Disney Re-Making Stories: The End of Creativity?

Politicians running for re-election may “remake themselves.” Companies “reinvent themselves.” If the company happens to make films, are the stories necessarily reinvented—essentially being retold—too? If this becomes the norm, is the implication that storytellers have exhausted the story plotlines that the human mind can conceive? Perhaps retelling old stories is simply laziness and corporate expediency at the expense of substance.

In March 2015, Walt Disney Pictures announced that it would concentrate on live-action versions of classic fairy tales.[1] That the latter had come from Walt Disney Animation Studios renders the strategy synergistic, which is to say, convenient financially. For one thing, the same market-segment is “carried along.” In the case of “Cinderella,” the operative demographic is girls. Other “reinvented” stories on Disney’s radar screen at the time included “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Jungle Book,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Dumbo.” Novelty in storytelling seems to be lost in the same old, same old—albeit in new packaging.

To be sure, some narrative creation goes with even such re-tellings. For example, the re-made “Cinderella” includes a back story explaining the step-mother’s cruelty, new stuff on the prince’s relationship with his father, the king, and a reason why Cinderella “doesn’t run from home or fight back.”[2] These additions take the basic story as a given, however, and this tendency may imply that we have squeezed out all the great plot-lines that we can possibly imagine. Even if the well of plot-types has not gone dry because they have pretty much already been lifted out into the light of day, the habit of “re-inventing” existing stories can orient energy away from narrative creativity to the extent that the empty well becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Audiences used to being spoon-fed the same story over and over may come to expect nothing more and reward the film companies that take the road most travelled. That is to say, the status quo can become a virtual black hole to which potential creative energy cannot escape. As real as the limitations facing creative storytellers may seem, at least some of the constraints may be contrived, and thus artificial.

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[1] Ben Fritz, “Disney Recycles Fairy Tales, Minus Cartoons,” The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

Interstellar: Being in Love as a Black Hole

As difficult as it is to grasp the nature of a black hole and its all-consuming gravity, Interstellar (2014) also traces the powerful yet mysterious gravitational pull of human love, including that utterly unfathomable condition we know as “being in love.” We fall in love, which is an expression that presupposes gravity. Yet such all-consuming attachment may not even in principle have as its object our species itself. Even falling in love may be dangerous—just look at Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

“You have attachments, even without a family. I can promise you, the yearning to be with other people is powerful,” Cooper explains to Dr. Mann in the film to justify getting back to Earth as soon as possible. “That emotion is the foundation of what makes us human—not to be taken lightly,” the father of two adds. We are indeed social animals. Yet we don’t seem to be hard-wired to feel an attachment for our species itself, as demonstrated by humanity’s failure to keep global warming from potentially rendering our wise species, homo sapiens, extinct. In fact, the film pits the yearning to be with another person against the species’ very survival, suggesting that being in love is very powerful indeed as well as possibly ruinous to the species.

Brand’s yearning for a man she is in love with places her in a conflict of interest in giving her recommendation on which of two planets to visit. “Love is powerful, observable,” she says. Here on Earth, we know that being in love can lead people to make drastic life-choices that are irrational by any other calculus. A person in love may decide to suddenly walk away from years of work in a field without even a threat of regret in order to be with the other person in another city. A person whose love is unrequited may abruptly change a daily routine or even move to get some distance from the other person. In addition to hopefully being “cured” of being in love with him or her as soon as possible (though time usually takes it time as a thickener of sorts), ending the fierce, unrelenting pain of the rejection is also of high priority. The continued yearning without its object and the hurt from the rejection can be agonizing if the person loves deeply.

Brand describes being in love as being profound. “Maybe it’s some evidence, artifact of a higher dimension we can’t consciously perceive,” she explains to justify her planetary recommendation being consistent with seeing the man with whom she fell in love many years earlier. Love is the one thing we can perceive that transcends the dimensions of time and space. “I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead,” she confesses. It is as if a worm-hole exists between the two souls, rendering their connection as immediate in spite of the oceans of space between them.

Drawing on Kant, I wonder whether being in love distorts both space and time in how they appear to us. The time spent with a beloved passes must quicker, at least initially, than does the time spent apart when the heart yearns to be at one with the other. The area where the beloved lives and works takes on a drastically different meaning and value, both in itself and relative to other places. This special “bump” may even be immune from the waning effects of time due to its own warp.

Finality, such as in the beloved cutting the person still in love off from any further contact and meaning it, is inherently at odds with the love’s innate ability to massage time and space. Particularly a person who falls deeply in love with another person has difficulty in finality at such depth. It is as if the constructed wall violates fate itself, if not the very nature of the love. Yet a person in love can be wrong in sensing fate being at work; the existential feeling in “falling head over heels” in love—that such loving comes out of one’s very core being—is not the sort of thing that a person can turn off (or on). 

To someone who has never been in love, all of this must seem like something in another galaxy. Even to a person who has fallen in love but is not presently in love with the person in love with him or her, it is easy to dismiss the other person’s condition as insignificant or even crazy. It can thus be easy to walk away without any guilt for what the other person is to go through emotionally.

“Maybe we should trust it even though we can’t understand it,” Bland says as she advocates going to the planet where her beloved may still be alive. But should we? If being in love distorts time and space by means of its relentless gravity, then is it wise for other people and the person in love to trust the emotion? He or she may be wrong about fate; the beloved may not be “the one” after all. Indeed, “the one” may actually be cruel, all too comfortable with finality.

Astonishingly, the person in love may still yearn for the underlying good in the other person even as the beloved is bent on inflicting so much hurt that he or she will never have to see the person again. A person in love willing to risk such rejection to work things out demonstrates just how much he or she values love above all else. It is also likely that a person willing to inflict a maximum pain to be rid of such a person forever demonstrates just how little he or she values love itself. Lest it be concluded that a black hole of sorts resides at his or her core being, falling in love may also be quite selfish. Faced with a powerful, relentless yearning for one person, a person in love is hardly unmoved by what he or she wants. Such love, as well as such hate, may not be trustworthy, and may even be dangerous. Perhaps our species would have evolved better had we the ability to fall in love with our species rather than individuals. 

The Imitation Game: Machines Imitating Man?

What does it mean to understand something? Put another way, what counts as understanding? The film, The Imitation Game (2014), touches on the question of whether machines (i.e., computers) can think, but the film falls needlessly short in pursuing the question. My aim here is to show how film can be more substantive along philosophical lines without sacrificing on entertainment value.

In one scene, detective Robert Nock, bent on getting at what Alan Turing really did during his stint in the British military, interrogates the professor. The exchange essentially springs philosophy of mind on the viewers. Already having watched the construction of a machine (i.e., computer) designed to “think” faster than the group of decoders of the German coder, Enigma, the viewers have some context for the dialogue on whether machines can think.

“Can machines think?” Nock asks. “Could machines ever think as human beings do?”

“Most people say not,” Turing replies. “Well, the problem is you’re asking a stupid question.”

“I am?”

“Of course machines can’t think as humans do,” the professor explains. “A machine is different from a person; hence they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something thinks differently from you, does this mean it’s not thinking? We allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of different tastes, different preferences, if not to say that our brains work differently—that we think differently—and if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say the same thing for brains full of . . . wire and steel?”

Unfortunately, the machine vs. human thinking topic ends there, truncating the film's foray into philosophy of mind. The screenwriters could have had Hugh Alexander, a two-time chess champion of the state of Britain and member of Turing’s decoding group, lsay to the professor later in the film something like, “You say that humans think differently, but you use as examples liking something and being sad about something else. You even throw in an allergy. None of these is thinking. Liking is a preference, being sad is a mood, and a person cannot think himself into being allergic to cats. These examples are not of thinking, and yet you use them as such. Clearly you aren’t thinking very clearly—professor.” 

Stepping back to the “metafilm” level, the screenwriters could very easily have developed the initial dialogue between Turing and Noch in a way that would have enriched the viewer’s thinking about the topic while still being entertained. Behind Alexander’s populist-themed, “Take that! professor” lies an advancement or development of the philosophical dimension of the film.

In fact, the development could have been continued. Not content to let Alexander, a rival in the story, to have the upper hand for long, Turing could have replied with, “I was just using those examples to demonstrate that we humans are different. In terms of thinking more specifically, do we simply manipulate words, which are only symbols really, according to rules, such as that certain verbs can go after the symbol cat?  Is understanding just arranging symbols according to rules that we have agreed on? If so, then machines that do the same thing can understand, and thus think.”

Alexander could reply with something like, “Well, when I understand something like justice, I am not just doing mental games with words and rules for how those rules can be arranged. I just know that something is just, so I don’t think that machines can understand, and therefore think.”

“So maybe the question is whether machines can think without understanding?”

This continued dialogue would essentially play out the beginning established during the interrogation at police headquarters. The viewers would have a sense of intellectual denouement while being stimulated cognitively in the process. Supporting the more explicit line, context could be provided—that is to say, the topic could be hinted at recessively while other points are front and center.

For example, when commander Denniston interviews Turing to be a decoder, Denniston is shocked to learn that Turing does not know German. Turing insists that decoding is essentially solving puzzles, which depends on being good at such games rather than knowing the language. Turing could have elaborated, such that the viewers would get more preparation for the more explicit treatment of the topic in the later interrogation discussion.

Faced with Denniston’s steadfast belief that a decoder must know German, Turing could have added the following. “Even though I don’t understand German, I can still work with the words, which are really symbols, according to certain rules. There are certain rules governing how Gutten Tag can be used, for instance. You can’t use the symbols as an opener at night—that would go against the rules agreed on for the two words. In fact, I don’t know any Chinese at all, but if given a list of characters and a set of rules on how those characters can be used, I could write sentences in Chinese that would be understandable to anyone who has learned Chinese. Does this mean that I understand Chinese?”

“No, surely not. You would be functioning like a machine,” Denniston might reply, “and people are not machines”

“I’m not so sure, at least as far as the military is concerned. But I’m not a machine; I understand decoding, rather than just going through the motions. This is what you would be hiring me for.”

The primary point of the dialogue would be whether Denniston hires Turing. The philosophical question of whether the manipulation of symbols according to rules constitutes understanding (or meaning) would be secondary, as is fitting for laying the groundwork. In this way—working with a dimension of a film (e.g., the philosophical) at various subtilties—screenwriting can be likened to writing a score for a symphony orchestra. In some places, a certain melody in the string section is foremost, while that melody is in the background in a few other places. The various depthnesses lodges the string-melody in the listeners’ respective minds more firmly. 

In terms of The Imitation Game, the viewers would be more engaged with the film even as they are entertained. Perhaps we would be more likely to think about the film afterward. Perhaps some viewers might read more on thinking and understanding, and even on artificial intelligence (AI). My point is that the film would have had more depth without sacrificing on the entertainment value. 

A Theory of Everything

In his doctoral dissertation, Steven Hawkins demonstrates that the universe could have begun spontaneously. That is to say, the big bang could have gone off without being triggered by a divine intelligent being, or God in the sense of the word as used in the Abrahamic religions. To say that the universe could have begun in a moment of singularity is not necessarily to vitiate the deity-concept of all content. In fact, Hawkins’ work may one day trigger a movement to hem in the concept to the terrain that is distinctly religious.

Throughout A Theory of Everything (2014), God as the Creator is depicted in a strict dichotomy with physics as only one of the two can survive intact. I submit that the “either/or” choice is unnecessary because it arises from a category mistake involving religion. In positing God as the first cause or prime mover of a physical process, we distend the religious domain onto that of the natural sciences. Characterizing God as the condition of existence, on the other hand, backs the concept of the deity away from physics, chemistry, and astronomy and thus avoids the unnecessary dichotomy.

We can go even further still, putting some daylight between the two domains. Plotinus, a second century Platonist, characterized God as extending beyond the limits of human cognition and perception. Infinite space and never-ending time, on the other hand, are within our realm and thus not particularly divine. Indeed, what we experience as existence is within our realm rather than transcendent. To claim that God as Creator is the condition of existence can be interpreted as an attempt to source God beyond the limits of human cognition and perception unless that condition is taken as the cause of a sequence of events understandable through any of the natural sciences.My point is simply that theology is not one of the natural sciences, so the choice between them is unnecessary as it stems from a category mistake wherein the religious terrain oversteps or encroaches onto that of physics and chemistry. Pruning back the ancient conception of the Abrahamic deity to the distinctly religious can save the concept from entanglements that pit it against scientific investigation. Put another way, to apply such investigation to God represents a category mistake wherein science oversteps its innate boundaries. Rather than debate if God is behind the chemical reactions known as the big bang as is done throughout the film, we might try to figure out what is distinctly religious or theological in nature. 

The Holiday: We Accept the Love We Think We Deserve

Two women suffering from unfaithful boyfriends swap homes in California and Britain, respectively, where they each meet a local guy and fall in love. By unfaithful, I don’t necessarily mean cheating; rather, the cheating variety can be situated within the larger category of not committing to love one person completely and with fullness of heart. Such is the plot of The Holiday (2006), a film that is essentially about five good people. As the three unfaithful people are pruned out, the viewer is left with an optimistic feeling about human beings being capable of emotional intimacy.

The film opens with Amanda Woods finally getting confirmation that Ethan has been sleeping with a coworker. In fact, the deceitful guy is in love with the other woman. Frozen emotionally from the pain of witnessing her parents split up many years earlier, Amanda cannot bring herself even to cry. In an idyllic hope to get over the hurt by spending Christmas in Europe, she swaps houses with Iris Simpkins. Iris is in love with Jasper Bloom, whose engagement to a coworker takes Iris by surprise. Faced with the excruciating hurt from being in love with someone who has chosen someone else, Iris too goes with the idyllic hope that a few weeks in Los Angeles will lessen or remove the pain.

In England, Amanda meets Iris’s brother, Graham, who does not take long to fall for her. His love is real. Indeed, a deep connection can be sensed up front without meaning it is merely a crush. I think such connections can exist from the start, rather than necessarily coming about only after two people grow together. Amanda is paralyzed deep down, but she finally melts at the last minute and the two are together on New Year’s Eve.

In Southern California, Iris befriends Miles, and their mutually growing interest reflects perhaps a more subtle connection that can “fly under the radar” without detection. Arthur Abbott, a retired screenwriter and neighbor whom Iris befriends, sees the connection before either Iris or Miles, and Arthur’s good nature shows through as he acts as a catalyst. Even so, Iris is distracted by Jasper, who keeps in contact with her for selfish, inconsiderate reasons, and Miles still has feelings for his ex-girlfriend, whom he discovers has been cheating on him. She finally shuts the door (literally) on Jasper when he was visiting her in Los Angeles, and Miles refuses to give Sophie a second chance. Once trust has been sliced apart by not enough love on one end, even the other person being very much in love is not sufficient to heal the ruptured intimacy. Love must be mutual, or it is bound to go off kilter and crash.

In The Holiday, the people who are strong enough in character to say yes to emotional intimacy with one person above all others win the day. The film presents a world in which good people rise above the chaff. Life is not one big picnic with noodle salad for those people; Iris, Amanda, and Miles must struggle, for instance, to overcome their respective feelings for people of a lesser god—wounded souls who for whatever reasons cannot or will not overcome their inner demons and come the rest of the way to adult intimacy. As the last scene shows, much carefree freedom goes with the mutual intimacy, whereas the freedom of the deceivers is illusory, for they are trapped in souls too afraid to grow.

Little Women: Strong in Death and Love

Little Women (1994), based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, can be thought of as a social history of civil-war-era New England—that is to say, the film captures what life must have been like on a daily basis. Yet the human predicament resonates and thus makes the film moving for viewers far removed from the world of the Marsh family in Concord, Massachusetts. In particular, the film confronts the viewer with the hard task of going on even with the emotionally heavy experience of loss.

The film presents the uneasy feeling of “ending” through two manifestations: death and love. Regarding the former, the Marsh family, and especially Jo, must come to terms with the loss of Beth. With a weakened heart from a fever and minutes from death, Beth tells her sister Jo, “I know I will be lonely for you, even in heaven.” Jo’s realization after the death that she will never see Beth is so hard that she writes a novel of her childhood as a means of vicariously holding on to Beth. It is difficult indeed to come to terms with never again seeing a person who has meant so much. This is true too in romantic love when it is as if fate has brought two people together, and yet one demurs and the other must accept the loss.

“You don’t need scores of suitors; you only need one, if he’s the right one,” young Amy Marsh advises her three older sisters.  When a beloved is felt to be “the one,” the forced return to life without that person can feel like a long prison sentence. Few people rise to such a rank; they can be few and far between—which is a testament to their tremendous value. So much distance, in other words, exists between “getting in” and “never to be seen again” that the heart struggles to make the journey.

In rejecting Laurie’s proposal of marriage, Jo feels that she will never find “the one” tailored to her, for she is rather unique as an independent writer in the nineteenth century. Faced with the unfathomable distance between loving Jo and never seeing her again, Laurie marries Jo’s younger sister Amy. At first, she resists, saying she will not date someone still in love with her sister.  Laurie denies it of course, telling Amy, “I have always known I should be part of the Marsh family.” Amy eventually agrees to marry him, and he need not face the prospect of never again seeing someone who has meant so much to him. Although he need not face such a hard sentence, his chosen path back to “just friends” with Jo is not easy.

The transition that Laurie undergoes in his relation to Jo is not one that many people in Laurie’s emotional place can make. Once you start falling in love with a person, it is nearly impossible to going back to just being roommates, for example. Once you discover that the person you are falling for is not falling for  you, continuing as "just friends" almost certainly goes with much pain, especially if the one you love starts dating someone else. 

Fortunately for Jo Marsh, she finds love in Friedrich, a poor academic tutor from Europe. That he is much older than her and comes with empty hands (i.e., not much wealth) are of no concern to Jo, as she really loves him. Putting her hands in his, she tells him that his empty hands are full now. That's love, which transcends, and thus relativizes, all those criteria that seem important in the absence of love but suddenly pale in comparison when a deep connection is felt. 

Life goes on even amid deaths and loves lost—and even love takes hold in spite of it all. This is the message conveyed by Little Women. Facing the prospect of their father’s possible death in battle and Beth’s weakened heart, the little women are hardly little; and years later, in going on after Beth has died, knowing they would never again see her, Meg, Jo, and Amy are hardly little women. Jo is hardly little when she wraps her heart around poor Friedrich. Life is indeed not only the struggle for existence as Darwin postulated; it is also the plight of the elusive yet very deep meaning felt as two people come together as if by instinct. 

Advise and Consent

A film that centers on the U.S. Senate’s role in confirming executive nominations made by the president, Advise and Consent (1962) is arguably about whether moral limits pertain to power.  Put another way, should we expect no-hold barred efforts to manipulate others in the political arena? Personal lives and personal pasts being fair game?  Moreover, is the aim power for its own sake, or the manipulation of others for the sake of a public policy and ultimately the good of the country?

The narrative begins with president’s nomination of Robert Leffingwell reaching the U.S. Senate for confirmation. The Majority Leader supports the nominee out of support for the dying president. The Leader appoints Sen. Brig Anderson to chair the subcommittee that is to hold the hearing. Brig is more concerned that the process be fair and competent than that Leffingwell be confirmed. Sen. Fred Van Ackerman strongly supports Leffingwell because the nominee is for peace in an otherwise harshly anti-communist climate brimming with a penchant for war. Sen. Seabright Cooley, on the other hand, strongly opposes the nominee both  out of a personal vendetta and a concern that he would give away too much for peace.

As the plot thickens, Sen. Anderson learns that Leffingwell lied under oath during the hearing. The senator pressures the president to withdrawal the nominee. The Majority Leader and of course Sen. Cooley support Brig’s decision to delay the subcommittee’s vote until it can be determined why the nominee lied. Sen. Van Ackerman is incensed, however, sensing that Sen. Anderson has turned against the nominee. Van Ackerman realizes he is excessively anxious in the cause of peace, but he goes ahead anyway with what he has uncovered of Brig’s long-past (likely drunken) gay encounter with a friend while in the army. Scared that the blackmailer will expose the skeleton, Anderson slits his throat in his office bathroom. It does not take long for the other senators to discover that Van Ackerman was behind the blackmail and that the president had no knowledge of it. Sen. Cooley, however, did know of it and let it go on in hopes that he could stop it in exchange for Sen. Anderson’s agreeing to oppose the nominee. The Majority Leader tells Cooley that he has gone too far, and this prompts the veteran senator to acknowledge on the Senate floor that part of his motive was his grudge against Leffingwell for having made him look bad four years earlier. Cooley also unbinds senators pledged to vote against the nominee. The Majority Leader in turn unbinds his senators, given the blackmail and suicide, and lets Van Ackerman know that he will not be expelled only because doing so would involve tainting Brig Anderson’s legacy. In other words, Van Ackerman is relegated to a sort of domestic exile in the Senate.

From an ethical perspective, the most transparent line is between political deals to get votes and going into a senator’s personal life to force a senator to vote a certain way. The film illustrates that even such a clear ethical line is like a semi-permeable membrane in the political arena. The fact that the sordid variety of political manipulation can be easily done anonymously makes enforcement difficult at best. Even so, at least the punishment for crossing the line can be strengthened such that it may act as more of a deterrent.

A more difficult ethical assessment lies in how the senators should vote on the Senate floor. The Majority Leader, for instance, favors confirmation even as he strongly opposes Sen. Van Ackerman’s use of blackmail to force a vote as soon as possible so the nominee could be confirmed before the news of his past attendance at a communist group on a college campus could be made public. Should the Majority stick by his friend, the sick president, and vote yes, or is not giving Van Ackerman what he wants (i.e., confirmation of Leffingwell) more important? Sen. Lafe Smith, who had been friends with Brig, votes no. The Majority Leader decides that giving the sick president the secretary of state that he wants is more important; after all, the Leader did unbind the senators pledged to vote yes. Sen. Cooley votes no, legitimately out of a philosophical difference he has with Leffingwell on the place of the U.S. in negotiating with the U.S.S.R.

 If the ethical denoument makes sense but you still feel that the blackmailer got off easy, I’m with you. Generally speaking, the view that aspiring politicians should expect the “hard knocks” of politics is ubiquitous. “You have to expect that your opponents will go after you,” a veteran politician might say to a first-time campaigner. I question this advice, as it leads to society and its government going light on efforts to “destroy” political opponents by using their personal lives (and respective pasts) against them.  It is hard, therefore, to keep “attacks” to the level of policy and office-conduct. Even the common use of words like destroy and attack point to an excessiveness in how political behavior is construed.

The question may therefore be how to raise standards when doing so involves a reconceptualization of politics. That is to say, what we as a people typically take for granted as politics would have to be changed in order that norms and enforcement mechanisms change as well. The strengthened focus on policy alone would be a boon to the viability of any republic. In debates, for example, efforts at a sustained back-and-forth on a given policy often fall to personal attacks with impunity from the moderators. A reconceptualization of politics could make it more costly to a candidate to interlard such attacks rather than concentrate on a sustained line of thought on a given policy domain.

In short, the assumption that politics naturally sinks to its most base level in the political arena can be linked back to how politics itself is understood. After all, it is easy to conclude that politics rules in its own arena and can thus legitimately run its own course, within the law of course. However, politics is that which makes law. Is politics therefore subject ultimately only to itself? If so, then we should expect that anything goes in its own arena. Yet if a moral limit rightfully exists in the human psyche on how far political manipulation should reach, then simply throwing our hands up in a sort of feckless impotence tacitly in favor of the status quo is no answer, for a line must surely be drawn somewhere. If just drawing it is too much for a self-governing people, its republics surely cannot be perpetual.