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.

---

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.”