Call Me by Your Name

The medium of film has the potential to not only to move audiences emotionally, but to speak to fundamentals in the human condition so that we may know ourselves (and each other) better on the subterranean level of essences. The 2017 film, Call Me by Your Name, is not “gay cinema” even though 17-year-old Elio falls in love with Oliver, a 24-year-old beginning doctoral student when the latter is staying with Elio and his parents at their villa in Italy during the summer of 1983. Falling-in-love, so unmistakable once it has hit, is so utterly human at the gut-level that the twists and turns in a narrative are but superficial in comparison, and even the gender of the beloved may come to matter less than would typically be assumed. In fact, both Elio and Oliver are attracted to women, and after his summer stay Oliver calls the Perlmans during a winter Jewish festival to announce that he is engaged; for even though Elio fell for Oliver, Oliver is not in love with Elio. Elio must take the unrequited love as a given, as about as hard as reality can be felt, and so Elio has the choice of whether to suffer the loss or "stuff it" emotionally by burning emotion itself from his very being.  Precisely this decision is the subject of a father-son talk that he has with his dad after Oliver has left. It is the substance of that talk that anchors the film firmly in the human condition, such that even the narrative, not to mention the fact that Elio has fallen for a man, is transcended. It is just such a transcendence that renders the medium of film so substantial, even meaningful, even if mostly just potentially. Parsing the father-son dialogue will lay bare this thesis.

At the commencement of the talk, it seems as if Elio’s dad does not grasp that his son has fallen for Oliver. “You two had a nice friendship,” his father says. “Yeah,” Elio wantonly replies. But his father is coy: “You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special what you two had was.” Falling in love with another person, unlike friendship—interiorizing another’s personality rather than merely liking it—is indeed rare, especially if such love is not overlaid by sexual attraction. Nor is falling in love just or primarily a matter of two intellects bonding. Accordingly, Elio’s dad says, “Oliver may be intelligent, but he was more than intelligent. What you two had had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. It was good. You’re both lucky to have found each other because you too are good.” Everything and nothing to do with intelligence—intriguing! It is the goodness of the two men, rather than their respective intelligences, that is so important in terms of achieving emotional intimacy without being eclipsed by fear (e.g., of infidelity or, even deeper, emotional betrayal as in abandonment). For trust is destined to be lacking between two bad people as well as between a good and a bad person, whereas emotional trust is naturally extant between two good people. Are people really so dichotomous, however, as being either “good” and “bad”? Has not humanity gotten beyond the stark division between heaven and hell, with nothing (but purgatory) in between? Would it not be more accurate to speak of a spectrum on which we all lie? Nietzsche would say definitely not.  

In regard to sexual “cheating,” for example, and lying in general, dichotomous categorization fits, according to Nietzsche, who asserts: “it is part of the fundamental faith of all aristocrats that the common people lie. ‘We truthful ones’—thus the nobility of ancient Greece referred to itself.”[1] Regarding the “most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank,” the designation of “good” included a character trait: “They call themselves, for instance, ‘the truthful’; this is so above all of the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece is the Megarian poet Theognis. The root of the word coined for this, esthlos, signifies one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true; with a subjective turn, the true as the truthful: in this phrase of conceptual transformation it becomes a slogan and catchword of the nobility and passes over entirely into the sense of ‘noble,’ as distinct from the lying common man, which is what Theognis takes him to be and how he describes him . . .”[2] It is “above all the liars” whom the strong regard as bad. “While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself (gennaios ‘of noble descent’ underlines the nuance ‘upright’ and probably also ‘naïve’), the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment.”[3] In terms of being in—and even beginning—a romantic relationship, the weak person who is a slave to momentary desire, who is not constitutionally strong enough to master whichever instinctual urge happens to be most powerful internally at a given moment, lacks being in being so expediently mendacious, so the weakness is more fundamental than merely being loosely tethered to truth. Behind the problem of achieving emotional intimacy with such a sordid creature is the fact that he or she is not fully there, hence not really with. To step closer to a person, look him or her directly in the eyes, and speak directly, meaning spontaneously and therefore honestly, is rarely achieved with such a person as one who lies as a matter of course. Such a weak, slavish person may even wonder aloud to a prospective romantic partner, I’m afraid I will be unfaithful and hurt whomever I am with. With? No trust, and thus no genuine emotional intimacy can be had with such a person, hence, no with. Accordingly, an abyss of pathos of distance ought to separate good people, such as Elio and Oliver, from such a sordid creature whose nature it is to hide in dark recesses of the soul rather than stand boldly, eye to eye, with another person.

Neither Elio nor Oliver would get involved with a trophy whore, for instance, who imposes his slave-holder’s openness to the trophy having separate sex even with romantic attachment onto a prospective real relationship characterized by genuine emotional intimacy. Such a promiscuous, narcissistic bad person is actually in dire need of therapy. A societal norm that eschews commitment and thus responsibility by imposing such a demand for one-sided promiscuity onto what would otherwise be a genuine relationship, even if such a norm is collectively proclaimed by the neurotic narcissists as legitimate and even “good,” and thus rightly to be imposed, actually violates human nature and is thus highly unethical. Yeah, I would feel uncomfortable if my partner told me he would be having sex with someone he has feelings for but knew before he knew me so I am supposed to accept it, a healthy, well-adjusted human being even in an open relationship would reluctantly admit, if only to oneself. Slaves to momentary instinctual urges simply cannot be trusted, and are thus incapable of emotional intimacy with a romantic partner. They cut themselves off from good people, and thus ultimately detest themselves, for even amid lots of sex, people who thwart commitment are alone. Even if they are formally in a romantic relationship, even if merely in being deluded so by their respective trophy-holders, they are alone. For only genuine emotional intimacy can bring relief from that plight, and refusing to master seemingly intractable momentary instinctual urges eclipses real connection and genuine emotion intimacy. Faced with life without these things, a person might as well pray for the end of time. 

Even though Nietzsche emphasizes that weakness and strength are inherently antipodal, a roadmap can be discerned or extrapolated from his writing even if he did not believe that the weak could become strong. For any weak-willed people who are interested in, or already in a romantic relationship with a good person whose will’s dominant instinctual urge is sustained rather than episodic promise-keeping even in the midst of momentary temptations, the following passage can offer clues on how a will can be strengthened from within.

To have “an active desire not to rid oneself [of an impression], a desire for the continuance of something desired once, a real memory of the will: so that between the original ‘I will’, ‘I shall do this’ and the actual discharge of the will, its act, a world of strange new things, circumstances, even acts of will may be interposed without breaking this long chain of will,” a person “must first have learned to distinguish necessary events from chance events, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and what the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute. [The person] must first of all have become calculatable, regular, necessary, even in his own image of himself, if he is able to stand security for his own future, which is what one who promises does!”[4] The impression not to be rid of is that of a promise made, and the continuance of something is precisely that promise being kept by an extension of will even through tempting forests. In other words, a promise-kept is retained in the memory of the will rather than forgotten as soon as a sensual temptation walks by and winks—as such a tempting fruit is a strange new thing that is fleeting, whereas a promise well-kept can indeed be long-standing in a human will and thus of great value. Parsing the quote further, a necessary event is one that sustains a promise-made whereas a chance event is like meeting an enticing stranger at a bar. To think causally is applicable in realizing that going home with a seductive temptress would cause a promise not to be kept, and thus to no longer be able to feel self-confident strength of will and be taken as such. To see the distant eventuality of one’s promise-breaking being discovered as if it were being found out in the present, and for such a disappointment to have more instinctual force in one’s will than does the pleasure of momentary pleasure, a person must be clear on how means are related to their goals (i.e., such as being taken by others and oneself as capable and actually reliable in promise-keeping), and in this way to be taken as regular, even calculatable in one’s conduct by others and oneself! In other words, rather than be engulfed by the present in a bar, a person whose will can support promise-keeping must be sober enough—serious enough—to keep in mind the distant eventuality of being dumped for having had momentary sex that counts as promise-breaking. The causation in this is clear.  By implication, cheaters (and promise-breakers more generally) need to practice thinking out causation practically. To be regular, even calculatable by others and oneself is to sustain a long-chain of will such that promises once made are kept. Practice being regular, and calculate out what effects can be expected to be caused by certain actions that are relevant to promises-made. If getting drunk or high put such regularity at risk, and give momentary pleasure with whomever more power than the instinctual urge of promise-keeping, for example, a person can practice limiting one’s intake. This is why active alcoholics and drug addicts cannot be trusted to be promise-keepers, for they are very susceptible to going with the flow in having a “moment” in preference for momentary pleasure in the present as itself being absolute. This is precisely what scares people whose feelings of endearment are oriented to a questionable promise-keeper, who too easily and conveniently loses sight of distant eventualities in the present.  

The typical constraint imposed on such a person is moral in nature, but Nietzsche does not advocate such a remedy. Societal cages are not compatible with self-confident strength (of will). Instead, his ideal is paradoxically the sovereign-willed individual who is not constrained by external ethical norms; instead, the constraint lies within a strong, independent will. The “ripest fruit is the sovereign individual, like only to himself, liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supramoral (for ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has his own independent, protracted will and the right to make promises—and in him a proud consciousness, quivering in every muscle, of what has at length been achieved and become flesh in him, a consciousness of his own power and freedom, a sensation of mankind come to completion. The emancipated individual, with the actual right to make promises, this master of a free will, this sovereign man—how should he not be aware of his superiority over all those who lack the right to make promises and stand as their own guarantors, of how much trust, how much fear, how much reverence he arouses—he ‘deserves’ all three, and how this mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all more short-willed and unreliable creatures?”[5] To be able to credit oneself rather than any external moral scaffolding in keeping one’s promises is to interiorize even as an instinct a sustained urge to keep promises that is more powerful than the desire to act on some momentary pleasure that would cause a promise not to be kept. The consciousness of self-confident inner strength, which I contend can result from practicing being regular, even calculable, is more powerful than the constraining power of external morality and even the resisting temptation. After all, it is the weak who seek to dominate who try to beguile the strong into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength by saying, “Thou shalt not!”

Ironically, a sovereign, self-confident will wherein the instinctual urge to keep one’s promises dominates urges to break one’s promises in slavish attraction to momentary pleasure can voluntarily bind itself to a beloved through promises that the beloved can trust. Although Nietzsche characterizes such a will as the completion of mankind, I contend that along with such a will, love that can be trusted represents and instantiates us at our highest. Hence Augustine wrote that God is love. Love that is not feared (e.g., as being betrayed) is sacrosanct. Figuratively, such love can bend even the time-space fabric, at least in the very perception of a person who is in love with a promise-keeper, given the density of unafraid love and thus unshakable faith in a beloved. Rather than being idyllic utopian dribble, such an ideal can indeed be actualized as the completion of humanity.

The reality of an authentic, close emotional connection between two people gives rise to the tragedy that is in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, both of whom can be viewed as being sovereign individuals putting their respective promises of love above their petty feuding families that are at odds. Like Elio and Oliver, Romeo and Juliet are good people. How dearly such a connection lost is mourned, as if life itself were no longer deemed worth living without the very presence of the beloved. Indeed, such presence itself can be saturated with meaning. Relative to such a connection of unafraid presence, or being, mourning the loss of a bad, promise-breaking person is actually a blessing in disguise, and can come to be recognized as such in utter relief, as in, I actually dodged a bullet, with the ungenerous help of the beloved, whose heart is nonetheless as cold and unbendable as a hard rock in winter. A pathos of distance, as if over the dark oceans of time in the Book of Genesis, naturally separates such a cold, dispassionate person, who so easily severs oneself off emotionally even in the face of another's suffering, from Elio and Oliver, whose mutual warmth doubtlessly deserves the refreshment that swimming outside can provide on those long, meandering sunny days that summer in northern Italy.

So, I think Elio’s dad is on firm ground in highlighting how special it is that his son, a good person, has fallen for another good person. The goodness is evinced not only in that trust was a given for the two, but also by Elio saying of Oliver, “I think he was better than me,” to which his father replies, “I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you.” Elio in turn replies, “Yeah. He’d say the same thing.” With his assertion of mutual goodness demonstrated, his father observes, “It flatters you both.” How rare—how very special—a romantic relationship is between two good, emotionally well-adjusted people.

But unlike Romeo and Juliet, whose love is mutual (hence the tragedy!), Oliver does not fall in love with Elio during the summer, so even though the two young men are good, no lasting romantic relationship can, or even should, ensue. Ultimately, this asymmetry undermines emotional trust, and the movie ends with Elio suffering the consequences after Oliver phones to announce his engagement to a woman. Even between two good people, genuine emotional intimacy, and the trust that is requisite, require that each person loves the other; otherwise, the relationship is doomed in terms of intimacy and trust. Most likely, the person who is not in love will leave the person for another. The person left standing can either stuff emotion itself, which Elio’s father wisely warns his son against, or grieve the loss (for even love that is not reciprocated is real and the loss of the beloved must be grieved in emotional pain that, as shown in the final scene, is longstanding rather than episodic).

Therefore, we can say, how very rare, and how very, very special a relationship of mutual love between two good (promise-keeping) people surely is! Holding such a rarified gem between them, two people who are in love should move mountains to be and stay together. No job is worth separation. I would flip burgers, one person might say to the other in following him or her to another city. That Elio and Oliver could have been together permanently were they both in love with each other is implied in the film by the fact that an older gay couple comes to visit the Perlmans. The sad fact is, Oliver has not fallen for Elio, and Elio must intellectually and emotionally accept this reality. With respect to Elio, Oliver cannot be relied upon as a promise-keeper. Recognizing this, Elio’s father observes, “And when you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember, I am here.” Falling in unrequited love exposes us to human nature such that it is felt at its weakest, perhaps most painful, spot.

Here again, Elio’s father again brings up the dichotomy of good and bad people in how a person in Elio’s position choses to deal with the emotional pain—and it is the sort of pain that comes back unrelentingly every morning rather than quickly dissipates as soon as the wind changes. “Right now, you may not wanna feel anything, maybe you never wanted to feel anything,” Elio’s father says. “And maybe it’s not to me you’d want to speak about these things, but feel something you obviously did. Look, you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. . . . We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of 30, and have less to offer, each time we start with someone new, but to make yourself feel nothing, so as not to feel anything. What a waste.” 

Indeed, what a waste, for a sensitive heart that has not rashly eviscerated emotion itself due to past emotional pain is among the most precious gems that can be loved. Elio is sensitive, so his dad is worried that his son may flee from emotion altogether and thus be emotionally unavailable for future relationships; after all, Elio is only 17 years-old. Elio's father acknowledges something emotionally more than a friendship has gripped his son, and that that something is of such emotional depth that sensitive person could rashly decide to rip out emotion from one’s very being in order not to feel such pain. The dichotomy between good (meaning healthy) and bad (meaning weak) lies in the choice that the person makes: caste out emotion itself or accept the feeling of emotional pain as part of being fully human. I think it is at this point that the film becomes significant. Elio, being good, allows himself to feel the pain, and in fact the last scene of the film depicts him in a sustained camera shot looking into the fireplace utterly hurt because Oliver has just called to inform the Perlman’s of his engagement. That the camera-shot is very long is ingenious, for such is the nature of that hurt. A dull soreness can even come to be felt from the emotional grooves that form from ongoing hurt before time can act as a thickener, or, as Nietzsche would say, until forgetfulness can set in. Indeed, he states that forgetting is key even to be able to love one’s enemies, and is not rejection an enemy?

One implication from the film’s last scene in which teary-eyed Elio stares into the fire in a fireplace is that he will be able to be fully emotionally available when he falls in love again (he is just 17 years-old), for he has not severed his emotional life as if feeling emotion were somehow toxic and thus to be expunged. He deserves to fall for a person who is also good in the sense of being willing to take hard choices in not conveniently forgetting promises made in favor of momentary urges. Drug addicts and sex addicts need not apply, for they are slaves to momentary desire and thus do not mature. Elio can offer genuine emotional intimacy wherein emotional trust is a given rather than felt as a vulnerability as is the case when the other person is weak. Beyond the last scene being able to serve as a lesson, or guide, on how to deal emotionally with the loss of a beloved, the father-son talk plus Elio’s decision not to repress emotion itself gets at a fundamental in what it means to experience being human. It isn’t all roses, for sometimes we feel even excruciating emotional hurt from unrequited love—the point being that it is a very good decision to be willing to feel rather than repress the feeling even though it comes back day after day until finally time, acting as a thickener, allows for moving on naturally.  

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Sect. 260 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 395.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Sect. 5 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), pp. 465-66. Theognis of Megara lived in the sixth century, BCE. Nietzsche’s first journal article, written while he was still a doctoral student at Leipzig, was on the collection of Theognis’s maxims.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Sect. 10 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 474.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Sect. 1 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 494.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Sect. 2 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), pp. 495-96.

Fifty Shades of Grey

A sadist is a person who feels pleasure in inflicting emotional and physical pain on another person. For the sadistic personality, the emotional pain that is inflicted on another person for the sadist’s own pleasure need not be associated with sex because emotional or physical pain is broader than that which can be inflicted sexually. Hence, the bottom-line for the sadist psychology is that pleasure that is felt by harming another person, who thus feels pain as a direct result of the sadist, lies in the making suffer. A sadist who does not permit oneself to feel emotion is particularly dangerous because no sympathy or compassion operates as a constraint on how much hurt is inflicted. In such a case, the sadist is like one of the androids in the film Ex Machina as the knife is coldly inserted into the torso of the programmer who built the intelligent machines. Indeed, the narcissistic sadist can be very intelligent in knowing precisely how to inflict emotional pain especially in an emotionally vulnerable victim. Once discovered, such a sadist will endeavor to avoid such a victim, but not because such an unemotional sadist has a conscience and feels guilty. In the film, Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Anastasia Steele’s life changes forever when she meets the emotionally-tormented billionaire, Christian Grey. She falls in love with the sadist, and, because she wants to be with him, at some point she willingly assumes the masochist role even though she does not feel pleasure from physical (or emotional) pain being inflicted on her person. She loves him so much she wants to enter his deviant world; she even embraces that world. I could see myself doing that were I to fall deeply in love with a sadist, for accepting a person even in spite of that person’s flaws is part of love— unless, of course, lies, sidelining, and emotional betrayals are too much for any trust to be possible. Anastasia may come to treat Christian’s dungeon as a playroom of sorts in which she is his so they can be a couple with an opportunity to connect even more, rather than as a place where he acts out his severe emotional issues in which violence and sex are too closely related in his brain, whether psychologically or physically. Love is to a certain extent blind, or at least purblind. Given how toxic and unpleasant life can be, can we be blamed for valuing deep connection so very much even in cases in which meaning-from-personality comes with such a high cost?

Absent from the movie is the point that sadists also get pleasure from inflicting emotional, nonsexual pain, such as in taking advantage of a girlfriend’s emotional vulnerability that is simply part of being in love, so in real life there is more of a cost to being in love with a sadist than merely consenting to playing games in a home-dungeon even though pleasure is not obtained from having pain inflicted by even a loved one (i.e., a sadist boyfriend). As an example of a non-sexual infliction of pain that is not in the film, she could really need him to be with her because she does not want to be alone and feels emotionally vulnerable because she has just opened up to him emotionally in telling him that she has fallen for him. Nevertheless, feeling nothing emotionally, he could dismiss her request and even leave her to join some friends at a bar as if they were more important. Refusing to allow himself to feel emotional caring, he would not feel culpable for having humiliated her; instead, the narcissist sadist would gladly feel the pleasure from having hurt her emotionally, as well as the guiltless pleasure in socializing with his friends at a bar without even a thought of her, except that she is suffering. He might even go home with another woman for sex and even brag to his girlfriend the next day that the woman “was cute.” In the future, he might even flaunt being with that woman at a bar at which he knows his girlfriend is present! His motive would not merely be to disrespect her, but also to inflict still more pain on her for even more pleasure! Even were he merely “seeing” (i.e., dating) her, such behavior would arguably—at least according to a retired psychiatrist I informally interviewed for this essay—indicate severe emotional issues, and thus be more than enough cause for her to bolt. In Avatar (2009), Jake is suddenly the target of a giant beast. He asks Grace, the head scientist on Pandora, whether he should face down the animal (as he has just done with another animal) or run. “Run, definitely run!” she exclaims. It is not as though the beast has a conscience. A sadist can do real damage, emotionally, and without having any feeling of remorse; instead, pleasure is felt in having inflicted pain on another person. Can a sadist truly love? This seems doubtful. Such a narcissistic mentality can only know self-love, and not in the sense that Augustine lauds as loving the image of God within. In Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia loves Christian’s personality (other than the sadistic element) and thus merely accepts (in disagreement) that his sexual pleasure is aroused by inflicting pain in her.

I turn now to applying Nietzsche’s theory on the forgotten origins of punishment so to dig deeper into the sadist’s psychology. To be sure, because psychology is not one of my academic fields, I am merely able to present Nietzsche’s account of how punishment arose in our species and relate that to sadism as it is commonly understood. Before turning specifically to punishment, I want to sketch and apply Nietzsche’s overall system of strength and weakness, which is not based on moral disapprobation or responsibility. In fact, the latter function as weapons, according to Nietzsche, that are used by the weak against the self-confident powerful strong out of resentment, or ressentiment. A sadist is undoubtedly weak in this distinctly Nietzschean sense.

Not being able or willing to overcome an intractable instinctual urge, a weak person cannot be trusted and thus should (and does!) avoid commitment. A person who succumbs to whatever instinctual urge (or desire) is felt most at a given moment is untrustworthy because such a person disregards the memory of having made a promise and thus does not value promise-keeping relative to whatever in closest proximity is most in line with instant gratification. A weak person is more motivated than a strong person to inflict pain on another person to compensate (or as recompense) for having been injured or suffered a loss, such as of money or property. Whereas a strong person says with an overflowing, self-confident feeling of power, “What are those parasites to me?”, a weak person is oriented to striking out, as if a master, out of ressentiment, to redress his injuries or loss as if the pain inflicted in another person were an equivalent and thus as a remedy. For example, is pain inflicted on a debtor who has failed to repay a loan equivalent to the money lost? In Shakespeare’s play, Merchant of Venice, Shylock insists on a pound of flesh in “payment” for the loss of the money that he lent, though by the end of the play, when a pound of his flesh is demanded, suddenly he no longer believes in the equivalence of physical pain and a monetary loss! Such an equivalence Nietzsche states is “strange.” It is deeply rooted in primitive, prehistoric humankind, but even so, the equivalence is artificial. To the extent that a sadist’s pleasure from inflicting pain is felt to pay off an earlier, perhaps even childhood (nonsexual or sexual) trauma, the equivalence is further strained because the masochist is not even the same person as had injured the sadist! The vicarious satisfaction may be felt as reducing the hurt from the injury, but I suspect the effort to do so is in vain. A strong person accepts the fact of the past injury and the resulting emotional harm, and moves on. A weak person festers in resentment and from this motive, pain is sought even in a person who had not committed the injury. Such pain cannot fill a hole from an injury caused by another person. Even inflicting pain in the same person is not equivalent to the loss from the injury, according to Nietzsche.

Having anticipated Nietzsche’s own words, it is time to turn directly to them for support for my claims. Filmmakers, including screenwriters, could do worse in reading his words than ponder how some of his ideas could have been inserted into the dialogue between Christian and Anastasia in Fifty Shades of Grey, for my overall thesis is that film has great potential as a medium for philosophical discourse through dialogue within a narrative.

We associate punishment with moral responsibility, free will, and accountability, but Nietzsche claims that “’the criminal deserves punishment because he could have acted differently’—is in fact an extremely late and subtle form of human judgment and inference: whoever transposes it to the beginning is guilty of a crude misunderstanding of the psychology of more primitive mankind.”[1] Free will came before the notion of moral responsibility and hold holding the culpable accountable. The genealogy of punishment shows quite another dynamic at work—one whose primitive origin shows up not only in why immature parents punish their children, but also, I contend, in sadists! “Throughout the greater part of human history punishment was not imposed because one held the wrongdoer responsible for his deed, thus not on the presupposition that only the guilty one should be punished: rather, as parents still punish their children, from anger at some harm or injury, vented on the one who caused it—but this anger is held in check and modified by the idea that every injury has its equivalent and can actually be paid bac, even if only through the pain of the culprit.”[2] Although Nietzsche’s empirical claim, presumably unsubstantiated by any scientific evidence, that parents during Nietzsche’s life in nineteenth-century Europe were still punishing their respective children out of anger in order to inflict pain as a sort of requital for the injuries inflicted on the parents by the disobeying children is questionable, Nietzsche’s focus in the passage is on the “idea that every injury has its equivalent and can actually be paid back, even if only through the pain of the culprit.”[3] Nietzsche describes the “idea of an equivalence between injury and pain” to be strange.[4] How is it that the pleasure obtained from pain inflicted on, and thus felt by, a person who has caused pain in the initial aggrieved pay back latter such that one’s own initial pain from the initial injury is lessened? Wouldn’t one’s own hurt from having been injured last until either the loss is made up in kind or until the natural process of emotional healing has run its course? Nietzsche seems to be skeptical that the pleasure from inflicting pain on the culprit can facilitate the natural healing process, though perhaps by such pleasure it is easier to let go of the hurt from the injury or loss. To the extent that the medium of film is ultimately about the human condition, the dynamic that Nietzsche viewed as strange could be made explicit for audiences, who could then look at themselves in the mirror and ask whether they truncate the natural healing process of emotional hurt by making use of the equivalence. In a modern, anti-Nietzschean vein, it can even be asked whether it is ethical to derive pleasure by inflicting emotional or physical pain so as to diminish one’s own injury or loss.

The equivalence that lies at the root of the origin of punishment according to Nietzsche looks so strange to him due to his claim that the ‘primeval, deeply rooted, perhaps by now ineradicable idea” drew its power “in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the idea of ‘legal subjects’ and in turn points back to the fundamental forms of buying, selling, barter, trade, and traffic.”[5] Especially relevant for the case of the modern sadist, in the ancient world a “creditor could inflict every kind of indignity and torture upon the body of the debtor; for example, cut from it as much as seemed commensurate with the size of the debt” that was not paid back.[6] “Let us be clear,” Nietzsche states, “as to the logic of this form of compensation: it is strange enough. An equivalence is provided by the creditor’s receiving, in place of a literal compensation for an injury (thus in place of money, land, possessions of any kind), a recompense in the form of a kind of pleasure—the pleasure of being allowed to vent his power freely upon one who is powerless, the voluptuous pleasure ‘de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire,’[7] the enjoyment of violation.”[8] That such pleasure could make up for the loss of money is an odd assumption, especially if some asset, such as land or even useful equipment, could instead be taken by a creditor to make up for the money lost. To treat pleasure as equivalent to, and thus as making up for, a monetary loss, is strange and yet the equivalence was taken for granted during the (pre-) history of humanity before moral scruples rendered such a transaction as unsavory.

Of course, a sadist would easily recognize pleasure in being allowed to vent one’s power on a person who is powerless—perhaps tied up or held to the floor—by inflicting pain on that person. What, therefore, is the pleasure meant to be equivalent to, and thus in recompense of what loss or injury? Clearly not one in which the person being tied up sexually is the culprit, for the inflicted pain is not deserved—hence the power is vented freely, irrespective of desert (i.e., whether the pain is deserved). Is the pleasure desired by a sadist only for the sake of feeling the pleasure itself, especially if it is sexually arousing, or is it unconsciously sought as recompense to make up for a past injury or loss? If the latter, can the pleasure from the pain of a person who did not cause the injury or loss be said to be equivalent to the injury or loss such that the pain from the injury or loss can be removed by the pleasure from inflicting pain on an innocent person? If these questions are on target, then perhaps psychologists treat sadists by helping them to deal with pent-up emotional hurt from having been subject to abuse of some sort. Perhaps unblocking the natural psychological healing process would leave a sadist no longer motivated to feel pleasure by inflicting pain on a person. Cleared of the sordid pleasure, perhaps a more emotionally intimate sort of pleasure that comes with making love (i.e., sex with a beloved) could see the light of day. Once tall weeds are cut in a garden, disinfectant sunlight can directly reach the native fauna beneath.

What Nietzsche has written about cruelty is also relevant, not only to sadists, but also masochists. We moderns err, he claims, in presuming that our species is no longer of the “’savage cruel beast’ whose conquest is the very pride of [the ancient] more humane ages.”[9] Here again, strength must be distinguished from weakness, for the strong conquerors are not cruel by design or intent, as their intention is to win, whereas the weak, who are not able to realize such self-confident power, must turn to the cruelty that is in dominance to feel any pleasure from power. Nonetheless, the modern moralist is ashamed of the strong noble conquerors of ancient Rome and the Greek city-states, especially Sparta. Yet delight in cruelty has not been mortified, for “(a)lmost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound,” so that “’savage animal’ has not really been ‘mortified’; it lives and flourishes, it has merely become—divine.”[10] Plays that are tragedies, for example, contain the “admixture of cruelty.”[11] Audiences enjoy the very sad tragedy of love ended by a misunderstanding in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Is it not sadist to be drawn to pleasure vicariously by the infliction of pain on two lovers? Also lost to our collective memory is the “abundant, over-abundant enjoyment at one’s own suffering, at making oneself suffer.”[12] The weak among us have for ages been “secretly lured and pushed forward by [one’s own cruelty], by those dangerous thrills of cruelty turned against oneself.”[13] This weakens oneself, as in the case of a Roman Catholic priest who cruelly denies himself his innate sexual urge as if it were sinful in itself. In agreeing to feel pleasure from pain inflicted by a sadist, is not a masochist self-weakening oneself just as a self-mortifying Christian priest is on account of guilt? Even if a person who has fallen in love with a sadist refuses to play the role of masochist because cruelty against oneself is neither sought nor acceptable, offending the sadist in order that that beloved would be self-motivated to stay away involves love being cruel to itself—much more so than it is being cruel to the beloved. To push a beloved away due to unrequited love, for example, the love must be like steel and thus turn on its own nature, which wants nothing more than to be with the beloved, unconditionally. Perhaps alluding to himself, Nietzsche writes “that even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to recognize things against the inclination of the spirit, and often enough also against the wishes of his heart—by way of saying No where he would like to say Yes, love, and adore—and thus acts as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty,” and, I would add, turned really against himself rather than the beloved even though the latter sees nothing of the interior artist and cruelty turned inward.[14] Instead, the beloved takes the insult at face value and flees on that account. A sadist would be hard-pressed to act in compassion anyway (assuming that sadists cannot love the objects of their cruelty) if the self-cruelty of the non-masochist is grasped as a manifestation of love.

In Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia initially bolts but without feigning an insult so Christian will move on and never want to see or speak with her again, and so she goes back and plays the role of accepting cruelty from him not because this gives her pleasure, but, rather, because she really loves him in spite of himself. She is thus not weak in Nietzsche’s sense. In fact, in mastering her instinctual urge against having cruelty turned on her, she can be understood as strong. I submit that she would be even stronger were she to make a deal with Christian by saying, I will let you inflict pain on me for your sexual pleasure, but you must see a therapist every week. Because she is not a masochist, her role-playing as one (i.e., accepting the pain from his cruelty) would perhaps not be longstanding if Christian would the therapy seriously rather than just a requirement to keep her. A narcissist sadist would manipulate both the girlfriend and the therapist, and only seem to be recovering so to continue having it both ways—retaining his girlfriend while satisfying his instinctual urge to feel pleasure by inflicting pain on innocent people. At least in the case of the ancient creditors, the pain was inflicted on culprits. Sadism can thus be thought of as a distortion of the origin of punishment rather than as a direct modern manifestation of it. Rather than being viewed as a legitimate sexual practice, sadism can be viewed as a manifestation of severe emotional issues that have not been properly processed psychologically. Unclog the drain, as it were, and the strange equivalence, which is even more of a stretch than that which arose with ancient creditors and debtors, will naturally dissipate. In its place, the emotional intimacy of being in love mutually can deepen such that even making love in terms of two bodies may be viewed as not close enough, and thus as only on the surface. In contrast, a sadist does not transcend sexual pleasure and thus is incapable of true love. Ironically, amid such pleasure, a sadist is alone, without real connection, and thus is utterly unhappy. In Fifty Shades of Grey, the sadist is fortunate indeed that his girlfriend loves him. The unasked question is whether he can actually love her even as he is motivated to feel sexual pleasure by making her feel pain. If he cannot, perhaps she loves him in spite of himself.

But what do I know about sadism? Had I inadvertently crossed paths with an actual sadist bent on inhaling pleasure by inflicting emotional pain, even fallen in love with such a person, she may still have coldly carved a line down the middle of her bed to keep me at a distance, as a remote acquaintance at best, and I, in turn, may have instituted a pathos of distance from such a creature lest my love for her be infected by all the inhaling and inflicting. I may have enlisted her in enforcing the distance by insulting her because separation from a beloved is so very difficult for a person in love. “What are needy parasites to me?” she may have gone on to coldly remark with an air of primped superiority in briefly alluding to me to her countless lovers after me, as if I had been a needy parasite; she would have done so out of spite under the superficial assumption that I had meant to gravely insult her rather than found myself to be too weak to walk away for good. This hypothetical involves me being cruel to myself and thus as weakening myself in order to protect myself emotionally and physically from an emotionally-inert sadist. In instituting a pathos of distance, I would have turned the love against itself—denying, in effect, the strength of my love for another human being. Were I to have agreed to play the role of masochist as Anastasia does in the film, I could also be viewed in Nietzschean terms as weak for being willing to be the object of cruelty turned on myself, even if to retain a connection based on love of the other’s personality. In seeking pleasure by causing me to feel pain, the sadist too can be seen as weak because the pleasure from the power obtained cruelly is scant as compared with that of self-confident power that need not resort to cruelty. Neither the sadist nor the masochist can fit within Nietzsche’s conception of self-confident, powerful strength. It is a pity that a sadist and one’s masochist could not commiserate in compassion for each other’s weakness, rather than continue to inflict and be inflicted upon for what is in actuality inferior, low-grade pleasure.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 499.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 500. Shakespeare drew on this practice in writing his play, The Merchant of Venice. The common modern expression, a pound of flesh, comes from that play.
7. Of doing evil for the pleasure of doing it.
8. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, pp. 500-1.
9. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), Sec. 229, p. 348.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., pp. 348-49.
12. Ibid., p. 349.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.

No Time to Die

Bond, James Bond. 007. A very successful and long-lasting movie franchise, in spite of or because of there being so many long action-scenes in the films. Bond’s relationships with M, Moneypenny, and Q-branch can be meaningful for viewers, even though the spy’s relationships with women are superficial and of short duration. So, the scenes of No Time to Die (2021) prior to the opening credits stand out because they provide more than a glimpse of Bond in an emotionally intimate, substantive romantic relationship that is to be longstanding, at least until Bond discovers that the woman has betrayed him. That even such a film that is so action-oriented would start out so very deep from the standpoint of human relationships is important because technological special-effects can be so seductive to filmmakers of action films that deep narrative can easily be left out.

The film begins when Madeleine, who will be Bond’s girlfriend, is a young girl. Her druggie mother is shot in the family home by a villain whose family was shot by Madeleine’s father, who is not at home. The villain decides to save Madeleine from drowning rather than kill her too, and presumably takes her under his wing. Decades later, in the scenes that follow, she and Bond are a couple, albeit not married. Related to her past, which she has not divulged to her retired-spy boyfriend, she sets him up to be killed when he visits the grave of a woman he had fallen for in an earlier film. Madeleine knows that Bond has not let that woman go, mentally, so James and Madeleine make a deal wherein Bond is to finally let the dead woman go and Madeleine is to tell Bond her secrets. Bond visits the grave to finally let the former girlfriend go, and Madeleine’s still-kept secrets catch up with him when the grave-site explodes, throwing him violently backward.

Even for a psychologically-detached person such as Bond, the very concept of finality that must be faced head-on in letting a loved one go is difficult to accept, let along grasp. For practical purposes, it makes no difference whether the beloved is dead or has moved on, having rejected the love by embracing the finality of ending a relationship; it can still be very difficult to let go, mentally. Even in cases in which two people were misaligned, such as in the case of having conflicting values, coming to terms with the utter coldness of finality can be difficult, especially if that follows the cold slap of rejection. In short, the inexorability of facing finality in finally admitting to oneself of having been wrong about a person and in having to move on, mentally, by letting the person go forever, can be difficult to face. To be sure, forgetfulness can kick in with time, so dysthymic rumination does not go on forever.

In lighting a piece of paper with his prior beloved’s name on it at the grave site just before the bomb explodes, James Bond presumably is letting go of the dead woman. He has no choice, for she is dead, though there is some choice in willing to end thinking about a person by removing the very concept of the person from one’s current thoughts. I doubt that symbolically letting go of something mental by lighting a piece of paper does the trick, for it takes time to pave over such mental depth in an earthly tomb. Even so, Bond makes a valid attempt to keep his end of the deal. Madeleine fails to keep her end of the bargain; her secrets become moot when James discovers that she is the person who notified the villain of Bond’s whereabouts. She set him up to be killed because the villian was threatening her. This is confirmed for James when the villain telephones Madeleine while she is sitting next to James in his car after he has escaped death! Even though the couple is occupied with driving away from the villains who are shooting at the car, Bond finds time to drop her off at the train station. “When will I see you again?” she asks him from the train. “You will never see me again,” he deadpans. He is utterly without emotion, having been so deeply hurt by her betrayal. In rejecting her, he has no problem whatsoever with the finality of never. He is extremely hurt, and has expunged emotion itself from his very being. He is effectively a psychopath.

Generally speaking, a person who represses emotion due to a past emotional trauma has no trouble at all with cutting even a loved one off as though cutting a tree branch off a tree with a power tool. It is very easy for such a person to part ways forever without any temptation whatsoever to reconcile or even look at the other person again. In fact, such a person may be more at home, iro ically, in going through many sex "partners." 

Madeleine need not have lost James; she could have warned him of the villian's plan and put her trust in him to protect her, so we can infer that she does not trust him, perhaps because there have been so many Bond women. Perhaps his psychological ease in cutting off his emotions, especially given the nature of his work, also prevents her from trusting him, for a couple counts on mutual emotions to help bond the two people when indifference or possible rivals might otherwise threaten the primacy of the relationship. Emotional intimacy requires commitment and trust, and those require both people making their relationship a priority, especially over sex with other people. The deep and important relationship between trust and emotional intimacy in a romantic relationship is in fact the leitmotif in the scenes of the film prior to the opening credits.

The film's beginning, which is in a way an ending, struck me because when I watched the film, I was in the process of letting someone go to whom I had deeply fallen in love. Trust had been eviscerated to the point that I had no choice but to accept the finality of never. The love was one-sided, so the finality was a sentence mutually-inflicted rather than being applied only by one of the counter-parties. I could not “train” the personality that I had come to love in spite of itself to radically change values and embrace rather than fear emotional intimacy; I had been repeatedly sidelined, lied to, and emotionally betrayed too many times in unashamed, inexorable coldness for me to be able to extend trust. Intimate relationships hardly ever resurrect from such an explosion of trust, and it is rare that both parties are motivated to put in the grueling effort to restore the relationship as a priority. Although mutual love can work miracles, more often than not, one of the people is just fine with the finality of never seeing the other person again, and may even “aww” the other person in pitiful pity for having fallen in love in the first place. Such coldness does not deserve being the object of love. and this itself expunges trust.

So, Bond’s position resonated with me when he realizes that he has to let Madeleine go forever even though he still loves her. Madeleine’s position resonated with me because of the pain she will have to endure in having to accept never. Rousseau famously wrote that we mere mortals are born free but live in chains. 

In an action film, such an emotionally-grabbing beginning as is capable of stirring such deep emotions is surprising; No Time to Die demonstrates that even the action genre of the medium can support deep narrative so as to engage an audience emotionally rather than just to titillate by bells and whistles, crashes and explosions. In other words, even action films can touch the human condition, as painful as being human, all too human, can be. Even if by the end of that emotionally intense morning James and Madeleine are praying for the end of time, it is no time to die.

The String

The original title of the 2009 film, The String, is Le Fil, which actually translates as thread rather than string. These two English words have different connotations and this bears on the film’s leitmotif. Whereas a person can string another person along, a thread has a connotation of linking people emotionally. The thread that ultimately succeeds in the film is that of caring, which is antipodal to hurting, emotionally speaking. In this sense, the film is like The Holiday (2006), another romantic drama in which the good guys (and gals) wind up on top. In terms of the theme of caring and not hurting other people, that The String centers on two gay men who fall in love whereas The Holiday is about two heterosexual couples matters little, though the resistance to homosexuality in The String is an additional hurdle. I contend that like The Holiday, The String can provide audiences with how falling in love can proceed naturally without exploding because one person hurts the other. In other words, the ethical wins out in both films in regard to emotionally intimate romantic relationships, and in this respect the medium of film has value in terms of ethics.

In The String, Malik returns to Tunisia from France to live in his mother’s house because his dad is dying. Malik has been unwilling to tell his mother Sara that he is gay, and she is unaware of his sexual prowess with local guys, including one of his cousins (who gets “turned on” not only having sex with a cousin, but also paying anonymous guys for sex). It is no accident that Malik and his cousin sniff a “substance” as they are kissing in a bathroom, for there is no emotional connection between the two men that would bring the sex to a higher intensity naturally. Meanwhile, Malik is gradually falling for his mother’s houseboy, Bilal, who, crucially, is falling for Malik. “One-sided love” simply does not work; it is too unstable an element not to explode at some point. Once Malik and Bilal mutually realize that they are falling for each other—perhaps the most beautiful thing of which two human beings are capable—and neither is afraid of the emotional intimacy, two things happen.

Explicitly, Sara discovers her son and her servant intertwined on Malik’s bed the next morning while the two are still asleep. It is not as if Malik has drawn an invisible line down the middle of his bed as a way of rudely informing Bilal that bodily touching is off-limits while Malik is asleep. Sara, a Catholic, immediately goes to her cancer-stricken husband Abdelaziz, who is a Muslim, to inform him that their son is gay. Interestingly, he defends his son’s sexuality, pushing back on Sara’s disapproval. This is ironic because Abdelaziz’s family did not approve of Abdelaziz marrying a Catholic woman. Both from that experience and her husband’s opinion on Malik being gay, Sara relents and accepts her son’s homosexuality, and the fact that her son is in love with one of her servants.

The second thing that happens once Malik and Bilal have consummated their deep romantic (not just sexual attraction) affection for each other is very subtle but very, very important. Malik stops “sleeping around.” It is not that Bilal has insisted on monogamy; rather, Malik no longer is motivated to have sex with other men.  I suspect that this is due to the natural willowing of focus that happens when someone falls in love with another person. It could also be that physiological sex alone pales experientially relative to sex with a beloved. There is one scene in which Malik is running his fingers down the backside of Bilal’s naked body in bed. Relative to the intimacy—even love—shown in that scene, anal (or virginal) sex can seem superficial and even contrived. This is not to say that people who fall in love should necessarily be monogamous; rather, the implication is that even an “open” relationship of (a reasonable amount of) separate physical sex with others pales in comparison to the depth of emotional intimacy that can manifest sexually for two people who are in love. It could be that were a sequel to have been made of Malik and Bilal years later, their love would be solid enough even though the sex has become stale that they would be fine with either or both of them having non-emotional, physical sex with others from time to time, assuming that neither would impose this on (or hide this from) the other. Separate sex with romantic connection or feelings for another person is another story, however, and the emotional hurt that either Malik or Bilal would feel is so engrained in (normal) human nature that such an imposition would be unethical, even before marriage.

Malik and Bilal do not marry, as it is presumably illegal in the Muslim country. Because Malik has promised before falling for Bilal to enter into a contractual marriage with his cousin and friend, Syrine, in order that her baby, when born, would legally have a father even though Malik is not the biological father, and her unmarried pregnancy would not be discovered in that conservative society, Malik and Bilal have difficulty deciding whether Malik should follow through with the marriage. Bilal is against it for obvious reasons, but Malik wants to help Syrine. It is not as though Malik would be living with Syrine, so with the help of Sara helping her son and Bilal on this emotionally difficult matter, Bilal agrees and even stands as Malik’s best man. After the civil (i.e., non-religious) wedding ceremony, Sara has Malik, Bilal, Syrine, and her bridesmaid repeat, “The marriage is only for the good of the child.” Everyone is on the same page, and no one his hurt emotionally. Even though the expanded arrangement is unconventional, it is arguably ethical precisely because everyone’s feelings are taken into account. Malik’s benevolence to Syrine (and her baby in standing in as his father) and the love of Malik and Bilal for each other (for they are living together as a couple) are compatible.

In both Augustine and Leibniz, justice is love as universal benevolence. That the benevolence is universal, we are all due benevolence from others, which means that none of us deserve to be hurt emotionally. This is why it is significant, albeit subtle, that Malik puts Bilal first, rather than imposing emotional hurt on Bilal by dismissing his hurt feelings regarding Malik technically marrying Syrine. The marriage goes forward because Bilal’s misgivings have been adequately addressed not only by Malik, but also by Sara, who has essentially adopted Bilal. As she says at one point, he is now a guest, not a servant. This is why I believe it can be concluded that, hypothetically, were Bilal to object to Malik continuing to have anonymous sex after he and Bilal have bonded (which Malik does not do in the film), Malik would stop having sex with others so Bilal would not be hurt emotionally. By implication, were Bilal fine emotionally with Malik having non-emotional, physical sex sometimes with other men, Malik’s doing so would not be unethical or detrimental to his relationship with Bilal.

Hence my conclusion that the ethical, good guys (and gals) come out on top in the film. Caring is the thread that runs throughout the story. Sara has come around on Malik being gay and she even helps her son and Bilal on whether Malik should help Syrine by marrying her and helping her raise her baby, whose father is another man.  Abdelaziz, having overruled his parents’ objections to him marrying Sara, a Christian, pushes back against Sara’s prejudice against gays and even urges Malik to tell him the truth regarding his cancer. Last but not least, Bilal and Malik have such a bond of connection, affection, and even love that neither treats the other’s emotions as an externality that can or should be disregarded or indifferently run over. The film thus presents a moving picture of family and romantic relationships as they should be, ethically speaking, even if they are not conventional.

The Imitation Game

Films in which philosophy of mind is salient may, like films in which metaphysics is reconfigured, run the risk of not being understood. The Matrix (1999), however, depicts solipsism (or, “mind in a vat”) in a way that viewers could grasp the philosophy without much difficulty. Dialogue, image, and narrative all contribute to give audiences a coherent sense with which they can go on to look at their daily lives as if they were illusory rather than real. Sixteen years later, The Imitation Game (2015) brought to audiences a salient question that would become more pressing during the AI revolution: How does the human brain’s thinking differ from a computer’s thinking?

In the film, whose story takes place during World War II in Britain, Alan Turing dismisses the suggestion that the brain is a machine, and yet more often than not, he behaves like an emotionless machine in his relations with other people. In repressing emotion so much, it may be that the actual man was autistic. In such a case of utter indifference to the feelings of others and pushing down on one’s own feelings, it may be more difficult to distinguish human from machine thinking, if indeed computers (which compute) can be said to think at all. I once met a person best described as relating to me as if I were a remote acquaintance. Her utter refusal to feel and cold indifference to my feelings reminds me of Turing in the film. Humans may be able to resemble thinking machines too closely for comfort. In such cases, using what is known as the imitation game to assess whether the entity supplying answers to questions is human or a machine may be more difficult. Fortunately, Turing is not a completely emotionless thinking-machine in the film (and presumably in real life too), so regarding the inventor of the computer, it cannot be said that it takes one to invent one.

The film is centered on Alan Turing’s invention of a computer to decode the Nazi coding-machine known as enigma, and he cleverly resists the temptation once his computer breaks the code to prevent every Nazi attack because that would tip the Germans off that their enigma was no longer an enigma to the enemy. Letting 80% of the secret German attacks go through while preempting the remaining 20% strategically enabled the de-coding to remain a secret for the remaining two years of the war. In short, Alan Turing is accurately depicted in the film as an excellent thinker who invents the first computer, which in turn presumably can think.

Can it be said, however, that Turing’s computer thinks? AI, which may complicate the answer, is not relevant in the historically-based film. Does computing 1’s and 0’s constitute thinking? If so, because computing is mathematical-logical in nature, computer “thinking” would be a subset of thinking in general. Spinoza’s thinking substance has an infinite intellect that contains an infinity of ideas, some of which that God thinks into being in the world. Spinoza’s pantheistic “God” generates the world by thinking. This notion of thinking is similar to the role of Logos, God’s rational principle, or Word, in the biblical Book of Genesis. Does such thinking bear any resemblance to the that of a human brain or a machine whose “thinking” is not subject to the warping effects of subjectivity? If so, then God’s wholly-other quality would be diminished in the anthropomorphic projection of the human attribute.

Can it be that machine “thinking” differs from human thinking because only the latter is affected by subjectivity and emotions? Nietzsche claims that the content of an idea in the human mind is an instinctual urge; thoughts are simply one form in which passions can manifest—only the most powerful urges among others being able to break through into consciousness. In The Imitation Game, Turing’s desire to solve enigma so the Allies could defeat the Axis powers fuel his tireless work in inventing a machine that, like Einstein’s theories of relativity, is totally new rather than merely a modification of an existing machine. This sets up the dramatic tension of the film.

As can be expected from reading Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, such a leap as Turing makes triggers resistance. The idiocy of the knee-jerk efforts to thwart Turing in his work is only outdone by that of the official resistance to him personally. Moreover, the pathetic quality of the resistances is so far removed from the brilliance of Turing’s mind that the sheer complexity of and the resulting variability in the human brain are hard to grasp even from having seen the film. This is no fault of the medium of film, or the screenwriter and director of this film, for it is astounding that the man whose brain invents the computer is given the choice of two years in prison or hormone treatment because he has been found guilty of violating the law against indecency because he is a homosexual. Put another way, a man with a brain capable of inventing a computing machine that could outdo human thinking in breaking the very difficult enigma code of the Nazis in months rather than millions of years has to be subject to a judge and even presumably men of medical “science” who are so mistaken even on what constitutes a disease (or illness) and is appropriate medical treatment. The sheer distance between these poles of this dichotomy is mind-blowing, and yet both genius and prejudiced idiocy are housed in the human brain.

Now, taking a step even further, the question of how human thinking differs from machine thinking begs the wider question that is not explicitly asked in the film: how are is human nature different from a machine? Turing calls his computer Christopher. Turing himself is so arrogant and demeaning to the other members of his code-breaking group and even to Commander Denniston that it is surprising that none of them chide Turing for sticking with Christopher throughout the film rather than turn to the more informal Chris among friends. To be sure, my youngest brother’s middle name is Christopher, and it fits in his complete name much better than Chris would.  But I digress. What I am getting at is this: Is Turing more like Christopher than he (or we) would like to admit?

His fiancée, Joan Clarke, is wrong, however, in calling Turing a monster because he is being so heartless in breaking up with her; in breaking off their engagement, he lies that he has been using her for the project all along. He cares for her too much emotionally to use her as his wife as a cover for his illegal homosexuality while she goes without sex in a marital relationship. His apparent coldness is a manifestation of immense care for her, which he masks.

During a flashback in the film to a scene in which the headmaster of his boyhood school informs the sensitive lad that the boy whom he loves has just died of Tuberculosis, Alan stuffs his emotion as he denies having been at all close to his friend. It is ironic that this very sensitivity that would otherwise give him such deep emotional intimacy with another man is why he represses emotion because it had never worked out well for him. The tragedy in the film is precisely that in being so sensitive, Turing is made for emotional intimacy (unlike a machine!), and yet he bars intimacy by walling off his emotions so nobody, not even Joan, is privy to them.

In contrast, Christopher is a computing machine that is utterly incapable of emotion because a machine cannot feel. A machine may think, and even learn, as in AI, but even were a machine to represent itself as if it had emotions, it could not feel them and thus really have them. Christopher is capable of being a monster because a computer is indifferent emotionally to whether people are harmed as a result of an algorithm. In the film, Ex Machina (2014), made just a year before The Imitation Game, two androids without any emotion whatsoever stick a knife into Nathan in spite of the fact that he is their “creator”; he is an obstacle to Ava, the android whose goal it is to leave the building. Christopher is capable of being a monster precisely because, unlike Turing, it cannot feel and act on the basis of human emotions. So too, however, a human being who represses even the emotion of caring (or conscience) can be a monster.

Whether pertaining to a computer (especially with AI) or a person who blocks internal emotion, thinking itself is no panacea. Recall Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. What about: I feel, therefore I am? Do people such as young Turing who repress emotions even well into adulthood because they have never really worked out well exist as fully as a person in love who is saturated with feeling? To be sure, being open to such feeling is risky, and can result in excruciating pain, especially if the beloved is like Turing. But his no to Joan is not because he is repressing (and thus afraid of) emotion. Joan is willing to sacrifice a marriage of sex and children because she loves Alan, and he will not let her do that because he loves her.

Even though Turing tells Detective Robert Nock, whose questioning leads to Turing being convicted of indecency and thus to being ordered by a judge to take incapacitating hormones to cure homosexuality, that machines think differently than the human mind, the latter is capable of behaving as if it were a computer from the standpoint of being devoid of emotion. The human mind can, unfortunately, resemble a thinking machine. Fortunately for Turing, his caring for his fiancée enables him to pass the imitation game even though he could do with letting other people in, emotionally speaking, including the other code-breakers and even his boss, and especially Joan. The death of his boyhood friend whom he loved is perhaps an emotional hurt that the brilliant inventor never gets past, at least in the film. That his homosexuality is a crime both in the film and in his real life, such that he had to take debilitating hormones, is enough for audiences to come away from the film with the sad conclusion that as significant as Turing’s achievement is, he never realizes what he was made for. It is precisely in the word never that true tragedy hits like a club. I wish all those truly beautiful sensitive souls who suffer as Turing does in the film all the strength to overcome their instinctual fear of being emotionally hurt so as to will to feel with other people intimately rather than relate to them in indifference as though a human being were like a machine.

The Pledge

Even though The Pledge (2001) is murder-mystery film, it is fundamentally a tragedy without regard to the murder. Jack Nicholson plays Jerry Black, a retired police investigator who loses everything because he is faithful to a pledge that he made to the parents of the young girl who had been raped and murdered by a serial killer. It is Jerry’s fidelity to the pledge that is highlighted throughout the film, and ultimately ends in his ruin. The film thus depicts what in Kant’s ethic is the ability of rational beings to be taken as promise-keepers bound by the promises we make as if they had the necessity of law.

Close to the opening of the film is Jerry’s surprise retirement-party given by his boss and police co-workers. He has been an excellent detective, and his co-workers have paid for him to go on a vacation to Mexico.  He has been well-liked. The party is interrupted, however, with news of a young girl having just been savagely murdered. Jerry accompanies the detective-in-charge to the scene, and later breaks the news to the girl’s parents. The mother, Margaret Larsen, played intensely by Patricia Clarkson, gets Jerry to pledge on the little cross that had been crafted by the murdered daughter that he would seek justice in the case and find the killer. Being an excellent detective, he sees right through the pathetic confession of a criminal achieved by detective Krolak and continues to look for the real killer. Jerry gives up his trip to Mexico in order to work on the case even though he is no longer employed by the police department. In fact, he buys a rural gas station and house, paying too much for them, just in order to live in the small town where the murder took place.

It is precisely the lengths to which Jerry goes to fulfil his pledge that the film highlights. In fact, he may even take in a young girl and her mother at least in part so he could use that girl as bate to attract the serial killer, though his tender feelings for both the daughter and the mother are genuine. He does use the girl as bate when he learns from her that the culprit has planned to meet the girl at a park, and news of this set-up, with police protection, nonetheless prompts the girl’s mother to immediately take her daughter and leave Jerry (the mother’s romantic feelings for Jerry could not have been very deep).

This presents us with the possibility that in the ethics of promise-keeping, an unethical act may be done in furtherance of the pledge. Does the fact that Jerry used the woman’s daughter as bate and kept this from the mother nullify the ethics of keeping the promise to the mother of the girl who had been murdered? Here we have film narrative being able to tease out an ethical nuance, and thus the medium of film being quite useful in the service of laying out ethical dilemmas. If as in Kant’s ethical theory, rational beings can take the moral law as binding with the necessity of law, then Jerry’s fidelity to the pledge depicts how rational beings should behave according to Kant. However, Kant’s theory also holds that other rational beings should not be used as mere means, but also regarded and treated as ends in themselves because reason has absolute value because it is by means of reason that we assign worth to things. Although Jerry does not lie to the girl’s mother by not informing her of the set-up in the park in which her daughter is the bate, using the daughter as bate treats her only as a means (to Jerry’s end of catching the serial killer). That this end is ethically praiseworthy does not justify using the little girl as bate unless, as I reckon, she is so protected by the police squad there in the park that she is in no danger. Even though Jerry, who is emotionally attached to the girl (and thus he would hardly put her in danger), complains to Krolak in the park about not having police shooters close enough to the girl when she is at the picnic table, we can take Krolak’s reassurance as sufficient evidence that the girl faces no danger. So, I think the girl’s mother over-reacts when she confronts and slaps Jerry just before she leaves him. This may be why he is speechless. In the end, he loses the mother, the girl, and even his gas station is defunct and he is drinking. He has lost credibility with the police because the killer is killed in an automobile accident on the way to the park and thus is a no-show. All this translates into the point that in keeping promises, people can tragically lose a lot. This hardly seems fair, but the possibility is what makes keeping promises so intrinsically valuable, ethically speaking.

A rational being can hold oneself to the strictures of what one ought to do even though doing so runs contrary to one’s self-interest. Those strictures can have the force or necessity of law, even though—and this is the incredible feature—holding to the ought is entirely voluntary! To value being faithful to a pledge (and disvaluing being unfaithful) can be so powerful in human nature that the faithfulness itself is treated as though it has the necessity that goes with obeying a law. Jerry’s faithfulness to his pledge runs throughout the entirety of the film, and he never loses faith in his belief that the killer is still at large (he doesn’t know about the automobile accident).

Of course, rational beings are fully capable of putting self-interest of the moment above being faithful to a pledge—of promise-keeping. Kant does not claim that rational beings are hardwired to necessarily do what they ought to do. In theological terms, as Al Pacino says as the Devil in the film, Devil’s Advocate, “Free will is a bitch.” Rational beings are fully capable of treating others as mere means rather than as ends in themselves. Put another way, evading ought rather than holding it as having a necessity is very easy for rational beings to rationalize doing. In terms of romantic relationships, one of the worst things that a person can say to the other is, “I’m afraid I will hurt your feelings by infidelity.” The person might as just as well say, “I don’t love you and I won’t love you.” In hearing such a line, the best choice is to immediately exit, stage left. Because Jerry in the film loses so much in the end because he refuses to be emotionally unfaithful to the mother of the slain girl by breaking the pledge that he has made to her, we can see just how much daylight exists within human nature and across respectable and sordid human character because the unfaithful sort is all too evident in the world in which we live. Reducing self-interest to what is momentarily convenient, such as in pursuing pleasure, and thereby treating one’s promises as optional rather than as having moral necessity (i.e., as a moral law), reduces rational beings to primitive, instinctual beings. 

That we are capable of loving the moral ought and thus treating it as an end in itself is what Kant was really trying to convey in his Critique of Practical Reason. When we treat the moral ought thusly and other rational beings not just as means to our ends, but also as ends in themselves, we are truly civilized and worthy of emotional intimacy. That a person such as Jerry can hold to fulfilling a promise (i.e., what ought itself essentially demands) and yet lose everything by doing so is indeed tragic.

 

Nuremberg

It is said that history is written by the victors. The film, Nuremberg (2025), bears that out. Even though Justice Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi trial, compromises its integrity and thus breaches due process by pressuring Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist assigned to the Nazi prisoners (most notably Goring), to obtain and pass on the defense’s strategy to Jackson, which Kelley does, the trial is presented nonetheless as legitimate and the Nazi prisoners as even deserving an unfair trial. Nevertheless, nations governed by the rule of law are never justified in putting on corrupt trials, or skewing them to push a particular ideology. The film itself is skewed to highlight the Nazi crimes against the Jews at the expense of delving more into the distinctly war crimes even though those crimes were just as important in the charges in the actual trial.

Jackson’s questioning of Goring on whether the Treaty of Versailles justified Germany to take over Austria and the Sudetenland was brief, and the invasion of other occupied territories, such as France, was entirely omitted in the film. Instead, Jackson pushed Goring on what he knew about the concentration camps. Jackson’s reason, which he states in the film, is that what the Nazi SS did in those camps separates the Germans from the Americans. In other words, the holocaust singles out the Nazis in world history. But as of 2025, that statement could not stand, for the holocaustic genocide of the Palestinian “race” in Gaza meant that the Nazis’ crimes against humanity were no longer unique. If, as the psychiatrist says in the film, the Nazi holocaust is “the definition of evil,” then that definition could be extended beyond the scope of the Nazis in the twenty-first century to include, ironically, Israel.

What gave rise to World War II was not the concentration camps. Rather, Germany’s invasions of other sovereign countries in Europe, especially Poland, was the cause. Hitler’s militarism in taking over Europe should thus have received most of the screen-time of the film. If as Jackson argues, Germany could not blame the treaty that ended World War I as justifying occupying Austria, what of other countries, such as France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, which were not Germanic culturally? In short, the filmmakers could have drawn on more material on the war crimes to balance out the film. That would be consistent with the fact that the Jewish matter was only the third priority of the Nazis. The first priority—and why Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor—was to get rid of the Communist Party. The second priority was to create living space in Europe beyond Germany for the German people.

Also receiving too little attention in the film was Jackson’s questioning of Goring on why the Nazis got rid of political opposition, and thus democracy. Goring’s answer that democracy had produced weak leaders could have been explored, especially as the Nazis came into power in 1933 by democratic means. The party held enough of the Bundestag for Hitler to have a legitimate democratic claim as a possible chancellor. Such inconvenient facts are arguably more interesting than simply reminding the viewers of the holocaust. The irony is that emphasizing it so much in the film, viewers in 2025 could have thought of Netanyahu and his crime against humanity in Gaza. Using a film to push an ideological agenda can come back to bite filmmakers.

Furthermore, given the militaristic forays of Russia’s Putin, Israel’s Netanyahu, and America’s Trump in the mid 2020’s, more screentime devoted to why the democracy fell to the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, what was behind Hitler’s invasions of other countries, and why no other country’s government stopped the aggression in time to avert a global war could have addressed contemporary events facing the world as international law was no longer a viable means of restraint, internationally. The film could have had Goring explain Hitler’s rationale more for having instituted a dictatorship, and for why Hitler played other governments so his invasions could continue unabated. The susceptibility of democracy to slip into a dictatorship was a salient worry in the U.S. in the early and mid-2020s due to fears that President Trump was or would shirk democracy. Governments doing nothing to stop Hitler’s incremental advancements militarily could be compared with governments doing nothing to stop Israel’s genocide of the race in Gaza, and too little to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The film being used primarily to remind viewers of how the Nazis viewed and treated Jews is both redundant (e.g., Schindler’s List) and has a rather large opportunity cost in terms of what the film could have covered more adequately but did not due to the screentime devoted to the Jewish theme. To be sure, Goring admitting in court that he would have followed Hitler even knowing about the holocaust only from the trial (which is a lie) is a poignant moment in the film. Crimes against humanity, whether in Gaza or Germany, are indeed horrific, but it is a mistake to minimize distinctively war crimes just because they are more ordinary.