Heaven Is For Real: Applying Kierkegaard to a Film

In Heaven Is For Real (2014), a film based on Todd Burpo’s best-selling non-fiction book of the same title, the evangelical Christian minister becomes convinced that his son, Colton, actually visited heaven while in surgery. Todd cannot make his faith-held belief intelligible to even his wife, Sonja. She misunderstands her husband and questions his obsession and even his sanity until Colton tells her something about heaven that applies to her uniquely. Then both parents are uniquely related in an absolute way through faith to the absolute—to the absurd, in Kierkegaard’s parlance. How Todd deals with his realization can be unpacked by applying the work of the nineteenth-century European philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.

Before Sonja comes to believe in the impossible, a formidable wall stands between her and her husband as he grapples with whether to take heaven literally and comes to believe that Colton has been there.  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Sonja tells him at one point. His relation to the absolute, the impossible, has become isolating, for such a relation is individualized, according to Kierkegaard, and incommunicable to others.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard dissects the Biblical story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. Essentially, Abraham goes above the ethical to embrace an absurd impossibility by faith. Faced with God's demand of sacrificing Isaac and God's promise that Abraham's seed will spread, Abraham has faith in the impossible on the strength of the absurd (i.e., that God will somehow present the old man with another child to fulfil the promise). It is absurd for God to have Abraham sacrifice his only offspring and yet promise that Abraham’s seed will populate the nations, yet somehow Abraham embraces this impossibility.

Kierkegaard contends that such an apparent impossibility held by faith cannot be communicated. A “knight of faith” must therefore be isolated in this respect. This is part of the price he or she pays for violating the ethical on the strength of the absurd, which transcends but does not obviate the ethical dimension. "Abraham is silent--but he cannot speak, therein lies the distress and anguish. For [Abraham might say] if when I speak I cannot make myself understood, I do not speak even if I keep talking without stop day and night. . . . The relief of speech is that it translates me into the universal."[1] By the universal, Kierkegaard has ethical principles in mind, for they are on the universal level because they are known inter-subjectively and thus can be understood by others.

For example, a person who resists the temptation to take more than his share of a food can be understood by others as doing so on the basis of fairness. This ethical principle is widely known, so a person acting ethically can appeal to fairness in justifying his or her action. In intending to violate his ethical duty to care for his son, Abraham no longer has access to ethical principles; a person of faith is alone, without recourse to shared understandings and thus support from other people. The paradox or impossibility embraced by faith "cannot be mediated,” Kierkegaard contends, “because it is based on the single individual's being, in his particularity, higher than the universal."[2]  A knight of faith, unlike an ethical hero, gives up recourse to intersubjective (i.e., universally understood) ethical principles; making matters worse, because the impossibility is particular to the individual (i.e., the faith is applied to a particular situation), it cannot be made intelligible for this reason too. God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; it is not as if every man has the same demand and can thus stand in Abraham’s shoes. Therefore, Kierkegaard writes, "The true knight of faith is always [in] absolute isolation.”[3]

As effectively depicted in the film, Todd Burpo suffers from such isolation as he grapples with what his son is telling him and concludes that heaven is for real, rather than imaginary— a dream, fairy tale, or myth. That is to say, he takes heaven’s existence literally, rather than figuratively. Not only is Todd not understood; he is misunderstood, which puts him in a tight spot. Nancy Rawling, a member of the church’s board that oversees the minister, Todd, tells him that his obsession is hurting the church. Besides his leaves of absence, Nancy has a problem with what he is preaching. Underneath, she resents God for taking her son but allowing Colton to live. She does not know Todd’s isolated pain, and thus is jealous.

Before Sonja is convinced that Colton really did visit heaven, she chastises her husband for being sidetracked from cares of this world, including most notably their family. She does not understand that the absolute paradox of existence that so grips her husband is really about their family—Todd comes to this realization only at the end of the film.

Colton tells Todd, for example, that he sat on Pop’s (Todd’s maternal grandfather) lap in heaven. This sends Todd into a frantic search for pictures of the man. When Colton recognizes a boyhood picture, Todd is face to face with the absurd. “That’s impossible,” he says. “Everyone is young in heaven,” Colton explains matter-of-factly. Todd does not notice the inconsistency in one boy sitting on the lap of another boy roughly of the same age, or the convenience for Colton in everyone in heaven being approximately his age.[4]

  

Even Colton’s sister who died in the womb is Colton’s age in heaven. That a baby who had not made it out of the womb in life would exist as a girl Colton’s age in heaven is an absurdity that Sonja initially decries as impossible; but that Colton knows of the miscarriage, presumably from his visit, convinces his mother that her son had actually been in heaven, and, moreover, that heaven is real, literally. From her cognitive conclusion, Sonja suddenly has faith in the impossible. Even though Todd also believes that Colton spoke with the unnamed daughter in heaven, he and Sonja find they can only embrace without words on the strength of the absurd that transcends understanding.  The wholly other is finally ineffable; we are left with the experience of yearning beyond the limits of human cognition and perception.

Seeking nonetheless to be understood and to spread his new faith sourced in his particular circumstance, Todd feels the need to preach on heaven as literal—even inviting radio listeners to come hear him at his church on the next Sunday. “You don’t have to save the world; that’s already been done,” Nancy had already warned the evangelical minister. Kierkegaard warns that a false knight of faith is sectarian.[5] Todd’s partiality—his mission to get others to accept the absurd in spite of his unique vantage-point—stems from the obsession and feeds off pride. In his sermon, Todd claims that love demands telling people that they are loved. Does it? Might this be as much presumptuous as it is compassionate? Maybe love more naturally issues simply in being witnessed rather than being told.  In any case, his Augustinian conclusion from heaven being real (rather than imaginary) that God is love, and therefore that we should love one another, is hardly harmful, and it closes the gap that existed, when he wrestled with the absurd, between his preoccupation with heaven and tending to the people in this world.

Kierkegaard’s knight of faith "is the paradox [;] he is the individual, absolutely nothing but the individual, without connections and complications. This is the terror that the puny sectarian cannot endure. Instead of learning from this that he is incapable of greatness and plainly admitting it, . . . the poor wretch thinks he will achieve it by joining company with other poor wretches.”[6] Hence, Todd advertising his upcoming sermon on heaven to radio listeners can be taken as an attempt to pivot off the insecurity of a faith-based isolation by trying to convince other people of the veracity of his claim and being oriented to how they should live accordingly.

Kierkegaard tells us,

A knight of faith “is assigned to himself along [;] he has the pain of being unable to make himself intelligible to others but feels no vain desire to show others the way. . . . The false knight readily betrays himself by this instantly acquired proficiency; he just doesn't grasp the point that if another individual is to walk the same path he has to be just as much the individual and is therefore in no need of guidance, least of all from one anxious to press his services on others. Here again, people unable to bear the martyrdom of unintelligibility jump off the path, and choose instead, conveniently enough, the world's admiration of their proficiency. The true knight of faith is a witness, never a teacher, and in this lies the deep humanity in him which is more worth than this foolish concern for others' weal and woe which is honoured under the name of sympathy, but which is really nothing but vanity. A person who wants only to be a witness confesses thereby that no one, not even the least, needs another person's sympathy, or is to be put down so another can raise himself up."[7]

Todd expects his distended congregation to accept his faith-claim even though the minister came to it out of his particular relations. In fact, Todd goes on to tell them how they should live accordingly. He dismisses, in effect, the innate unintelligibility of the absurd. It is possible, nevertheless, that Colton’s visit is a dream or hallucination. After all, the book tells of Colton describing Jesus sitting on a throne just to the right of God—an image that fits with Todd’s evangelical paradigm. Interestingly, Colton’s repeated emphasis on heaven being beautiful does not necessarily point to, or require, a literal interpretation. Moreover, the meaning, and sense of spiritual well-being that the boy gets from the experience would not be diminished had he actually been dreaming or hallucinating—the latter from a hormone released by the human brain in the process of dying yet not dead.[8] In turning to preaching his message, Todd is vulnerable to building a house of cards on a fiction.

Kierkegaard’s false knight is plagued by pride, and is too weak to leverage the strength of the absurd into a sustained faith that can withstand the solitude of intelligibility and the ever-present possibility of non-existence (i.e., the visit being a fiction). The figure is akin to Nietzsche’s ascetic priest—a voluntarily-weakened bird of prey that is too weak to resist its (dominating) urge to feel the pleasure of power by dominating others. Telling others how to live by bracketing off areas of strength by Thou Shalt Nots, the weak herd animals who nonetheless seek to dominate are not strong enough to accept their inner constitution of weakness. They are not of true faith, and yet their herd follows them as if purblind. Were Todd content to be a  witness to love simply by loving, he would not feel the need to save the world on the word of his son. As Nancy points out, God’s Son has already done that.

---

[1] Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Penguin Books: London, 1985), p. 137.

[2] Ibid., p. 109.

[3] Ibid., p. 106.

[4] Colton may have been dreaming—sitting on his great grandfather’s lap without seeing the man’s face then suddenly the man is a boy like Colton.

[5] Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 106.

[6] Ibid., p. 107.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have studied the hormone and found it to have such a property. As for common images, we can look to cultural (i.e., shared) myths and the related archetypes (e.g., Jesus with a beard—an image that came about in the early Middle Ages—Jesus being represented as clean-shaven in the ancient Roman, or Patristic, epoch of Christianity).

Gandhi

Film is indeed an art form, but the medium can also function as a teacher in how it conveys values and wisdom. Both of these features of film are salient in Gandhi (1982), whose director, Richard Attenborough, says in his audio commentary that the film has done much keep Gandhi’s philosophy alive in the world. In using the film’s star protagonist to explain what is behind his approach, viewers become, in effect, students. The strength of film here lies in its use of both audio and visual means to engrave the lessons in memories. In Gandhi, the main concept to be explained and illustrated is nonviolent active non-cooperation or defiance of unjust laws or regimes.

In a speech to his fellow Indians, Gandhi declares, “We must defy the British.” The crowd erupts. “Not with violence,” he explains, that will inflame their will, but with a firmness that will open their eyes.” He then advocates burning clothes manufactured in Britain. “If you are left with one piece of homespun, then wear it with dignity!” Active, nonviolent defiance strengthens self-esteem. The strategy also has a strength that counters the force of the unjust.

For example, guards at the Salt Works hit the Indians protesting the British monopoly on salt. As the unarmed Indians walk row by row into the guards, wood swiftly comes down on heads, shoulders, and backs. “Women carried the wounded and broken bodies from the road, an American reporter reads into a phone, “until they dropped from exhaustion. But still, it went on and on.” Then, crucially, he reaches the essential point. “Whatever moral ascendancy the West held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated.” In the voluntary taking on of suffering is a kind of invisible force that confronts the aggressors with their sense of being good rather than evil. In other words, the suffering is like a mirror making the dark side of the human psyche inexorably transparent. Not even a tyrant can put down such a squalid self-image. The image is also likely broadcasted to third parties and even the world at large, likely resulting in the very human sentiment of disapprobation, which Hume calls the moral sense. The culprits may find themselves cornered, psychologically and perhaps even politically and economically.

“I think our resistance must be active and provocative,” Gandhi tells the Congress Party leaders meeting in Jinah’s living room to strategize. “Where there’s injustice, I always believed in fighting,” Gandhi states at another point in the film. “The question is, do you fight to change things or to punish? For myself, I’ve found we’re all such sinners, we should leave punishment to God. And, if we really want to change things, there are better ways of doing things than derailing trains or slashing someone with a sword.” Nonviolent non-cooperation is geared to changing the unjust by forcing them to confront themselves.

“I wish to embarrass all those who wish to treat us as slaves. All of them,” Gandhi tells the Congress Party leaders at Jinah’s house. He then illustrates his point. Specifically, he asks the servant for the tray of tea and starts to serve “I want to change their minds, not kill them for weaknesses we all possess.” He then suggests a day of prayer and fasting, which of course would have the same impact as a general strike. The prayer and fasting are oriented to confronting a person’s own demons, while the societal discomfort draws attention to the demons plaguing the oppressors who are living comfortably while exploiting the Indians. Awareness is the first step on the road to change.

“What about very powerful tyrants like Hitler? Do you really believe you could use nonviolence against Hitler?” a photographer from Life magazine asks Gandhi in a later scene. “Not without defeats and great pain,” he replies. “But are there no defeats in [World War II]? No pain? What you cannot do is accept injustice from Hitler or from anyone. You must make the injustice visible; be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.” The strength in active nonviolent defiance is subtle, unlike that of a club or gun; the impact on the oppressor psyche is reflected in the excessive measures that it takes in reaction.

For example, Gandhi remarks at one point that “Marshal law [in Bengal] only shows how desperate the British are.” Surely some kind of force had provoked the desperation that the British rulers could not shake. The strength of Gandhi is essentially the innate ability of any human being to make force a confrontation within another person between a self-image, which can be so convenient to the self, and the demons that inhabit every person.

More broadly than in nonviolent civil disobedience, the demons plaguing another person’s soul can both be made more transparent and exculpated by means of restorative suffering. While Gandhi is on a hunger-strike to end Muslim-Hindu violence in the newly independent India, a violent Hindu man approaches Gandhi and tosses some bread on the old man’s chest.

“Here! Eat! I’m going to hell, but not with your death on my soul.” Unlike the typical oppressor, the man is already aware of his demons.

“Only God decides who goes to hell,” Gandhi retorts.

“I killed a child,” the man explains. “I smashed his head against a wall.”

“Why?”

“The Muslims killed my son! My boy.”

“I know a way out of hell,” Gandhi offers. “Find a child—a child whose mother and father have been killed . . . and raise him as your own. Only be sure he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”

The hardened murderer is stunned, and collapses at the foot of Gandhi’s slender bed. The great soul has given the angry sufferer a way to reintegrate his soul that is plagued with pain; in coming to see the Muslim side by raising a Muslim child, the man would come to see the other side in the societal strife and therein create space in his own soul for the otherness of the other in place of the seemingly intractable demons. For being a man of peace, Gandhi does an awful lot of fighting.

Just before Gandhi is assassinated by a fellow Hindu, he tells the photographer from Life that “(t)he only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts, that that’s where all our battles ought to be fought.” Civic clashes are essentially projections of those which take place in the human mind between contending urges, and ought to be viewed and attacked as such by opening eyes.

Proof

If you are not careful, you could come away from the film, Proof (2005) as a scientist, for the scientific method enjoys a starring role, albeit mostly in subtle undertones rather than in stark instructional flourishes in Technicolor. Essentially, the message is that confirming proof eludes the human mind and its scientific method. Yet interestingly, the film also captures genius, even if its source cannot be proven.

The film centers around Catherine, the daughter (played by Gwyeth Paltrow) of a brilliant math professor, Robert (played by Anthony Hopkins), who went insane and died; the story takes place just after his death. The dramatic tension is both in terms of relationships and questions of fact. Concerning the former, tension is most salient between Catherine and her visiting sister, Claire. Tension also builds between Catherine and her love-interest, Hal. In flashbacks, we feel tension also between Catherine and her father. Last but certainly not least, Catherine herself is riveted with inner tension, which comes to a major decision whether to go to New York to live with Claire taking care of her or to remain in Chicago to pursue Hal and mathematical notoriety and further advancement. In short, Catherine’s inner conflict lies in whether to buy into the paradigm in which she is deemed crazy or the alternative “story line” in which her apparent craziness is actually a natural reaction to having had to deal with her messed up father and sister.

In terms of questions of fact to be resolved, Hal and Claire seek proof establishing the authorship of the breakthrough mathematical proof written in a notebook locked in Robert’s desk. The handwriting seems to be Robert’s, but it is possible that Catherine’s own resembles his as the two worked closely together on mathematics. Also, it is not clear whether Robert was sufficiently sane to reason through such a momentous proof. Proof is therefore paramount, yet as Hal admits, the author cannot be proved. The film ends with him telling Catherine that in going through the mathematical proof together, the most he could do is prove that she could not have written it. This is none other than the scientific method in action!

In science, alternative hypotheses (i.e., propositions) are eliminated. The elimination can be known with certainty—that is, proved to be false. This is all that science portends; it cannot prove the hypothesis that the scientist asserts. In shooting down alternative explanations, the hypothesis is left standing, but this does not prove it. In trying to figure out who ate the cookies left out on a kitchen counter to cool off, we can eliminate the cat, sister Susie, fat brother Scott and even fat brother Jeff. This does not mean that Skip ate the cookies. That Skip has actually lost weight and is athletic would suggest that he is not the culprit, but this too is not proof. It is possible that the dog Skip (named after the brother) jumped up on the counter and chomped up the chocolate mistakenly taking it for another dog’s poop (this does not mean that the brother known as Skip has the same habit!). In short, eliminating alternative suspects does not prove that Skip is the culprit. Even so, science says we can have greater confidence that Skip is our man. Yet is such confidence warranted? We could be overlooking another alternative entirely. Suppose we are completely unaware that a friend occasionally stops by. The only person who knows is the mother, and she isn’t talking. She would gladly let her son Skip take the rap so she could go on leading a double life.

In the film, eliminating possibilities that Catherine could not have written the proof does not mean that she wrote it. It is possible that both she and her father could have written it. Yet the viewer is left with a distinct answer—that Catherine is indeed the author. In fact, we get to see the very instant in which she had the major insight, while she was reaching in her refrigerator. Seeing genius for what it is—a break-through of ideas past those that had been log-jammed or stymied—is perhaps much more revealing, not to mention satisfying, than whether Catherine actually wrote the proof. The flashback itself functions as proof, though even here this devise is shaky due to the salience of mental illness in the film. In other words, the viewer’s assumption that the flashbacks are meant to reveal what actually happened may be faulty, and thus hardly able to support proof. I submit, therefore, that the film is really about how limited the human mind is. Philosophically, the theme is on the epistemological limits of the human brain. We think we know a lot more than we do. 

The Last Emperor: A Curious Case of Limited Absolute Power

People either obey a powerful government official or rebel. A rebellion does not typically include continued loyalty to the sovereign. The French Revolution demonstrates this point. Yet in China in the 1910s as the Qing dynasty lost power, the authority of the emperor became more complex—or maybe it had been so throughout the dynasty.

Early in the second act of the film, The Last Emperor(1987), the Manchu boy-emperor can do whatever he pleases in the Forbidden City. Behind the massive red walls, he orders one of his eunuchs to drink ink. The man dutifully complies, knowing that he will die from the poison. The boy gave the grave order simply to prove to his emperorship to his younger brother, who had been shouting, “You are not the emperor! You are not the emperor!” The order instantiates absolute power on a human scale—the sort that Thomas Hobbes prescribes for a sovereign king or assembly in the bloody seventeenth-century Europe. Even in being the final say on theological interpretation, Hobbes’ ruler, or ruling body, has absolute sovereignty.

For the last emperor—the last Manchu ruler of the Qing dynasty, which began in 1644—sovereignty is limited to the Forbidden City. Even as he is master of all therein, the Ming dynasty falls to a series of two brief republics—representative democracy in China—and a chaotic period in which warlords contended for greater influence. The teenage emperor cannot very well leave the confines of his city’s walls under such circumstance; his absolute sovereignty is thus limited.

In the scene in which the emperor makes a run for the exit, his own guards beat him to the outer door and close it before him. He orders them to open it, but they do not. Interestingly, they kneel to him and bow their heads in obedience—yet with their swords held upright in front of them. This strange mix of loyalty and refusal may strike the Western viewers as odd. In Mutiny on the Bounty, the rebellious crew-members to not pay captain Bly homage as they ignore his orders. Such a stark “black and white” dichotomy concerning power does not fit The Last Emperor. On the one hand, the very young emperor orders a servant to drink ink, yet five or ten years later the emperor’s guards refuse to re-open the outer door as per the emperor’s order. This strange comparison suggests how artificial human power can be. That is to say, sometimes the authority that some people say they have is exaggerated, even false, yet in having their way those weak birds of prey may exercise their presumed entitlement nonetheless.

For the emperor’s servant to actually drink ink just because a six or seven year-old boy gives the order as some part of a puerile sibling-rivalry suggests that the servant takes human institutionally-dependent authority too seriously. An adult of sound mind would never agree to die as part of a child’s game; yet if other adults are bent on enforcing even such an absurd manifestation of power as coming from legitimate authority, the servant may have died anyway. In other words, when the ludicrous is taken seriously by some adults, the real adults—the stronger ones—may find the lunacy all too real, for practical purposes. Hence, a kid can get away with telling a servant to drink ink even as the guards pledged to obey the emperor refuse his more substantive order to let him through, out of the world of make-believe. Sadly, that world can be all too real. 

Son of God: Comparative Religion in Film

The 2014 film, Son of God, follows a familiar trajectory well-known to viewers who had seen films such as George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Watching the Passion story yet again, I could not help but take note of the repetitiveness from sheer likeness. Yet one scene sticks out among the usual denouement—that scene in which Jesus in the wilderness, the high priest in the Temple, and the Roman Pontius Pilate with his wife in their chambers pray in their own ways and with differing assumptions about divine intent toward a petitioner. The interplay of petitions plays like a tutorial for the ears and eyes on comparative religion, found here even within a religion.

“Father, I know it must be as you will it. Father, take this from me; spare me,” Jesus implores in a quiet voice nearly breaking in the emotionality of the intimate petition. God’s Will is here not in line with Jesus’s immediate comfort; indeed, following that Will would mean severe upcoming suffering and even death.

“Lord I know you are pleased with me, for you sustain me in sincerity,” the Jewish high priest announces as he looks upward, flanked by his fellow priests, in the stone Temple. In stark contrast to Jesus’s approach, an air of formality characterizes the Temple-centric relation. The chief priest finds himself benefitting from God’s Will, thanks to the sincerity the man finds in himself. Such sincerity, he assumes, must surely be based in a foundation beyond himself—namely, God.

In this back-and-forth film-making technique, the viewer is presented with polar opposites within Judaism. The mode or style of discourse with Yahweh and whether the Godhead’s will is convenient or to be grudgingly accepted are each pushed into two camps. Can organic creatures approach the source of existence intimately without dismissing the abyss between Creator and Creation? On the other hand, is formality nothing but puffed up human artifice? Furthermore, does divinely sanctioned suffering represent self-mortification writ large or is the existential angst a reflection of the dearth of pathos in a canyon so wide? On the other hand, is not the presumption that perfect being is so well pleased (and so conveniently) in a hardened heart in actuality an eruption of arrogance? With such questions boiling just below the surface, the viewer is then thrust out of Judaism, if only for a few seconds, and even out of monotheism.

“We thank you, our ancestors, for watching over us,” Pilote’s wife prays as her husband looks on. Ancestors in ancient Roman religion are like saints in that they can intervene to protect if petitioned. Unfortunately, the film overlooks the Roman pantheon of gods, such as Jupiter and Mars, that are roughly equivalent Yahweh. Even so, the petition to the ancestors presents the viewer with the suddenly odd combination of intimate relation and convenient alignment of wills.

“Father,” Jesus implores, whispering intimately. Coming off the convenience of the priest and Pilote, the viewer is suddenly confronted with a very painful misalignment---Jesus’s flesh being weak.

“Praise the Lord, God of Israel, everlasting and everlasting. Amen. Amen.” the high priest shouts. Coming on the heels of Jesus’s soft cry, the distance in the priest’s formality is transparent. Praise the god that is well-pleased in me. Were the priest in Job’s place, would he still praise the everlasting source that can allow for such unjust pain?

“If you will it, Father,” Jesus says in a quiet voice as a tear streams down his left cheek, “if you will it, your will is mine.” The congruence of wills even in the midst of still so much suffering to come severs Jesus from the high priest, and hence the fabric of Judaism would be ripped apart.

In short, this rather unorthodox scene-analysis demonstrates how an entertaining feature-film can present comparative religion in a very effective way. Even within a religion, comparative religion can be done. Perhaps the major pitfall to avoid is that of reductionism. The mature screen-writer and director bracket their particular preferences rather than cast all of the options but one as straw men designed to fail. The multiplicity teeming in human nature naturally manifests itself both in the myriad approaches to the divine in worship and the assumptions that we have regarding alignments and clashes of Will with will. 

The Emperor: Above the Clouds of Petty Protocol

In complex social arrangements, such as exist in governments, business firms, and religious organizations, a person must climb through many levels before reaching persons of sufficient height and occupational breadth that what had been said to be binding requirements suddenly become as though unfettered butterflies. Astoundingly, the mid-level subordinates may even object as the rules are relegated back to their true status as guidelines. Beyond the element of greater authority, a greater perspective in terms of what truly matters is profoundly important in this regard. Having many decades of lived experience, plus a certain maturity in place of pettiness, is also in the mix. A Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, for example, may be more likely to pick up on a sincere heart of the sort Jesus would praise than run through a laundry list of doctrinal requirements. 

In the film Emperor (2012), religion and government are intertwined in the Japanese emperor, who was until shortly after World War II also officially a living god. Although his aides attempt to put General MacArthur into a straightjacket of protocol for the meeting with the emperor at the end of the film, both the general and the emperor are off sufficient maturity and perspective to disabuse themselves of the protocols and focus on the truly important stuff. To discern the petty from the profoundly important is a key feature of upper-echelon leadership.

In the film, Teizaburo Sekiya forewarns General MacArthur before the meeting with the emperor. “there are certain proprieties I’d better make you aware of. You may not shake His Majesty’s hand or touch him. You must never look His Majesty directly in the eyes. You may not step on his shadow. When you sit down with His Majesty, you have to sit on his left. You must never call His Majesty by his name.”

Upon greeting the emperor, General Bonner Fellers obeys the protocol, assiduously avoiding eye contact with the shorter man. General MacArthur begins likewise, looking above the emperor, and says, “It is indeed a pleasure to welcome you here, Your Majesty.” The emperor thanks the general, to which MacArthur thanks the emperor, making eye-contact with a warm-hearted expression and outstretching his hand. The emperor wears a confused look at first, but then gently shakes the general’s hand.

As if the general had not broken enough with protocol, he announces that he has arranged for a picture. The emperor motions to his aide not to object, and moves into position for the picture—the general standing on the emperor’s right.

After the picture is taken, the general announces that the translator is to stay but everyone else in the room is to go to the library while the general and emperor talk. Being excluded, and thus unable to enforce the protocol, Sekiya blurts out, “But that was not part of the plan.” The emperor says “Sekiya” in a way that lets his compatriot know that he is to comply with the general’s wishes. Only the general and the emperor appear aware of the political reality: the general rather than the emperor is running Japan. To the victor goes the task of rebuilding the foe.

The emperor takes his seat, with the general already seated to the left. The emperor then rises, and offers himself as solely responsible and as willing, therefore, to take all the punishment. “This has nothing to do with punishment,” the general replies. Even among two leaders in high places, one can lose sight of the truly important. The general had cut through the morass of thou shalt nots, which the lower and mid-level functionaries hold onto so tightly, to establish a sort of collegial intimacy that renders the two men much more alike than either to his respective subordinates.  Only at that high level can the sun shine above the clouds of minutia, such that eve the gods on Mount Olympus might be jealous of what man can accomplish. “I need your help,” the general beseeches with heart-felt concern for the emperor’s subjects as he looks directly into the man’s eyes. “So let’s see what we can do to get Japan back on its feet.” Both men doubtlessly know that this task lying before them is vitally important, as many Japanese are starving at the time.

The movie thus provides a good snapshot of organizational life being appreciably freer on the top floor and unnecessarily petty on the floors below. How to convince the narrow-minded gate-keepers that their levers are not so vitally important after all is a question in need of an answer. It is telling that Sekiya is so greatly disturbed by the general’s change of plan. MacArthur has used his experience wisely in not having argued with Sekiya as he promulgated the forbidden conduct; the general undoubtedly knew the true pecking order in Japan then, and that he could appeal directly to the emperor as both were unique having responsibility for the whole of Japan and thus would undoubtedly relate.

Behind the 2014 Summer Movie Flops: It’s the Narrative, Stupid

With box-office revenue in the U.S. and Canada expected to come in at only $3.9 billion for the summer of 2014, or 15% lower than the year before, and no film hitting $300 million domestically,[1] the question is whether the dip could be explained by a cycle or some larger, irreversible trend. I contend that two factors push the answer past the typical response that most of the movie franchises would be out in force in the summer of 2015.

Most importantly, the well-trodden recipe for box-office cash may have gradually willowed away good story-telling. The number of flops is astounding. They included “The Expendables 3,” “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” “Hercules,” “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” and “Sex Tape.” Out of twelve sequels, only three managed not to nose-dive. According to The New York Times, audiences had had enough with “same old, same old.”[2]

“Maleficent” did well because it proffers audiences “a revisionist story line with an unexpected twist.”[3] Of course, Angelina Jolie in bondage gear might have had something to do with the box-office success too. Likewise, Scarlett Johansson might have pushed “Lucy” to its $115.1 million in North American sales; her sulky voice had certainly stole the show in “Her.” Yet without fresh, captivating yet not overly complex narrative, the drought in so much of California at the time could easily be said of Hollywood too.

It is no secret that aspiring screenwriters are told both in print and by writers in the business that Hollywood producers look for certain kinds of scripts that are known to sell well, especially if they can be readily made into franchises. In The Screenwriter’s Bible, the author barely hints that stories can have bad endings; The ending had better turn out good if you want to sell your script in Hollywood. Such capitulation to distorting narrative to meet what has sold well in the past is often a “no-brainer” to beginning screenwriters who desperately want in the game. Perhaps they should not be so sycophantic—so much in need of Hollywood. Perhaps screenwriting is best pursued part-time, as a hobby that could wind up paying well, rather than as a career. Yet Hollywood too is to blame, for it has been too easy for producers to go the road most travelled at the expense of good story-telling and thus the film industry’s own best interest.

Alternatives stemming from online streaming, dvds, and better home screens increasingly push movie theaters to justify the value for price that they provide. Films such as “Gravity” and the “Transformers” franchise can justify their appeals to be viewed on the huge screens that only a movie theater can provide, whereas dramas lack such a rationale, and may be more comfortably watched in bed anyway. Films not meeting the raised bar visually probably will not see much action in theaters. Whether visually stunning on a mammoth screen or not, a film must have excellent narrative to draw audiences, at least ideally. The arteries can become blocked, however, as entrenched producers and screenwriters presume erroneously that only the deepest grooved paths lead to the Emerald City. The wizards, detached from the city’s other residents and thus the way things are done, are the screenwriters who dare think outside the box yet are not so far gone as to lose touch with the mainstream audience.

---

[1] Andrew Hart, “Film Industry Has Worst Summer Since 1997,” The Huffington Post, August 29, 2014.

[2] Brooks Barnes, “Movies Have Worst Summer Since 1997,” The New York Times, August 29, 2014.

[3] Ibid.