even to the point of having to give up her office. The Kai who takes her place is corrupt, greedy, and self deluded. Known as Kai Win, she is constantly shown as a selfish hypocrite seeking after power, but is eventually redeemed in the shows climax. By contrast, the main Bajoran character, Major Kira is depicted as a doubting, but honest and dedicated follower of the religion. She is devoted to helping the secular Federation and her own people, and she has constant clashes with the over-bearing and oppressive influence of Kai Win. Deep Space Nine shows a primitive culture that is still dealing with religious issues (since human society has apparently freed itself from religious influence) and the inherent problems with having clergy. The private practices of the individual and their beliefs are more important than an institution or hierarchy.
[31] In the world of Star Trek, religion in the human realm has largely faded away, as more enlightened secular humanist principles have taken over. Even the miracles of religious faith have been achieved through technological progress. Answers once sought from heaven are now available from more mundane sources. For example several religious traditions look forward to a millennial kingdom of peace on earth, or of the gods returning to make things right. Christians of all kinds and Muslims await the return of Jesus to usher in Gods kingdom (though in different ways of course). Many Jews still await the coming of Gods Messiah. The New Age Movement itself takes its name from a coming Age of spiritual enlightenment. Many Buddhists and Hindus seek an end to the cycle of death and rebirth, and even a more perfect re-creation of all that exists.
[32] Star Trek however, tells us that this new age will be heralded by the invention of warp drive, the ability to make a space ship travel many times faster than the speed of light (enabling interstellar travel and communication). The Messiah will not be Jesus, Buddha, or any divine person or prophet, but rather a race of enlightened aliens, the Vulcans. Impressed by our achievements and by our potential to better ourselves, they will share vast scientific knowledge with us. Together the human and Vulcan races forge a united Federation of planets that seeks to bring peace and harmony to the galaxy. Starfleet replaces the priestly castes of old, as the new ambassadors of their philosophical enlightenment. Representing the proverbial cream of the crop, they are the defenders of the humanist faith to the galaxy.
[33] In the near future, Star Trek tells us, science will eventually put an end to the problems we face in our world today.14 Hunger, war, poverty and class distinctions will disappear, and Earth will be united under one government and standard of living. Starfleet will protect and expand the Federation for the betterment of all. Of course, in the story our heroes will find that the rest of the galaxy does not share our magnanimous vision of the future. Thus cultural clashes occur with totalitarian governments like the Klingons, Romulans, Borg, and the other alien races. Yet technology continues to solve problems and the characters show faith in it, despite many setbacks. Holodecks provide endless entertainment; transporters make travel fast and painless. Replicators can prepare just about any meal one could desire, without the necessity of killing animals. Warp drive allows journeys that would normally take decades or centuries accomplishable in months or years. Medical science has progressed to the point wherein scars can be removed in a matter of seconds. Artificial limbs are identical to the real thing and there is even a magical cure for radiation.
[34] Star Trek is not completely one sided in its appraisal of technology, there are countless episodes that depict transporter and holodeck malfunctions, starship engines exploding, and the Borg, the very embodiment of technology gone wrong. The Borg are part machine and seek to assimilate people and technology by force into their Collective, a socialist-nightmare utopia of control. Still, through it all, there is a prevailing attitude that progress will inevitably continue. Despite the dangers, nobody gives up their transporters, their holodecks or their warp drive. A few shun technology, but these persons are portrayed as superstitious and backward, looked down upon much like some technologically savvy people look down upon the Amish.
[35] In the second Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan, the eccentric southern physician Doctor McCoy says According to myth, the world was created in six days, now watch out! Here comes Genesis! Well do it for you in six minutes! Indeed the Genesis Device, created by a team of human scientists, is capable of turning a barren planet into an Earth-like paradise, through the use of technology, wholly apart from divine intervention. However, despite sciences triumph over God, the technology has a flaw. Kirks son points out that in their rush to complete the project, they used an unstable proto-matter as a shortcut. This makes any planet created with the Genesis Device dangerously unstable. Early on the potential use of the Genesis Device as a weapon of mass destruction is realized. In the films climactic battle, the villain Khan tries to use the Genesis Device to kill Kirk and his crew but ends up terraforming a nebula instead.
[36] In the subsequent sequel Search for Spock another man-made miracle occurs. In the previous film, Spock had died saving his friends, echoing Vulcan philosophy with his statement that The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Kirk says in his departed friends eulogy Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels his was the most human. Yet when Spocks coffin is shot into space, it is not the end of him. Kirk returns home to find Spocks father reprimanding him for leaving Spocks soul behind. As it turns out, Spock had done a telepathic mind-meld with Dr. McCoy before his death, allowing Spocks spirit or essence to reside in the mind of the good doctor. On the surface of the newly born Genesis planet, Spocks coffin has landed and been affected by the technology. His body is reborn as a small child, who matures to adulthood at a vastly accelerated rate. Having finally mind-melded (sharing his thoughts) with McCoy, Spock regains his sense of self. Though his personality seems slightly altered, his friends accept him as the real Spock. The Genesis planet destroys itself, but Spock emerges whole, like a chick hatching from an egg. This evokes a metaphor of the individual being worth more than an entire world. Indeed Spocks statement is reversed, in this case, The needs of the few or the one outweigh the needs of the many. The individuals importance is affirmed alongside the Star Trek philosophy of collectivist harmony.
[37] Through these and other examples, Star Trek shows that what we once considered miracles may one day be duplicated by science and the immortality we seek in religious belief perhaps does not reside in the hands of a deity or some supernatural force, but rather through natural or technological means that are in our hands. The true gods may simply be ourselves.
[38] Another religious concept, the idea of a paradise, or heaven, has played out countless times in the shows and films. Usually the paradise is an illusion or trap, one in which a culture is stagnated.
[39] In The Return of the Archons the computer Landru holds his people under his thumb until Kirk can free them. The perfect society is far from idyllic with no freedom. Apollos promise of a paradise in Who Mourns for Adonais is too limiting for human beings and the god must be destroyed so that humans can prosper. Continuing with this concept and extending it to the idea of a heavenly paradise, the seventh Star Trek film and the first to feature The Next Generation crew, confronts this idea with the concept of the Nexus.
[40] The Nexus is an immense band of energy that appears at various times in the galaxy and travels about sucking in people and things. Great disasters herald its appearance and a man named Soran continues to appear wherever it goes. As it turns out he is a fanatic, a man obsessed with being drawn into the Nexus. Belonging to a race of long-lived humanoids, he has spent over 70 years trying to get back into the Nexus from which he was cast out (making him somewhat like Lucifer who was cast out of heaven for his disloyalty to God). Soran is willing to kill billions of people to get back into the Nexus. He plans to destroy an entire star system with a super weapon (a tri-lithium torpedo) in order to draw the Nexus close enough for him to step inside and into a blissful state of existence.
[41] Captain Picard tries to stop Soran from launching the weapon and in the process his crew is killed and he is sucked into the Nexus. Inside he is delighted by a vision of himself with what he had always wanted but never had in life a loving family. Picard resists when he realizes it is not real and he still has a mission to accomplish. Admonished by his friend Guinan for his weakness, he seeks out and enlists the help of (the now long dead) Captain Kirk who is also residing in the Nexus (having been enveloped in it 70 years ago). Kirk too is at first enamored of the delightful visions of the Nexus, but is convinced by Picard that temporal matters are more important. They return to a point in time before the star systems destruction and stop Soran, but Kirk is killed in the process. Dying a second time, Kirk realizes that making a difference is what really matters. With his last breath, he mutters oh my! as if he sees something that we the audience cannot see. Perhaps this is a hint of a real afterlife, or perhaps it is simply Kirk coming to fully realize the moment of his own death. In any case, the audience is left to make up their own mind, perhaps as Roddenberry would want them to (in keeping with the agnostic spirit he pioneered on the show).
[42] Moving on to the science fiction universe of George Lucas, that of Star Wars, we see a different picture painted of the world and the role of religion in it.
[43] Star Wars does not take place in our future, but rather in a galaxy far far away, a long time ago. Technology is seen less as a shiny new cure for all things, but as an old and familiar part of everyday life that doesnt always work like its supposed to (like an old car). Technology has the potential for both good and bad, but it is not a panacea.15
Traveling about the galaxy is as common a thing for people in Star Wars as driving the family car across the country for modern people.
[44] Unlike Star Trek, with its many authors and contributors who have modified the story and characters after Roddenberrys death, Star Wars continues to be a franchise controlled ultimately by one man. In this discussion I will not focus on the expanded universe of novels, comics, interactive games or other media that form a lesser part of Star Wars continuity. In the canon films, we see two major threads. In the original trilogy, we see the story of a rag-tag band of idealistic Rebels fighting against an oppressive totalitarian government known as the Galactic Empire and their ultimate triumph over that evil. In the prequel trilogy (with two films completed and the last one expected by 2005), we see the events in the twilight decades of the Old Republic, a democratic but corrupt government that ruled before the Empire. The prequels tie both trilogies together by weaving a common thread, the story of the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker.
[45] In the first film (story order speaking) The Phantom Menace a small political incident (a dissident trading faction starting a war with another planet) occurs and some Jedi Knights are sent to resolve the issue. In the Old Republic, the Jedi Knights are a religious order of warriors. They have the innate ability (apart from technology) which lets them tap into a mysterious cosmic Force, that grants them superhuman abilities such as telekinesis, mind control, increased stamina in battle, levitation, and other incredible skills. They wield glowing energy swords known as Lightsabers with amazing skill. While the Jedi are certainly powerful, they are not invincible, and they do not seek power for themselves. The Jedi Order is located in a Temple on Coruscant, the capital city of the Galactic Republic and is under the authority of the Supreme Chancellor of the Senate.
[46] Thus the role of religion in Star Wars is established as one of service, but viewed negatively; it is the tool of the state. However, the Force itself is an interesting concept. It could allegorically be viewed as a metaphor for all religious faith, yet it is something that is universal, testable and empirically verifiable (unlike the religious beliefs of our modern world) even to unbelievers. Microscopic life forms that reside in the cells of a body known as Midichlorians are said to be an indicator of Force sensitivity. Qui Gon Jinn, the elder Jedi sent to negotiate the dispute says that without Midichlorians life could not exist and we would have no knowledge of the Force.
[47] Qui Gon Jinn is often at odds with his superiors in the Jedi Council over various matters of their faith. The Jedi Order adheres to strict rules in a Jedi Code (which is not fully expounded on screen). A Master chooses a Padawan (apprentice) to train as a Jedi and they are all celibate. In fact, all Force sensitivity seems to be selected by nature, and Jedi are recruited soon after birth. Jedi are very rare in the galaxy, numbering about ten thousand out of hundreds of thousands of star systems. One such person is discovered on a backwater desert planet quite by accident.
[48] Qui Gon and his party escape from an attempt on their lives by the treacherous Trade Federation but are forced to land their disabled starship on the backwater planet of Tatooine. There they encounter young Anakin, a slave who is skilled with machines. He helps Qui Gon Jinn, the Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan and Queen Amidala by giving them comfort in his mothers home (their master is Watto, a greedy alien junk dealer). Anakin shows off his impressive skills and superhuman reflexes by winning a dangerous Pod Race (reminiscent of the chariot race in the religious epic Ben Hur) which wins him his freedom and the money that his newfound friends need to rebuild their ship and escape back to their home planet.
[49] Seeing Anakins potential as a Jedi candidate, Qui Gon tests his Midichlorians (which are unusually high) and decides that this boy fulfills an ancient Jedi Prophecy of the Chosen one who will Bring balance to the Force. His idea is controversial among the Jedi Council, and they at first reject Qui Gons request to have Anakin trained as a Jedi. Anakin is proven to have Force Ability, able to see things before they happen and read the backs of cards with his mind. Yoda, an ancient Jedi Master says that he senses much fear in the boy Anakin. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, he tells the frightened child. The Jedi philosophy is that one must be calm, at peace, passive and control ones emotions in order to feel the Force and use it for the service of others.
[50] Events are set in motion so that when Qui Gon is killed in battle with a deadly Sith Lord, Obi-Wan takes his masters dying wish that Anakin be trained to heart. Obi-Wan decides to train Anakin whether the Council allows him or not, and they grudgingly accept. During the course of the film another figure is continuously present, that of Senator Palpatine. Viewers of the original trilogy of films recognize him as Emperor Palpatine, the tyrannical ruler of the Empire years later. This ambitious man himself has control of the Force, yet he is so powerful, he can keep this fact secret from the Jedi, overshadowing their powers. We learn that Palpatine is actually a member of a rival Force sect, known as the Sith. These Sith were thought to have been exterminated a thousand years ago, around the time of the formation of the Republic. Yet they have lingered on in secret, plotting their revenge. Palpatines secret apprentice, Darth Maul is sent to kill Qui Gon and Obi-Wan, but only succeeds in killing the Master before he is himself slain by Obi-Wan. Palpatine, like his apprentice and all Sith, uses the Dark Side of the Force, tapping into emotions like anger and hatred in order to achieve power. The Senator manipulates the Trade Federation into their disastrous battle with the defenseless planet Naboo in order to cause a political crisis. This crisis generates sympathy for Naboo, Palpatines home planet, and he gets himself elected Chancellor of the Senate. Palpatine vows to clean up the corruption that prevents peaceful planets like Naboo from being protected from the likes of the Trade Federation.
[51] In the next prequel film, Attack of the Clones, we see ten years later that Chancellor Palpatine has continued to secure power for himself, through the Dark Side of the Force. Clearly the abuse of religious and spiritual authority is shown, and the weaknesses of a stagnant and arrogant institution like the Jedi Order, who is powerless to stop it. The Sith Lord Palpatine has recruited a new apprentice, Count Dooku (known as Lord Tyrannus to his master), a Jedi Knight who has left the Order. Together they organize another plan to cause a state of emergency in the galaxy, allowing Palpatine to gain more power.
[52] Dooku leads a Separatist movement of star systems and planets that break away from the Republic, including the Trade Federation and other galactic corporations. This begins a galactic civil war which comes to be called the Clone Wars. We know from the original trilogy that this devastating war heralds the birth of the Empire and the destruction of the Jedi Order. The Separatist threat is all the excuse Palpatine needs to gain emergency powers and create a galactic army. The army is made up of cloned soldiers, secretly grown in a lab on the far off planet of Kamino. The Jedi, who are to lead them into battle against the Separatists, thus become soldiers and officers in the Republican army.
[53] Meanwhile Anakin, who has become a young man, is tempted by the Dark Side of the Force. Incredibly gifted and powerful, as well as emotionally unstable, he grows apart from his master Obi-Wan due to several factors. Anakins great power in the Force makes him increasingly arrogant and frustrated with his master, whom he feels is an impediment to his progress as a Jedi. Anakin continues to pine for his mother whom is still living on Tatooine. As a boy he vowed to return and free the slaves including his mother, but never followed up on that promise. He also falls madly in love with Amidala (now a Senator and no longer Queen) which grows out of his boyhood crush when he meets her in The Phantom Menace. Since the Jedi are celibate, they try to keep their affair a secret and this sense of guilt continues to erode his sanity and control of his emotions. Palpatine of course seizes full advantage of this and seeks to place them together at every opportunity.
[54] Anakin is troubled by dreams of his mother suffering and finally disobeys the orders of his master in order to find her. He returns to discover that she has been freed and married a Tatooine farmer named Clieg Lars. Anakin encounters the man, but is told that a band of warlike tribal aliens called Sand people (or Tuskens) have kidnapped her. Anakin finds his mother dying from torture and is powerless to save her life. Enraged, he gives in to hatred and massacres the entire village, including women and children. While he tearfully confesses to Amidala this terrible act of genocide, he apparently feels little remorse except for his temporary loss of control. Headstrong and arrogant, Anakin continually loses his temper and talks back to his master. In battle, by disobeying Obi-Wans orders he loses his right arm to Count Dookus lightsaber. This is symbolic of Anakins loss of self. He gains a machine arm, but has lost a part of his being through his poor choices.
[55] At the end of Attack of the Clones Anakin and Amidala are married in a secret wedding and Palpatine watches as his armies march off to crush his enemies, according to the conspiracy he controls. The events of the final prequel film are not fully known, but suffice to say, Anakins fall to the Dark Side will be completed and Palpatines power will be secured as Emperor.
[56] Moving ahead to the original Star Wars films (filmed 20 years ago) we see events taking place two decades after the prequels. In this age, the Empire is in control, but more and more star systems are breaking away in a desperate attempt to throw off the yolk of oppression. In the first film (originally titled simply Star Wars in 1977) A New Hope, a super weapon, known as the Death Star has been created to destroy entire planets and thus terrorize the galaxy into submission. The plans for this weapon were originally obtained by Count Dooku from one of the alien races that had joined the side of the Separatists. Now Palpatine commands this stolen knowledge to kill billions of people. This event galvanizes the Rebel Alliance, a community of guerilla fighters to mount an attack that destroys the hated weapon.
[57] In this time the Jedi are all but extinct, except for three individuals. One of these is Obi-Wan Kenobi, a hermit living on Tatooine in obscurity. Obi-Wan, now known as Old Ben, is disparagingly called that wizard just a crazy old man by Owen Lars, son of Clieg Lars. Owen and Beru are the Uncle and Aunt of Luke Skywalker, a farm boy who has been lied to about his past. He has been told his father was a spice miner when in fact his father was a Jedi Knight named Anakin Skywalker, who fought in the Clone Wars alongside Obi-Wan.
[58] When the family purchases some droids to help out around the farm, Luke discovers one of them holds a secret message from an Imperial Diplomat who is secretly helping the Rebels, Princess Leia. This clue leads Luke to Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom Leia asks for help. Agents of the Empire also follow the clues and Lukes relatives are murdered. This prompts Luke to follow Kenobi on a mission to rescue the Princess and recover the Death Star plans to the Rebels.
[59] Obi-Wan reveals to Luke that not only was his father actually the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, but Luke himself also has potential in the Force. Kenobi begins to train the youth in the ways of the Jedi as best he can. Finally Obi-Wan is killed in battle with Darth Vader, a Sith Lord, and the new Sith henchman of Emperor Palpatine. Darth Vader was once a Jedi, as an Imperial Official states, The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the galaxy, and you my friend are the last of their religion. Vader is a cruel and mysterious figure, creating fear as the Emperors representative. An Imperial general insults Vader, calling him a sorcerer whos sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped the Empire stop the Rebels. At this Vader uses the Force to telekinetically choke the unfortunate man nearly to death until he is stopped by order of his superior, Moff Tarkin.
[60] Obi-Wan allows himself to be killed by Vader in a lightsaber duel so that Vader and the other Imperials will be distracted long enough for Luke and his new friends, a pair of smugglers known as Han Solo and Chewbacca, the Princess and their two droids to escape the Death Star and deliver the plans to the waiting Rebel fleet. Luke is emotionally shattered when he sees Obi-Wan die, as he loses the closest person he had to a father in life, but runs when he hears the voice of Obi-Wan in his head say Run, Luke, run! Despite the death of his physical body, Obi-Wans influence on galactic events through his guidance of Luke continues throughout the films, thanks to the power of the Force.
[61] A desperate attack on the Death Star ensues, with many Rebel pilots being killed. Luke is one of the last remaining pilots. As he nears the weak-point of the Death Star, an impossibly difficult target, he hears the voice of his dead master urging him to use the Force and stretch out with his feelings. Turning off his ships computer, Luke trusts in the Force and is able to successfully hit the target and destroy the Death Star once and for all. The Rebels are victorious and escape the Empire once again. However, during the battle the Lord Darth Vader senses Luke using the Force, and takes this knowledge with him as he too escapes the Death Stars destruction.
[62] In the next Star Wars film, the Empire Strikes Back we see perhaps the most overtly religious of the films. While the prophecy of the Chosen One in the prequels, and statements about the Will of the Force conjured up images of monotheistic and Judeo-Christian overtones, now the Force is described more nebulously. It has been compared to Buddhism, Taoism, or other eastern religious beliefs.
[63] The Rebels continue to fight the Empire, and we learn that Darth Vader, the evil lord is actually Anakin Skywalker.16 A cyborg, Vader has been wounded many times and relies on a breath mask and respirator to keep him alive. The boy who once enjoyed fixing machines has now become nearly one himself. As the man has become more machine, he has also become metaphorically less human. His voice is deep and ominous and his body is hidden beneath a black mask and cape. Vader is ruthless in his desire to crush the Rebels, killing his own men when they make mistakes. In the Empire Strikes Back, he has gained a new obsession finding his long lost son Luke and turning him to the Dark Side of the Force. Emperor Palpatine is seen as well, and we see that he is Anakins master, guiding him to do his bidding as an agent of evil. According to Obi-Wan it was Vader who wiped out the Jedi Knights, but he also lied to Luke, saying that Vader betrayed and murdered your father. When Luke learns the truth, he becomes suicidal, his quest for vengeance now utterly meaningless. After losing his hand in battle with his father, he jumps from an incredible height, but is saved at the last moment by his friends.
[64] Earlier in the film Luke encountered master Yoda, the other surviving Jedi, who trains him more fully in the Force. Yodas platitudes include the warning to beware the Darkside... fear, anger, aggression, the Dark Side are they and A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan had described the Force as what gives a Jedi his power an energy field created by all living things, it surrounds us and binds the galaxy together. Yoda tells Luke further that life creates it, makes it grow and that one can feel the Force around you between you, me, the tree, the rock. This notion of a universal Force everywhere has several religious parallels, both in the notion of Brahman and karma in Hindu and Buddhist thought, as well as the omnipresence of God in various monotheistic traditions. Luke tries to use the Force to pull his crashed starship from a swamp in which it has become stuck, but gives up. His lack of faith is admonished by Master Yoda. To Lukes statement, I dont believe it, he says that is why you fail. Yoda demonstrates his power by levitating the massive vehicle through the air and landing it safely on the ground. Luke is shown a vision in a cave by Yoda of Darth Vader. Luke attacks the specter and cuts off its head with his Lightsaber, only to find his own face beneath the helmet.
[65] Luke trains with Yoda for a time, but then breaks off the training when he has a vision of his friends (Han Solo, Leia and company) in pain. He rushes off to help them; despite Yodas warnings that he is not yet ready. Obi-Wans spirit admonishes Yoda that Lukes reckless nature was also a flaw he himself possesses. Yoda and Obi-Wan act in the manner of many parents who finally let their child go off into the world, to make their own decisions. They give him parting advice, to bury his feelings deep down, to remember his training save you it can. The notion of salvation comes into play in a much greater way in the third and final film of the original trilogy and the last film in the series.
[66] In Return of the Jedi, the Star Wars finale, the Rebels have been steadily gaining victories against the Empire. Luke Skywalker is now nearly a fully trained Jedi and very powerful in the Force, like his father. Yet he succeeds where his father fails, much as Galahad passes the tests his father Lancelot fails in the Arthurian romances. Luke fights for the Rebellion and for their freedom. He uses the Force to fight evil but does not give in to the anger and the hatred linked to the Dark Side. Rescuing Han Solo from an evil crime lord, they return to the Rebels to discover that another Death Star has been built. This even stronger super weapon presents an ideal target, because the Emperor himself is onboard. By assassinating the evil leader of the Empire, it is hoped that freedom can at last be won for the galaxy. Luke Skywalker is the only Jedi Knight in the Rebellion; the rest are ordinary people from various alien races, humans, and droids, all with the common goal of freedom from oppression. Interestingly enough, the phrase May the Force be with you is always a part of the Rebel philosophy (even going back to A New Hope). Though they are not Jedi, they believe that the Force is on their side, in their battle for liberty.
[67] Of course the Force (The Dark Side of the Force) is also on the side of the Empire, in the persons of Vader and Palpatine. As the events unfold another subplot emerges, Lukes desire to save his fathers soul.17
[68] It turns out that the second Death Star is being used as bait to capture and exterminate the Rebels, by drawing them into a trap. The Emperor has foreknowledge of the events through the Dark Side of the Force and he uses Vader as a trap for Luke. Vaders son allows himself to be captured and brought before Vader, in order to bring him back to the good side. Luke says to his father, There is still good in you, the Emperor hasnt driven it from you fully I feel the good in you, the conflict. Vader responds that there is no conflict... I must obey my master. Vader fatalistically tells Luke that it is too late for me, son. A battle of wills occurs, alongside a battle of Lightsabers as the Emperor goads Luke into attacking him. Luke finally gives in, perhaps sensing that the fate of the Galaxy rests in his hands. With the Emperor dead, the war could be ended then and there. Vader is forced to defend his master and he and Luke begin a death struggle. In Empire Strikes Back, Vader expressed the notion that Luke could destroy the Emperor, and offered Luke the chance to join him and they would rule the galaxy as father and son. A secret rivalry thus exists between Palpatine and Vader. Palpatine has again used the Force to manipulate his pawns into position. If Vader wins, he will have slain the last Jedi Knight and destroyed the Rebellion. If Luke wins, he will have killed his own father in anger and thus become Palpatines new Dark Side apprentice. Plus Palpatine will be rid of the treacherous Vader and have a new young pupil to mold to his will.
[69] Luke remembers his training and resists both options, by refusing to kill his own father. Enraged, the Emperor tortures Luke with the Force, throwing lightning at his body. The suffering of Luke willingly for the salvation of a guilty man evokes parallels with Christ. Overcome with the sight of his sons suffering, Vader finally kills his master, and in the process sustains mortal injuries himself. In his last dying moments Vader comes to terms with himself and finally allows his good side return. He allows Luke to see his true face under the mask, horribly scarred. Luke leaves the Death Star before it is finally destroyed by the Rebel Fleet and burns his fathers body on a funeral pyre.
[70] Good triumphs over evil when the Emperors technologically advanced army is defeated by a primitive tribe of small furry aliens, the Ewoks that the Rebels have whipped up support for against the Empire. In fact, the turning point of that battle occurs earlier when C3PO, the golden droid who has been following our heroes along since the beginning, is declared a god by the Ewoks. This unlikely alliance allows them to destroy the Death Stars shield generator on their planet, and destroy the invincible super weapon at last.
[71] Luke comes away from the burning pyre of his father to rejoin the other Rebels in celebration with the Ewoks of their victory over the Empire and we see him smile, as he witnesses the ethereal Jedi spirits of Obi-Wan and Yoda joined by that of Anakin, indicating that his father has found peace and redemption after all. The sacrifice of father and son has finally brought Balance to the Force. We hold hope that a new generation of Jedi will be raised to serve the galaxy when we learn that Lukes sister Leia also has the Force. Finally we see the various planets liberated from the Empire, including the image of a statue of the Emperor falling over in Coruscant, ironically a statue that had been erected in his honor when he was elected Chancellor after the events of The Phantom Menace.
[72] Star Wars portrays religion in vague, allegorical terms. In the prequels it seems to be saying that religion does have a role in the affairs of the world, including in government, as a service to the people, but that it can also be abused by those who seek power over others. The Jedi represent those who use spiritual gifts for the benefit of mankind, while the Sith show the abuse of those same gifts to oppress others. The Jedi are shown as flawed individuals who are too set in their ways to see the danger of the Sith until it is too late. But in the end The Force triumphs and sorts out the problems of the galaxy by empowering individuals to do good in the face of evil. It allows ordinary people like Han Solo, a smuggler who cared only about money to accept responsibility and help the Rebels achieve their goals. It helps a man like Lando Calrissian, another criminal who was desperately seeking to become a legitimate business man, to throw off the Imperials who were bullying him and try to make up for the people he hurt by cooperating with the corrupt authorities. It also guided a tribe of primitive aliens to defeat a much more powerful foe, even if the means to achieving that end was an accidental deception (C3PO the droid as their god).
[73] The message of Star Wars is in more ways universal 18 in that it does not evoke a particular sectarian belief, but espouses the notion that there is another dimension to life and that spirituality has a place in achieving good in the world, and not just for a select few. Star Trek disregards religious matters for the most part as a crutch that may help primitive people, but is ultimately something that should be outgrown in favor of more mature secular humanist principles.19Though later Star Trek in the post-Roddenberry era continues to be more pro-faith it still attacks institutions as corrupt and portrays religious beliefs as something that may be positive for some, but not for most. It teaches us to be suspicious of institutions, miracles and deities, and rather to trust in the goodness of humankind and our potential to use science and secular philosophies to solve our problems.20 Star Wars shows the potential for both good and evil to come from religious practice and belief, but it tends to emphasize the good (especially in the original films, and the ultimate resolution of the saga) and the transformative and lasting power of religion as it grows to encompass new ideas and to face new challenges and so perhaps this is a more realistic view, than Star Trek, which envisions religion as a passing thing, that human beings will eventually have no need for. One way to sum it all up would be to say that while Star Trek declares the death of the gods and where to go from there; Star Wars espouses the everlasting role of the gods in our lives.
[74] Looking at Star Wars and Star Trek one can see that in science fiction, issues such as religion, which form an important part of life for billions of people in our world, can be discussed in an allegorical fashion, which is less likely to offend peoples sensibilities and offer solutions to problems as well as to create thought experiments about the future. By bringing up these important issues, the genre serves an important function to spark debate and discussion, while also entertaining. By viewing science fiction with this in mind, we can come to a better appreciation of the genre and help to understand the ideas being presented by the creators of the material. We need not accept their conclusions at face value of course and should continue to evaluate them critically.
GROUPED FOOTNOTES ?? References
FILM CREDITS
Ben Hur
Enterprise Star Trek Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Star Trek: First Contact Star Trek: Generations Star Trek: Insurrection Star Trek: The Motion Picture Star Trek: Nemesis Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Voyager Star Trek: Wrath of Khan Star Trek III: The Search for Spock Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Star Wars Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones Star Wars IV: A New Hope Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
questions.
Bewitching the Box Office:
Harry Potter and Religious Controversy
by Rachel Wagner
Vol. 7 No. 2 October 2003
Bewitching the Box Office:
Harry Potter and Religious Controversy
by Rachel Wagner
Abstract
[1] The cultural phenomenon produced in recent years by the Harry Potter books and films has sparked outrage among critics and avid devotion from supporters. This article examines the debate through the implementation of three dichotomies that help to define the approaches people typically take to the Harry Potter stories: 1) fantasy vs. reality, 2) good versus evil, and 3) secular versus religious. As I demonstrate through an examination of these dichotomies and their application, the public debate about Harry Potter encourages us to reexamine the import and meaning of the separation of church and state.
Article
[2] J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone grossed $90.3 million in the first weekend in theatres in 2001, and the sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, nearly matched that record with $87.4 million in the first weekend.1 The films are based closely on the first two books of a seven-volume projected series about Harry Potter, a boy who discovers that he is a wizard and embarks on a series of adventures centered on his residence at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Four of the books are already on shelves. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth volume, is projected to be released on June 21, 2003, and the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, will be released in 2004. The books and the films have caused uproar among some conservative Christian communities, and fervor among loyal fans who lovingly don robes reminiscent of Harrys and dab lightning bolts onto their foreheads while uttering incantations. Everyone seems agreed that some important issues are on the table, but no one seems exactly sure what these are, or why we should or should not be concerned about the mania surrounding Harry Potter.
[3] This essay asks exactly that question: Why have the Harry Potter books and films provoked such enthusiastic celebration and simultaneously such harsh scrutiny? I examine the religious controversy through a series of three dichotomies that reflect how both defenders and critics have viewed the phenomenon, in order to clarify the shape of the controversy and to suggest that at least one pivotal issue underlying this phenomenon is the growing uncertainty among Americans about what separation of church and state really means in the modern world.
I. Fantasy versus Reality
[4] Supporters of Harry Potter claim almost unequivocally that the books and films should be considered fantasy, and as such, are harmless to children. Far from representing a real world of witchcraft, the Harry Potter works draw a clear distinction between the fantasy world of Hogwarts and the real world of us Muggles. Like J.R.R. Tolkeins Lord of the Rings series and C. S. Lewiss Narnia series, say supporters, in Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling presents an alternative reality that is attractive, entertaining, and above all, purely imaginative.
[5] In an interview with Diane Rehm for National Public Radio, Rowling freely admits that in the preparation of her books, she does a certain amount of research. And folklore is quite important in books. So where Im mentioning a creature, or a spell that people used to believe genuinely worked; of course it didnt . . . then, I will find out exactly what the characteristics of that creature or ghost were supposed to be."2 Rowling asserts that she is not in the slightest personally drawn to practicing magic or witchcraft. Instead, she says that theres a kind of magic that happens when you pick up a wonderful book and it lives with you for the rest of your life . . . There is magic in friendship and in beauty . . . metaphorical magic, yes. [But] do I believe if you draw a funny squiggly shape on the ground and dance around it, [then something will happen, then] not at all. I find the idea rather comical (ibid.). Supporters of Harry Potter argue that the books are literature, and do not resemble Wiccan practice in any meaningful way. Michael G. Maudlin of Christianity Today concurs with Rowling, saying that we have committed a fault of logic in saying that reading about witches and wizards necessarily translates into these occult practices."3
[6] Richard Abanes, one of the most vocal critics of Harry Potter, acknowledges that most fans of the Harry Potter series believe that nearly everything in the books are [sic] mere product of Rowlings fertile imagination.'4 He also accepts that Rowling has studied mythology and witchcraft in order to write her books more accurately (23); however, Abanes sees a more sinister function to Rowlings incorporation of legitimate historical materials. Says Abanes, the vast amount of the occult material [Rowling] has borrowed from historical sources still plays a significant role in modern paganism and witchcraft. He argues that the books and films could easily present a spiritual danger to children and teens, or even adults, who are either leaning toward occultism or who may be vulnerable to its attractions (24). In other words, simply by reading Harry Potter, a child could be drawn to real occult practices, whether or not the books and films are faithful representations of such practices.
[7] Berit Kjos, in Bewitched by Harry Potter, concurs. The haunted grounds of Hogwarts, he says, may be out-of-this-world, but with its blend of earthly familiarity and practical magic, it has captivated more than seven million minds. Kjos goes even further, pointing out what he sees to be the malevolent forces behind the works, adding that these stories are every bit as spiritual as Christian literature, but the spiritual power they promote comes from other gods."5 Says Lindy Beam of Focus on the Family, Help your children see that there is a real world of witchcraft that is not pleasing to God. This way you will teach your children to . . . avoid the misconception that witches and wizards are merely harmless fantasy."6 For these critics, the world of witchcraft is real, dangerous, and seductive.
[8] Robert S. McGee and Caryl Matrischiana, producers of a video called Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged?, argue that there is little or no distinction between reading about witchcraft in Rowling books, engaging in nature-oriented worship, or participating in Satanism. For them, the movement from Harry Potter to the worst abuses of non-traditional religious movements is a slippery slope with no return. Matrischiana and McGee would be completely unphased by the argument that Harry Potter does not offer a faithful representation of Wicca as it is practiced today. For them, any depiction of witchcraft is dangerous. They are especially critical of Rowlings depiction of children engaging in practices labeled witchraft since they argue, Harry, Ron, and Hermione serve as role models, and even seemingly benign depictions of witchcraft may open the door to more baleful influences.7
[9] Not all conservative Christians take this approach, however. In her book Whats a Christian to Do with Harry Potter? Connie Neal recognizes that the real dividing point in the debate among Christians is the issue of fantasy versus reality.8 Posing the hypothetical question, What do the books actually say about witchraft and wizardy? Neal replies: The answer depends on whether the questioner means real occult witchcraft in the real world or witchcraft and wizardry as it is defined and set up in the fantasy world created by J. K. Rowling. Whichever primary mental file a person draws upon will have a lot do with how he or she answers that question (57). Neal sees the Harry Potter books as fantasy, but sees witchcraft as a real threat apart from the books, and therefore she insists that the books and films be consumed under the watchful eyes of Christian parents.
[10] Neal even provides a helpful guide to protect kids from spiritual forces of evil that might be a potential threat if parents fail to distinguish between the real world of the occult and the fantasy world of Harry Potter. Her advice includes using the Bible as a point of reference in reading; distinguishing between magic in the fantasy genre and magic in real life settings, never engaging in witchcraft, never consulting the dead, never practicing sorcery or interpreting omens, and even the surprising recommendation to never offer your children as a human sacrifice!9 Nevertheless, Neal is representative of many supporters when she argues that reading Harry Potter is not the same as practicing witchcraft or even as some assert promoting it (88). However, based on her reading of Paul, she argues that just as some Christians in the early church might misunderstand the new freedom under the law that makes eating meat sacrificed to idols acceptable for those in the know,10 so some Christians might be troubled by Harry Potter, and thus should understandably stay away from the books and films.
[11] The dichotomy of fantasy versus reality is a cogent means of defining perspectives in regard to the Harry Potter phenomena. Supporters argue that Harry Potter is a work of fantasy appropriate for consumption by children, some say with parental guidance. Both Christians and non-Christians argue this point. Critics exhibit horror at the thought that children might fall down a slippery slope to the occult through the seemingly benign introduction to witchcraft in Harry Potter, whereas supporters identify the Harry Potter books and films as a harmless journey through an imaginative world. The critical position assumes a dualism of good and evil to be an authentic paradigm for defining the world. This position also implies that viewing or reading questionable material causes real changes in the mental state of the person consuming the material, inviting them to edge closer to the darker side and distancing them from the forces of good and from a guarantee of salvation. Thus, the dichotomy of fantasy versus reality leads us inevitably to a second dichotomy defining opinions about Harry Potter: good versus evil.
II. Good versus Evil
[12] Supporters of Harry Potter, both Christian and secular, claim that Harry Potter is above all a moral character, and sets an example that they would like to have their own children emulate. Michael G. Maudlin of Christianity Today says that in the face of Harrys difficult life (the death of his parents, ostracism from his peers, a difficult life with his aunt and uncle) he gets discouraged and angry, but overall he displays courage, loyalty, compassion, joy, humility, even love (3). The editors of Christianity Today enthusiastically advise parents to read the books to their children. They recommend the first Harry Potter work as a Book of Virtues with a preadolescent funny bone. In Harry Potter, they argue, one will find wonderful examples of compassion, loyalty, courage, friendship, and even self-sacrifice. No wonder young readers want to be like these believable characters. That is a Christmas present we can be grateful for (January 2000). Harry Potter is heralded as a good kid, since he takes risks for his friends, fights for justice and truth, and displays some of the human virtues most worthy of praise.
[13] Connie Neal agrees. Applying the popular Christian paradigm, What Would Jesus Do? she asks, What Would Jesus Do with Harry Potter? Her answers are telling; Jesus would use the Harry Potter stories as parables to spark childrens interest in the battle between good and evil; Jesus might look at poor Harrys early childhood and offer him love and encouragement; he might compare the trustworthy goodness of Albus Dumbledore (the head wizard) to the infinitely superior goodness of God the Father; Jesus might draw a parallel between the invitation to enter the otherworldly realm of Hogwarts with the Christians invitation to enter the kingdom of God; and finally, Jesus might show children that just as Harry entered a magical door to platform nine and three-quarters the magic door to Gods kingdom is the magical transport that is Jesus (90). Overwhelmed with her own allegories, Neal exclaims, Oh, theres a lot Jesus might do with Harry Potter! (ibid.). The book ends with her descriptions of personal evangelism, using Harry Potter as the model for a good Christian life.
[14] When J. K. Rowling was asked by Diane Rehm about good and evil in the Harry Potter series, she acknowledged the stories complex representation of morality. Says Rowling, the Harry Potter books are scary in exactly the same way as the Grimms Fairy Tales. Original Grimms fairy tales are told for children to explore darkest fears, thats why they endure. They include figures typically considered evil, such as the archetypes of the wicked stepmother; such evil images crop up again and again. Rowling says that in their original form, the Grimms fairy tales are brutal, they are frightening, I think more than anything I have written so far. Children today, she notes, have the same fears as those who first read the Grimms fairy tales, and literature is an excellent way . . . a fabulous way to explore those things. Although Rowling, as she herself puts it, doesnt try to make enormous points to teach children anything, the stories are moral because it is a battle between good and evil. In her view, it would be a mistake to pretend to children that life is sanitized and easy when they already know . . .that life can be very difficult if it hasnt happened in their own family, then one of their own friends fathers will be dying. . . theyre in contact with this from a very early age; its not a bad idea that they meet this in literature.
[15] Rowling intends to present Harry as a sort of role model. She says, Harry is a human boy. He makes mistakes, but I think of him as a very noble character. Hes a brave character, and he strives to do the right thing . . . to see a fictional character dealing with those sorts of things I think can be very helpful (Rehm interview). Seeing the books presenting a clear demarcation between forces of good and forces of evil, and seeing the likes of Harry and Dumbledore as representatives of the forces of good, supporters see the books and films as helpful tools for children in the development of their own moral compasses.
[16] Critics do not see such a clear divide between the forces of good and the forces of evil in Harry Potter books and films. In fact, they see Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and even Hermione Granger as negative models for children to follow. Issuing the charge of moral relativism against Rowlings works, Richard Abanes says that the morals and ethics in Rowlings fantasy tales are at best unclear, and at worst, patently unbiblical (35). Harry Potter repeatedly disobeys his instructors and is rarely punished; in fact, Abanes complains, rather than following any objective standard of right and wrong (i.e. Hogwarts rules), Harry lets his own self-interests and subjective rationalizations determine his actions (ibid.).
[17] Harshly criticizing what he calls Potterethics, Abanes catalogs what he sees to be morally questionable material in the books and films. For example, in The Sorcerers Stone, prompted by Draco Malfoys jeers, Harry disobeys Madame Hooch when directly told not to ride his broomstick, and is rewarded with a spot on the Quidditch team. Harry agrees to meet Draco in the middle of the night to duel him, disobeying school rules about wandering around at night, a rule that Harry and his friends break repeatedly. When Harry sneaks to the Mirror of Erised in the darkest hours and is discovered there by Dumbledore, he is only mildly chastised, and not at all rebuked for breaking house rules. Harry also breaks school rules by reading books on Dark Magic and following Professor Snape into the Forbidden Forest. Hermione, at least at first, tries to rein in Harry and Rons wanderlust, being dubbed by them a know-it-all and an angry goose with a bad temper. Eventually, Hermione earns their friendship through a lie and joins them in their nighttime adventures. Hermione even casts a Body Bind spell on Neville so that he will not stop them from leaving the dorm at night. Similar escapades take place in the second film and book, facilitated by Harry's invisibility cloak.
[18] Also, in the second book and film, Harry, Ron and Hermionr concoct a potion to make them look like Draco Malfoys friends, so they can eavesdrop on Draco. Even Hagrid and Professor McGonagall present questionable role models in Abanes opinion, since Hagrid performs magic against Dumbledores express orders, and McGonagall breaks school rules to put Harry on the Quidditch team. Abanes sums up the problem: The threefold moral message that Rowling presents through her characters is clear: 1) rules are made to be broken if they do not serve ones own self interests; 2) rules need not be obeyed if no good reason seems to exist for them 3) lying is an effective and acceptable means of achieving a desired end (38). Abanes even goes so far as to argue that this moral relativism is comparable to the Wiccan creed If it harm none, do what you will. Abanes says, Whether Rowling realizes it or not, she is promoting witchcraft/occultism/Wicca in the form of ethical and moral subjectivism (39). Abanes, then, is arguing that moral relativism, which he believes to characterize the Potter stories, is equivalent to the Wiccan worldview. The idea that one of the greatest dangers of witchcraft is a subjective morality is one that crops up repeatedly in the opinions of similar critics, who feel more comfortable with conviction in an absolute morality based on their own reading of the Bible.
[19] Supporters of Harry Potter identify him as a moral character worthy of emulation, human, but striving to become a better person, fighting evil at every turn. Critics argue that Harry Potter is a questionable role model, and the lines between good and evil much more difficult to discern in the books and films, and the failure to do so is seen to be much more spiritually precarious. Whereas supporters of Harry Potter can be found in both Christian and non-Christian camps, critics tend to be defined by their conservative Christian stance, fearful that the lack of black and white moral guidelines in the stories about Harry Potter make him a dangerous model for children to emulate and call into question the absolute morality they argue is apparent in reading the Bible.
III. Secular versus Religious
[20] The third and final dichotomy in the Harry Potter debate is the issue of whether the books and films should be viewed as secular or as religious objects. This issue is closely related to the previous ones, since those who support the presence of Harry Potter books in public schools will often claim both that the books and films are fantasy and that they present a positive moral (good) role model for children. Critics often argue either that Harry Potter represents a dangerous (evil, real) religious point of view or that at the very least, Harry Potter should be perused under the watchful supervision of parents who serve as positive moral guides.
[21] Supporters of Harry Potter claim that the books and films are clearly the product of a secular phenomenon, and as such are wholly appropriate for a public school environment. This perspective has resulted in an avalanche of educational products related to Harry Potter, including a number of internet sites and teaching guides aimed at helping teachers integrate Harry Potter into the classroom. Scholastic, one of the largest publishers of childrens books, contains a page devoted exclusively to Harry Potter, and many teachers read the books in the classroom, with the help of numerous prepackaged guides introducing students to, among other issues, the problem of witch persecution in its historical context. Children will also find the books on the school library shelf, if they arent already checked out, that is; or if they havent been banned.
[22] Critics of Harry Potter claim that the books and films are anything but secular and fiercely object to their presence in a public school environment. The Harry Potter books topped the 1999 list of most frequently challenged books in America.11 As of November 2000, the Harry Potter books had been challenged more than 400 times in over 25 school districts in nineteen states. Ogden Carson, a third-grader at West Ridge Elementary School in Colorado at whose school Harry Potter was banned, says, To me if people dont want kids reading these books, their kids shouldnt be in public school. They should be in private school Christian school."12 The issue is anything but simple. The church of All Saints in Guilford, Surrey, had a special Harry Potter Family Service, complete with changes to the Church of England liturgy.13 To make matters more complicated, Gloucester Cathedral was used as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the films. Indeed, if the Harry Potter books and films can be charged both with representing a role model appropriate for Christian children and a slippery slope into the occult, how is it possible to claim they are not a religious tinder box?
[23] Is Harry Potter to be viewed as a religious phenomenon? Absolutely, says Richard Abanes. The books and films present a religious worldview, which includes a smattering of Buddhism and reincarnation, Roman, Greek, and Celtic mythology, astrology, Arthurian legend and Druid symbolism (29-31). Also plentiful, Abanes adds, are Rowlings many references to various demonic entities deeply connected to magic, witchcraft, and sorcery (32) Does it matter, as supporters claim, that Harry Potter does not offer an accurate picture of Wicca, or is it enough that the books present any form of witchcraft, and that they have been used also in a Christian context?14 Rowling herself does not see the books as religious and does not approve of book-banning. She says to Diane Rehm, No book is going to be for every child. . . If we ban every childrens book that makes mention of magic or witches or wizards . . . we are going to be removing three quarters of the classics from the bookshelves.
[24] Herein lies the heart of the dilemma. Although many people will disagree with the points made by conservatives like Richard Abanes, Robert S. McGee, and Caryl Matrischiana and argue that their fear of Harry Potter may be frightfully exaggerated, there is grounds to concede that, nonetheless, there is a real issue here. In the face of growing knowledge about and tolerance of many different faith expressions, we seem to be experiencing an increasing difficulty to define 1) what separation of church and state really means; 2) what constitutes moral or immoral literature in the context of the public schools; and 3) how we should define fantasy literature in the same context. The phenomenon of Harry Potter is a religious phenomenon, precisely because it has forced us to face squarely what it really means to be tolerant of all religious expression in the modern age. The solution may not be to remove Harry Potter from the schools, but to reexamine what separation of church and state really means. Is such a division even possible, really? Is it possible to have real tolerance of all religious expression and also maintain separation of church and state? Might discussion of Harry Potter in the classroom be one means of opening the door to the pertinent question of what religion is and what it means to be tolerant of people practicing it in all of its manifestations, especially in a syncretistic and pluralistic modern world? Fantasy versus reality; good versus evil; secular versus religious. Perhaps these are not dichotomies after all, but invitations to dialogue in the face of modern definitions of religious expression that are larger than the traditional conservative Christian ethic and, indeed, larger than the dichotomies discussed here suggest in their either/or fashion. When J.K. Rowling was asked in an interview what single thing she would change about the world, she replied, I would make each and every one of us much more tolerant. The primary challenge of our modern predicament is that the enactment of such an ideal must include giving Harry, the Wiccans, the conservative Christians, and others, all seats in the classroom, or none of them.
GROUPED NOTES
FILM CREDITS
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged?
It all happens here: Locating Salvation in Abel Ferraras Bad Lieutenant
by
Simon J. Taylor
Vol. 7 No. 1 April 2003
It all happens here: Locating Salvation
in Abel Ferraras Bad Lieutenant
by Simon J. Taylor
Abstract
[1] Bad Lieutenant offers a both a narrative and a theology of salvation. Both are focussed on the death of the Lieutenant at the end of the film. This essay traces these accounts of salvation and finds that they are both flawed, in nature and scope. These flaws derive from an exclusive focus on the death of the Lieutenant and the cross of Christ as the loci of salvation. The value of Ferraras work is in the articulation of these flaws, as they point to dangers for Christian theology as it seeks to articulate the salvation offered by Christ. Article
[2] At the end of Abel Ferraras film Bad Lieutenant (1992), the Lieutenant (never named and referred to in the credits simply as Lt) sits in his car in front of a sign that reads It all happens here. Another car pulls up, a man calls Hey, cop and a single gunshot is heard. The car pulls away and the film ends as the noise of life in Manhattan goes on and Lts death is discovered. All this takes place in one wide-angle camera shot, so that we do not see Lt, but the car in the street. The film closes as those standing in the street hear the gunfire and investigate the murder that has just occurred.1 This scene is the culmination of a whole series of imagery linking Lt with Christ and is intended to represent the salvation of Lt. In this essay, I am concerned with the nature of the salvation depicted by Bad Lieutenant. Plot Summary
[3] Ferraras film traces Lts passage through a world of violence, murder, sex, drugs and gambling. Lt is supposed to police this world but instead is involved in all aspects of it. We see him stealing and trading drugs, threatening others for money and sex, using drugs and prostitutes and abusing his position as a policeman. Above all we see him gambling and involving others in gambling as he places bets on the World Series. The debts accrued from this gambling ultimately lead to his death. In the midst of this world, Lt comes across a nun (also unnamed) who is raped in church by two young men who also steal a chalice. Her refusal to name her attackers (although she knows them) and forgiveness of them are incomprehensible to Lt, but ultimately lead him to a vision of Christ. After this vision, Lt is given the stolen chalice by the mother of one of the rapists. This leads him to the criminals. Yet instead of turning them in for the reward money, which would have gone some way towards paying his gambling debts, Lt puts them onto a bus telling them Your life aint worth shit in this town. They are given a chance to start a new life elsewhere, while he parks his car to await his inevitable death. Throughout Bad Lieutenant, religious imagery and scenes of violence combine to form a powerful piece of filmmaking. Harvey Keitels performance in the title role is a superb piece of acting, and gives an authority and seriousness to the film that help prevent it becoming either farcical or voyeuristic. Lt and Christ
[4] The title of the film itself is an unambiguous reference to Lts moral qualities, and one of Ferraras preferred strategies is to combine a religious image, specifically a cross or crucifix, with an instance of Lts bad behaviour. Thus the first piece of religious imagery we see is also the first instance of Lts badness a crucifix on a rosary hung over the rear-view mirror of Lts car seen as he snorts drugs. Later in the film, a girl driver that Lt stops wears a ring with a large cross on it. We see this most clearly when he intimidates her into miming oral sex whilst he masturbates. When he first enters the church in which the nun was raped, we see Lt framed by a crucifix and one of the pictures of the stations of the cross on the wall. He stands next to a processional crucifix to eavesdrop on the nun being interrogated. This seemingly blasphemous conjunction is actually Ferraras means of telling us that in his behaviour, Lt is crucifying again the Son of God.2 This is reinforced by an image of Lt in a cruciform pose, his body forming the image. Here Lt is naked (nakedness itself, perhaps an echo of Christ on the cross), drunk, in the company of two prostitutes, possibly impotent in that there is no suggestion of sex here, and howling like an animal. This is Lt at his very lowest. If he is re-crucifying Christ, he is also crucifying himself.
[5] As his daughter receives her first Communion, Lt does not receive the sacrament but discusses his betting. Again we have the conjunction of Lts bad behaviour and a crucifix. Here, however, Ferrara frames Lt in the same way as he frames the Christ on the crucifix. Ferrara is going further than a simple conjunction of religious imagery and Lt and begins to suggest an identification between Lt and Christ. We can see this elsewhere in the film. Lt goes to the home of a young dealer to whom he has sold drugs in order to collect the money he is owed. There are a number of religious pictures in this apartment, including a picture of Jesus face woven into a sofa. Lt sits on the sofa right over the face of Jesus, as it were, in his place. Just as Ferrara has Lt body form the image of the cross (itself suggesting some identification with Christ), so Lt bodily takes the place of Christ. This occurs in the church. Lt picks up the statue of the Madonna that the rapists knocked over and lies down next to it. There is something of the cross in this pose, but most of all it resembles a pieta (Mary receiving the body of Jesus from the cross, the most famous example of which is Michaelangelos sculpture in St Peters, Rome).
[6] As well as this identification between Lt and Christ, we twice see Christ himself during the film. Christ is never fully present in the film, only seen as a vision. The Christ we see is stripped to the waist, wounded and bleeding. He is the Christ of the crucifix. This visionary appearance of Christ is a departure from the realism that characterises the rest of the film, and is unique to Bad Lieutenant in the whole of Ferraras body of work. 3 The first time we see Christ is as the nun is raped on the altar of a church. As we watch this crime, the film cuts between the rape and an image of Christ on the cross, screaming in agony. The suggestion is that this is as if it were happening to Christ, or at the least that Christ shares her pain. It later transpires that the boys used a cross to penetrate the nun. Lt meets (or sees) Christ in the same church, where he has gone to plead with the nun for the names of her assailants. She refuses, saying that she has already forgiven them. The nun then leaves him, silently, giving him her rosary. She quite literally hands her cross to Lt. He then drops to the floor and howls. It is at this point that Lt sees Christ, just as we saw Christ during the rape. Lt curses Christ at first and throws at him the rosary he has been given. Finally he breaks down and begs for forgiveness. What am I going to do? Youve got to say something. You want me to do everything. Where were you? Where the fuck were you? Im sorry, Im sorry. I did some bad things, Im sorry. I tried to do tried to do the right thing, but Im weak. Im too fucking weak. I need you to help me. Help me. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me, please. Forgive me father. As Lt crawls towards Christ and kisses his feet, we see that in fact it is an old woman that has entered the church. It is she who has the stolen chalice and gives Lt enough information to find the rapists. The vision of Christ thus leads directly to Lts most significant identification with Christ as he takes the place of Christ in forgiving and setting free the two rapists. This identification is compounded by the fact that this costs Lt his life. Locating a narrative of salvation
[7] Lt, like Christ, dies to save others from their sin. It is this final scene that provides the notion of salvation within the films narrative. The two boys are saved by Lt who gives them money and a chance to start again in another city. The portrayal of Lt as a Christ figure reaches its climax at this point, but this salvific outcome is itself enabled by that portrayal. Paradoxically, we are also, I think, meant to understand this as the salvation of the Bad Lieutenant. Zoe Lund, Ferraras co-writer, described the film as showing how far he [Lt] goes to seek redemption4 and one critic sees Lt as like one of the trespassers on the cross crucified together with Jesus who shows remorse and is save5 Lt is saved as he saves others, his final and ultimate identification with Christ releases him from the problems he has heaped upon himself and his sacrifice for the boys redeems him.
[8] Yet the ending of the film, in which Lt makes this final sacrifice, has a different tone to that which precedes it. The wide-angle frame, the distance of the action and the continuation of life around the dead Lt is much more open than the rest of the film. Previously the religious imagery was stark and determinative, but here there is space. Ferraras intent here may be to draw the world into the salvific action of Lts death, but equally it allows us to draw out from this action and to ask some wider questions. Did Lt have to die, could he not have admitted his own culpability and sought to live with the consequences of his actions? And what of the two boys, sent to another city without any help or family support? Are they made to face what they have done? Will they, as Lt suggests to the nun, do it again? These are serious questions concerning the nature of the salvation that Lt and the boys achieve in the narrative of Bad Lieutenant.
[9] If we can question the nature of salvation offered in the film, we can also question the scope of salvation presented in the narrative. Thus we can ask about the incidental characters in the film, such as Lts family and the mother of the boys. Would they see Lt and the boys as saved by the final events? The boys mother now has less chance of seeing her sons than she would have had done had the police found them. Lts family are not considered, but have lost a husband and father, and their breadwinner. They may even be targeted by Lts killers to complete their reprisals. Salvation seems very limited within Ferraras narrative. It is focussed on certain individuals, Lt and the boys, and excludes others: victims, families, community.
[10] For Ferrara, it seems, death is the ultimate moment of life. It is the end of Lts problems, and thus his salvation, just as leaving the city is salvation for the two rapists. Your life aint worth shit in this town, Lt says to the boys they are dead to New York. The statement at the end of the film that It all happens here suggests that Lts death is the only significant moment of redemption or salvation. Ferraras concentration on death as the moment of salvation, reflected in his use of the image of the cross throughout the film, closes down the salvation available to his characters. Nor is there any new life for any of the characters in the film. For the two boys who are sent away, salvation lies in exile. Lt is dead. The police force remains a mixture of good and bad. Lts killers simply drive away. This is a very bleak picture (which may, of course, be Ferraras point). Salvation does not change the nature of the world in which we live. There is a fatalism about the narrative of salvation that Ferrara articulates. There is no struggle, no attempt to redeem the wider world. Ferraras salvation is about death, not life.
Locating a theology of salvation
[11] Within its narrative framework, Bad Lieutenant locates salvation in the death of Lt. It all happens here. But behind and alongside the narrative, Ferrara is articulating a theology of salvation. This theology concentrates on the cross as the locus of salvation. This is reflected in the way that the film shows Lts death as the culmination of a whole series of images identifying Lt with the crucified Christ. Lt is saved by his imitation of the crucified Christ. The boys are saved by the effects of Lts death. For Ferrara, the cross is the site of salvation. It all happened there. Yet, just as the salvation within the narrative is flawed, so is this theology of salvation. Both the nature and scope of the theology of salvation offered by Bad Lieutenant show this.
[12] The nature of salvation has become escape, away from the city or away from this life. If salvation is located purely in a death, then once the saving death is achieved, the story must end. This is the weakness of the presentation of the salvation of the two rapists. Precisely because their lives do not end, the nature of their salvation must be questioned. Their salvation comes exclusively from a death, and hence is narrowly about their crimes and can say nothing more. An exclusive focus on the cross can leave us (to use some traditional language) justified, but can say nothing of our sanctification. Such a theology can speak only of death, life asks too many questions.
[13] The scope of salvation is equally impoverished, for Bad Lieutenant can speak only of the individual, not of the wider ecology of relationships in which that individual is placed. Ferraras characters are left like the disciples on Good Friday, scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Those saved are taken out of these relationships, those who remain in a form of relation to others are not saved. Thus these relationships are, in the final reckoning, disregarded. Rowan Williams suggests that people who have been saved should be transformed themselves, and that this transformation should affect their relationships. The saved man or woman is one with sufficient sense of his or her own dignity, selfhood and resourcefulness to love generously.6 There is little love, generous or otherwise, to be seen in the saving conclusion to Ferraras work. Conclusion
[14] Bad Lieutenant, then, offers an inadequate theology of salvation, and this inadequate theology is both rooted and reflected in an inadequate narrative of salvation. Yet this should not prevent us from seeing the film as a serious and important contribution to the theological task of articulating salvation. It is a real virtue of Bad Lieutenant that it enables us to articulate a fault-line that the film shares with much Christian theology.
[15] Of course to state a problem is not to solve it. Absent from Bad Lieutenant is any concept of resurrection, of salvation as restoration to new life. It is the resurrection that offers a means of speaking of our transformation. Death alone cannot offer this, there must be the new life of resurrection. As Williams notes, to speak of the resurrection of Jesus is also to speak of ones own humanity as healed, renewed and restored, re-centred in God.7 What we have seen in Bad Lieutenant, and the theology of salvation it presents, calls for a fuller articulation of the role of the resurrection in Christian soteriology. But that is a task for another day.8
NOTES GROUPED
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Vol.7 No.1
Beautiful Necessities: American Beauty and the Idea of Freedom
by David L. Smith
Vol. 6 No. 2 October 2002
Beautiful Necessities: American Beauty and the Idea of Freedom
by David L. Smith
Abstract
[1] A central theme of American Beauty is the disjunction between the quests for liberation undertaken by its characters and the discoveries at which a few of them arrive. The world of the film is carefully structured as a culturally deterministic system. Nevertheless, a kind of freedomepitomized by the experience of beautybecomes possible for some of the characters even in the grip of fatal necessities. The Buddhist concept of mushotoku (non-attainment) and Emersons idea of Beautiful Necessity are used to explicate the films complex exploration of freedom and fate.
Article
[2] The mystery of American Beauty is the way it takes some of the most familiar themes in modern American popular culturethe attempt to change ones life, to achieve liberation from constraining circumstances, to become oneselfand gives them fresh and surprising life. What saves the film from cliche, I will argue, is its fine sense for the paradoxical nature of the quests for freedom it depicts. Paradox arises because the world of American Beauty is a closed, culturally deterministic system. Its characters are perfect creatures of their social locations. They may hope for something more, but their very conception of this more derives from the culture that confines and defines their desires. Their stories are correspondingly bleak and self-defeating. And yet, American Beauty is not a bleak or pessimistic film. Possibilities of meaning and freedom emerge from its deterministic world that have little to do with its characters conscious intentions. The film, we might say, is a meditation on the disconnect between the narrative quests of its characters and the meaning that, in a few cases, happens to them. My purpose in this paper, then, will be first to explicate the film from this point of view, showing how it plays with ironic disjunctions between quest and attainment, freedom and fate, and second, to suggest how certain analogues from religious thought, especially the Buddhist concept of non-attainment and certain themes from Emerson, can help us to unpack its paradoxes.
[3] Admittedly, many of the films reviewers have not shared my sense that the film succeeds in avoiding the undertow of cliche. For nay-sayers, American Beauty is simply another version of the numbingly familiar story of individual liberation from social convention, with a few extra elements of sensationalism thrown in to up the commercial ante (masturbation! recreational drugs! borderline pedophilia!).1 Like films from The Graduate to Pleasantville,2 it sets its drama of emancipation in suburbia, rehearsing the message that life tends to go stale within the confines of a picket-fence, consumerist, career-driven version of the American dream. Its particular characters and story-line are drawn in broad, even cartoonish"3 strokes: man quits dead-end job in disgust, loosens up, and finds new life in adolescent fantasy; career-obsessed woman comes to a bad end; boy and girl, drawn together by hatred of their respective families, make plans to take off for the city. This tale of liberation through non-conformity is by now so familiar, so co-opted, so devoid of any real critical edge, that it is natural to wonder why anyone would be interested.4
[4] Positive reviews of the film, on the other hand, have had a hard time identifying the secret of its power or substantiating the reasons for its extraordinary critical and popular success.5 Good acting is part of the answer; inspired cinematography likewise. But many viewers and reviewers also point to something else. Kenneth Turan in the LA Times, for example, writes of something undefinable about American Beauty that makes its satire seem more familiar than it is."6 In the same spirit of puzzled wonder, the terms mystical and spiritual frequently crop up in connection with the rapt aesthetic of beauty that inspires some of the films characters.7 Vague as such terms may be, I propose to take them seriously, and to try to explicate the mystical or more broadly spiritual aura of American Beauty as clearly as possible. This dimension of the film comes into focus, I will show, when we notice how American Beauty establishes two distinct critical or interpretive frames around its story which produce the films deepest impressions through their interplay. One of these frameworks is social-psychological, the other broadly spiritual or religious.
[5] First, the film is carefully structured to put its characters social and psychological motives in critical perspective. Specifically, it shows how the characters quests for freedom are, in every case, symptoms of their starting points, expressions of the complexes from which they are trying to escape. The formal organization of the film, including its cartoonish simplification of character, is designed to make this point. The story focuses on two families, the Fitts and the Burnhams, who are next door neighbors and who inhabit two distinctive complexes of cultural values and personality typestwo architectural and sociological boxes. The Fitts family represents what we might as well call the military-industrial complex. The head of the family is a retired Air Force Colonel, identified in the script consistently as the Colonel rather than by name. The code of life he imposes on his family is a caricature of military discipline: relentless self-control above all, with a dedication to drawing and enforcing boundaries exemplified by his homophobia and violent response to rule-breaking. Next door, the Burnham household represents another typically contemporary complex of values. Robert Bellah might want to call it expressive individualism, but I will call it the consumerist-entertainment complex. Lester, the father, works in advertising. Carolyn, the mother, is a kind of manic Martha Stewart who struggles to succeed at selling real estate, schools herself with self-improvement tapes, and dotes on material symbols of her achievement (Italian silk upholstery, a Mercedes SUV). The guiding light of the Burnham household, then, is desirethe drive for success, the drive for pleasure, and the drive towards a more perfect arrangement of appearances. (See the way the handle on those pruning shears matches her gardening clogs? says Lester in reference to Carolyn. Thats not an accident.(2)8 If the Fitts illustrate the tragic effects of the repression of desire, the Burnhams represent the pitfalls of its pursuit.
[6] The paths to emancipation taken by members of the respective families, in turn, reflect the complexes that nurtured them. Ricky Fitts, son of Colonel Fitts, uses and sells marijuana, but significantly, the variety he prefers was genetically engineered by the U.S. Government.(46) That is to say, the culture of control, now taking charge of the blueprints of life itself, gives Ricky the means by which he seeks to transcend his family, to escape the culture of control. Another way in which Ricky finds a kind of freedom is through the view-finder of his video camera. Ricky casts himself as a professional observer, a student of other peoples lives with no compunctions about peeping through their windows. He transforms ordinary experience by distancing it on film, asserting a kind of control over life through the neat rows of tapes that line his bedroom. But here again, the influence of the military-industrial complex is clear. Who is more adept at surveillance than the military? And who engineered the sophisticated equipment by which Ricky engineers his detachment? Ricky is thus caught in a bind that is familiar to anyone who has reflected on the paradoxes of contemporary popular culture, where anti-technological life styles are celebrated with electric instruments and anti-capitalist rock bands are promoted by AOL Time Warner. The wildly mixed messages compel one to wonder how far emancipation by such means can go.
[7] The rebellious members of the Burnham family are in a similar bind. They seek to mitigate or change their circumstances through drives, values, and impulses acquired from the cultural complexes they seek to escape. As products of the consumerist-entertainment complex, they seek satisfaction in raw desirethe yearning for self-completion through acquisition, through novel experience, and through the manipulation of appearances. Thus, young Jane builds for the future by saving up her baby-sitting money for a boob job.(72) Carolyn, whose kitsch romanticism extends to her choice of Bali Hai as dinner music, yearns her way into an affair with Buddy Kane, the Real Estate King, who represents everything she longs to become. (His personal philosophy provides the perfect mantra for her preoccupation with appearances: in order to be successful, one must project an image of success, at all times.[51]) Finally, Lester, in the films main plot line, quits his job in order to get back his life, to renew himself by falling back on his instincts.9 His instincts turn out to be pretty regressive, however. He develops a crush on a teenage girl; devotes himself to working out because he wants to look good naked;(44) and buys on impulse a 1970 Firebird, the car he always wanted.(68) (Its red, of coursethe color of desire, like the Burnhams front door, Carolyns roses, and Lesters own rose-petal fantasies). Lesters pursuit of the girl, Angela, becomes the center of attention in the film for a number of reasons, not the least of which is pure prurience. Nevertheless, we can see how it fits the themes under discussion here. As in Lolita, the hyper-romanticism of a tabooed attraction becomes a symbol of the culture that nurtures ita culture of yearning, for which real life is always elsewhere. Lester Burnham is no Humbert Humbert, but his middle-class desires are a match in both intensity and inappropriateness for those of Nabokovs cultured emigre.10
[8] This analysis of the characters motives points to a conclusion that has become rather routine in academic Culture Studies: in short, no exit. Culture is a totalistic system that affords no leverage point by which a genuine project of emancipation could get itself off the ground. Every apparent way out is already subsumed, already co-opted. The system may offer mitigations and palliativesways to keep hope alivebut no real alternatives. Ricky gets his drugs; Jane, Lester, and Carolyn get their romantic visions; but these are too deeply implicated in the system for us to even imagine an elsewhere to which they might lead. The conclusion of the story makes the futility and fatality of their choices clear. Lester is dead. Carolyn has lost her lover, her family, and probably her sanity. Janes plans for escape are about to be thwarted and the Fittsfather, son, or bothwill soon be picked up by the police for Lesters murder. (Lesters blood is on the Colonels shirt; Ricky is on film offering to make the hit.)11 In the end, then, history fails as a realm of freedom or source of meaning for any of the characters. It is rather a system of strict cause and effect, a karmic wheel, in which doing what one wants is equivalent to bondage under the iron law of ones conditioning.12
[9] What hope is there, then, for freedom? The remarkable thing about American Beauty is that it does not take that question as rhetorical. Instead of settling for one of the stock contemporary responses to meaninglessness (playful nihilism, apocalyptic nihilism, existentialist posturing, or blind faith) it simply and honestly treats the question as worth raising. If meaning is not to be found through emancipatory projects, then where is it to be found? If freedom does not consist in doing what one wants, then what is it?
[10] To address these questions, the film constructs another critical frame around its story, loosely built of the moments in which various characters find their lives lit up by beauty. As noted above, the world of the film is not devoid of meaning. The kind of meaning its characters stumble across, however, is oblique or even irrelevant to their stories, to self-understandings that remain bound and blinkered by their circumstances. It has little to do with what anyone intends or thinks they are doing. And yet, when beauty emerges, it makes a difference, somehow transforming or opening up the realm of necessity from within. Thus, the world of American Beauty may offer no chance for freedom in the sense of escape, autonomy, or triumphant self-creation. It does, however, suggest something that Emerson discovered meditating on the similar themes in his essay Fate: namely, that necessity, without our knowing how or why, can sometimes appear as Beautiful Necessity."13 For Emerson, this arose through the realization that freedom is necessary"14 that there is no gap between the conditions that seem to constrain us and the values we hope to realize. The trap is transformed, we might say, through the insight that the trap is what we are, and through the sense of aesthetic appropriateness or beauty that accompanies the realization. A similar transvaluation of the problem of life through beauty is, to my mind, the real subject of American Beauty.
[11] I have called this aspect of the film spiritual for a number of reasons. First and most obviously, I do so because beauty enters the film in moments the characters themselves find intense, extraordinary, and revelatory which they sometimes characterize in explicitly religious terms. Ricky Fitts is the source of the two clearest cases of religious interpretation. With reference to a video he once took of a homeless woman frozen to death on the sidewalka touchstone for him of the worlds beauty and sadnesshe says When you see something like that, its like God is looking right at you, just for a second. And if youre careful, you can look right back.(57) Second, there is Rickys film of a plastic bag whirled by the wind, the films central icon of beauty. About this Ricky says: Thats the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.(60) Less explicitly religious, but bearing a strong family resemblance to mystical literature through its theme of self-overcoming, is Lesters final comment in voice-over:
Sometimes I feel like Im seeing it all at once, and its too much, my heart fills up like a balloon thats about to burst.and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I cant feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.(100)
Comments like these put the viewer in mind of fairly familiar notions of transcendence, suggesting alternative horizons of meaning that place the films cynical take on history in a wider perspective.
[12] A similar point is made through the literal framing of the film between Lesters voice-overs. We know from the start that our narrator is a dead man. He soars with the camera above the neighborhood whose formal layout shaped his life. He floats free of time. His story is over; he knows what the dead know. And so his presence at the edges of the film hints at a dimension beyond the story, even while it is being told.15 That dimension, however, has nothing to do with a literal promise of life after death, let alone with the stock Hollywood motif of the intervening angel. Rather, what Lesters perspective brings to the film is the suggestion of a larger structure of selfhooda life both in and out of the game, as Whitman put it.16 We are cued that the stories about to unfold are not going to tell us everything there is to know. Thus, like Rickys God-language, the voice-overs introduce the promise of alternative sources of meaning.
[13] Two episodes in the film stand out as fulfillments of that promise, moments in which the power of beauty becomes palpable to the audience as well as to the characters. First, there is Rickys video of the dancing plastic bagthe films most haunting visual image. Beauty, as epitomized in this scene, is an intrinsic value that is everywhere but seems to come out of nowhere. It emerges here from a situation that is utterly deterministica scrap of plastic caught in a vortex of cross-windsand utterly ordinary, encountered in an empty parking lot on a cold gray day (echoing Emersons similarly fortuitous moment on a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky).17 (10) Rickys other encounters with beauty are similarly quotidian and similarly fatal: in a dead bird, in an old woman frozen on the curb, and in the sadness of the girl next door. Whatever its occasion, though, beauty is intrinsically meaningfula satisfaction unmatched by anything else represented in the film. It brings the characters who get it (Lester, Ricky, possibly Jane) a sense of meaning that is absolute and unquestionablecomplete in a way that even threatens to cancel out the rest of life. As Ricky says, sometimes theres so much beauty in the world I feel like I cant take itand my heart is going to cave in.(60) A close neighbor of death, beauty is at once eschatologically and ontologically ultimate; it interrupts or puts an end to the stories we struggle to sustain and speaks from beyond them.18 It is thus appropriate that beauty is what evokes the films only God-language. In those moments when Ricky feels that God is looking at him, beauty is what he sees when he looks back.
[14] Insofar as beauty stands apart from the characters intentional questsas a gratuitous interruption of the life of desire rather than a moment within itit is strictly useless. It is simply a way of seeing the world clearly, apart from what we would make of it. Nevertheless, this kind of clarity can also have consequences for how life is lived. So in the film, a second focal moment in which meaning becomes palpable is a moral event: Lesters last-minute renunciation of his pursuit of Angela. Like the epiphanies of beauty, this moral epiphany is a simple matter of seeing clearly. Lesters desire for Angela had been driven by illusions and wishesrepresented for us in the films lurid fantasy sequences. Granted: his illusion about Angela is not too different from the illusion that Angela held about herself and tried, rather awkwardly, to project to others. This whole network of projection and self-deception dissolves, however, when, just as the flirtation is about to be consummated, Angela lets Lester see who she really isadmitting to her inexperience, changing her story. Lester, in turn, responds with poise, generosity, and tenderness. He does the right thing. It is not a triumph of principle, but a triumph of natural compassion and clear, unclouded perception. Lester in the end thus finds and exercises freedomnot the freedom to do what he wants, but the freedom to deal mindfully with what is realand so discovers the beauty in his necessities.19 He has not found a way out of his circumstances, but he has found a way to own them that makes possible his final affectionate review of the moments of joy that punctuated his stupid little life."(100)20
[15] What sort of freedom is possible, then, in a deterministic system? What sort of liberation from the trap of culture is possible if the trap is what we are? What American Beauty suggests, I believe, is first of all that freedom, although it is not likely to be achieved by intentional effort, nevertheless may occur to us as an experienced quality, like the beauty that emerges from the dance of the wind-driven bag. It is not found beyond fate (i.e. we do not become who we are by becoming other than we are). Rather, it comes as an affirmative moment within fate, as in Emersons Nietzschean tribute to Beautiful Necessity or Lester Burnhams joyful post-mortem embrace of every single moment of my stupid little life. Freedom is the discovery of beauty in our necessities, even as the trap is sprung and (in Lesters case, literally) the gun is put to our head.
[16] What is attained in such freedom is thus paradoxical, because it brings nothing that one did not previously have. What is recovered is something from which one was never really separated. The spiritual discoveries of characters in American Beauty thus need to be understood on the model of something like what Soto Zen calls mushotoku or non-attainment. According to this view, enlightenment, as an unconditioned reality, is outside all trains of cause and effect: not attained, not lost; neither an addition to life nor a subtraction from it. By its own seamless nature, it cannot come as the result of a quest or project in time; it cannot come at all, for it is not possible to be apart from it. Thus, as the Buddha reportedly says in the Diamond Sutra, When I attained Absolute Perfect Enlightenment, I attained absolutely nothing. That is why it is called Absolute Perfect Enlightenment."21 Religious life may seem like a quest, a journey to the other shore, and may actually be structured as one. However, the actual relation, if any, between effort and attainment is not constrained by this narrative logic. The way keeps to its own ways, or as a Chan poem puts it:
Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes and the grass grows by itself."22
[17] This is not to say that the characters quests in American Beauty are completely irrelevant to the meaning they find. Rickys pursuit of beauty on video-tape is in some sense a means to his discovery of beauty in odd places (as is, perhaps, his use of marijuana). Lesters growth in moral insight is a clear though unintended consequence of his restlessness. Because he quits his job, he loosens up; because he loosens up, he pays attention; and because he pays attention, he recovers his world. Nevertheless, my point in this paper has been that the genius of American Beauty is the way it places these relatively conventional narrative quests in the context of a wider skepticism and a wider promise. Time, in the world of the film, is a fools game, but not all of the characters are fools. Some of them manage to draw on sources that precede, exceed, and evade their own habits of self-reflection. They find themselves both in and out of the game, and would not be themselves apart from this doubleness. In the end, it is the interplay between these perspectivesbetween the inescapable logic of the cultural game and the equally commanding moments in which we find ourselves apart from it; between the fatality of our traps and the possibility of freedom that persists within themthat constitutes the mysterious achievement of American Beauty.
NOTES
1. Dismissive reviews from respected critics included Stuart Klawans in The Nation ( The Boys of Summer, 269 no. 11 (October 11, 1999) pp. 34-36; J. Hoberman in the Village Voice (Boomer Bust); and Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic (In Search of an Author 221 no. 15 (October 11, 1999) pp. 36-38.
2. My quick survey of other films and television shows with which American Beauty was compared by early reviewers turned up the following: Sunset Boulevard (for the dead narrator voice-overs), Lolita, Sex, Lies & Videotape, Happiness, Election, The Apartment, Network, Blue Velvet, After Hours, Its a Wonderful Life (for the angel motif), Married with Children, Welcome to the Dollhouse and The Ice Storm.
3. The cartoon quality of several of the characters, especially Carolyn and Colonel Fitts, is lamented by Richard Alleva in No Leave It to Beaver, Commonweal 19-20 126, no. 19 (November 5, 1999). Jay Carr in The Boston Globe (September 17, 1999) Arts & Film C4, refers to Carolyn as a Stepford Wife on acid.
4. Like several otherwise appreciative reviewers, Janet Maslin in The New York Times saw the film as little more than a celebration of non-conformity. (Dads Dead, and Hes Still a Funny Guy September 15, 1999, Section E, page 1.) If this were all there was to be said about the movie, I would agree with its negative reviewers.
5. Within a year of its release, the film had grossed over 130 million dollars, starting from a 15 million dollar production budget. (See www.boxofficemojo.com/americanbeauty.html) It won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1999.
6. The Roses Thorns September 15, 1999, Part F, p. 1. David Denby, Transcending the Suburbs, New Yorker 75, no. 27 (September 20, 1999): pp. 133-135, for a sense of wonder at how well the film works.
7. See David Denby, Transcending the Suburbs, New Yorker 75, no. 27 (September 20, 1999): pp. 133-135, for a sense of wonder at how well the film works.
8. Page numbers for quotes from the screenplay by Alan Ball refer to American Beauty: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket Press, 1999).
9. Kevin Spacey develops this view of Lester, the character he plays, in an interview with Jay Stone in The Ottawa Citizen, September 15, 1999, B8, Front.
10. N.b. Angelas last name is Hayes, echoing Nabokovs Dolores Haze.
11. An early version of script is available in the Internet which begins with Ricky in prison.
12. A similar theme of entrapment is apparent in the conventions Alan Ball has established for his latest project, the TV serial Six Feet Under. Each episode begins with a death, a fatality that cant be escaped but simply dealt with. Each of the regular characters, moreover, faces intractable confining circumstances, placing them in situations very much in keeping with the implications of the title and the visual theme of boxes in the shows opening credits.
13. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays & Lectures (New York: The Library of America, 1983), p. 967.
14. Ibid., p. 953.
15. Reviewers have frequently compared this device to the famous use of a dead narrator in Sunset Boulevard. The comparison is close, but it only serves to highlight the differences between the films. In Sunset Boulevard, the voice-over is a tool of irony, allowing the narrator to crack jokes at his own expense and come to terns with the inevitability of his downfall. But something far more positive and spacious is achieved in American Beauty through the same device.
16. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, in Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: The Library of America, 1982), p. 191.
17. Emerson, op. cit., p. 10.
18. To invoke Emerson again, Beauty is the creator of the universe (op. cit, p. 445)present before time
19. Significantly, I think, one catches an echo here of the slogan used on the films publicity posters: look closer. The way this phrase is presented in the ads, layered over a close-up of Angelas naked belly, plays rather shamelessly on the prurience of the plot. Its second level of meaning, however, is a fair summary of the films deepest themeExamine the motives that are drawing you to these images. Pay attention! American Beauty is a film about prurienceabout all that we find so desirable and entertaining in this worldthat aims at disenchanting prurience. It is a film about desire in which desire is ultimately dissolved in clarity. And always, seeing is the key. Eyes and vision are recurring motifs throughout the film: notably, in Rickys reference to the eye of God; in the unblinking, fearless intensity of Rickys gaze, which so impresses Jane; and in the final look in Lesters eye at the moment of his death, which so impresses Ricky. (What is it that the dead know?)
20. Like Gregor Samsa in Kafkas The Metamorphosis, Lester dies still in the grip of his predicament, but nevertheless in a state of vast and peaceful meditation, thinking back on his family life with tenderness and joy. Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 135.
21. Diamond Sutra, A. F. Price translation, quoted in The Enlightened Mind, Stephen Mitchell, ed. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991) p. 35. For other examples of the logic of non-attainment, which is closely related to non-dualism, see David Loy, Non-Duality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988; Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1998).
22. Quoted in Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, p. 134.
FILM
American Beauty
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Igby Goes Down
Reviewed by Jessica Frazier
Divinity Faculty, Cambridge University
Photo by Myles Aronowitz. 2002 United Artists - All Rights Reserved
Vol. 6, No. 2, October 2002
Igby Goes Down
[1] Some reviewers have complained that Igby Goes Down is all too transparently autobiographical--that Burr Steers, writer/director of the film, has transformed the grievances of his own wealthy whitebread youth into those of Igby Slocumb, an idealised hero with the wit and wherewithal he might have wished for in his own salad days. But whether or not you consider autobiographical fiction suspect, it goes to the heart of what it is to fashion meaningful lessons from the raw resources of life. What makes Igby Goes Down more than your average morality play is that Steers is not searching for a guiding rule that will deliver mere success or even happiness. Igbys gradual journey from New York to the West coast is a sort of inverse Journey to the East, in pursuit of an ultimate object of faith that will not fail him. The films feted black humour is so very dark precisely because Steers and his eponymous hero are reluctant to compromise their ideals. It is the combination of scepticism and faith that makes Igby Goes Down a Trojan horse for modern religious insights.
[2] Kieran Culkin is full of the tremulous bravado of youth as the youngest son of the Slocumbs--a family in name only, as we discover in the opening shots of Igby and his brother Oliver (Ryan Philippe) attempting to suffocate their mother with a clear plastic bag. The ensuing narrative is a sort of apologia for this event, and for all Igbys brash rejections of authority--social, religious, romantic, familial--as he moves from place to place. Igby is the archetypal youngest son of Biblical myth: a Joseph betrayed by his brother, alienated by his family, and left to live by his wits in a strange land full of power-plays and moral riddles. Culkin is supported by a Hollywood cast who redeem their lurid characters with complex performances that are full of humanity.
[3] The leitmotif of people as signposts runs throughout the film. Oliver musingly observes that their father is a slippery when schizophrenic sign for instance along the highway of life. But Igbys singular combination of detached cynicism and openhearted engagement allows him, like Joseph, to see the signs for what they really are--and the moral outlook is bleak. Steers puts his caustic wit to work shooting down every perspective that comes within his sights: Christians, Darwinians, Republicans, Leftists, the military, intellectuals, artists and even German poets (surely not Rilke!) are found lacking. There seems to be little left for the hero or his audience to put their faith in. Certainly not God who, by implication, is either insane like his father (a mumbling and occasionally nude Bill Pullman), or cruel like his mother (pill-popping Susan Sarandon), who is heard to reason his creation was an act of animosity. Why shouldnt his life be?
[4] Ultimately the movie transcends even traditional Hollywood idols of romance and family, just as Igby, alternating between hope and renunciation, finally transcends his dependence on people (or signs) altogether. What makes Igby Goes Down more than a post-modern critique of societys golden idols, is the heroic vision that lies at its core. Yes, Igby is a know-it-all brat, but he receives enough beatings in the film, and takes them bravely enough, for us to forgive this, the first line of defence for an unexpectedly tender soul.
[5] Igbys spiritual maturation is the bright core to this dark comedy. It is Igbys courageous authenticity that draws others to him, and he is able to forgive those who have shaped his own tragedy because, like Joseph, Jesus and the ascetics of every tradition, he can see the edifying providence of suffering. In its moral orientation, Igby Goes Down is a polar opposite to Shyamalans Signs. The film is a Pandoras Box of the evils within American society, but amongst them Steers hides what he considers to be pre-eminently valuable in the individual, giving new life to some of the classic spiritual paradigms lying outside of American mainstream religion. In his open-minded yet uncompromising resilience, Igby is Steers vision of hope, tempered by his own life experience.
[6] And if that seems too moralistic for you, what holds the film through its harsher moments and its slower sections is Igbys irreverent sense of humour. Humour is his key to liberation, keeping the mind muscular and able to grapple free from the mis-molding of the soul that reality can bring. Ultimately it enables him to transcend both hypocrisy and tragedy, and start out on faiths long, lonely journey toward something better. So if youre not inspired, at least youll laugh--and thats the first step.
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Minority Report
Reviewed by
Michael Karounos
Vanderbilt University
Vol. 6, No. 2 October 2002
Minority Report
[1] Minority Report is clearly Spielbergs best, most thoughtful picture since Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan. Based on a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, it is set in the Washington, D.C. of 2054 where for the past six years the police have been able to prevent murders through the use of a trio of "pre-cogs": pre-cognitive people who receive visions of future murders. The three, a woman and two men, are kept in a clover-leaf shaped pod filled with water and are tended by a somewhat neurotic technician whose sole qualification for the job seems to be that he is very nurturing. The pre-cogs fragmentary visions of future crimes are displayed onto computer screens and downloaded into the departments crime computer for analysis.
[2] John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the captain of the pre-cog unit, and it is he who manipulates the images through the not entirely convincing method of "conducting" the images on glass displays with cyber-gloves. Elements of doubt and interpretation are part of the process because accurate conclusions are dependent on the skill of the officer analyzing the "evidence," and also because the visions can have a "dissenting" component of only two pre-cogs predicting the same future, with the third filing a "minority report."
[3] Anderton joined the force six years before, motivated by the unsolved kidnapping of his young son, and struggles with feelings of guilt, revenge and hatred. He has been separated from his wife for six months (can so many sixes be coincidental?) and has become addicted to the drug "Clarity" for relief from his inner demons. In other words, he has sufficient "character motivation" for us to believe that he believes in what he is doing. Whether he will continue to "believe" is one of the questions the movie will raise.
[2] Minority Report is a visual delight, but to this point it lacks a compelling catalyst to drive the narrative. The catalyst arrives in the form of Colin Farrell, a Brad Pitt look-alike who steals nearly every scene as Detective Ed Witwer, a Justice Department official suspicious of the pre-cog operation and who aggressively investigates it to test its fitness for nation-wide application. Even in his scenes with the charismatic Cruise, Farrell comes off as a strong foil and I think it has to do with his body language. Cruise stands or stares in conventional fashion in their confrontations, but Farrel slumps, looks sidelong, glances from beneath his eyebrows and adopts similar tropes in a manner that is convincing and highly personal. His is a discordant personality, dressed in a dark suit, scruffy-looking, like a Type-A Columbo who, ironically, is determined to find something wrong where nothing yet wrong exists, much like the work of the pre-cog unit itself.
[5] The films visual constructions of the future are for the most part convincing and far superior in integration to laughable efforts such as that seen in Attack of the Clones. But in the best of films, it is character not action that drives a viewers interest, and the movie rides the successful chemistry of the antagonism between Cruise and Farrells characters.
[6] Philosophically, the movie will intrigue both the religiously minded and non-religiously minded for its presentation of the free will vs. determinism debate (which will always be with us), whose resolution (not coincidentally, I think) depends on the identical arguments used to argue both sides of the current capital punishment controversy.
[7] Politically, the movie can easily be read as coming heavily down on one side of that argument and it does so by venturing into surprising, theological grounds. The area where the pre-cogs are kept is referred to as "The Temple"; the police officers are called "priests" and "clergy"; the punishment chamber for the future murderers is called a kind of "hell"; and the "handcuffs" are an immobilizing headset which is referred to as a "halo." Moreover, there are three pre-cogs (constituting a kind of trinity) and the warden of the "death penalty" wing is called Gideon. Make of the last what you can. In the composition of these elements, the movie is clearly making a value judgment of epistemological systems and their believers. As a Christian, I conclude that it is not, shall we say, sympathetic to Christianity in its metaphysical or temporal forms, but viewers should decide for themselves.
[8] Interestingly, it is the female, Agatha, that is the most accurate of the three pre-cogs, and whether it is coincidence or not, her name means "good" in Greek. Much like the character of Trinity breathes new life to Neo in The Matrix, it is she who guides Anderton to his spiritual awakening and recovery. Similarly, the characters of Morpheus and Neo in The Matrix are interchangeable, just as the male twins are interchangeable in Minority Report, predictably casting the woman as the nurturing, life-giving force. Furthermore, the pre-cogs were "created" by the chief-of-police (Max Von Sydow) and a woman scientist. Archetypers en guard.
[9] While containing the inevitable Spielberg sentimentality, the films conclusion argues for forgiveness over revenge, for mercy over justice, and for free will over determinism without being lugubrious. Literally and metaphorically, the film makes the argument that new eyes make for a new perspective and is a clever polemic which will both entertain and provoke the viewer to think about metaphysical, philosophical, and political issues which have been and always will be important to our culture and to our faith.
[10] In his lesser films, Spielberg often took the opportunity of making sly digs at Christianity and it will be interesting to see if after the welcome hiatus of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, in which Christianity was portrayed with some complexity and even sympathy, whether Minority Report augurs a return for him to the culture wars of our time. A.I. was a two-headed abomination as both art and political polemic but with Minority Report he has a classic sci-fi hit that successfully crafts a powerful argument about contemporary issues.
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The Pianist
Reviewed by Christopher Garbowski
(c) Guy Ferrandis / H&K
Vol. 6, No. 2, October 2002
The Pianist
[1] At the world premiere of The Pianist in Warsaw, several months after it received the Palme dOr at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Roman Polanski confessed that he had declined Steven Spielbergs initial offer to direct Schindlers List because the subject matter was too close to home: the setting of that film, Cracow, was where Polanski himself had survived the Holocaust. Ultimately, the story of Wladyslaw Szpilmans survival in Warsaw, as told in The Pianist, was more attractive to Polanski, as Szpilmans account gave him the chance to tell a very personal story at a slight remove, allowing for greater objectivity. Objectivity is a key word here, and the style of The Pianist is subordinated to achieving this end. Polanski noted that his intent was to allow the story to tell itself: no directorial tricks such as shaky camera work or pseudo-documentary effects through extensive use of black and white film. The Pianist conveys cinematic directness and emotional candor.
[2] The hero of the biopic is certainly more suitable to Polanskis temperament than Oscar Schindler; although by no means a negative character, he is not the hero that the protagonist of Spielbergs film becomes. Aside from his virtuosity as a pianist--obviously a key, but not the only one, to his survival--Szpilman is not endowed with a particularly exceptional character. Polanski avoids all extremes in presenting his hero, creating a remarkably believable depiction of an unbelievable, yet very real, plight. We watch Szpilman humiliated, but he never loses his humanity.
[3] Befitting the story of a musician, The Pianist has a number of movements: initially we follow the protagonists story from the outbreak of the war to the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto; next is the horror of ghetto life up until Szpilmans escape, including the deportation of his family to a death camp; then a relatively static series of interiors follows where the protagonist is caged in the hideouts provided by Polish hosts who risked their lives on his account. The crescendo is reached when Szpilman lands in the lions den itself, i.e., Warsaw sans a Polish population after the tragic Warsaw uprising that motivated the citys vengeful and unimaginable destruction by the Nazi occupiers. Help for Szpilman comes from the most unlikely source: a Nazi officer involved in that rearguard action discovers the Polish Jew and, upon hearing him play, decides to help the musician survive the couple of weeks before the inevitable arrival of the Red Army from the East.
[4] Music provides the framework and heart of the story. In the opening sequence the sonata played by a defiant Szpilman during a recording session symbolizes the height of European civilization. The musician defends this civilization by playing on as the bombs fall ever closer, finally hitting the very recording studio in which he plays. At the end of the film Szpilman returns to a remarkably similar studio, also in Warsaw, and a few moments later we leave him in a concert hall, where the music serves as a requiem for those Jews and Poles and Germans -- we have just learned that Szpilman was unable to save the officer that helped him, and subsequently fell into the hands of the Red Army -- who died in the tragic war.
[5] One of the more moving scenes in the film comes when the musician approaches a piano in an apartment hideout. He has been warned not to make a sound since the danger of an informer is very real. Szpilman sits at the piano, the camera cuts to his face and we hear a wondrous sonata. The viewer wonders, has the protagonist cracked under pressure? The following close-up of his hands hovering ever so slightly above the keys explains that he is playing the piece in his mind. The scene eloquently demonstrates what Viktor E. Frankl writes about so stirringly in Mans Search for Meaning, that survival in such extreme circumstances was something more than a mere biological affair; it was crucial to find meaning in the sea of absurdity. Earlier in the film music was a mere instrument of survival, for example when Szpilman played in one of the Ghetto bars. Here, music, or rather its shadow, became a means of maintaining his sanity.
[6] During the confrontation with the Nazi, a dumbfounded Szpilman asks why the former had saved him. The officer takes no credit for himself, somewhat cautiously proffering instead that God has meant for him to survive. The answer jars not only with the status of its proclaimer, but also with all the atrocities witnessed in the film. Earlier Polanski films stack the arguments against any such explanation: in The Pianist the answer is uncertain, but the possibility is at least entertained. And perhaps this is proof of Polanski attaining the highest measure of objectivity in this impressive film: all sides of the major questions involved are treated in earnest, avoiding particular biases.
[7] For some of us, part of Gods purpose in saving Szpilman seems evidenced in the very power of the story he alone could tell; a story which under Polanskis capable retelling commemorates those who died, as much as it celebrates the protagonists survival.
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Film Review
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone
Reviewed by Denny Wayman and Hal Conklin
Cinema in Focus
Vol. 6, No. 1 April 2002
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone
[1] The appeal of J.K. Rowlings fiction lies in her ability to create a world in which children are the heroes and evil disintegrates at the touch of love. Joining the ranks of such writers as C.S. Lewis, Madeline LEngle and J.R.R. Tolkien, Rowling addresses the primal fears and universal longings of young souls and provides a way for children to experience courage, loyalty, morality, identity, and evils temptation in a world that ignores their size. Rowlings fiction recognizes childrens true identity and deeper ability to succeed.
[2] Rather than limiting life to only the physical realm with all its many disappointments and struggles, the story of Harry Potter tells of a world in which Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has power that has come to him not only because of his heritage but also by his mothers sacrificial death out of her love for him. Like the Star Wars fiction where Obi-Wan Kenobi sacrifices his life so that young Luke Skywalker can escape, or the Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan allows the wicked witch to sacrifice his life in the place of a young traitor, the Christ-figure in Harry Potters life is his own mother. In a murderous rampage, the evil Valdemort kills his father, but Harrys mother sacrifices her life to save her baby. Parasitically living off the lives of others, Valdemort is unable to kill Harry because the power of sacrificial love given him by his mothers choice has a far greater power.
[3] Now an orphan and forced to live in the cupboard under the stairs in the home of his unloving uncle and aunt, Harry does not realize his true lineage or abilities. But on his 11th birthday Harry is retrieved from their home and taken into his parents world. This world reveals to him his true identity and value and begins to educate him in the struggle between good and evil. This universal spiritual awareness, that life is a spiritual struggle and we are beings far more important and powerful than our physical circumstances indicate, is the primal theme of the film. Harry soon discovers that the struggle with evil is not only an outward experience, but an inner one as well, as he comes face to face with his own mirrored desires and entangling fears.
[4] Some Christians have struggled with Rowlings choice to make Harry a wizard and to place him within a school of witchcraft and wizardry, where one of his friends uses spells to help him. But magical spells and mythical characters have captivated childrens literature from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, and it is interesting that Harry uses no such spells, nor does he need to. His fathers athletic gifts and his mothers sacrificial love, along with his own pure motives and courage, empower Harry to achieve greatness without the use of witchcraft. At Hogwarts School, as well as in Christian theology, sacrificial love is the ultimate power.
[5] The final temptation occurs when Harry is invited by the parasitic Valdemort to join forces since there is no such thing as good or evil, there is only power. This portrays the final temptation in all our lives. In the real world beyond the powers of government and commerce, there is a spiritual struggle between good and evil. Though we often try to ignore its reality or redefine the truth, we must also decide whether we will take the side of power and evil or have the courage to uphold truth and good. May we all choose as wisely as Harry Potter.
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Vanilla Sky
Reviewed by Jason M. Flato
University of Denver
Vol. 6, No. 1 April 2002
Vanilla Sky
[1] Cameron Crowe's latest offering, Vanilla Sky, is akin to viewing a Georgia O'Keefe painting. There is a disjunctive movement that places the viewer into the film's world, a world where existence and understanding rarely coalesce. Indeed, O'Keefe's oft cited quip is relevant--"there is nothing less real than realism."
[2] The plot revolves around publishing heir David Aames (Tom Cruise), who zips around Manhattan in his expensive car, eats at exclusive restaurants only to return to his luxurious apartment(s) where his lover Julie (Cameron Diaz) drinks lattes and leaves messages on his alarm clock--suggestively uttering, "open your eyes, David." Indeed. The rest of the film takes us through jealous lovers, a defacing car crash, barrooms, prison cells, a caring psychiatrist, immortality, and unusual dreams. Yet, none of this is quite as it appears: Is Sofia (Penelope Cruz) merely a psychological projection? Is Julie dead? Is David' s face unscathed? The line between dream and reality is displaced. The film weaves a tapestry where dreams, existence, projection, and the external world are at the same time interwoven and undone.
[3] Although Vanilla Sky wants to moralize Cruise's movement throughout the film ( recall Jerry Maguire ), it is not simply about gray hairs and pretty faces. David Aames seeks an inoculation against finitude, striving to overcome mortality .In terms of life affirmation, Vanilla Sky is paradoxical: memory and recollection become a jumbled mess. Such as this is, Cruise's character equates the transcendent world with everyday life, comprehending the abhorrent reality behind the reality. The abhorrent reality is conveyed wonderfully in a scene that takes place in a dark club to pulsating techno music. We watch David descend into drunken madness as he removes his latex mask and confronts his brute existence. Moreover, in the scenes where David talks with his psychiatrist (a miscast Kurt Russell) we watch as he forms and deforms life-- consequently, as viewers we share in David' s maddening confusion. This commonality between character and audience is tied to the very ground of religious experience: in the face of finitude we seek to affirm life as we repeatedly encounter anxiety , death and suffering.
[4] The idea of transcendence is centered on the fleeting character of love, represented by Sofia. At the end of the film, high above the streets of Manhattan, the choice Aames must make is ultimate: to decide between disembodiment and incarnation. This emerges in light of interplay between the absence and presence of Sofia, "the last guileless woman in Manhattan"--she is the eternal embodiment of the centered self The ultimate concerns that Aames must make are subverted the practical ones of Sofia; in her harmony with the world she is just doing what one does, resolutely living choice by choice.
[5] In the end, I want to suggest that the film presents us with a sort of Nietzschean theological anthropology: to live is to dance on the abyss and die at the right time. This is the anthropological scaffolding that holds the other religious themes together. Interpretation wields meaning upon appearances. The discontinuity between interpretation and experience, a continual theme, probes at deeper questions about memory , recollection and ontological forgetting.
[6] The notion that we can domesticate God is undone in Vanilla Sky. To choose immortality is to displace God and in turn dissolve ourselves in light of a transcendent void. See Vanilla Sky if only for the re-presentation of the album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and the other clues to decoding the film. Viewed as a love story, a struggle for the soul, or an existential confrontation with the eternal, Vanilla Sky should be seen late at night in one of those stadium-style theater.
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The Journal of Religion and Film
Buddhism, Christianity, and The Matrix:
The Dialectic of Myth-Making in Contemporary Cinema1
by James L. Ford, Ph.D.
Vol. 4, No. 2, October 2000
Buddhism, Christianity, and The Matrix:
The Dialectic of Myth-Making in Contemporary Cinema1
by James L. Ford, Ph.D.
Abstract
[1] This essay analyzes the recent film The Matrix from the perspective of modern-day myth-making. After a brief plot summary of the film, I note the well-documented parallels to the Christian messianic narrative of Jesus. I then go on to highlight the often overlooked parallels to the Buddhist existential analysis of the human condition. In particular, I note a remarkable resonance between The Matrix and the fourth century (C.E.) philosophical school of Buddhism known as Yogacara. By highlighting the syncretic or combinative nature of the films symbolic narrative, I submit The Matrix as a cinematic example of the dialectical process of myth-making by means of Peter Bergers theory of socio-cultural construction.
[2] Humans are mythologizing and, as Peter Berger would suggest, "world-building" creatures. We appropriate elements from our past and present to fashion epic narratives and myths for a variety of existential, sociological, and religious ends. Myths are not fixed narrative forms, however. Studies of traditionally oral cultures evidence considerable elasticity in the details of a particular myth.2 And history also demonstrates that myths often evolve as a result of cultural diffusion and contact. Myths are constantly adapted to new cultural contexts and worldly realities. While the invention of writing inspired a more fixed status for some myths, it did not halt the ongoing adaptation and amalgamation of previously disparate mythological themes and concepts.
[3] In this essay, I will examine the recent popular science-fiction film The Matrix, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, from this perspective of mythological adaptation. While the Christian metaphors throughout the film have been well noted, significant elements of a Buddhist worldview are often overlooked. In particular, the symbolic and existential parallels to a fourth century (C.E.) philosophical school of Buddhism know as "Consciousness-only" (Vijnavada/Yogacara) are indeed striking. In addition to noting such parallels, I will submit The Matrix as a provocative example of modern-day myth-making. Appropriating familiar symbols and motifs into a new epic narrative is clearly not a contemporary phenomenon and I will borrow from Peter Bergers dialectical theory of "world building" to elucidate this process. The foundation myths of many religions arguably reflect the same dialectical process I will try to illuminate here. Although The Matrix is not likely to become the foundation myth for a new religion, it will perhaps inform the worldviews, if only subtly and temporarily, of thousands of young adults. Indeed, this is the destiny of most myths. But who knows, this may become a classic along the lines of The Wizard of Oz or Star Wars.
[4] To characterize a contemporary film as "myth" is not without problems, not the least of which is qualifying such a genre into an acceptable definition of myth. Here I will adopt a definition offered by Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko. She delineates four criteria of myth with respect to form (narrative of sacred origin), content (cosmogonic in terms of cultural origin or existential condition), function (model for human activity), and context (in the sense that myth provides "the ideological content for a sacred form of behavior").3 I suggest that The Matrix qualifies in all respects as a mythological narrative. It is also important to note that myths are not disembodied texts divorced from time or place. Their language, symbols, and meaning are invariably tied to the context and worldview of origin. Moreover, the functional use of myths may range from a childrens story hour to a mechanism of political legitimization. In other words, myths serve any number of social, religious, ideological, or pedagogical functions. Movies, like any narrative form, can be considered a form of myth if they meet the criteria noted above. Star Wars, The Fisher King, Blade Runner, and 2001: A Space Odyssey represent appropriate examples according to this perspective.
Article
The Matrix: A Plot Summary
[5] For those who have not seen the film, I offer here a very brief summary of the plot. The basic premise is that the world as we know it is not objectively real but a computer simulation (the Matrix) wired into our minds by a species of artificial intelligence"a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines," we are told. This cyber-species was originally created by human technological know-how, but eventually took over after emerging victorious in a war waged for generations that virtually destroyed the world. It (they?) now breeds humans as an energy resource (sort of like living batteries) and inputs the virtual Matrix to keeps our minds occupied"And so," we are informed, "they built a prison out of our past, wired it to our brains and turned us into slaves." A small colony of humans has survived independent from the artificial race in a place called Zion, below the surface of the earth. They await a foretold messiah who will conquer the Matrix and restore human control to the world. That is the basic story line revealed through the first third of the movie.
[6] We are introduced to the hero Neo (an anagram for "the One"), a talented computer hacker, as he sits before his computer. The screen blinks a message and Neo (Keanu Reeves) stares blankly"Do you want to know what the Matrix is, Neo?" This is Neos initial revelatory call. He is eventually led to Morpheus (the God of Dreams played by Laurence Fishburne) who is leader of a rebel band and convinced that Neo is "the One," the long expected Messiah who will free humanity from its plight. Morpheus extracts Neo from his enslaved existence. He reveals the deluded nature of the Matrix and trains Neo in how to enter and manipulate the Matrix for his own purposes. "The Matrix is everywhere," Morpheus informs Neo. "It's all around us, here even in this room. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." But Morpheus can take Neo only so far; Neos identity as a Messiah is a growing one and he must complete his own rite of passage and discover the path for himself. He is not even convinced he is "the One."
[7] Two other key figures are worth noting. One is a woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Neos closest companion within the rebel group. She also is convinced, because of an oracle once received, that Neo is the One. The second is Cypher (Joe Pantoliano), an angry member of the rebel group who eventually betrays Morpheus and Neo to the cyber enemy. In the fast moving conclusion, Neo rescues Morpheus, battles virtual agents of the cyber enemy, is killed, resurrected, and finally appears to conquer the Matrix. The final outcome is left ambiguous as Neo warns the entity controlling the Matrix: "I know you're real proud of this world you've built, the way it works, all the nice little rules and such, but I've got some bad news. I've decided to make a few changes." In the final scene, Neo ascends to the sky like Superman. We must await the sequel to find out what those changes will look like.
Christian and Buddhist Parallels in The Matrix
[8] The Christian messianic parallels are rather obvious. Neo, like Jesus, is the long-expected Messiah who is ultimately killed only to resurrect as a fully "divine" creature. The final scene even evokes the bodily ascent of Jesus to heaven. Also, Morpheus seems every bit the equivalent of John the Baptist, even to the point of baptizing Neo in a graphic scene in the liquid bowels of the human battery chambers. Trinity might be compared to Mary Magdalene and Cypher clearly parallels Judas. But where is God in all this? And what, we might ask, is the fundamental human problem suggested by this epic narrative?
[9] Phenomenologically, most religious foundation myths suggest a basic existential problem of human existence. Confucian accounts of the idealized Chou dynasty, for example, inform its understanding of the fundamental problemsocial disharmony due to the human tendency to neglect ritual and social propriety. For Hindus, it is bondage in the perpetual cycle of samsara, life after life, as illustrated in the Bhagavad-Gita and other mythological narratives. And for Christianity and Judaism, the fundamental problem is alienation from God due to our sinful nature and egoistic tendency toward trying to be like God, symbolized best in the Priestly Genesis creation narrative. The soteriological (relating to salvation) claim of Christianity is that God has offered his own son, the messiah, as a means to overcome that alienation. While The Matrix echoes the messianic motifs of the Christian narrative, the "human problem" is clearly not alienation from God since God is nowhere present in the storyor at least not a personal creator God. Conrad Ostwalt sees this omission of the divine and the rejection of the supernatural as agent for the apocalypse as symptomatic of "the contemporary apocalyptic imagination."4 God will not bring about the apocalypsesomething else will. But The Matrix need not be understood only as a "contemporary" adaptation of the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic view; there are other ancient mythological perspectives that also omit the "divine" entirely. It is here, I think, that Buddhism offers an illuminating mythological parallel.
[10] The most fundamental problem according to Buddhism is our ignorance of existential reality. If we could perceive the true nature of reality and the path to enlightenment, condensed in Sakyamuni teaching of the three marks of existence (impermanence, no-self, and suffering) and the Four Noble Truths, then we could overcome our ignorant state and achieve the insight of a Buddha (the awakened one). This problem of the mind is reflected in the first two verses of the Dhammapada, an early collection of sayings attributed to the historical Buddha:
[11] All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. If a man speaks or acts with pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.5
[12] This is further and perhaps best articulated in the fourth century C.E. Mahayana philosophical school known as Yogacara, which resonates strikingly with The Matrix.6 Yogacara, also known as the Consciousness Only school (Vijnavada), asserts that the objective world we perceive to be real is ultimately a product of our minds.7 As with the Western Idealist tradition, this is not necessarily an ontological assertion (the objective world does not exist), though many observers have drawn this conclusion.8 Rather, this is more accurately an epistemological insight.9 That is, Western and Buddhist "idealism" emphasizes that every "object" is significantly altered by our perception and understanding; we know it second-hand as idea and we cannot know it before it is so transformed. "What is real?" Morpheus asks as he introduces Neo to the Matrix. "How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, that you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain." This quote might just as well appear in the philosophical dialogues of Vasubandhu, a fourth century founder of Yogacara.
[13] While there may be striking similarities between Yogacara and Western Idealist statements concerning the relationship between objective reality and out perception of it, a fundamental difference lies in the soteriological aim of such an insight. Western Idealists strive to discern an a priori, absolute moral sense (Kant) or an "Absolute Mind" (Hegel) through rational analysis. In contrast, Yogacarins emphasize the essential path and process toward to discerning the world free of delusion. This necessarily entails various meditative and visualization practiceshence, the name of the school (practitioners of yoga). Meditation techniques were developed to, in a sense, deconstruct ones conditioned way of seeing the world and help one awaken to the way the world truly is. The manner in which one is able to create and control images in the mind through various visualization practices only serves to reinforce the notion that everyday conscious perceptions, like dreams, are no less "created." The practitioner comes to realize the illusory nature of the self and the external constituents of reality (Dharmas). Ultimately, one transcends subject-object dualism and abides in pure consciousness, an ineffable state of transcendent bliss. This is the soteriological goal of a Yogacara practitioner. According to tradition, as one progresses along this path, one procures powers to manipulate the perceived "objective" world. A Buddha actually attains the power to create his/her own cosmic realm.10 Perhaps this is the destiny of Neo in future episodes. That is to say, since Neo now possesses the power to control and manipulate the matrix, perhaps he will create a new world for beings to experience.
[14] The parallels between The Matrix and this Yogacara Buddhist analysis of the human problem should be apparent by now. In both cases, the issue is one of the mind. In The Matrix, Morpheus informs Neo the he is a slave: "you (like everyone else) were born into bondage...... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind." Moreover, humanitys state of ignorance is largely of its own making in both accounts. In Buddhism, we are karmically conditioned, both individually and collectively, by our past choices and behavior. The life one is born into is determined by ones karma, and ones present "worldview" is conditioned by ones context and volitional choices. According to The Matrix, humanity is controlled by an artificial intelligence it created. Thus, humans bear significant responsibility for their enslaved state.
[15] In The Matrix, the perceived reality is literally "programmed" into our minds. Neo, despite his clear Messianic qualities, seems more like a Buddha or bodhisattva who comes to reveal to humanity its state of ignorance and, presumably, the way out. Perhaps the sequels (two to be shot simultaneously in the fall of 2000) will reveal more about this soteriological path, but the integration of martial arts with its yogic emphasis on discipline and mind control are noteworthy. The very process of Neos training is a techno-cyber version of meditation. New software is input yielding a complete transformation of mind just as meditative practices are intended to transform ones perception and experience of reality.
[16] As with any myth, this narrative is metaphorical and begs some kind of interpretation. How are WE "programmed," it seems to ask? What aspect of OUR reality is artificially constructed and enslaving us within a conceptual prison? Is technology liberating or imprisoning us? Is materialistic capitalism leading to true happiness or unrequited addiction? Do our cherished religious views bring us together or divide us? From a pedagogical perspective, these are fruitful questions for stimulating students to conduct their own interpretation of this modern myth and its relevance to our social reality. In addition to the mesmerizing action scenes, it may well be that this implicit skepticism toward "institutional" control explains the popularity of this film for young adults.
[17] Beyond these parallels to Buddhist and Christian worldviews, it is also important to note how this "myth" diverges from core values of these traditions. For example, in many respects The Matrix is a glorification of violence and patriarchal dominance. The one token female is, on the surface, notably androgynous or even masculine. And the graphic violence merited an "R" rating for the film. One might argue that the killings are not actual but analogous to killing the demons of ones mind or destroying the symbolic manifestations of hatred, greed and delusion (i.e., Sakyamunis encounter with Mara beneath the Bodhi tree on the eve of his enlightenment). But the mesmerizing process of destruction, amplified by the technology of VFX or "bullet time" photography, transcends metaphorical license and clearly cultivates a more literal form of violence. It is here, as with all mythology, that we must pay due attention to the context of this myth and especially its commercial aims. The glorification of violence has clear commercial appeal to one of the primary target audiences of Hollywood producersyoung teenage boys. So while on an abstract level, The Matrix indeed evokes many "religious" parallels to Christianity, Buddhism, and other mythological traditions, it also integrates arguably contradictory values of violence and male dominance for commercial (or other) ends. Might we say it reifies some of the "social matrices" it allegedly purports to undermine?
[18] This evident "disconnect" between the "religious" dimension of the sacred, on the one hand, and the "Hollywood" and cultural elements of the film, on the other, speaks directly to the contextual nature the mythologizing process. Myths are not the product of an individual author but a collective representation developed over time. Myths are always produced in "institutional" contexts. Thus, they are the by-product of a dialectical process that often yields internally conflictive elements.
Peter Berger and the Dialectic of Myth-Making
[19] Sociologist Peter Berger asserts that the inherited worldview of any culture or society is a created one.11 Humans do not come into the world with a given relationship to it; we create our purpose and impose our own significance upon the world. This insight into the "constructed" nature of culture is, indeed, a fundamental insight of post-modernism. Berger proposed a three-step process by which we create (and re-create) our own socio-cultural reality. First, there is "externalization" or the initial outpouring of our conceptualizations onto the world. Berger cites language as an example of the first order here. I often use historical social structures based on race or inherited privilege to illustrate this point to my students. In the realm of religion, one might cite the different conceptualizations of the "transcendent" in various contexts such as Yahweh, the Tao, Brahman, or kami.12 The second step involves the "objectivation" of this externalized reality. At this point, the externalized concept becomes objective reality. We experience it as though it has always been there and forget that we actually created it ourselvese.g., "of course monarchy is the natural form of governance;" "isnt it obvious this racial class is inferior;" and so on. Finally, there is the "internalization" of this objectified reality. Berger writes that culture (including religion) "is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continually acts back upon its producer."13 As I tell my students, this is the process by which each of us individually and as a society is "socialized" by a certain worldview. Education, ritual, and "family upbringing" all facilitate this internalization.
[20] Significantly, Berger emphasizes that this process is not deterministic. We, as individuals and as a society, are in constant dialogue with our inherited "objectified" reality. And through an ongoing dialectical process, we may "externalize" new conceptualizations that, in turn, are objectified and internalized. The process is ongoingand myth-making, I contend, is a significant dimension of this dialectical process. Myths often appropriate symbols or metaphors from different, sometimes conflicting, "objectified realities" and transform their meaning. The Biblical account of Noah and the flood borrowed significantly from the Babylonian tale of Utnapishtim within the Epic of Gilgamesh. At the same time, the Biblical authors radically transformed the story by integrating the Hebrew god into the narrative. Similarly, the chronicles and interpretations of Jesus were influenced by the Messianic expectations of the time. But the Messiah that came was not the Messiah expected; thus, the gospel writers and Paul appropriated prophecy from Isaiah and the familiar metaphor of the sacrificial lamb to "externalize" another existential understanding of the Messiah. In this way, epic foundation myths often reflect Bergers dialectical process. They help transform the "objectified" reality and are vital instruments for "internalizing" a new (if only slightly) worldview.
[21] The Matrix can be seen as a modern, self-conscious example of this myth-making process as well. In an interview with Time magazine, Larry Wachowski stated their mythological intent directly:
[22] Were interested in mythology, theology and, to a certain extent, higher-level mathematics. All are ways human beings try to answer bigger questions, as well as The Big Question. If youre going to do epic stories, you should concern yourself with those issues. People might not understand all the allusions in the movie, but they understand the important ideas. We wanted to make people think, engage their minds a bit.14
[23] Mixing metaphors from Christianity, Buddhism, Greek mythology, and even cyber technology, The Matrix as myth may be seen as an analysis of the contemporary existential condition. It appropriates the decidedly Christian messianic mythological framework but imports a form of Buddhist idealism to radically transform the (Christian) existential understanding of the human condition. In this respect, it dialectically produces a new worldview through myth.
[24] It is impossible to know what narratives will become the foundation myths of our culture. But epic films like The Matrix are the modern day equivalent of The Iliad-Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh, or various Biblical myths. Indeed, one might well argue that popular epic films like The Matrix and Star Wars carry more influence among young adults than the traditional religious myths of our culture (The Biblical illiteracy of most of my "Christian" undergraduates would certainly attest to this.) It remains to be seen how influential The Matrix will become; the sequels may determine its longevity. At this point, I find it a useful and resonating example of our inherent proclivity toward myth-making and world-building in the cinematic medium. Beyond the abstract and "important ideas" that the Wachowski brothers wanted to tackle, The Matrix also illustrates the culturally imbedded nature of myth with respect to issues of gender, violence, and entertainment. FILM CREDITS
The Matrix The Wizard of Oz Star Wars The Fisher King Blade Runner 2001: A Space Odyssey
Notes
1 I am grateful to colleagues who have offered helpful suggestions and insights on earlier drafts of this paper. In particular, I would like to thank Charles Kimball, Steven Boyd, and most especially Ulrike Wiethaus.
2 See, for example, Raymond Firths "The Plasticity of Myth," Ethnoligica 2 (1960), 181-88.
3 Lauri Honko. "The Problem of Defining Myth" in Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 49-51.
4 There are, of course, other perspectives within the Christian tradition. Justo Gonzalez identifies and traces three different theological strands from Christianitys early period. This "substitutionary" version, which emphasizes inherited sin and necessary expiation/forgiveness, traces to Tertullian, the Synoptic Gospels and Paul. It is clearly most evident within the Protestant tradition. A second strand, tracing from Origin and perhaps the Gospel of John, defines the fundamental human problem more in terms of ignorance (in the sense that we have lost the necessary vision to see God), rather than sin. According to Gonzalez, this perspective is more characteristic of the Eastern church and later liberal theology. See Christian Thought Revisited (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), especially pp. 50-64.
5 See "Armageddon at the Millennial Dawn." The Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2000.
6 Max Muller, editor and translator. Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 10. The Dhammapada, Part I (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965), 3-4.
7 I do not mean to suggest that the Wachowski brothers intentionally borrowed from the Yogacara philosophical perspective. They have apparently been reluctant to reveal their sources, though they have acknowledged some Buddhist influence. See Time magazine, Vol. 153, No. 15 (April 19, 1999), 75.
8 For a coherent overview of Yogacara thought, see the appropriate chapter in Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. London: Routledge (1989), 77-95.
9 For representative examples of this debate with respect to Yogacara Buddhism, see John Keenans The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989), 169 and 209, and Paul Griffiths On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem (La Salle, Ill. : Open Court, 1986), 83.
10 Conrad Ostwalt has interpreted this idealistic dimension as a "contemporary revisiting of Platos famous allegory of the cave and of neo-Platonic dualism of real and ideal" See "Armageddon at the Millennial Dawn." The Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2000.
11The most famous example here is Amitabha (Japan: Amida), the central Buddha of the Pure Land tradition of Buddhism in East Asia. Amitabha, while a bodhisattva, vowed to create his own Pure Land upon achieving Buddhahood. All who invoke the name of Amitabha with a sincere heart can be reborn in that majestic realm where enlightenment is more easily attained.
12 Clearly, one could interpret the message of Jesus in similar terms though ignorance is not traditionally defined as the fundamental problem. See endnote four.
13 See, for example, The Sacred Canopy (New York, Anchor Books, 1967) and The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (with Thomas Luckmann. New York: Doubleday, 1966).
14 It is perhaps worth noting that Berger claims not to presume that humans "created" God. In fact, he acknowledges that the various conceptualizations of the "sacred" may very well be authentic responses to something truly real in the same way, he notes, that mathematics, though created, clearly corresponds to a given reality. Working this out, however, is an issue for theologians. Interestingly, the Wachowski brothers have acknowledged their interest in higher-level mathematics.
15 The Sacred Canopy, 3.
16 Time. Vol. 153, No. 15 (April 19, 1999), 75.
JR & F
Vol 4, No. 2
Bruce Willis as the Messiah:
Human Effort, Salvation and Apocalypticism in Twelve Monkeys
by Frances Flannery Dailey
Vol. 4, No. 1 April 2000
Bruce Willis as the Messiah:
Human Effort, Salvation and Apocalypticism in Twelve Monkeys
by Frances Flannery Dailey
Abstract
[1] Twelve Monkeys (1995) is representative of numerous recent Hollywood films that focus on the theme of the end of the world by drawing on standard apocalyptic motifs from Judaism and Christianity. However, although the formal elements of the film share much with ancient apocalypses, the film desacralizes apocalypticism by replacing divine mediation and salvation with human effort, thus relocating the apocalypse entirely within the sphere of human activity and concern. In the transformation of ancient apocalyptic images, this film serves as a pointed commentary on the usurpation of religion by science, the new modern God.
Article
[2] I would first like to ground my discussion of "apocalypse" in terms of the cogent definition offered by the SBL Genres group in Semeia 14, in which an apocalypse is defined as:
a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.1
[3] The ancient examples of this genre include both historical apocalypses such as Daniel 7-12, parts of I Enoch (the "Animal Apocalypse" of 1 Enoch 85-91 and the "Apocalypse of Weeks" in 1 Enoch 92-104), 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, in which the temporal element figures prominently, and the otherworldly journey, including 1 Enoch 1-36 and 2 Enoch, in which there is an emphasis on two-tiers of reality between which a character travels.
[4] Terry Gilliam's complex film Twelve Monkeys typifies both the historical apocalypse as well as the otherworldly journey.2 The film begins in our future in the year 2035, and presupposes that the surface of the earth has become uninhabitable by humans due to a viral plague that wiped out 5 billion people beginning in 1996, leaving less than 1% of the world's population to survive in a harsh life underground. The memory of this event is laden with eschatological imagery, as the film flashes to newspaper headlines bearing such captions as "Millions Fear End Soon." In the year 2035, a team of underworld scientists "volunteer" prison inmate James Cole (played by Bruce Willis) for a special mission: to return in time and find the source of the pure virus, so that a cure might be found that would return humankind to the surface of the earth.
[5] In his time travels back to the earth of 1996 and 1990, Willis or Cole becomes a prophetic revealer for the people of the 1990's. Due in large part to Cole's developing relationship with Dr. Kathryn Railley (played by Madeleine Stowe), he reveals the eschatological events to come, like the ancient apocalyptic seers Enoch, Daniel, Ezra or John. The movie opens with his quote:
... 5 billion people will die from a deadly virus in 1997... The survivors will abandon the surface of the planet... Once again the animals will rule the world... Excerpts from interview with clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, April 12, 1990 - Baltimore Co. Hospital 3
[6] Although Cole is diagnosed as mentally ill, the veracity of these eschatological cosmic secrets is assured, as the viewer and Cole realize that from a certain perspective (that of 2035), they have in fact already occurred.
[7] Cole is not merely a revealer figure, but - in light of the SBL definition of "apocalypse" - he is also an otherworldly figure, shuttling back and forth between the underworld of his original present and the earth of the past and post-apocalyptic future. As in Enoch's journeys throughout heaven and earth, "cosmology undergirds eschatology," in that James Cole's journeys establish a complex spatial dualism testifying to the events of cosmic history ( 1 Enoch 6-36).4 In Twelve Monkeys, there are in fact several pairs of two-tiered reality, each of which is intricately intertwined with the temporal element.
[8] First, the underworld of 2035 has become earth, or the dwelling place of humankind, while the above ground earth is reminiscent of hell, a place of destruction for humans. Second, the dismal underworld of 2035 is hell in comparison with the heavenly pre-plague earth of the 1990's, with its "pure air" and natural beauty.6 This motif is emphasized by a note Cole leaves to Dr. Railley in 1990: "You live a beautiful world, but you don't know it. You have freedom, sunshine, air you can breathe. I would do anything to stay here, but I must leave." This motif of earthly paradise is also captured in the music Cole hears in the 1990's, which is dominated by naturalistic imagery (e.g., "Blueberry Hill" and "What a Wonderful World").7 Third, the underworld is the source of revelation and judgment for the people of the past, thus constituting an ironic heaven in contrast to the earth of the 1990's. Finally, the hope of the netherworld of 2035 is that through Cole's efforts, humans might eventually return "upwards" to a cleansed and purified earth, that is, a journey from hell to an earthly Paradise or heaven.
[9] This last dualism illustrates that Cole is not merely an otherworldly revealer of apocalyptic truths from the underworld of 2035 to earth of the past. He is also an otherworldly revealer in reverse, whose mission is to bring back information from earth of the pre-plague 1990's that will effect eschatological salvation for humankind of the late 2030's. This is made abundantly clear after Cole lands in jail during his first journey to the earth of 1990 and mutters "Need to go... need to go... I'm supposed to be gathering information...".8
[10] Thus, in its overarching narrative structure, Twelve Monkeys is clearly an apocalypse, in which revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being (James Cole) to human recipients (Dr. Railley and the scientists of 2035), disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal (envisaging both eschatological destruction and salvation) and spatial (involving another world). In addition to this overall structure, standard motifs from ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses abound in Twelve Monkeys. The Edenic return to paradise envisioned in Isaiah 11:6-9, 65:26, the Sibylline Oracles 3:620-624, 788-795 and 2 Baruch 73:6-7, in which "the wolf lays down with the lamb," is ironically symbolized by the release of numerous zoo animals just prior to the plague of 1997, who roam the earth of 2035 free of humankind.9 Obviously, the theme of massive eschatological destruction by plague, "predicted" in hindsight by Cole in 1990, is a stock theme of the Book of Revelation (Rev 15:1-16:21). Moreover, James Cole is clearly a messiah figure, and in accordance with his role as eschatological revealer / savior, he appropriately has the initials "J. C." This connection with Jesus is made even more obvious by Willis' appearance in a bloodstained shirt, which, although partially obscured by his jacket, reads "Chris-." Finally, the culminating events of 1997 take place during the Christmas holidays, and images of angels appear throughout the background of this modern apocalypse.
[11] Thus, Twelve Monkeys resembles texts such as 1 Enoch, Daniel, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch both in overarching structure as well as in numerous thematic motifs. However, the disagreements between Twelve Monkeys and ancient apocalypses are equally important, as they testify to the desacralization of apocalypticism, thereby making important statements about modern society and the role of religion.
[12] The "sins" in this apocalypse are rampant consumerism, animal exploitation and environmental devastation. These sins are brought to light mainly through the character of Jeffrey Goines (played by Brad Pitt), the mentally ill son of a famous virologist. While detained in a mental asylum with Coles, Goines points to a television and explains the sin of consumerism:
It's all right there-all right there. Look. Listen. Knee/. Pray. Commercials. We're not productive anymore, no one needs to make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers. Yeah, okay, okay-buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't - fact, Jim, fact - what are you then I ask you? You're mentally ill.
[13] The sin of animal abuse is likewise illuminated through Goines' character, an animal activist and the organizer of "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys," which orchestrates the release of zoo animals in 1996 that results in the populations of wild animals that inhabit the earth in 2035.10 During another asylum conversation with Goines, saviour of animals, Cole looks at television clips of cruel experiments being conducted on monkeys and rabbits and mutters, "Look at them. They're just asking for it. Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out."
[14] The sin of environmental devastation in a sense triggers the apocalyptic plague itself. An environmental activist confronts Dr. Railley after a lecture and prophetically states:
Surely there's very real and very convincing data that the planet cannot survive the excesses of the human race. Proliferation of atomic devices, uncontrolled breeding habits, pollution of land, sea and air; the rape of the environment...
In this context, isn't it obvious that Chicken Little represents the sane vision, and that homo sapiens motto "Let's go shopping" is the cry of the true lunatic?
[15] However, he is the agent of his own oracle, since he, the assistant of Goines' virologist father, steals and purposefully releases the virus that kills 5 billion people. When Kathryn Railley finally begins to suspect that he is the source of the plague, she refers to him as "an apocalypse nut."
[16] Thus, the apocalypse itself is brought about not by divine intervention, but by human action, as retribution for human sins. Similarly, human scientists orchestrate salvation through the all too human agent of potential deliverance, James Cole. Cole is a reluctant messiah, a prisoner, and the scene in which he is "volunteered" for this mission against his will shows him being cruelly treated before being hoisted up into the air against a metallic background reminiscent of a cross. With dry irony, a female scientist tells him "We appreciate you volunteering. You're a very good preserver, Cole." However, preserving - or saving - turns out to be a painful and impossible task. Not only does Cole suffer mental derangement by trying to bridge two worlds, he ultimately fails to avert the plague of 1996-7, and in the end cannot even save himself. Whether he succeeds in providing the scientists of 2035 with enough "revelation" to save humankind is ambiguous, and is left up to the next wave of human effort. The divine is nowhere in view.
[17] In fact, through the desacralization of the motifs of the apocalypse, the film makes the point that in the modern world, science has replaced God as the object of worship. This is made clear when Jeffrey Goines screams about his famous father the virologist, saying, "When my father gets upset, the ground shakes! My father is God! I worship my father!!''11 The obvious allusion to the earthquakes that typically accompany theophanies and the disasters of the last days underscores the theme that science has replaced God.12 In the underworld of 2035, it is scientists who orchestrate the future salvation of humankind by searching for a cure and by selecting and sending various messiah figures, such as James Cole. Moreover, these scientists sit in judgment over the messiahs as well as over the people of the earth of the past - whom they have resigned themselves not to try to save.13
[18] In the dualistic reality of Twelve Monkeys, the team of scientists in 2035 parallels not only virologists in the 1990's, but also teams of psychiatrists that include Dr. Railley. Cole, the viewer) and the scientists of 2035 all understand the cosmic and eschatological secrets, and thus know that "ultimate reality" consists of eschatological doom for the people of the 1990's, as well as two different worlds (both spatial and temporal). However, from the limited point of view of the people of the pre-plague 1990's, this revelation of James Cole's is equivalent to madness, a pronouncement that is made by psychiatrists who place this messiah in a mental ward. Since, for the psychiatrists, the only reliable source of knowledge is scientific proof, anything that is not verifiable is considered to be fantasy.15 Thus, Dr. Railley initially rejects Cole's revelation and diagnoses him as insane, stating "He's sick, okay? He thinks he comes from the future. He's been living in a meticulously constructed fantasy world, and that world is starting to disintegrate. He needs help." However, she eventually realizes that Cole's madness is the truth, and that it is she and the people on earth in 1997 that are in need of help.
[19] In the central pivot point of the film, James Cole - having just returned to 2035 - caves in to the stress of trying to bridge two worlds. He begins to suffer mental collapse and refuses to "know" what he does about ultimate reality. As Cole is restrained in a hospital in 2035, the camera pans from a paradisical painting that hangs above his sterile bed to the scientists singing "Blueberry Hill," ironic in its naturalistic imagery and joyful tone. The scientists clearly function as the ultimate authority and continue to decide the messiah's fate, offering him a certificate of "full pardon," that is, total forgiveness. Meanwhile, in 1990 Dr. Railley begins to give up the god of psychiatry for the irrational knowledge she intuitively knows is the "truth." She confesses that psychiatry is "the latest religion," stating "I'm in trouble here. I'm beginning to lose my faith." The dichotomy of sanity / insanity corresponding to the rejection or acceptance of Cole's revelation in fact constitutes the central motif of Twelve Monkeys.
[20] In the film, true sanity is equivalent to knowing the apocalyptic future. Dr. Railley delivers a lecture in 1996 entitled "Madness and Apocalyptic Visions" in which she discusses the "Cassandra Complex," which she defines as the condition "in which a person is condemned to know the future but to be disbelieved, hence, the agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it." In her lecture, she identifies several apocalyptic seers of the past whom she considers to be mentally ill, each of whom predicted a plague would wipe out humankind, quoting from the Book of Revelation: "There are omens and divinations. One of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials, full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever" (Rev 15:7). Later events clarify that at least one of these apocalyptic prophets was a time traveler from the future, who, like James Cole, was an otherworldly revealer for people of the past.16 His prophecy was not revelation of the future, but a statement of what, from his perspective, had already occurred. The implication that perhaps all apocalyptic seers are time-travelers (and hence that their oracles are reliable) is suggested in the scene in which a millenialist street preacher who quotes the same passage from Revelation seems to recognize Cole and yells "You're one of us!" Slowly, Dr. Railley realizes the truth of the quote from Revelation, in that the "seven vials of God's wrath" are vials of the virus - visible at a point near the end of the movie on an airport's x-ray machine - which bring about the end-time for the majority of the planet.
[21] In conclusion, Twelve Monkeys is remarkable for the breadth of apocalyptic imagery it shares with ancient apocalypses. The two-tiered structure of reality, the figure of the otherworldly revealer, pointed allusions to James Cole as a messiah figure, and themes such as judgment, salvation, forgiveness and apocalyptic revelation clearly point to the relevance of ancient apocalypticism for expressing modern concerns. However, at the same time, the entire sphere of apocalypticism is resolutely desacralized in this modern text, such that the eschaton itself as well as any hope of salvation depends entirely on human effort.17 God has been replaced by scientists, and although the science of the 1990's is shown to be a false idol, the science of 2035 is still held up to be the ultimate source of power and knowledge. If the scientists are successful, the locus of future bliss is not heaven, but an earth purified through human effort and the power of science. FILM CREDITS
Armageddon Fifth Element Twelve Monkeys
End Notes
1 Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre (J. J. Collins, ed.; Semeia 14; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979).
2 The only ancient Jewish apocalypse to combine the otherworldly journey and a review of history is the Apocalypse of Abraham. See J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (2nd ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998) 6.
3 Cole introduces this revelation to a team of psychiatrists in 1990 by saying, "I know some things you don't know, and it's going to be very difficult for you to understand."
4 The phrase "cosmology undergirds eschatology" is used by Nickelsburg to describe the spatial dualism of 1 Enoch, in G. W. E. Nickelsburg, "The Apocalyptic Construction of Reality in 1 Enoch," in Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium (J. J. Collins and J. H. Charlesworth, eds.; JSPSup 9; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991) 51-64.
5 This is not unlike the eschatological vision of the Testament of Moses 9-10, in which the elect are elevated to heaven, while the earth becomes a hell for their enemies.
6 In fact, the theme of earthly Paradise repeatedly appears in commercials advertising vacation getaways in Florida, the attempted destination of Kathryn Railley and James Cole that evaporates along with Cole's chances for a getaway from the scientists of 2035.
7 The latter song is especially important for establishing this theme, and plays both during Cole's visit to 1996 and during the closing credits. The lyrics read, "I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and you. And I think to myself - 'What a wonderful world.' I see skies of blue, and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself - 'What a wonderful world."'
8 As in Daniel 7-12, events on "earth" mirror events in "heaven," and Cole leaves a prison in the underworld of 2035 only to find himself in prison and a mental institution in 1990.
9 The roaming of wild animals may be an ironic twist on the apocalyptic motif of a return to Eden, cf. Is 51:3; Hosea 2:18; 1 Enoch 10:7, 19, 20; 11:1; 25:2-7; 29:1-32:6; 4 Ezra 11:46; 2 Baruch 29:1-8; 2 Enoch 58:2-6. On the other hand, the image may refer to the post-judgment return to wildness (itself a twist on the theme of a return to Eden) evident in texts such as Hosea 4:3, Amos 5:19 and Zephaniah 2:14-15.
10 For the sin of animal abuse see 2 Enoch 58:2-6; Testament of Zebulon 5:1-5.
11 Cole later refers back to this statement, ironically stating that Goines "didn't say his father was a scientist, he said he was God."
12 For example, Exod 19:18; Isa 29:6; Matt 24:7; Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11; Rev 6:12; 8:5; 11:13, 19; 16:18; 1 Enoch 1: 5-7.
13 In one of the final scenes of the movie, a female scientist from 2035 is seen in 1997 meeting the environmental apocalypticist who is on his way to spread the virus across the globe. As she introduces herself (in order to gain access to the pure virus and thus to develop a cure in 2035), she ironically states, "I'm in insurance," that is, a business that pays off on disaster.
14 The lengthy statement made to Cole by a mental patient is worthy of quoting for its ironic implication that belief in another world is tantamount to insanity: "I don't really come from outer space... It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend?" Likewise, Goines, clearly mentally ill, refers to a prior patient as crazy for requesting T.V. programs that had already aired (that is, who believed the charge nurse could turn back time). Thus, the two mental patients with whom Cole has conversations confirm that belief in another world and time travel constitute insanity, although from the larger context of the movie, this is sanity.
15 Goines points out that there was once a doctor in the 18th century who suggested that tiny invisible things called germs exist - (the source of the plague of 1997) - but that people declared him to be crazy. Goines then asks Cole, "You believe in germs, right?" Cole simply replies, "I'm not crazy."
16 The seer is in fact Jose (Jon Seda), Cole's former cell-mate from 2035, mistakenly sent into the more distant past of W. W. I.
17 This point is made in many other films with apocalyptic motifs, including the film Armageddon, in which Willis plays another messiah figure. Armageddon is an otherworldly journey in which the spatial element figures prominently. Here the otherworldly mediator is NASA, and Willis plays both the human recipient of revelation imparted by NASA as well as the messiah figure who saves the world through his self-sacrifice. Unlike that of Twelve Monkeys, the destruction of the world is an "act of God" in the form of an approaching meteorite, and science is hailed as a positive force for good. However, as in Twelve Monkeys, the salvation of the world is wrought entirely by human effort - a team of seven men led by Willis' character attempts to blow up the meteorite. Although there are repeated and sustained references to God, Jesus or the Bible (over twenty), these simply serve to highlight a bifurcated view of divine providence, since humans in the film remain unsure of whether God cares or acts on their behalf. They pray, but it is clear that they will not await divine deliverance: humans must effect salvation from the meteorite by themselves. Thus, in its portrayal of a divine apocalypse averted by human effort, with the added insurance of repeated pleas to God, the film reflects the schizophrenia of much of popular religiosity today. Like the person who believes that Jesus is returning in the year 2000, but who continues to go to his/her job every day, the characters in Armageddon "hedge their bets." In both Armageddon and Twelve Monkeys the ultimate source of salvation is science, human effort, and the self-sacrificial death of the characters played by Willis. The Fifth Element is yet another film in which Willis plays a pivotal role in saving the world, this time by romancing the messiah figure, a female who loses her nerve in saving the world until emboldened by Willis' love.
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The Journal of Religion & Film
The Apocalyptic
Cosmology of Star Wars
by John Lyden
Vol. 4, No. 1 April 2000
The Apocalyptic Cosmology of Star Wars
by John Lyden
Abstract
[1] The paper analyzes the saga of Star Wars as a text that has borrowed extensively from biblical apocalyptic. There is a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil; a great cataclysm is foretold, but the faithful will survive with the help of God (The Force); a messiah figure (Luke) appears; and a new world order will come about in which justice triumphs and wickedness is punished. This myth is made relevant to modem viewers by being framed as a battle of technology vs. the natural human: the machine Vader vs. the human Anakin, the Death Star vs. the Force, Imperial walkers vs. primitive Ewoks. The films' apparent technophilia is cover for a technophobic message: we must remember our humanity lest we be absorbed or destroyed by our machine creations.
Article
[2] In a year which has featured the first new Star Wars movie in 16 years, media critics have finally begun to notice the religious themes in this most popular of all film series. And while the religious elements may be more obvious in The Phantom Menace, they have in fact been there from the beginning of the series (in episode four). Indeed, the incredible success of the Star Wars films is not due only (and I would argue, not primarily) to marketing or special effects, but to their ability to tap into basic religious or mythological concepts with which viewers can connect.
[3] It is well-known, for example, that George Lucas self-consciously constructed the screenplay for the first film under the influence of popular mythologist Joseph Campbell. In an address to the National Arts Club in 1985, Lucas noted that he was entirely without direction until he stumbled upon Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.1 And the stages of Campbell's monomyth, outlined in that book, do indeed suggest the structure of Lucas' screenplay: the hero (Luke) is called to the adventure; he initially refuses the call; supernatural aid is supplied (Ben Kenobi), which enables the adventure to proceed; he passes the threshold (Mos Eisley) and enters the belly of the whale (The Deathstar). He meets the goddess (Leia) whom he must rescue, and loses the father-figure (Ben) who becomes a spiritual presence to him. After escaping the Death Star, he must return to it, this time to destroy the monster.2
[4] However, it is my contention that reading Star Wars through the lens of Campbell's philosophy does not do justice to all that is in the films, religiously speaking. Although the basic storyline does indeed replicate Campbell's categories, Lucas did not intend to be a mouthpiece for Campbell's thought, which diverges from Lucas's own religious sensibilities in a number of important ways. Lucas used a variety of religious sources to construct the world of Star Wars, including biblical apocalyptic. It is not my intention to demonstrate that Star Wars is chiefly an apocalyptic text or only that, but to show that Lucas utilized apocalyptic ideas, among other religious notions, in the construction of the Star Wars universe. To do so, I must first spend some time showing the inadequacy of the Campbellian interpretation of Star Wars, due to the fact that many people have interpreted the films' religious elements solely through those categories.
[5] To understand Campbell's view of Star Wars, one must have some sense of his overall philosophy of religion. Campbell had very little formal education in religious studies. He studied Medieval European literature, Romance philology, and modem literature, especially the works of James Joyce and Thomas Mann. His main encounter with religion began through editing the posthumous writings of Indologist Heinrich Zimmer and through working with Swami Nikhilananda translating and editing the Upanishads. On the subject of mythology, he was an autodidact without formal training.3 When one looks at Campbell's assessment of religions in his published writings, this background is evident. Many of his examples come from modem or medieval literature with little explicit reference to religion. When he does speak of religions, he shows a decided preference for Hinduism's conception of the divine and salvation, and in particular, the traditions of monistic Vedanta. He degrades the western religions, Judaism in particular, for sharply distinguishing God from the world. "The Biblical image of the universe simply won't do any more,4 writes Campbell, and he also claims that in eastern religions the ultimate divine mystery is sought beyond all human categories of thought and feeling, beyond names and forms .... Anthropomorphic attributions of human sentiments and thoughts to a mystery beyond thought is--from the point of view of Indian thought--a style of religion for children."5
[6] One may note that this judgment even preferences non-dualistic Vedanta over the devotional forms of theistic bhakti practiced by most Hindus. In any case, the "proper" religious teaching of identity with the Godhead is not taught in the West, according to Campbell, because it is viewed as heresy or blasphemy; Campbell even claims Jesus was crucified for claiming identity with God.6 This is the sort of oversimplification of historical and theological matters in which Campbell revels. He generalizes about religions, concluding all that do not preach monism are superstitious and parochial. He reserves particular venom for the Jewish claim to be the chosen people who have received a unique revelation from God.7 That this denigration of Judaism is tied to Campbell's own anti-Semitism has been well documented by Robert Segal and Maurice Friedman.8
[7] Campbell's monism also represents a "psychologizing' of religion and myth, and here he is under the influence of Karl Jung in particular. He tries to reduce all religion to a journey of "self-discovery" brought about by identification with the story of the "hero" reproduced in every myth. One of the most striking things one finds in reading Campbell's works is his amazing ability to ignore the points of the individual tales he is telling; all are made to fit the mold of the one 'true' story of the "Hero with a thousand faces" mapped out in the book of that title.9 There as well he concludes that the end of the hero's journey is a union with the divine in which all personal identity and difference is annihilated.10 But finally, this identity is not interpreted as the union of the individual with a transcendent absolute, for there is no transcendent; rather, the identity of all is interpreted in immanentist categories, in that the individual realizes he himself is the absolute, the creator, the center of his own universe.11 Each person is to realize this, that each of us makes our own universe and so is responsible for all that happens in it. This is why Campbell cannot take the problem of undeserved suffering seriously; we deserve everything that happens to us, for we make our own universe.12 In this he sounds more like Jean-Paul Sartre or Friedrich Nietzsche than the great religions of history. This view also represents a reduction of reality to that which we experience and perceive, and so it cannot take seriously any external mystery of transcendence.13 The only "mystery" is what lurks in my own unconscious, which can be plumbed via depth psychology and interpretation of my myths and dreams. In this Campbell has also very much influenced the New Age movement in its use of mythology and religion.
[8] After George Lucas invited Campbell to Skywalker Ranch to view all three Star Wars films in a single day, Campbell gave his approval to the message of the films in interviews with Phil Cousineau and Bill Moyers. In his interpretation, we again see the hallmarks of his own philosophy of religion. Darth Vader is a "bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system." Like him, each of us must learn to develop as a human individual by "holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you.14 Immorality comes when we do not listen to our own inner voices and instead listen to others. "The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for.15 Again, this message resembles Nietzsche's philosophy more than that of George Lucas, I would argue, as this is Campbell's own moral philosophy.
[9] Campbell also gives an immanentist interpretation to the idea of the Force. The Force is "within" us, he points out, and for him this means not that the sacred is both beyond us and within us (like the Holy Spirit in Christian thought, or Brahman in Hinduism), but only that which lies within us. The Force is "what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life," and as such it is not a "first cause" or a "higher cause," but "a more inward cause." "Higher is just up there, and there is no 'up there.' We know that. That old man up there has been blown away. You've got to find the Force inside you."16
[10] That Campbell's interpretation of Star Wars need not be the only one is clear even by an examination of Lucas's own words about the meaning of the films. In a recent interview with Bill Moyers in "Time" magazine, he said that he did not intend Star Wars to be a replacement for the old religions, nor does he say that the eastern religions are "closer" to the truth than the western (as Campbell does).
[11] I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modem and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out there .... I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people--more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.17
[12] The mystery is clearly transcendent for Lucas, not merely a reflection of some internal psychological structure. "I think that there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about God, I'm not sure." Lucas would seem more at home with John Hick's philosophy, that there is a Reality which transcends all the religions and which each is trying to describe as best it can, rather than Campbell's reductionist view that all religions can be boiled down to a single psychological process of auto-suggested divinity. Lucas also believes that his films do not supply religious answers, but ask questions that are then given various answers by the different religions. This seems to echo Paul Tillich's method of correlation, which claimed that culture can ask the questions of existence but only revelation can answer them. Lucas actually likes the fact that a number of religions can find their own ideas reflected in the Star Wars films; they fill in the answer to the question with the content of their own faith.18
[13] In the process of asking basic questions about the meaning of life and how we should live, however, the Star Wars films do give some guidelines about the ways in which those questions might be asked or answered. Lucas has taken ideas from numerous religions of the world and combined them into a syncretistic mix which works. Just as he freely borrowed from various genres in constructing Star Wars--the western, swashbucklers, samurai films, film noir, world war two films--so he also shows his skill as a filmmaker in his ability to synthesize mythological and religious concepts from around the world. Again, this is not Campbell's monomyth, I would claim, but a polyglot of religious languages in which each contributes something to a pluralistic whole of diversified parts--albeit with a western interpretation. I will focus on Lucas' use of apocalyptic ideas, in particular.
[14] There is considerable consensus among scholars about the basic elements which define apocalyptic, especially the apocalyptic of biblical religion. An "apocalypse," of course, is a disclosing of secrets, especially the plan for the destiny of the world to which the divine power will bring it. A radical discontinuity between the present and future ages is envisioned: as C.K. Barrett puts it, "History would, as it were, take a leap to a new level, on which the judgments of God would be more plainly visible; or, better, God would, by entering history, either personally or through a representative, introduce into it a new factor which would revolutionize its [15] course."19
[15] God is in control of history; it has a destiny which will be fulfilled, though it requires radical change accompanied by considerable turmoil. In other words, before things get better, things will get much worse.20 This tribulation leads to a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil in which these powers are envisioned in starkly dualistic terms; there is no ambiguity about which is which. Humans are called upon to make their choice for good or evil, or as Persian apocalyptic puts it, "truth" or "the lie"21--and depending on their choice, they will either be rewarded or punished by God in the end. A final resurrection of the faithful follows in which they are re-united with God and each other in a restored communion of the faithful. All of this may be accomplished with the aid of a Messiah figure who acts as God's intermediary.22
[16] Apocalyptic functions religiously, scholars tell us, as a comfort to the faithful in times of persecution. The current persecution is viewed as the tribulation which must precede the final judgment and restoration of the faithful. The faithful are told of their future reward to encourage them to remain steadfast and not give in to the powers of evil or the temptation to forsake their faith.23 Apocalyptic also functions politically as a critique of the established order which is denounced as an incarnation of evil; the predicted future order, that which ought to be, calls for "cataclysmic change: the humbling of the mighty and the exaltation of the meek." Hope for this new order is a remedy to anxiety and frustration, conveying a sense of confidence and one's own righteousness.24
[18] How many of these features are found in the Star Wars films? A number of them are instantly recognizable. There is certainly a cosmic battle between good and evil, clearly envisioned as opposites, and the fate of the whole galaxy hangs on the outcome. The evil is personified first by Darth Vader, and later by the Emperor who is trying to eliminate self-determination of the planets and bring all in accord with his will. There is some parallel here to the situation of the early Christians and other politically oppressed groups which have found the authorities unsupportive of their self-determination--in the case of the Christians, there actually were Emperors who persecuted them for failure to honor and obey. Events are also spiraling towards a cataclysmic battle, which can be seen both at the end of the first film (episode 4) as well as to a greater extent at the end of the first trilogy in episode six. Though all appears to be lost at a certain point, the faithful win the day by trusting in the Force--a higher power which is in fact controlling all events. A savior-messiah figures into the plots as well; this figure is Luke in the original trilogy, but in episode one it is Anakin Skywalker, referred to as "the chosen one" whose birth was foretold--a virgin birth, no less. Qui-Gon Jinn maintains that Anakin is the prophesied one who will bring "balance" to the conflict, citing as evidence the fact that his blood contains a higher concentration of "midichlorions" (which allow a Jedi to access the Force) than Yoda's.
[19] The role of faith is quite clear in the movies as well, in particular, episode four (A New Hope). Here Luke has not yet developed the ability to see dead people, move objects, or know the future, and so what he sees of the Force's power is more limited. He observes Obi-Wan's Jedi "mind-trick" (used on dim-witted stormtroopers to evade confiscation of R2-D2); he learns to fight a combat training droid without seeing it; and he hears Obi-Wan's voice after his death. Outside of these few examples, he has little to go on other than his belief that there is a Force which will help him when he tries to blow up the Death Star without computer assistance. Obi-Wan also shows tree faith in his willingness to give his life for no discernible purpose; he tells Vader, "if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine," and it is only this belief that he will be of more help as a spiritual presence to the forces of good which justifies his apparently futile martyrdom. Han Solo, in contrast, opts not to believe in the Force, for as he says: "Kid, I've flown from one end of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff; but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field controlling my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense." He attributes to luck what Luke and Ben attribute to the Force, and he trusts in his own abilities rather than any transcendent power. (In fact, in this he sounds a lot more like Joseph Campbell than Luke does! Of course, Solo actually fights for the Force without realizing it; a sort of "anonymous Jedi," if you will, whose skepticism about ultimate matters does not prevent him from aiding friends in need.)
[20] Darth Vader is also depicted as a figure who paradoxically bears witness to the power of faith in the Force. When his "ancient religion" is ridiculed by one of the Imperial officers as inadequate next to the technological power of the Death Star, he uses the Force to choke him and asserts that he finds his "lack of faith disturbing." Throughout episode four, Vader appears to be an anachronism in the Empire, as no one else seems to believe in the mystical dimension he does; his faith is a peculiarity in the otherwise secularized and technologized empire. As Governor Tarkin puts it: "The Jedi are extinct; their fire has gone out in the universe. You, my friend, are all that is left of their religion."
[21] Several things, however, are different beginning in episode five (The Empire Strikes Back). We encounter the Emperor for the first time, and discover that he represents the Dark Side of the Force more powerfully than Vader; he is not simply a bureaucrat like Governor Tarkin was. In addition, Vader seems to have more power: In episode four, Leia makes a crack about Tarkin holding Vader's "leash," likening him to a henchman; now, Vader has his own star cruiser and crew just for the purpose of chasing Luke's friends, and he is free to execute imperial officers whenever they disappoint him. Also in episode five, Luke begins to discover the power of the Force and actually sees some of the things he has only believed up to this point. Obi-wan appears to him and delivers messages; Yoda shows him how to move objects around and see the future. At the same time, Luke lacks the total belief required to be a Jedi; when he says it is impossible to lift his ship out of the Dagobah swamp and Yoda does it for him, he can only say "I don't believe it!" to which master Yoda replies: "That is why you fail." Luke also confronts the power of the Dark Side in a new way, not only through Vader's attempt to capture him but through the revelation that Vader is his father. In this way, Luke confronts the possibility of evil in himself, in that even his Jedi father turned to the Dark side. Luke's vision in the cave on Dagobah, in which he kills Vader only to find he wears Luke's own face, reinforces this idea that the only evil one needs to fear is the hatred and anger that lurks within oneself.
[22] Episode six of the saga (Return of the Jedi) brings all its elements to a conclusion. We see the final apocalyptic battle and Luke faces Vader again. He now accepts Vader as his father, and attempts to redeem him by appealing to his former nature as Anakin Skywalker. In this Luke fails and he is brought before the Emperor for a final testing. Can he resist hate and fear, even when confronted with the destruction of his own friends and the rebel cause? His attempt to remain non-combative breaks down when Vader threatens to turn his sister to the Dark side. In a fit of anger, he chops off his father's hand, just as Vader had chopped off Luke's hand at the end of the previous film. But when the Emperor exhorts Luke to kill Vader and "take your father's place at my side," Luke throws down his weapon. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," he says. He is able to come to this decision, as he sees himself about to suffer the same fate as his father; in particular, he looks at the stump of Vader's electronic hand and then at his own machine hand which he was given after he lost his own. He resists the temptation to lose his humanity to a technologized and de-personalized identity.
[23] Luke's decision not to fight may appear to be one place in which the film borrows from eastern religious notions of ahimsa, non-violence. But there is a significant difference between his actions and the ethic of the Bhagavad Gita in which the Hindu notion of ahimsa is developed. In that text, Krishna advises Arjuna to fight to preserve the world-order of dharma, but to do so without selfish desire or hatred. This is basically the same advice Yoda and Obi-Wan give to Luke; to kill his father, but without giving in to hate or anger. Yet Luke ignores their counsel and refuses to fight him at all. He abandons the "eastern" philosophy of detachment advocated by Ben and Yoda for a more Christian ideal of attachment to those whom one loves. And oddly enough this is what saves them all, as he manages to redeem his father from hatred and violence. Here again, Christian concepts of redemption clearly take center stage, as Luke's willingness to non-violently sacrifice himself(much like Obi-Wan's self-sacrifice in episode four) becomes the key to turning his father back. Granted, in his "conversion" Vader does use violence against the Emperor, but in so doing he eschews the path of violence he has been following since he turned to the Dark side.
[24] In the end of the film, Luke sees the spirit of his redeemed father accompanied by those of Yoda and Obi-wan, an otherworldly salvation of the righteous analogous to the final resurrection of the dead in biblical apocalyptic. It is also worth noting that these figures retain their individuality even in this apotheosis, contradicting Campbell's monistic vision which would require their dissolution into the absolute. If Obi-wan can sit on a log in the Dagobah swamp and discuss Luke's family tree with him, it appears that the departed are not simply manifestations of some abstract oneness which does away with their personalities.
[25] Much of this tale also transcends the structures of apocalyptic, it can be seen. The future is not completely set; although faith in the Force should bring success, even Yoda does not guarantee this. The Dark forcemasters tend to speak of "destiny" in a way that suggests free will is non-existent; but the good side always allows participants to choose their own destinies, granting that free choice can and does contribute to the direction of events. When Luke asks Yoda (in episode five) if Han and Leia will die, he replies, "Difficult to say. Always in motion is the future." What will happen depends on the choices that individuals make, and this cannot be foretold with complete certainty. That this is so is shown by the errors the Emperor makes in predicting the outcome of Luke's testing, as well as in the fact that Anakin, even as "the chosen one," was corruptible.
[26] Perhaps the most significant difference from traditional apocalyptic, though, is that the function of the Star Wars myth does not seem to be to give comfort to the politically persecuted. If Star Wars is primarily a myth for United States citizens, it is hard to see how we fall into that category. Of course, if apocalyptic categories are used to describe a battle that has already taken place, it can actually serve to support the status quo, rather than question it. In this case, the evil has already been vanquished, and represents the previous political order rather than the present one.25 Apocalyptic form would then be used not to critique the powers that be (the U.S. Government, for example), but rather to support them as the just victors over evil. Star Wars does tap into some of this by portraying the Empire as resembling both Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, authors of Camera Politica, support just this interpretation of Star Wars. They hold that the films express a conservative ideology that supports the American ideals of individualism, elitism, antistatism, agrarianism, and anti-rationalism.26 However, their attempt to interpret the films entirely in traditional Marxist terms seems to fall short by reducing the films to their supposed political message of support for western capitalism. Their own survey of viewers seemed to suggest that most did not see the Empire or the rebels in political terms, and even when they did, there was no consistency in assigning a political identity to them--e.g., more viewers believed the Empire resembled a right-wing dictatorship than communism, but most also believed the rebels resembled right-wing freedom fighters more than left-wing revolutionaries.27
[27] What Ryan and Kellner are unwilling to grant is that the films have used apocalyptic concepts not primarily for political purposes, but for some other end--and it is in this that the Star Wars films may differ most markedly from traditional apocalyptic. For the "enemy" is not a political "other," but ourselves, or at least the threat that we will lose our humanity to greed and a selfish quest for power--symbolized by the Dark side, and even moreso by the technology of deathstars, imperial walkers, and Vader's own robot body. Virtue triumphs over evil technology, however, not only when the "natural" Ewoks beat stormtroopers and their imperial walkers by "primitive" jungle tactics, but when Darth Vader becomes Anakin Skywalker once again. When we see him unmasked and his humanity restored, even at the moment of death, he is "saved," as he says himself.
[28] All of this, it can be seen, serves to reveal some basic virtues Lucas wants to highlight: the importance of family, the redeeming qualities of love and forgiveness, loyalty, friendship, and faith. These are what viewers like to see, as in so many Hollywood films. And although these values are labeled banal or anachronistic by many critics, these are the virtues the fans appreciate and presumably hope to emulate in their lives. The continual whining about how Star Wars is trying to replace "real" religions28 might subside a bit if we realized that the values it portrays are not entirely negative. As viewers, we are caught up in the struggle between good and evil framed in apocalyptic terms not because we hope for release from political persecution, but because we can relate the story to our own struggles to do good in our personal lives. On a small scale, we all try to be like Luke rather than like Vader. As George Lucas himself puts it:
[29] Heroes come in all sizes, and you don't have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It's just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people--these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives. You don't have to get into a giant laser-sword fight and blow up three spaceships to become a hero. 29 FILM CREDITS
The Empire Strikes Back A New Hope The Phantom Menace Return of the Jedi) Star Wars
Notes
1 "It was the first time that I really began to focus. Once I read that book I said to myself, this is what I've been doing .... It was all right there and had been there for thousands and thousands of years, as Dr. Campbell pointed out .... It's possible that if I had not run across him I would still be writing Star Wars today." Phil Cousineau, The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 180.
2 Andrew Gordon, "Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time," in Screening the Sacred: Religion. Myth. and Ideology in Popular American Film (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 73-82.
3 Cousineau, pp. Xxv-xxix. (Curriculum Vitae for Campbell)
4 Joseph Campbell, "The Confrontation of East and West," in Myths to Live By (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 89.
5 Ibid., p. 93
6 Ibid., p. 95
7 This claim privileges one group's proximity to the divine whereas (in his view) all have the divine "within" them, already. Since Judaism seeks a "relationship" with a named God rather than identity, it claims that relationship is only available "through membership in a certain supernaturally endowed, uniquely favored social group." Ibid., pp. 95-96.
8 Robert A. Segal, Joseph Campbell: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1987); Maurice Friedman, "Why Joseph Campbell's Psychologizing of Myth Preclude the Holocaust as Touchstone of Reality," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66/2: pp. 385-401.
9 "It seems to be a temptation that many modem thinkers cannot resist--to put forward their own central discoveries as the core of all the world's religions .... Even when they know something about the world's religions, they do not hesitate to ignore all the phenomena that do not fit their personal perception ...." Friedman, p. 395; "[Campbell] cites hundreds of myths and extricates from them hundreds of archetypes...but he analyzes few whole myths .... He is interested less in analyzing myths than in using myths to analyze human nature." Segal, pp. 137-138.
10 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 365-378.
11 Here I must agree with Friedman against Segal. "Campbell seems to want a unity of inner and outer, as Segal says, yet it is not the actual outer but a mysticized and universalized outer that comes from his projection of his inward philosophy on it." Maurice Friedman, "Psychology, Psychologism, and Myth: A Rejoinder," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67/2, p. 471.
12 Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 161. Campbell speaks of "loving one's fate" even if it involves suffering, and quotes Nietzsche in support of this ideal. He also quotes the Buddha's dictum that "all life is suffering," ignoring the fact that the Buddha sought a way to escape this, not an affirmation of it.
13 In an address he delivered shortly after the first men walked on the Moon, Campbell cites the Kantian notion that space and time are mental constructs rather than objective realities, and claims that the "moon flight as an outward journey was outward into ourselves." Even the conquest of outer space is finally only the conquest of another inner mystery, and its significance lies in its ability to tell us more about ourselves. Campbell, "The Moon Walk--The Outward Journey in Myths to Live By," p. 239.
14 Campbell and Moyers, The Power of Myth, p. 144
15 Ibid., p. 147
16 Ibid., p. 148
17 "Of Myth and Men," Time, April 26 1999, p. 92.
18 Ibid., p. 93.
19 C.K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (New York: Harper, 1956), p. 227.
20 "Children will be born with the white hair of old men, miscarriages will increase, and women will cease to give birth at all. The earth will fail to bring forth fruit .... One nation will rise up against another, wars will tear mankind to pieces, within families fathers will oppose and quarrel with sons, and brothers with brothers.., everything is devastated and destroyed. When at last even the cosmic order disintegrates, the stars will no longer follow their regular courses..."
21 Eduard Lohse, The New Testament Environment, tr. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), p. 57.
Bruce Lincoln, "Apocalyptic Temporality and Politics in the Ancient World," in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1, ed. John J. Collins (New York: Continuum, 1998), p. 459.
22 Norman Perrin, The New Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 71.
23 Willi Marxsen, Introduction to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), p. 273.
24 Lincoln, p. 467.
25 Ibid., p. 466.
26 Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 228-236.
27 Ibid., p. 235.
28 For just one example of this, see Maclean's, May 24, 1999, "The Second Coming," pp. 14-18.
29 Time, p. 94.
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Vol. 4, No. 1
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Anti-Feminism
in Recent Apocalyptic Film
by Joel W. Martin
Vol. 4, No. 1 April 2000
Anti-feminism in Recent Apocalyptic Film
by Joel W. Martin
Abstract
[1] As the second millennium winds down, apocalyptic themes inform many Hollywood plots. Several recent popular films and television shows depict epochal threats from space. This essay focuses on the films Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact, Contact, and The Lion King and an episode from "Futurama." Extremely popular--"Armageddon" was the highest grossing film released in 1998--, these films and shows beg for attention. Strikingly, three of them give prominence to father-daughter relationships (in Armageddon, the oil driller hero dominates his coming of age daughter; in Deep Impact, the journalist hero, although estranged from her father, elects to join him on the beach as a fatal tidal wave sweeps the east coast; in Contact, the radio astronomer mourns her lost father and miraculously meets him again on a magical beach at the ends of the universe). What is all of this about? Clearly something vital is going on.
[2] This article examines what the social status and fate of these cinematic daughters say about contemporary gender politics, what this focus on father-daughter relationships reveals about the political unconscious. The article highlights the odd mix of initiative and passivity that characterizes the female protagonists of these films. It traces how these works link feminism with the threat from space, showing how these films suggest that the former causes the latter. This leads to a troubling conclusion, repugnant politically and ethically. According to the politics of these films, to avoid the apocalypse, women must be re-subordinated. The article employs theoretical approaches developed in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film and advanced by scholars such as Douglas Kellner, Michael Ryan, and Janice Rushing.
Article
[3] Apocalypses reveal. They envision heaven or deliver a heavenly message.1 This remains the case in Hollywood.
[4] I want to call attention to an apocalyptic trope present in several recent films. It consists of a long tracking shot that traverses a great expanse of the universe. I call it the cosmic magic carpet ride, because it takes viewers on an intergalactic journey no human could ever experience. The journey may begin or end on earth. It may move centifugally "outward" to alien spaces or centripetally "inward" to our home planet. In either case, it flows seamlessly from earth to the cosmos or from the cosmos to earth. An exemplary example occurs at the beginning of the film Contact. Examining it closely, I will argue that it conveys a religious message worthy of theological reflection. As I will also show, most apocalyptic films, including those that feature a similar shot, are less inspiring.2
[5] They choke the spiritual message with ideological ones. In particular anti-feminism clouds our visions of the stars.
[6] Contact begins with a view of earth from near space. The scene centers on the southeastern United States at night. Close enough to make out the glow of coastal cities in Florida and Texas and the contrastingly dark pool of the Gulf of Mexico, we are, nevertheless, far enough away to see the curvature of the earth set off against the blackness of space. The soundtrack consists of snatches of music from the era of the movie's production. We hear, among other things, a line from a song by the Spice Girls. As the camera backs out and away, the whole of the earth becomes visible, a sphere surrounded by space. Just as the moon comes into the picture, we hear slightly older songs, including the theme from the late 1970s television show "Dallas." The conceit here is that we are overtaking the soundwaves of radio and television broadcasts that radiated outward years ago from earth. At Mars, we hear the candy bar jingle, "Sometimes you feel like a nut..." The Van Allen asteroid belt brings Nixon defending his honor, "I am not a crook." The Sixties sound off beyond Jupiter: Martin Luther King, Jr. exults "Praise God Almighty, we're free at last," a journalist reports President Kennedy's assassination, and the theme song from the "Twilight Zone" plays. Somewhere in the rings of Saturn we hear Dean Martin singing, "Volare!" And beyond Neptune, we hear the Lone Ranger cry "Hi Ho Silver," FDR declare the attack on Pearl Harbor "a day that will live in infamy," and Hitler rant auf Deutsch, a rare instance when the language spoken on the soundtrack is not English. The last discernible statement belongs to FDR, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And the last trace of our civilization--some very faint dots and dashes of Morse code--vibrates just before the camera leaves our galaxy.
[7] The shot does not stop there, but the sound of the soundtrack does. This transition warrants remark. It divides the shot into two distinct parts, a noisy prelude and a silent feature. The effect is profound, a sonic equivalent of the shift from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. We have shifted from the mundane familiar to the strange and wondrous. Before this moment, Top 40 songs, American Presidents' speeches, and Madison Avenue slogans crackled on the soundtrack and helped domesticate the novel visual. For media-saturated Americans, this noisy trip through the solar system resembles a drive down a new highway with our favorite tapes along. After we leave the solar system, however, things change. Because the soundtrack no longer anchors us in the familiar detritus of everyday American mass culture, the strangeness of the visions before us shine forth that much more brightly. The silence tells us we are no longer in Kansas. The silence compels us to pay attention.
[8] We are swept along on a grand tour of the universe. We glimpse distant, primordial phenomena like the ones first revealed in the 1990s through spectacular color photos from the Hubbell telescope. These sights resemble those described by Carl Sagan in his novel Contact. "Everywhere she looked there were stars, not the paltry scattering of a few thousand still occasionally known to naked-eye observers on Earth, but a vast multitude--many almost touching their nearest neighbors it seemed--surrounded her in every direction. The sky was blazing with nearby suns. She could make out an immense spiraling cloud of dust, an accretion disk apparently flowing into a black hole of staggering proportions, out of which flashes of radiation were coming like heat lightning on a summer's night.3
[9] This entire vision proves most exhilarating and moving. We are truly "flying." But, because of the silent soundtrack, the experience carries deeper meaning. As in some forms of meditation and prayer, the absence of sound here connotes profoundity and indicates awareness of mystery. Far from the noise of earth and commerce, we enter a space where the proper human response is awe. Later in the film, the beauty she sees in the depths of far space overwhelms the scientist Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster). She responds like biblical prophets suddenly brought into God's presence. "No words," she cries, indicating that speech cannot do justice to this revelation.
[10] May we not likewise see in this shot something apocalyptic? When viewed in the manner of a constructionist theologian, the shot's existential effects might be compared to those of the God-concept. Like this concept, the shot indicates our position in a larger grander order that contextualizes without crushing our significance. Because this shot is space-oriented, it relativizes and humbles us and suggests our insignificance in the big banged world. It provides a popular religious vision of the universe revealed by science: 400 billion stars in each of 50 billion galaxies. It evokes an unfathomable, mind-boggling reality whose units of temporal and spatial measurement defy ordinary human comprehension even as its beauty, power, and inexhaustible mystery draw us. And it invites ethical and spiritual reorientation.
[11] On the other hand, because this visual shot is also earth-anchored, it reminds us of our precious specialness in the vastness of nature. This humanizes. The visual equivalent of the child's game of nesting addresses--my address is such and such a street in such and such a town, state, and country, on planet earth, the Milky Way, in the universe--this shot suggests the earth still counts. This is a traditional function of apocalyptic, according to Eugene Weber. "Self-centered, self-fascinated, humanity is loath to concede that we are not central to the cosmic scheme of things...Apocalypse, however tragic, reassures.''4 Similarly, although we know earth is no longer central, the visual magic of this shot suggests our home planet is still very important. If for no other reason, this makes the shot supportive of human meaning making and anthropomorphic affirmation in the manner of classic apocalyptic.
[12] Thus this bipolar shot serves a useful iconic role, suggesting the two sides of God that Gordon Kaufman distilled years ago. As he summarized in An Essay on Theological Method, "the genius of the word 'God' is that it unites the relativizing and the humanizing motifs and holds them together in one concept? A similarly compelling genius resides in this grand image of the earth in the universe.
[13] Contact's version of the shot is exemplary, most likely to induce this type of reflection, but the shot occurs elsewhere with similar, if subdued, effect. Robust versions show up in some films in the Star Trek franchise, Deep Impact, Armageddon, and others. Attenuated versions color Apollo 13, Independence Day, and the Fifth Element. All imply the same basic theological message: earth, a very small place in a very large universe, still has special value. Banal when written, this truth shines when delivered via the superb special effects of a contemporary film. For moderns long accustomed to earth's decentering, this shot nonetheless reassures, assuaging on a deep level a metaphysical crisis that began hundreds of years ago and has accelerated in the last several decades.
[14] This is not to say that Hollywood directors are systematic theologians, that they worry about contemporary viewers' existential questions or that they attempt to answer them. They certainly do not worry about whether they are doing "first order," "second order" or "third order" theology. They are most concerned with creating entertaining narratives, not touching people spiritually. Not surprisingly, they often employ the shot I am analyzing in predictable plots of social crisis and imminent catastrophe. In most of these films, the vastness of space does not induce awe as in Contact, it simply threatens. The threat comes in a literal, concretized, concentrated form: an asteroid, a comet, an evil ball of fire, and big plasma-farting bugs. A spectacle of destruction follows. Indeed, so filled are these space-aware films with images of imminent and actual disaster, they may seem to deliver, indeed, to be, nothing else.
[15] Why does this pattern seem so strong in recent Hollywood film? Could it be a residual effect of the Cold War? As G. Simon Harak, Ira Chernus, Caron Schwartz Ellis have argued, fear of nuclear war, civil defense drills, and maps featuring ground zeros of instantaneous urban holocausts taught us all to fear the skies as possible "corridors of chaos" and destruction.5 Aware of the real possibility that we could die within a few minutes of an ICBM launch, it is not surprising that many of us in the 1970s sought solace in films featuring beneficent alien visitors. These cuddly extraterrestials helped us view the skies with something other than terror. We needed E.T., the Star Man, the Brother from Another Planet, and the kind folks in Cocoon. Now that the Cold War and its mad arms race are over, we are free to imagine the sky as truly menacing. It's ironic, but now that our fears of nuclear winter seem more remote, we can tolerate and may on some level actually need visions of chaos and destruction coming from above, viz., fireballs, comets, asteroids and implacably hostile alien invaders. Seeing things blown up provides a post-Cold War catharsis to generations who lived in terror. But here's the rub: the great majority of men and women in the audiences flocking to these films came of age after the depths of the Cold War. What do they know of the Bomb? These films do more than release pent up Cold War fantasies of destruction.
[16] Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan's insights regarding the ideology of disaster and crisis films seem apropos.6 In Camera Politica, these cultural critics argue that disaster and crisis films invoke and address contemporary social tensions. Moreover, they argue that films do more than mirror these tensions, films teach viewers how to respond to them. According to Kellner and Ryan, one of the essential ways American learn their politics, values, and roles is through exposure to cinematic narratives, stories in film. Films transcode or translate the social order into images and narratives, teaching us through screen representations which boundaries we must honor and which we might be able to transgress. When the social order is stable, the dominant discourses, value-systems and accompanying symbolic representations are also secure. Men are men, and women are women. When the social order is in crisis, a simultaneous crisis occurs in the realm of representation. Disaster films abound.
[17] Following Fredric Jameson, Kellner and Ryan argue that ideology succeeds in maintaining order not through outright domination, but by pacifying, channeling, and neutralizing the forces that challenge the status quo. Since ideology cannot ignore these forces, but has to respond to them, their presence and power will be registered even in those cultural representations that oppose them. Kellner and Ryan's approach, then, suggests that we take very seriously the current apocalyptic films. Rather than see them only as entertainment or the residual cathartic release of Cold War anxieties, we might interpret them as essential efforts to respond to ongoing social tensions. These reel crises address real ones.
[18] To illustrate and develop this approach, let's interpret a recent apocalyptic film, the Lion King. This enormously popular animated film is apocalyptic in both the erudite and popular senses of the term. And, although its action is almost all on earth, the stars do figure in the film. The great king Mufasa tells his son Simba that the stars are all the rulers who ever lived; they watch over earth. Other characters offer differing theories about the nature of stars. Most important, the film depicts at its center a heavenly vision.
[19] The dead king Mufasa appears as a massive apparition in the night sky and chastens Simba for forgetting him. Simba, mistakenly convinced that he was responsible for his father's death, has been guilt-ridden and stagnant. Rather than getting on with his life and fulfilling his duty as the heir to the throne of the Pridelands Kingdom, he has retreated to a multi-racial counter-cultural oasis. While Simba lollygags with his male friends, the Pridelands kingdom has turned into a wasteland. A land that once had color is now ashen. Most horribly, due to the corrupt leadership of the regicide Scar, lions must live alongside hyenas. Thus we have within Lion King a doubled apocalypse, one spiritual and one social. Mufasa's heavenly appearance will lead to the reversal of the earthly catastrophe. But that can only happen after another kind of reversal takes place.
[19] A lioness ventures out from the wasteland and attacks one of Simba's frat brothers. Simba defends his brother, but the lioness, clearly stronger, pins him down. Fortunately for the prince, it turns out that this lioness is Nala, his cubhood playmate. One song later, they have fallen in love. Playing one day, they literally tumble down a hillside in the jungle, and he ends up on top of her.7 This time, she does not bear her teeth, but instead, shows "bedroom eyes." This reversal of positions establishes male dominance and clarifies the prince's sexual orientation. At last revealed to be heterosexual, Simba returns to the Pridelands and confronts Scar, his evil, impotent, darker hued uncle, the second son born to rebel, the true killer of Mufasa. Scar is a pro-immigration integrationist, and he is animated and voiced in a manner that suggests stereotypes of a gay man's speech patterns, mannerisms, and moods. He lisps, sashays, and broods.' Physically weaker than other male lions, he fights dirty. He deserves and receives defeat.
[20] After Simba sends Scar to a fiery death, Simba expels the hyenas and assumes the throne. He and Nala reproduce and the entire kingdom come to see their cub. The film indicates the cub is male by showing him then interjecting the title the Lion King. Just as this conclusion recapitulates the film's opening scene, we have every reason to expect the future to bring more dynastic struggles, border wars, and gender tensions.
[21] Freud would have a field day with the Lion King, but let's stick with Kellner and Ryan. Their Jamesonian notion of ideology explains why the Lion King, which seems determined to glorify heterosexual romance and a middle class family pattern, must allude to the possibility of a life outside of heterosexuality and without the nuclear family. Again, in order to undercut feminism, the film must show a female possessing real strength, only to subordinate her to a male. And so on. In the manner of a vaccine, the film exposes us to alternative ways of life in order to inoculate us against them.
[22] Kellner and Ryan further argue that we can speed our decoding by paying attention to the way metonymy, with its reference to the specific, material context, undermines metaphor, with its invocation of some higher transcendent meaning. Take the Lion King's mantra of a 'circle of life.' As a metaphor, it provides the comforting knowledge that nothing ever ends, that parents live on in their children, that time is not linear and death not final, that all things cycle around in a great and magical economy of repetition. As a metonymy, the circle of life has a different, because materially based, meaning. It coincides with quite specific, rigidly enforced material borders that divide races and marginalize certain peoples. The circle of life, to put it crudely, refers to a gated community called the Pridelands. Within it one finds happy nuclear families that stick to their own kind. Beyond its borders, however, one finds fields of death and deserts of privation, ghettos and barrios populated by unruly hordes. Out there leaders speak in dialect (Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin) or slobber to communicate. In the Pridelands, the good king Mufasa sounds like a Shakespearean-trained actor (James Earl Jones). Not surprisingly, when the two realms mix and social classes get out of their proper place, disaster results. Fascism springs up; nature itself declines. The metaphor of the circle of life is not innocent.
[23] Ideology drives other 90s apocalyptic films, including those that focus more resolutely on the stars. Turning these films inside out, we can now argue that the crisis they resolve derives not from space itself, but instead reflects apprehensions about feminism. These films respond negatively to the real and symbolic instability introduced into the gender system by feminism. It is not a coincidence that each of these films' narratives enacts the re-subordination of a woman and connects this process of subordination directly to the struggle to overcome a threat that contact with space, space rocks, and space beings supposedly represents. In Armageddon, for example, it is a daughter's sexuality that needs to be contained. Only after the father has transferred his authority over her to her male lover can the father perform the sacrifice that will save the earth.
[24] Anti-feminism percolates in Deep Impact. The world's number one journalist earns a spot in a subterranean city where a remnant of earth's population will survive earth's collision with a comet. At the last moment, however, she gives up her seat on the rescue helicopter and elects to reunite with her father on the beach in what will be a suicide hug beneath a great tidal wave. Metaphorically, her actions signify decency, grace, and forgiveness. Metonymically, however, it may be a different story. She yields her seat to a woman who has a child, to a mother. And it seems important to note that the father she rejoins is the man who left her mother for a much younger woman, an action that we are led to think contributed to her mother's suicide. If these material facts do not change our interpretation, other things in the film suggest it renders a judgment against feminism. A young man, really a kid, leaves the safety of the cave city to save a young woman left on the surface. Thanks to his heroism and against great odds, they reach it to the top of a mountain and escape the deluge. There presumably they will enter into a new covenant with God, marry, and repopulate the earth. Overall, I think we detect a disturbing pattern in this film. Women who are fertile and heterosexually bonded survive. Death comes to highly competent professional women and those who are post-menopausal. One wonders if the film was really about a comet after all. What is really being blasted here?
[25] In the Fifth Element, humanity's rescue depends upon the action of a perfect being. Unfortunately, the perfect being is female. At the critical moment when she must act, she becomes too emotional and starts crying. Overwhelmed by the duality of humanity, she hesitates. Only after the Bruce Willis character tells her that he loves her does she blast the evil ball of fire and save earth. Coincidentally, the only other men present are two celibate white priests and an emasculated African-American man. It takes a white heterosexual male to save the earth even when you have a perfect being on your side.
[26] In Independence Day, one of the early casualties is the First Lady. The film implies she would have survived had she followed her husband's admonition to flee L.A. Males, in contract, not only endure, they prevail, even when they behave recklessly. Late in the film a male pilot and computer hacker fly a captured alien vehicle into orbit, enter the gargantuan alien mother ship, and disable its computers. They escape unscratched, although enemy ships pursue them, a massive explosion engulfs their vessel, and they crash in the desert. When we next see them, they are walking back to their base, puffing cigars. Their women greet them with renewed respect. It seems likely that these women will abandon their careers--one was a stripper and the other the President's press secretary-- and assume more traditional, less visible roles.
[27] The anti-feminist pattern dyes this genre so strongly it shows up clearly in a parody of the genre, an episode of the Fox network's animated television show "Futurama" (premiere broadcast, 8 November 1999). Parodies derive their humor by playing with the conventions of well-established genres. Because parodies depend upon viewers consciously recognizing the pertinent conventions, they tend to exaggerate and foreground these conventions. Think of Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, and Scream. "Futurama," as its title indicates, spoofs science fiction and its images of a technological future. It chronicles the picaresque adventures of a young man named Frye, a slacker frozen in the 1990s, then thawed a millennium later. In this episode, we see Frye in the 1990s hanging out with a friend in the broadcast control room of WNYW, the Manhattan headquarters of the Fox network. A technician, seated in front of a bank of monitors, asks him if he wants to watch the show "Single Female Lawyer." Frye responds, "Oh, I don't know. That's a chick show. I prefer shows of the genre 'world's blankety-blank.'" His buddy responds with a sexist comment, "She is wearing the world's shortest skirt." Convinced, Frye says, "I'm in."
[28] A short parody of "Ally McBeal" follows. It begins with a close-up of a middle-aged man wearing a judge's black robe hitting on a young woman. "Counselor," the man says, "I remind you that it's unethical to sleep with your client. If you really care about the outcome of the case, you should sleep with me."
]29] "Your Honor," the woman responds, "it's bad enough to proposition a single female lawyer in court, but this is a unisex bathroom." The view expands to show that these characters are standing in a large tiled bathroom, much like that featured regularly on the television show "Ally McBeal."
[30] "Overruled counselor," the judge says, kissing the woman on her lips.
[31] She pushes back against him momentarily, then embraces him, moans, and deepens the kiss. One of the stall doors pops open and a stenographer, seated on the toilet and typing on her machine, comes into view. She asks, "Could you repeat that last part?"
[32] The scene shifts back to the control room where Frye and the technician are watching the monitor. Yawning and stretching, Frye spills his "Lobrau Beer" on the control panel, short-circuiting the machinery. Static fills the monitor screen. "Oh my God! You knocked Fox off the air," the technician cries. Unfazed, Frye says, "Pfft, like anyone on earth cares?"
[33] At this point, the scene segues into a letter-perfect copy of the opening scene from Contact described above. Looking down on a skyscraper capped with the call letters "WNYW," we ascend, rising high above Manhattan. Red concentric rings pulsing from an antenna atop the building indicate broadcast signals. We move with them through clouds and beyond, passing the moon, Mars, belts of asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, interstellar dust, and the Voyager space probe. Finally, a green mottled planet comes into view. A label identifies it as "Omnicron Persei 9, 1000 Light Years Away, 1000 Years Later." The television signal reaches the planet. The scene shifts to the interior of a room where two large brown aliens sit watching "Single Female Lawyer." The aliens are gendered--one of the aliens has horns, the other wears a pink bra. Each looks rather like Alf gone to seed. On their television set the lawyer and the judge from "Single Female Lawyer" kiss in the unisex bathroom.
[34] "Could you repeat that last part?" the stenographer asks again. Then static fills the aliens' screen.
[35] "This is an outrage," the male alien shouts. "I demand to know what happened to the plucky lawyer and her compellingly short garment."
[36] The static disappears, and the Fox icon appears. An announcer states, "Due to technical difficulties, we now bring you eight animated shows in a row."
[37] "Aargh," the alien spits. He lifts a laser and blasts the television. In the remainder of this episode of "Futurama," the aliens travel to earth and attack it, reproducing scenes of destruction identical to those in "Independence Day." They will stop their devastation only if earthlings show them how the 1000 year old television episode concluded. Accordingly, Fry and his friends stage a courtroom scene. The lawyer is to marry the judge, but the incompetent actors fail to follow the script. The result barely satisfies the aliens' need for narrative closure, but, after giving the performance a mediocre review, they leave earth.
[38] This parody provides a perfect reduction of a whole genre and it clarifies a leitmotif in contemporary apocalyptic film, the tendency to link feminism with catastrophe. The cosmic shot in this episode of "Futurama" not only moves seamlessly from earth to space, it shifts directly from a focus on a professional woman and her sexuality to the aliens who will devastate earth. The shot joins her story to theirs. In this parody we have an almost explicit recognition that it is a crisis in the gender system that has produced the genre of 1990s apocalyptic films. If space threatens, it has something to do with a professional woman. The apocalypse comes about because of a single, female lawyer. Once upon a time, "heaven was a screen where signs appeared by which God premonished humankind. Disorderly activity in the heavens anticipated greater or lesser disorder on earth.''10 Now disorder on earth leads to disorder in the heavens, at least in those heavens projected on Hollywood's screens.
[39] Finally, let us look at a more subtle film, one that contests the same conventions "Futurama" parodies. Unlike more conventional films in this genre, Contact resists equating traffic with space with danger. In fact, it celebrates contact with space. It provides one the best magic carpet rides of all films and features other scenes glorifying the beauty of celestial events. In short, it affirms the apocalypse provided in the new vision of the universe provided by science. And, not coincidentally, it judges anti-feminism negatively rather than enacting it uncritically or parodically. In this highly cerebral film, those who find space to be a threat are considered pinheads and bureaucrats. Religious fundamentalists--who are portrayed stereotypically-- and national security hierarchies fear contact because it undermines their sources of authority, their claims to know what's real and what's not. They want to stop the apocalypse, even though it's a good thing, not a destructive one. Uniting forces, they repress the lead SETI scientist's experience of actual contact with aliens; the film culminates in an interrogation that combines motifs from the trials of Joan of Arc, Galileo, and Anita Hill.11 Ellie Arroway, the scientist played by Jodie Foster, becomes a prophet who speaks truth to small-minded men and she pays a price. The apocalypt, who gained an awesome perspective on the heavens, a wondrous message for humanity, is partially silenced, but by small-minded people, not the film itself.
[40] And yet, there are two odd scenes that do not fit this generous interpretation. Ellie Arroway risks her life to travel a billion light years to the end of the universe only to land on a beach and have a chat with her Dad. It's not really her Dad, but he looks and talks like him and fits her memories of him perfectly. They hug on the beach. This scene echoes the one featured in Deep Impact. Evidently, at the end of time and space, a girl just wants her Dad. I leave this to the Lacanians to explain, but does it not seem out of place or forced in the film Contact?
[41] Similarly puzzling is the scene immediately after the trial. Ellie, who has shown no interest whatsoever in teaching, is shown talking enthusiastically about space to a group of children near the radio telescopes in the desert. Why was this scene with children inserted? Does it show she is completing her own circle of life, passing on to the next generation the curiosity her father instilled in her? Or is she opening up to other human beings as the alien advised her to do? Or is she performing some court-mandated sentence of community service? The film leaves this unclear.
[42] In any case, this scene, like so many others that punctuate this genre, functions to return a single, professional, and in this case romance-resistant woman to a traditional role. This may be why this particular film could not stop there but continued on to show the scientist by herself on the rim of Canyon de Chelley contemplating a handful of earth and the majesty of the night sky. That ending fit the spirit of the film more truly, and shows again that Contact itself does not conform perfectly to this genre or reproduce its conventions. It resists the anti-feminism that fuels the other films and distorts how they respond to space. Contact shows that mystery need not always give way to misogyny. Apocalypse need not always turn into catastrophe. FILM CREDITS
Armageddon Apollo 13 Blazing Saddles Brother from Another Planet Cocoon Contact Deep Impact E.T Fifth Element Independence Day The Lion King Scream Spaceballs StarMan Star Trek Wizard of Oz
END NOTES
1 See the definition of "apocalypse" provided by the SBL Genres group and quoted in Frances Flannery Dailey, "Bruce Willis as the Messiah," in this volume. I thank Flannery-Dailey for calling this to my attention and sharing a copy of her article with me before its publication in the Journal of Religion and Film.
2 Lynn Schofield Clark provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also want to thank my fellow panelists and the audience at November 1999 session of the AAR where I first presented these ideas.
3 Sagan, Contact (New York: Pocket Books, 1985), 341.
4 Eugene Weber, "Apocalypse Through History," The Key Reporter, Vol. 65, Number One (Autumn 1999), 7. See also Weber, Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
5 Gordon D. Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975) p. 56. My comparison is not perfect. In discussing the relativizing side, Kaufman stresses that God is "not subject to our direct investigation" (p.50). The universe is subject to investigation; among other things, scientists theorize its origins, mass, and rate of expansion. However, the point here is to deal with the images before us. It is these that imply infinity and invite awe. Finally, in suggesting this comparison, I may be partly influenced by Kaufman's subsequent work, which dwelt more on integrating scientific visions with theological construction.
6 G. Simon Harak, "One Nation, Under God: The Soteriology of SDI," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56 (Fall 1988); Ira Chernus, Dr. Strangegod: On the Symbolic Meaning of Nuclear Weapons (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986); Caron Schwartz Ellis, "With Eyes Uplifted: Space Aliens as Sky Gods," in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film eds. Joel Martin and Conrad Ostwalt, Jr. (Boulder: Westview Press, t995), 83-93.
7 See Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), esp. pp. 1-16, 49-75.
8 Tamara Goeglein called this reversal to my attention.
9 Lisa Bellan-Boyer alerted me to this pattern.
10 Eugene Weber, "Apocalypse Through History," The Key Reporter, Vol. 65, Number One (Autumn 1999), 6.
11 See Bryan P. Stone, "Religious Faith and Science in Contact," Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 2, No. 2 (1998).
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Hannibal
Reviewed by Artie Megibben
(Credits )
Photo by Phil Bray
2000 - Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Vol. 5, No. 1 April 2001
Hannibal
[1] Ever since the night Renfield met Dracula, moviegoers have had an appetite for blood-sucking villains with class. And not since Bela Lugosi has a villain had more style and class than Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter. He quotes the classics. Hes a patron of the arts. And his fangs are as acquainted with Bulugar caviar as with the soft, supple flesh of his victims. Hopkins Lecter does not so much snarl as purrwhispering seductive innuendoes set to opera musican approach matched only by Edens subtle Serpent.
[2] This is much the same technique used by visualist Ridley Scott (Gladiator, BladeRunner). Scotts use of style over substance (or should I say "suspense") make Hannibal an exquisite sight to behold. In place of the psychological thrill-ride of the Jonathan Demme-directed The Silence of the Lambs, Scotts lush cinematography gives us a painterly blow-by-blow account of Hannibal. (You will need to avert your eyes from time to time.) His lens caresses Italys most picturesque city where Lecter has been lying low for the past ten years. In Scotts misty Florence we find our villain holding court with art historians and connoisseurs. His office is the famed UffiziMichelangelos David, his next-door neighbor. Hannibals Tuscany flat has the sweep and haunting aura of Lugosis classic castle. Here he sits at his antique grand piano bathed in golden candlelight, playing soothing concertos as he reads the newspapers grizzly headlines.
[3] It seems according to the papers that FBI agent Clarice Starling (played this time by Julianne Moore) has been reassigned to his case. And rather than taking a powder, Hannibal renews his correspondence with her. This guy must want to get caught!
[4] The film, while gory, is rich with theological sub-themes. Agent Starling interviews Mason Verger, a faceless philanthropist with a vendetta to get Lecter. (Incidentally, when I say faceless, I mean faceless. It seems that years before Lecter suggestively cooed our deviant philanthropist into peeling off the flesh of his face). "It seemed like a good idea at the time," remarks Verger (played by Gary Oldman). After their interview, Verger makes a haunting observation. "Interesting," Verger notes "You had no problem looking at my disfigured faceyet when I mentioned God you noticeably winced and changed the subject."
[5] Those who watch this movie intently will note that while the bad guy is a cannibal, he is by no means the only sinner in this film. An Italian police detective attempts to catch Lecter on his own. Why? Avarice, of coursethere is a hefty reward. And for this deadly sin he is doomed to die. Hangedhis bowels gushing out. Remind you of anybody you know? Can you say, "Judas Iscariot?
[6] Clarices hard-nosed supervisor Paul (Ray Liotta) cant keep his eyes off her shapely legs. Ah, his sin would be Lust. Gee, I guess the good guys arent really all that good! Can you say, "Romans 3:23"? And for supervisor Pauls appetite Hannibal has just the dish. Dont ask.
[7] Also Agent Clarice has her own "issues." Lecter, who has had her number since the first film, makes some insightful observations. What drives this little backwoods country girl to be such an "achiever"? Is it her strong sense of right and wrong? Why no, it is her inner need to prove that she is more than "white trailer trash." And that would be the sin of Pride.
[8] The film actually does a good job of showing us that we are all sinners. Our differences are only those of degree. Hannibal in fact is the Christ figure in this bloodfest. Captured at the end of the film by Verger and his henchmen, Lecter is stretched out crucifix-like to meet his bloody doom. And by the very end of the movie Hannibal sacrifices himself for his beloved Clarice. Perhaps Mason Verger said it best in the movie: although we are all wicked, salvation is possible even for the most destitute of sinners. "Ive been pardoned by the State and by the Risen Christand nobody can beat the Riz."