Medium Cool

In Medium Cool (1969), John Cassellis, a cameraman, maintains a medium-cool level of emotion even in the midst of the socio-political turmoil in Chicago during 1968 until he learns that his station manager had been allowing the FBI access to the news footage. The film can be interpreted as providing a justification for his lack of trust in American law enforcement even as the need for law and order is made clear from the ubiquity of the human instinctual urge of aggression. For the film shows not only the extent of violence, but also its engrained nature in our species. By implication, the viewer is left to conclude that that law enforcement is necessary in a civilized society.  Yet this can only be a necessary evil, for the last few scenes of the film show just how likely discretion is to be abused. The atrocious and one-sided police violence during the peaceful protests outside of the Democratic National Convention make it clear that if given the legal authority to use weapons, human beings may abuse such discretion if too weak to restrain their own personal passions and, albeit less common, even their psychological pathologies.

The film opens with a small protest in a rural area in Illinois. Of immediate concern is the involvement of Illinois’s military in a domestic matter. The disproportionate heavy machinery of official force seems out of place. That the soldiers’ knives at the end of the guns are so close to the necks of the peaceful protesters also points to bad judgment. A journalist recalls police roughing up cameramen so they won’t show untriggered police brutality. The implicit conclusion is that the excessive means of force together with an aggressive mentality among soldiers and police is a dangerous cocktail.

The film moves to a scene at a rollerball game in which individual players are beating each other up even off the track. The crowd enjoys it, just as the viewers of local news like watching violence. Later in the film, we see Cassellis practicing at boxing—again illustrating the human need or penchant for violence. He explains to his girlfriend’s son, “The object is to knock the other guy’s brains out.” At one point in the film, a manager of a media company says on the phone, “We do not manufacture violence.” This is true enough, for, given the human aggressive instinctual urge, violence can be expected to be around plenty enough to fill the time-slots on the local evening news.

The propensity for violence interpersonally is made very clear as Cassillis and his sound man, Peter Bonerz, contend with hostility from several black people in an apartment in spite of the fact that the two journalists had interviewed one of the people and thus provided a mouthpiece for the racial grievances. Even though the Black woman is being verbally hostile to one of the journalists, a Black man insult to injury by angrily demanding, “You got to respect our women!” The journalists were respecting her, and, ironically, she had not been respecting them. Conflating societal phenomena and the two journalists in the apartment, the Black man insults them by calling them arrogant and exploiters. That the journalists provided a societal mouthpiece for one of the men contradicts the accusation of exploitation. But reasoning is often wan up against anger: hence the need for law enforcement.

Violence is also on the societal stage. Watching a television program on John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, all of whom had been assassinated, the teacher whom John is dating remarks, “It seems like no one’s life is worth anything anymore.” We hear King’s “I have a Dream” speech, which we can juxtaposition against the propensity towards violence in the apartment of the Black man whom the journalists had (thanklessly) interviewed. The ideal is one thing; extant human nature on the ground is quite another.

The documentary-like scenes of the anti-Vietnam War protests of chants of “No more war” again demonstrate the ubiquity of untriggered violence even among people who are hired to prevent violence. Against the song, “Happy Days are Here Again,” we see Mayor Daly’s “police state terror” playing out in the streets of Chicago as police attack non-violent protestors. The excessive response of Illinois’ army being present just renders the danger all the more of hiring people with criminal mentalities to enforce the law. On the radio, we hear, “The policemen are beating everyone in sight.” Another reporter states that the police are targeting a specific political group—the anarchists. Appropriately, onlookers were chanting, Zeig Heil! As a reference back to the Nazi thugs in uniform. The overwhelming, excessive machinery of force, including that of a military, combined with the fact that the police mentality was criminal inflicting severe injury on innocent victims—and the fact that the criminals got away with it—is the emotional-image that the audience is left with. But there is neither remedy nor solution proffered.

The toxic American dynamic is just there, and as the Black Lives Matter movement would attest, Americans would be well justified in approaching police employees as dangerous even as they enforce the law. I contend that given the salience of the aggressive instinct in human nature, the power (discretion) enjoyed by police employees (and departments) is dangerous. Internal affairs offices within police departments suffer from an institutional conflict of interest (e.g., being part of the “brotherhood”) and thus should not be relied on, and the hands-off attitude of many city governments in favor of “citizen police commissions” is tantamount to aiding and abetting police brutality. Given this dangerous cocktail, the erroneous (and passive-aggressive) assumption/tactic that intimidation by an overwhelming, police-state, police presence should not be permitted. Simply put, there is simply too many police employees abusing their discretion for residents to have to be presented with a constant police-presence. The says that children should be seen but not heard is too charitable to police; they should not be seen or heard, but, due to the human inclination towards violence, present behind the scenes. This is the uncomfortable position that the film provides. Law enforcement is necessary, but, given the urge that some people feel to abuse power by instigating violence if given the chance, democratic, municipal accountability that does not rely at all on “internal checks” within police departments is vital.

The legitimacy of police to use force is limited to enforcing law. Hence, physically attacking people, such as in punching them with clenched fists and kicking them, which go beyond restraining people, are exogenous to the job function. Police with a penchant for attacking people may have a warped perspective justifying in their own minds, psychologically, beating someone up as a legitimate tactic. In 2023 in Ohio, for example, in an attempt to justify a police employee who kicked a man repeatedly in the ribs and hit him 30 times (and used a stun-gun), the deputy chief stated, “sometimes you do have to throw punches.” Even though his subordinates had use of a stun gun, he tried to justify their resort to street-fighting, saying “This wasn’t blows to the face or blows to the throat.”[1] This excuse fails, however, given that one police employee had straddled the victim’s legs and punched him “at least 30 times with both fists.”[2]

I contend that in going on the offence in violence rather than merely restraining and protecting oneself from violence, a police employee should be regarded as only another citizen. As Hobbes claims in Leviathan, self-preservation is a natural right that is not contingent on law. If anyone is kicking or punching a person, one has the natural right to defend oneself. Although this does not depend on law, city governments should encase this natural right because of the extent of discretion given to police employees by cities—an extent that is easily hyperextended. By no means should resisting getting kicked and hit be considered a criminal offence; rather, the “off duty” city employee should be charged criminally.

An obvious example of when a police employee should be considered a mere citizen concerns an employee who held a supervisory position in the New York City police department. Working as a private investigator for the government of China, he “threatened, harassed, surveilled and intimidated” a Chinese man “between 2016 and 2019.”[3] In 2023, he was convicted by a federal jury in New York of conspiracy and stalking charges. It made no difference that he was a police employee (and supervisor!) because his aggressive intimidation and harassment rendered him as a mere resident when he was engaged in that activity.

Even the language that a police employee uses along with unprovoked violence can indicate that the individual is no longer acting within the purview of one’s job in law enforcement. In Alabama in 2023, for instance, a state trooper felt justified in inflicting violence on a man who was not resisting arrest simply because he had joked “Oh, yeah” when she asked him if he felt tip of the stun-gun she had stuck into his back as he laid on the hood of a car. In saying, “Shut your bitch ass up,” and “Shut the fuck up. You was big and bad,” she was clearly not acting in a law-enforcement capacity. Her language is not professional, and thus it points to a state of mind that is outside of acting in her official capacity, which alone justifies the use of the stun-gun. That she ignored his pleas for her to stop using her stun-gun means that her desire to inflict pain was immune to any sense of compassion.

In his text, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith, who went on to write on competitive markets, claims that sympathy, aided by the imagination (in being in someone else’s place), is something that is normal to feel for others, especially if they are in pain. We don’t have to feel the pain in order to empathize. If someone who has been hired for a job in which deadly weapons can be used does not have compassion, then they are not the sort of psychology that should be hired for such a job. That such people have been hired suggests that the hiring processes of police departments are not yet advanced enough to be relied on, and so external accountability should receive more resources and attention.

Anger such that eviscerates natural sympathy can be immune even from the pleas of other police employees. Also in 2023, a Black man “was attacked by a police dog in Ohio after surrendering” to police employees “following a high-speed chase.”[4] That the truck driver had “refused to pull over, and was chased for about 25 minutes before spiked bars placed across the highway brought the rig to a stop” does not justify releasing an attack dog on the man when he was standing with his hands above his head, having clearly surrendered to the police.[5] Hence the police employee who released the dog was no longer acting in his capacity as an employee of the police department when he released the dog and could be charged criminally. 

The man's hands were up when the "SS (Nazi)" policeman released the attack dog. 

That the predator (i.e., the police employee) ignored his coworker’s demand, Do not “release the dog with [the black man’s] hands up. Do not release the dog with his hands up,” demonstrates just how flawed the hiring process of a police department can be, and thus how important external, municipality accountability is on police departments. The attacker shouted at the man, “Get your ass on the ground or you’re going to get bit!” which indicates not only extremely flawed judgment, which in turn likely points to underlying psychological problems, but that the guy was on a “power-trip” enabled by the discretion given to him as a police employee. That one of the police employees had aimed a machine gun on the truck driver can also be flagged in terms of flawed judgment. It is very significant that the employee had been hired for a position that includes use of a deadly weapon even though he had a penchant for violence.

The role of dysfunctional judgment is, I submit, a major problem in police departments. In 2023, two Los Angeles sheriff employees attacked an elderly Black couple in the parking lot of a grocery store because they had taken a cake (which could have been only a mistake). The employee attacking the man ignored the woman’s pleas that her husband was ill. Just for saying so, she was slammed to the ground by the other sheriff-department aggressor. Ignoring the woman’s pleas and shoving both people to the ground evinces utter disrespect, as if people deemed to be criminals by criminal police were not people. In actuality, such aggressors are not worthy of respect.

In yet another case, Los Angeles Sheriff deputies repeatedly punched a woman who was holding her 3-month-old baby simply because her maternal instinct would not allow her to release her baby to such aggressors. 

The aggressor's arm is circled as he repeatedly hits the mother as if in a street fight. There should be a special place in hell for men who slug women holding their infants. 

Interestingly, cities might consider enacting a “Good Samaritan” law protecting onlookers who stop attackers whether they happen to be city employees or not, for it is easy to tell if someone is resisting arrest or being pummeled with kicks and punches while passive. I contend that onlookers are ethically obligated to pull attackers off their passive victims, and, furthermore, that the criminal attackers should be criminally charged.

Because police hiring cannot be relied on, given the discretion with deadly force that police are given, the discretion should not include being able to turn off body-cams and cameras mounted on police cars. In 2023, internal documents showed that the police employee in Memphis, Tennessee who killed a man without cause didn’t turn on the body camera.[6] Just as Internal Affairs “internal accountability” within police departments should not be relied on, for police regard themselves in a brotherhood of sorts, so too is it a fatal flaw to presume that police employees can resist the temptation to turn off any cameras by which accountability could be aided.

We are all flawed, finite beings, human, all too human. Societies should thus be keen to check the power that is likely to be abused, and those with lawful physical power should be subject to psychological assessments that go beyond surveys and proforma interviews. Indications of “street” talk, bad (i.e., disproportional) judgment, and “street” fighting should be sufficient for terminations and criminal charges in cases involving violence, for the line between enforcing law and going on the attack is clear. Lastly, police employees should have more humility (i.e., a recognition of fallibility) in dealing with people assumed to be less, or lower, for every human being is worthy of respect as a human being. Being a city employee is conditional, rather than an entitlement. City governments should not only hold employees accountable, but also castigate police departments for policies allowing disproportionate force, such as aiming a machine gun at a truck simply because the trucker did not pull over. Retaliation is extrinsic to law enforcement. As the film demonstrates, accountability may be needed even on a mayor, such as Mayor Daly of Chicago, who astonishingly refused to stop the unprovoked violent attacks by his police even after his complicity was made public at the Democratic Convention. Even then, he evinced the Biblical pharaoh’s hardened heart. Similarly, the police predators discussed above demonstrated such stubbornness, in some cases even dismissing pleas for humanity from their fellow police employees.

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1. Dominique Mosbergen, “Police in Ohio Under Scrutiny after Video Shows Officers Punching Face-Down Man,” The Huffington Post, October 24, 2023.
2. Ibid.
3. Hannah Rabinowitz and Emma Tucker, “Former NYC Police Officer, 2 Others Convicted of Stalking New Jersey Family on Behalf of Chinese Government,” CNN.com, June 20, 2023 (accessed December 30, 2023).
4. Nick Visser, “Video Shows Police Allowing Dog to Attack Black Man Surrendering After Truck Chase” The Huffington Post, July 24, 2023 (accessed December 30, 2023).
5. Ibid.
6. Phillip Jackson, “Memphis Cop Who Fatally Shot Jaylin McKenzie Didn’t Turn On Body Camera, Internal Documents Show,” The Huffington Post, August 4, 2023.

The Conversation

Winner of the Palme d’Or (golden palm) prize in the Cannes Film Festival for 1974, The Conversation (1974) was written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola; it was a film that he really wanted to make, whereas he had made The Godfather (1972) to make money. In both films, business comes to be something more than business. In The Godfather, Sonny tells Michael not to take being hit in the jaw by the corrupt police captain McCluskey personally. That Sollozzo expects Tom Hagen to objectively present a business proposal to Sonny after Sollozzo has had the Godfather gunned down with five shots and still he survived just shows how ludicrous it is to suppose that the consequences of the murderous tactics of that business would not be taken personally. Even so, the moral dimension does not enter into the considerations. In contrast, Harry, who runs a small business recording third-party conversations for clients in The Conversation, gradually comes to take his work personally in a moral sense. Whereas the murders in The Godfather are personal in the sense vengeance being part of the motivations, those in The Conversation are personal in the sense of moral responsibility being increasingly felt by Harry. Accompanying this realization of guilt, however, is a recognition of the extent of surveillance on him, and this too changes him. If the problem were just being morally responsible for what clients do with his tapes, then he could solve the problem by doing something else for a living. Being a target of surveillance himself, however, is something that he cannot change. Even in tearing his apartment apart, he does not find the “bug,” or listening device that his client’s assistant is using. By implication, we can reflect on just how much we are watched in the modern world—that is to say, how much the world in which we live has come to be characterized by surveillance. I contend that we are largely oblivious to it because it has encroached so gradually that its incrementalism is difficult to detect.

Harry repeatedly finds his privacy invaded throughout the film. He arrives at his apartment and finds that his landlady has left a birthday gift for him just inside the apartment. Concerned, he picks up the phone. “I thought I had the only key,” he tells her. “Well, what emergency could possibly . . . alright.” She has undoubtedly said, in case there is a fire, but would she really enter an apartment on fire? “I’d be perfectly happy to have all my personal things burned up in a fire because I don’t have anything personal, noting of value . . . no, nothing personal except my keys, which I would really like to have the only copy of.” The notion that she would enter his apartment during a fire to save his belongings is of course ludicrous. She would be on firmer ground citing a plumbing (water) emergency because of possible damage to the apartment below. Then he notices that she has written his age on the card accompanying the gift. “How did you know its my birthday?” he asks. She undoubtedly tells him that she had seen his birth date in his mail. Another invasion! “As of today my mail will go to a post office box, with a combination [lock] and no keys.” He is reacting to this extreme because her excuses don’t hold water, and thus support his view that she is abusing her authority as a property-owner. Anyone who has rented a room in a house being lived in by its owner knows that without any moral reservations, the roommate can change into the boss.

Of course, Harry exempts himself from the immorality of invading other people’s privacy. Asked by his assistant Stan, who is played by the actor who had played Fredo in The Godfather, about what the man and woman on the tape are saying, Harry dismisses Stan’s claim that curiosity is simply part of human nature. “I don’t know anything about human nature. I don’t know anything about curiosity. That’s not part of what I do,” Harry insists. Furthermore, what his client does with that tape is none of Harry’s business—it is literally not part of his business. In the confessional at his church, however, Harry admits to having some moral misgivings. “I’ve been involved in some work that can be used to hurt these two young people. This happened to me before; people were hurt because of my work. I’m afraid it could happen again.” But then his denial quickly returns for its last stand. “I was in no way responsible. I’m not responsible,” he tells the priest. Well, people were indeed hurt. The president of a labor union had thought that his accountant had talked, so the accountant, his wife, and kid were found naked, tied up in their house, with the hair on their bodies gone and the heads found in different areas of the house. Bernie, one of Harry’s competitors, reminds Harry of this during a post-convention party at Harry’s business. Harry blurts out, “Had nothing to do with me; I just turned on the tapes.” He insists that what his clients do with the tapes in their own business, but we know from Harry’s confession that the line of ethical responsibility is not so clear to Harry himself.

At the convention, Bernie had placed a microphoned pen in Harry’s suit pocket. Bernie records a conversation that Harry has with Stan, who is now working for Bernie, and a conversation that Harry has at the party with a woman who works for Bernie. At the party, with everyone listening, Bernie plays the emotionally intimate, and thus private, conversation that Harry has just had with the woman—the same woman who would steal the tape of the current project from Harry after sleeping with him that night. Bernie does not understand why Harry is so angry at him, and Harry does not indicate any awareness of this extent of his competitor’s invasiveness. These suggest that the extent of invasiveness in the society is more serious than even the practitioners realize. At the party, Bernie tells Harry, “There’s no moment between human beings that I cannot record.” This statement should be chilling for all of us.

After Harry realizes that Bernie’s employee has taken the tapes that Harry has been holding back from his current client, presumably out of fear that the client would kill his cheating wife, Harry calls Martin, his client’s assistant. “You don’t have my telephone number,” Harry says when leaving a message for Martin. When Martin calls back anyway, he tells Harry, “We prepare a full dossier of everyone who comes in contact with the director. You know that means we’ve been watching you.” Well, it doesn’t follow that having a dossier on someone also entails constant surveillance.

Fearing that the director will kill his wife and her lover, who works for the director, Harry gets a hotel room next to the one where the wife and her lover were scheduled to meet. He witnesses a murder there, and goes back to his apartment in fear, where Martin calls. “We know that you now. For your own sake, don’t get involved any further.” Harry then hears his own music playing on the phone, which suggests that Martin has a listening device planted in the apartment. Harry tears it apart looking for the bug, but he can’t find it.

The message of the film goes beyond the moral lesson that Harry is indeed morally responsible for what his clients do with his tapes, for without them the harm would not take place. Interwoven with this realization in Harry is also his gradual realization that his own privacy has been so utterly violated. Both realizations characterize his character-arc.

I submit that we, like Harry, are not aware of the extent to which we are subject to surveillance when we are in public. Indeed, the trend, at least in the U.S. since 2001, has been almost certainly been in the direction of increasing surveillance rather than more liberty from it. Just as Harry comes to realize that his own business activity has an ethical dimension, so too we may come to realize that being watched involves a harm, and so the perpetrators can be culpable ethically.

One example of unethical surveillance is the flawed theory that by intimidating people by maintaining a nearly constant visible stationary presence, whether on a street or in the produce section of a grocery store, police can use deter people from committing crimes. At what cost though? The increasing trend points to the absence of a check on the municipal employees with guns. Freedom from intimidation, and, moreover, from fear, especially in a society replete with instances of police brutality, is arguably an important part of political freedom in a democracy. The gradual depletion of that part of liberty can easily go unnoticed because the change is so gradual.

Receptionists in business offices are gradually replaced by security guards, who not only must check us into a corporate or bank building, but also check us out! In some cases, we can’t leave the building unless we stop by security. This becomes even more questionable legally where the security guards are replaced by police, who by law cannot stop anyone without probable cause, at least in the United States. It is in that country that I think the trajectory is perhaps especially evident. Security guards at the main doors of a grocery store get replaced by police, and they start wearing bullet-proof vests, and then they stand in the produce section as if customers should be shot if they put a cucumber in a pocket.

Security guards at (even small) colleges and universities have been replaced by, or, even worse, supplemented by private police departments, and those police employees can patrol off-campus to enforce the regulations of academic administrators, who don’t have democratic legitimacy. Yale is a case in point. The implication is that private organizations, in the case of private colleges and universities, have municipal police power. The sad thing is that students and faculty get used to being constantly observed, and even come to be oblivious to it. Yet the gradual psychological effects from the passive aggression, culture of paranoid distrust, and routinization of emergency lights on security and police cars that are stationary on a campus even on class days take their toll. In the film, Harry is surprised at the extent to which he has been under surveillance by non-state actors. Faculty, students, and alumni on campus may similarly be so oriented to their tasks, teaching and learning ideas, that the innocents are oblivious to the extent that they are being recorded by cameras and (yet, as if the cameras were not sufficient) watched by security and private police employees. Perhaps university stakeholders should have a conversation with university administrators about the extent of surveillance as being antipodal to academic culture and atmosphere, and thus with the free exchange of novel ideas. 

Surveillance at Yale

Students in Yale's film classes think they are the voyeurs without realizing that there are cameras pointed at the seats! Even so, some egg thought having a security guard in the lobby was essential. Essentially paranoid.

 

As a student, I had taken the documentary seminar. As an alum, I put what I had learned to use, unobtrusively holding my phone-camera once I realized that a virulent security employee was continuously eyeing me as I was innocently leaving a film screening in December, 2023. 

Students being watched as they enter a classroom building

Excessive presence? What would a young student feel?

In September, 2023, that security guard followed me inside. Profiling alumni. Not a good fund-raising strategy for Yale!

The security employee who had followed me inside the building continued to follow me around, even eves-dropping when I was in an office! 

Students being watched on Old Campus; A manned Yale police car on a walkway; An undercover, hostile Yale policeman at a reception. Chill, Yale. 

Police-state 101. New course! Surveillance by Yale's private police employees (and security guards!) takes place even off-campus, in spite of an obvious lack of democratic legitimacy.

Far from Heaven

The film, Far from Heaven (2002), centers around a woman whose husband turns out to be gay. That this is set in 1957-1958 in socialite Connecticut is all the more telling, as the Caucasian woman finds her groundskeeper, who is a Black man, to be “beautiful.” The film is arguably a remake, or at least informed by, the film All that Heaven Allows (1955), in which a widow begins dating a younger, muscular man who tends to her trees. Although race and homosexuality are not issues in this earlier film (which, after all, was made in the 1950s), that a woman who socializes with friends who belong to a country club in New England would dare to date a younger man of a lower economic class—albeit not as low as the woman’s son and friends stereotypically suppose—was scandalous enough in the 1950s to furnish a tantalizing plot. That a filmmaker in 2002 could get away with portraying an interracial extra-marital sexual interest and a gay or bisexual husband having anonymous sex with men (even showing the husband kissing one of the men), whereas a filmmaker in 1955 would not have been able to get away with including such taboos (much less making them central), says something about the cultural trajectory of western civilization temporally.

By 2002, American society had changed markedly since the late 1960s, which ushered in the Black, women, and gay rights movements. Also, film censorship had let up appreciably since 1955. From the standpoint of the early 2020s, even American ideological culture in 2002 could be looked back at as antiquated. As one indicator, gay sex had increasingly come to be shown in film. The European film, Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2016), for example, begins in a gay bathhouse and shows the two men with frontal and back nudity having anal sex. Such a film would have been unthinkable even in 2002, and without a doubt back in 1955. In 2023, it was not clear whether such explicit displays were at the forefront in an evolution of freedom or a manifestation of lude displays going too far.

To be sure, American society as a whole cannot be said to have shifted so dramatically. This is evident because after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the court’s Roe v. Wade (1973) decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), restrictions on abortions were enacted in several member states. Regarding state-level legislation pushing back on gay rights, at least 417 bills had been introduced in state legislatures as of April 3, 2023 for that year, with a focus on banning access to gender-changing health care for minors and regulating curriculum in public schools.[1] Because discussion of sexual identity has been subject to bans, significant resistance to pro-transsexual material in films would exist even twenty years after Far from Heaven was made.

To homogenize the U.S., moreover, is to ignore the very different centers of gravity geographically in the various states in regard to the ideological “culture wars.” The “woke,” or identity-politics ideological movement, was also getting some push-back in the early 2020s. The resistance objected especially to the restriction of freedom of speech that ironically undercut the progressive claim of a Hegelian expansion of freedom since the 1950s in America. Indeed, the hegemony of group-identity ideology could be said to have become oppressive by 2023, dominating interpretations of cultural objects, including films.

Notwithstanding the politically-correct topics of race and sexual orientation in Far from Heaven, I contend that the film’s message transcends identity-politics to something about the human condition regarding emotionally intimate human relationships. Cathy and Frank Whitaker do not exactly present a loving marriage, and he does not seem to enjoy his work. In contrast, Raymond Deagan, their Black gardener who actually owns his own business and is educated at least in art-culture, is at peace enough that he ventures out to Cathy in friendship and perhaps more. Her sexual attraction to him is more apparent, and she becomes the driving force for any romantic relationship after Frank leaves her to be with a man. Before then, Frank is having sex with men anonymously, and rather than being comfortable with his homosexuality, it is a cause of mental anguish—especially since a psychiatrist advocates “conversion” therapy as if it were medical science. Cultural convention, including even ideology, thus makes use of natural science albeit without the latter’s empirical basis. Frank is in inner turmoil, and, meanwhile, that both Cathy and Raymond are the targets of mean stares and worse in public renders even a platonic relationship problematic. In a drunken rage, Frank angrily forbids his wife from having anything to do with that black man even though Frank’s homosexuality is perhaps even more societally taboo at the time. To be sure, in the 1950s, Connecticut law forbid both miscegenation (interracial marriage) and homosexuality. Even birth-control was illegal! In fact, it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Connecticut law that criminalized the use of birth control.

Bracketing the taboos of miscegenation and homosexuality (especially as adultery), however, we can zero in on the human relationships involved in terms of emotional intimacy. Just before Frank and Cathy break up, she indicates the emotional toll on her from Frank’s pattern of secrecy. Regardless of the specific content of the secrets, secrecy itself decimates the emotional intimacy of a relationship. Trust is absolutely fundamental. Even the relationship—even just in terms of friendship—between Cathy and Raymond can be critiqued on the basis of trust. Race is the context rather than the content here. Neither Cathy nor Raymond trusts the other enough to feel protected in the other’s world. To be sure, both worlds are segregated, but the matter can be generalized to that of trusting the other person to stand up in the midst of push-back from the other person’s social acquaintances.

In All that Heaven Allows, the younger man, Ron, does not trust the widow, Carie, not only to fend off her judgmental socialite acquaintances, but also to not care what they think or say. Ron doesn’t care what people think about him; he is comfortable in his own skin. Carie capitulates to the prejudice of her country-club friends and even her college-aged son and daughter, and thus justifies Ron’s lack of trust. Race and homosexuality are not in the picture, literally! Even the “younger man” and economic prejudices, which are salient in that film, pale in comparison to whether Carie and Ron trust each other enough to commit to starting a new life together. For Carie, that means leaving the house that she had had with her husband and kids, and all the security that a familiar surrounding offers even after the others have lived there. Ron, his friends, and his country house are so different from the life that Carie knows that she has trouble trusting Ron enough to make the leap. In short, the issue is trust, which is necessary for emotional intimacy, rather than age or economic class.

Race, homosexuality, age, and money are each capable of stirring up angst and prejudice, but more fundamental is the question of whether two people trust each other enough to have emotional intimacy. For without that, any relationship, of whatever color and stripe, is doomed or otherwise just a perpetuated shell within which two people escape life. Frank lies to Cathy in continuing to have sex with men. What is striking is that as he does so, she senses that he is keeping secrets. As Rose Castorini, Loretta’s mother in Moonstruck (1987), says of cheaters, eventually the other person in the relationship finds out. Her husband, Cosmo, a plumber, has been having an affair with Mona. “I want you to stop seeing her,” Rose tells him at the breakfast table with the rest of the family present. Cosmo “comes clean”—all he needs to say is, “Okay!”—because he knows that Rose really knows him, and therein lies the intimacy. In contrast, Cathy does not know Frank, and he does not know her. In bracketing identity politics, we can directly contrast the two couples without getting distracted and thus get a snapshot of what is essential for human relationships. Life without emotional intimacy is like living in a hollow shell far from heaven. So in the end, it doesn’t matter that Raymond is Black and Frank is gay; to get caught up on these attributes of the characters is to neglect the more fundamental point that trust is vital to any emotionally and physically intimate relationship. To borrow Nietzsche’s expression, we are all human, all too human.

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1. Annette Choi, “Record Number of Anti-LGBTQ Bills Have Been Introduced This Year,” CNN.com, April 6, 2023 (accessed December 13, 2023).

All That Heaven Allows

Film is an excellent medium for displaying and wrestling with practical philosophy, which includes ethics, political theory, and philosophy of religion (as well as aesthetics, which is a rather obvious topic for film). A film that has a character personifying a particular philosopher’s thought and antagonists rejecting that philosophy, and goes so far as to have a character read on-screen from a philosopher’s book, is the epitome of film doing philosophy. The film, All That Heaven Allows (1955), is such a film.

In the film, a widow, Cary, dates Ron, who is younger and, to her country-club socialite friends and two adult children, a working-class man. Ron’s circle of friends is hardly of the country-club sort, for his friends are lower rather than upper middle-class, and his tree business includes manual labor. However, he owns the business and is free of any time-clock, so he is not a man in the working-class. Although more difficult to spot in the film, the resistance may actually be to Ron’s living out of Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862) philosophy. Douglas Sirk, the film’s director, relates this philosophy to nature, as it is on display from inside Ron’s living-room window of his newly renovated country house next to a stream. To what extent a return to nature is necessary in living out Thoreau’s philosophy is one question Sirk may have intended to raise with viewers. Even Thoreau himself did not view nature in idyllic terms; nor did he advocate having to be perpetually in it to be recharged from it. Indeed, living amid nature presents our species with challenges, as it does Ron in the film when he falls off a cliff on his property. In the film, this question is set through the lens of whether Ron could be content leaving his country house to live in Cary’s house in town.

Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) was a German (though of Danish parentage) film director who left Nazi Germany after his Jewish wife was prosecuted for being Jewish. At Hamburg University, he studied philosophy and history of art. Out of this background, it is no surprise that he would Jane Wyman to hold up a copy of Thoreau’s book as Cary in full view of a camera and read aloud in a scene. In his films, Sirk portrayed characters trapped by social conventions sympathetically. His genre was thus melodrama. Perhaps it was his rejection of Nazi social conventions that gave him such sympathy for characters who suffer from such conventions; indeed, once in Hollywood, he directed the anti-Nazi film, Hitler’s Madman (1942). Perhaps also his move from Germany to California showed him how artificial social conventions are—not only because they can differ so much from culture to culture, but also because those in “tinsel town” can be so utterly petty and fake. In any case, Sirk’s antipathy toward social convention does not necessarily mean that he favored a return or escape to nature, and thus the sort of life that Thoreau lived in New England.

In the film, Thoreau’s nonconformist individualism is made explicit as Cary reads from the philosopher’s book, Walden at the house of two of Ron’s friends, a married couple, who also live in the country. “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation,” Cary reads out loud as Alida listens attentively. “Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it’s because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured, or far away.” The desperation is quiet because the masses repress their expressive urges in order to conform to societal standards, which in turn is presumed necessary to achieving and maintaining position. For example, large companies in the 1950s favored managers who were married over than single for promotion.

After listening, Alida says in reference to Thoreau’s book and her husband, “That’s Mick’s bible; he quotes from it constantly.” Cary asks about Ron, and Alida answers, “I don’t think Ron’s ever read it; he just lives it.” The audience is left with the impression that this is clearly superior. Elaborating on her husband, Alida then says, “Mick thought, well, like a lot of people, that if he had money and an important position, it would make him secure. Ron had neither one and didn’t seem to need them. [Mick] was baffled. The answer? To thine own self be true. That’s Ron. Ron’s security comes from within himself, and nothing can ever take it away from him. Ron absolutely refuses to let unimportant things be important. Our whole life was devoted to keeping up with the Joneses. [Mick] decided to get off that merry-go-round.” Outsourcing self-esteem to be determined or even conditioned by what other people think or say does not bring the sort of psychological stability that is based on self-acceptance “as is.”

As for external crutches like wealth, position, and societal status, such things can be fleeting and are thus not really reliable. Furthermore, a person can always have more money, higher office, or societal status, so the “rat race” goes on and on. In his book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson refers to such maximizing variables, which increase without an internal limitation, as schizogenic forces, which he distinguishes from the homeostatic ecologizing forces that seek an equilibrium instead. The two types of forces are fundamentally different—qualitatively so, differing in kind. An equilibrium, as in perpetually feeling content in one’s own skin as Ron does, is a much better foundation for being at peace with oneself than is a maximizing approach to external assets, whether they be money, position, or societal status. In the film, Wall Street (1987), Bud asks his sordid mentor, Gordon Gekko, “How much is enough, Gordon?” The Wall Street investor replies, “It’s not a question of enough.” A person can never had enough money to satisfy the schizogenic desire for more. Were Ron asked that question in All that Heaven Allows, he would probably just shrug. Ron is unphased when Cary’s son, Ned, asks, “Is there any money in trees?” Ron owns a tree business.

Ron absolutely refuses to let unimportant things be important. Being true to himself and not trying to be someone else to please other people are important to Ron. Cary tells her daughter Kay, “Ron has no intention of fitting in; he’s content the way he is.” To the social-conformist, externally-oriented mother and her two grown children, Ron might as well be on another planet. Such different orientations to social reality and selfhood placed in contact can spark conflict out of fear (of the otherness of the other, as if it were inherently a threat), jealousy, resentment, and outright anger. Ned exclaims to his mother about the possibility of her marrying Ron. “The whole thing is impossible!” Although Ned incorrectly assumes that Ron is working class, and objects to that, and that Cary is only interested in Ron’s muscles, and objects to that, I submit that the real basis of the rejection by Kay and Ned is that Ron’s center of gravity is inward, and that is radically different than an outward, societally-oriented focus. Kay realizes how fundamentally different these two orientations are. “Mother desires group approval,” and she is conventional,” Kay explains to Ron. Such a fundamental difference dwarfs differences in wealth and age. Ned’s explosive threat to his mother evinces an eruption of strong emotion too disproportionate to be accounted for by an objection to Ron’s relative economic condition. “Don’t expect me to come visit you! How could I bring my friends,” Ned nearly shouts, “I’d be ashamed!” The age difference between Cary and Ron, and Ron’s financial situation are not so obvious that Ned’s friends would be embarrassed. Something more is going on: two fundamentally different orientations to self-worth are put in contact and are clashing.

Unwilling to adapt, emotionally stunted, and trapped as if in a tomb, Cary, Kay and Ned unconsciously may feel envious, threatened and perhaps even inferior standing next to Ron’s inner peace. Even Cary rejects Ron, and in so doing, the philosophy that he lives by. “The only thing that matter is us,” Ron pleads with Cary as he sees her being pulled by the gravity of the egos around her. Things that happen in the past are unimportant, Ron assures her. Which car the couple takes to the socialites’ party at Sarah’s house doesn’t matter. That a woman at the party says with disdain in seeing Ron’s car, “Just look at that car!” doesn’t matter. That a man says, “So that’s Cary’s nature boy” doesn’t matter. That Cary accidently breaks the tea pot that Ron has fixed does not matter. Finally, that Cary is staying late at Ron’s doesn’t matter. Ron’s ability to put things in perspective comes from the fact that he is true to himself and thus doesn’t not feel the need to become someone else to please others.

To people oriented to people-pleasing in order to feel accepted, and thus of value, Ron’s dismissiveness of the truly unimportant could be annoying. People do argue about what is important. Even though Ron and Cary can start a new life in the mill that he has renovated to create a home for him and her, I think Ron would move in with Cary at her house were she to insist. To live among people who are alike in how they are fundamentally different from oneself cannot be easy, even for someone like Ron whose sense of inner-worth does not depend on what others say or think about him. To be sure, being comfortable in his own shoes, whether boots or slippers, Ron doesn’t have to live in nature, and Thoreau would agree that it is not necessary; periodic refreshers are sufficient. However, socializing with Cary’s friends would be difficult. The only time Ron’s anger flares is at the party at Sarah’s house, which is filled with the wealthy socialites who know Cary. Those guests blame Ron for scolding Howard for kissing Cary against her will. It is actually Cary who pushes Howard back, so Ron is quite obviously being scapegoated. Whether caused by fear, dislike, or jealousy in others, being scapegoated can take a hard psychological toll on anyone, even someone such as Ron whose emotional stability does not rest on external acceptance. A person can take only so much, and Ron’s flash of anger at the party may suggest that Ron would ultimately leave Cary’s world, with or without her. There are limits even to what self-acceptance can tolerate in a hostile environment.

In the movie Animal House (1978), a “nerd” and a fat guy go to a rush party of a college fraternity; they are quickly directed to sit with the other “losers” while the actual potential pledges are allowed to socialize with the head of the fraternity and other members, which includes the editor of the student newspaper. The two guys would never be accepted in that fraternity; in fact, they would be teased and ultimately rejected where they to stay. Fortunately, they find a frat where they fit.

Fortunately, Cary enjoys herself at the party given by Ron’s friends even though she knows she is different. Yet unlike Cary’s friends of Ron, Ron’s friends are tolerant and include her in the fun. Furthermore, Ron and Cary can be a couple at that party. So even though Cary is scared and emotionally beholden to her children and socialite friends, she is attracted to Ron’s world. After all, it is her who reads Thoreau. Philosophy can indeed play a salient role in film.

Avatar: The Way of Water

Sequel to Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) contains many parallels with the original film—perhaps too many. The most outlandish, yet philosophically robust, concerns the return of Steven Lang even though his character, the antagonist Col. Miles Quaritch, is killed by Neytiri at the end of the first film. Lang delivers some outstanding lines, so it is no wonder that David Cameron wanted to extend Lang’s character’s life. In so doing, Cameron invented the devise of a recombinant, a Na’vi artificially grown with the human Quaritch’s memories and personality implanted in the brain. This device is fundamentally different than a Na’vi avatar body in which a human brain is temporarily infused remotely by a human. In the case of Jake’s avatar body, which has both Na’vi and Jake’s DNA, there is no question that Jake’s avatar is not Jake himself. In the second film, the lines of identity blur between the human Miles Quaritch of the first film and the Na’vi Quaritch of the second. Cameron himself seems to be not of one mind on the question of whether the Na’vi Quaritch is the same “person” as the deceased human Quaritch. I contend that they are not, and, by implication, that a person’s self-identity, based on existing (or experience of oneself) does not rest solely with one’s memories and personality. In short, there is more to being a person. Before applying philosophy of personhood to the Quaritch characters in the films, I want to provide a context by briefly laying out the extent of parallels between the two films.

In the first film, a small, floating rock represents what pays for everything the humans are doing on Pandora. By the second film, the solid substance, unobtanium, is curiously not even mentioned; a liquid, amrita, extracted from the brains of (whale-like) tulkuns, is “what’s paying for everything on Pandora now.” The fluid acts as an anti-aging agent on humans. In the first film, a small rock represents unobtanium; in the second, a vial of amrita represents what comes from a much, much larger animal. The implication is that even a small sample is lucrative, and therein lies the strong motive for the humans’ colonial exploitation of Pandora at the expense of the Navi. Another parallel involves Lo’ak, the youngest son of Jake and Neytiri, who is taught the sea-culture ways by Reya, son of the local chief, in the sequel. “You bonded with an outcast!,” the chief exclaims to his daughter. Similarly, the chief in the first film was not at all pleased when Neytiri tells him that she has bonded with Jake’s avatar. Also, the reference to Jake, Neytiri, and their children as “children” in the sea way of life in the second film mirrors Neytiri telling Jake in the first film, “You’re like an infant.” The astute viewer of the sequel may notice that Neytiri manages a smirk when she and her family are being referred to as children, for she is then as Jake had been when Neytiri began teaching him the ways of the forest Na’vi. Still another parallel exists between the Tree of Souls that is on solid ground (until the giant bulldozers come by) in the first film and the Spirit Tree that is under water in the second film. The implication is that there is more than one way to “connect” with Eywa, so the loss of the Tree of Souls is not as catastrophic as it seems in the first film.

Parallelism as a tool for relating the two films is epitomized, and I think stretched too far, in Col. Miles Quaritch’s “return” as a recombinant in the second film. Quaritch’s becoming conscious in the second film parallels Jake when he first inhabits his avatar body in the first film even though a recombinant and an avatar are very different even though both have a Na’vi body. Becoming conscious from not having been conscious before is not like having one’s consciousness transferred from one’s own brain to that of one’s avatar. Unlike Jake only vicariously occupying his avatar body in the first film, the Na’vi Quaritch has no such mind-body duality; his mind and body are fused together and thus Na’vi rather than human. Therefore, Cameron overstates the parallelism between the Na’vi Quaritch in the second film and Jake’s occupied avatar body in the first film. Similarly, the parallelism between Miles Quaritch of the homo sapiens species and Quaritch of the Na’vi species is overdone—in this case, as identity, both in terms of a person’s identity and the identity of the two characters as identical (i.e., the same “person”).

Yet even as preposterous as the device to continue Steven Lang as an actor in the second film is, the relationship between his two characters is the most philosophically rich aspect of the second film. The political economic issues in the human colonization of Pandora pale in comparison because ontology and existentialism are more fundamental than political and economic thought philosophically. Indeed, my own studies went from political economy to theology and philosophy precisely to go deeper. From such a basis, I contend that Cameron overstates the existential self-identities of the two characters, erroneously fusing them into one identity, and thereby loses sight of what it is to be a particular person rather than someone else.

First, I need to unpack my term, existential identity. The word identity applies both to a person’s awareness of one’s self (i.e., one’s identity) and to two things being identical. Regarding the relationship between the human and Na’vi Quaritches, which spans two films, I could perhaps replace the adjective existential with ontological. Ontology (i.e., about what is real) applies here to whether the two characters are actually one entity, whereas existential places the emphasis on the two existences of (i.e., as experienced by) the two characters—the human and Na’vi Quaritches—without first asking whether they have the same essence. I contend that the experience (i.e., conscious existence) of the Na’vi Quaritch includes awareness of being a different entity than the human Quaritch. Put another way, the Na’vi Quaritch’s conscious experience does not consist only of (the human’s) memories (and personality). Unlike Jake’s avatar in the first film, the existence of the Na’vi Quaritch begins when he becomes conscious.  So I will argue that the Na’vi Quaritch is not a seamless continuation of the human Quaritch. In other words, we shouldn’t take them to be the same “person,” and thus identical, for the respective experiences of the two characters are distinct even though they have a personality and some memories in common. By implication, having the same memories and personality are not sufficient to be someone.

Ontologically, the two characters are two entities; each has his own body that is distinct and separate from the other. They aren’t even in the same film! Even in terms of DNA, they differ because they are, as the Na’vi Quaritch points out to Jake and Neytiri in referring to Spider, the human son of the human Quaritch, of different species. From this ontological basis, the Na’vi Quaritch experiences himself, and thus his identity, as distinct from the human Quaritch, and yet, the Na’vi Quaritch uses the first person, singular pronoun, “I” in referring to the human Quaritch in being betrayed by Jake. Very bizarre indeed. It demonstrates that Cameron has overreached in trying to extend Steven Lang’s character in the first film into the second film.

Just as there is (arguably) more to understanding than the manipulation of symbols (i.e., words) according to rules because a person’s understanding is a part of one’s experience, similarly experiencing oneself as a self—one’s selfhood—is not merely to have a certain set of memories and even a certain set of personality traits. To be sure, memories and personality are powerful ingredients in a person’s identity.

Cameron is on safe ground in having the Na’vi Quaritch repeat lines said by the human Quaritch, such as “Do not test my resolve” and “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” These lines resonate, and so they could have been etched in the human Quaritch’s memory, upon which the Na’vi Quaritch could easily draw from. They resonate so because they reflect a distinct personality, which the two characters both have. Even an impeccably identical vocal stress in the Na’vi Quaritch’s repetition of sayings of the human Quaritch is plausible. “You make it real clear,” “You’re not in Kansas anymore,” and “Lite em up” are the most notable instances. It is precisely such lines that likely motivated Cameron to “essentially” reprise Steven Lang’s role. It could be argued, admittedly, that people usually don’t repeat sentences word for word, so Cameron could be overreaching and thus overstating the identity between the two characters to give audiences more of what worked the first time around.

Even so, Cameron does not characterize the Na’vi Quaritch in general terms as a parrot. In fact, certain differences, such as in the Na’vi Quaritch using the words, scalp in referring to killing Na’vis, Mr. Sully rather than “Jake” in referring to Jake Sully, and labcoats rather than “scientist pukes” in referring to the scientists, can be taken as indications that the Na’vi Quaritch’s personality is distinct from that of implanted one. It would make sense that the experiences of the Na’vi Quaritch, which could not have gone retroactively back into the first Quaritch, have an impact on the personality of the Na’vi Quaritch alone. For one thing, experience with General Ardmore, which the human Quaritch presumably does not have in the first film, may boost the Na’vi Quaritch’s inclination show greater respect and less disdain for his enemies, including Jake and the scientists. The General’s professionalism in torturing Spider, for example, may rub off on the Na’vi Quaritch.

Therefore, both in terms of memories and personality, the Na’vi Quaritch is not identical with the human Quaritch. This suggests that the second Quaritch is at least in part his own “man.” He could still be a continuation of the human Quaritch, but, ontologically, barriers to a seamless continuity in terms of being the same person exist. As I have already argued, the beginning of the Na’vi Quaritch’s consciousness does not extend back to the human Quaritch’s existence because consciousness is not merely of memories and personality, and the body of the Na’vi Quaritch is distinct and separate from that of the first Quaritch. In fact, at one point in the second film, the Na’vi Quaritch crushes the scull of the first Quaritch! It would be absurd were the second Quaritch to say that he is destroying part of his own body. Rather, the second clearly views the scull as that of another “person.”

Nevertheless, the Na’vi Quaritch is of two minds on whether he is the same “person” as the previous Quaritch. General Ardmore also seems to be confused, though she at least seems to come to her senses. In meeting the Na’vi Quaritch, she tells him, “A lot’s changed since your last tour here.” The problem is that the human Quaritch had the tour.  The line is jarring, even out of place. Fortunately, she later reminds the Na’vi Quaritch that Miles (Spider) Socorro, a son of the human Quaritch, is “not your son.” By her tone of voice, I suspect that she realizes that the Na’vi Quaritch has gotten carried away in identifying himself as the human Quaritch and she is trying to draw him back to reality. Were the General to hold both that the Na’vi Quaritch had the prior tour of duty on Pandora and is not the father of Spider, then we would be in a pickle, or a pretzel, for logically we would be faced with a contraction. Unfortunately, this is precisely what confronts us when we turn to the Na’vi Quaritch’s own statements regarding himself in relation to the human Quaritch.

The Na’vi Quaritch oscillates somewhat on the question of paternity, telling Spider, “I’m not your father, technically,” and tone implies that a technicality doesn’t really matter. The General has already sternly “reminded” the Na’vi Quaritch that Spider is not his son. So the “but for a technicality” suggests not only that the Na’vi Quaritch is self-identifying as the human Quaritch, but also that the identification is an over-reach. Somewhat later, the Na’vi Quaritch disavows paternity, telling Jake and Neytiri concerning Spider, “He’s not mine; we’re not even the same species.” This is obviously a bluff, so Neytiri would realize the lack of value in using Spider as a hostage, but at least the Na’vi Quaritch is aware that he and the human Quaritch are, by implication, also not of the same species and thus cannot be the same “person.”  

That the Na’vi Quaritch comes to care about Spider, as shown in his decision to release Jake’s daughter so Neytiri won’t kill Spider, or that the Na’vi Quaritch even takes on a parental role in warning Spider that he might get a whipping if he misbehaves, does not mean that the Na’vi Quaritch takes himself to be Spider’s father, and thus the same “person” as the human Quaritch. That the Na’vi Quaritch empathizes with the human Quaritch, whose memories and personality have been implanted, and whom after all has been killed by Neytiri, is understandable, and thus so too is his assumption of the role of an adoptive parental figure. This is especially so, as Spider could not be expected for be fully at home in Neytiri’s family. Indeed, watching Neytiri kill a human, Spider hides from her lest her prejudice against the Sky People punctuate itself in vengeance against all humans after the murder of one of her sons by a human. Always one to point out that the humans and Na’vi are different and distinct, Neytiri would naturally be skeptical of the actual identity of the Na’vi and human Quaritches, and yet her decision to use Spider as a hostage to get the Na’vi Quaritch to release one of her daughters hinges the Na’vi Quaritch’s self-perception of identity with the human Quaritch. It is not clear whether the Na’vi Quaritch gives up his leverage by letting go of his hostage (i.e., the daughter) because he views himself as Spider’s father, for an adoptive parent would do likewise, but given how much the Na’vi Quaritch wants to kill Jake, I believe that the assumption of fatherhood, and thus of being a continuation of the human Quaritch, exists. This continuation even includes believing that what was done to the human Quaritch was done to the Na’vi Quaritch.

At the same time that the Na’vi Quaritch tells Jake and Neytiri that Spider is not his son, he tells Jake, “I took you under my wing; you betrayed me.” Na’vi Quaritch’s “I” extends back to include the human Quaritch, and yet the Na’vi Quaritch earlier insisted, “I’m not that man, but I do have his memories.” I’m not that man and you betrayed me. Now we are at the crux of the matter! A rational being, whether Na’vi or human, cannot hold that what happened to another being (rational or not) happened to oneself as if “that man” and “I” were not mutually exclusive. Self-identity cannot embrace the identity of oneself and another being. In other words, recognizing the human Quaritch as that man is to recognize that he is at an existential and ontological distance. By the law of non-contradiction, something cannot be both another entity and not another entity. The two entities are thus not identical; they have distinct and separate identities. This makes sense in the case of the human and Na’vi Quaritches, as their respective experiences are different; they aren’t even of the same species. The Na’vi Quaritch did not have a previous tour on Pandora before he first became conscious; General Ardmore is wrong in saying so, but she seems have realized this by the time she tells the Na’vi Quaritch that Spider is not his son because the human Quaritch was the boy’s father.  She comes to realize that the Na’vi Quaritch has been playing the dead character. Were she present later in the film when the antagonist and protagonist finally clash in person, she might tell the Na’vi Quaritch, No, Jake did not betray you. He betrayed the guy whose scull you crushed in one of your hands, so move on, get over it; your life is yours. You are not the person whom even you yourself have referred to as “that man.”