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.”

Wall Street

Oliver Stone’s film, Wall Street (1987) was filmed in the midst of U.S. President Reagan’s push for financial deregulation. As a MBA student at the time, I volunteered to help a professor with his paper on financial deregulation. The theory behind why the NASD (the National Association of Securities Dealers) could self-regulate its members seemed solid enough to this idealistic youngster (i.e., me); I had yet to witness human nature in the field, and over decades. Similar to Marx overlooking the human need for economic compensation as an incentive to work on a daily basis (though I overlook it too in posting free essays online), I was blind to human nature in that I did not see that the NASD itself would protect even its most sordid members so to safeguard the reputation of the profession and, even more realistically, stick up for other “members” of the “club.” The Newtonian-like automatic mechanism whereby industry self-regulation would work was too beautiful to let human nature interfere. Similarly, when I worked in public accounting, I saw the “check mark” indicating that, “as per comptroller, discrepancy resolved,” was just one of several technical points in conducting an audit. The illusion of technique as somehow objective in the business world can shield practitioners from the ethical content. In case you’re wondering how this relates to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, the antagonist Gordon Gekko is the poster child for greed, and thus the reason why the public should not rely on industry self-regulation to police Wall Street. Bud Fox goes headlong into being Gekko’s insider-trading protégé, easily ignoring conscience personified by Lou Mannheim even though he and Bud work in the same brokerage office. In Freudian terms, the id easily defeats the superego. It’s not even a close fight.

This is precisely why externally-imposed (i.e., free of the influence of the political contributions made by Wall Street firms) government regulation is necessary in a Capitalist economic system. Even Adam Smith recognized such a need, and thus that his theory of moral sentiments would not be sufficient. Greed can destroy persons and even entire economies. Wall Street’s greed for the very profitable unregulated sub-prime mortgage-bonds (and the insurance policies on those financial derivative securities), for instance, led to the financial crisis of 2008. The Clinton administration had fought to keep those instruments unregulated. Even after the crisis, Wall Street refused to accept blame. Even after the fact, conscience was easily dismissable.

In the film, Bud Fox’s conscience, as represented by Lou, tells him that there are no short-cuts. Bud dismisses Lou’s wisdom culled from at least 20 years of experience. Bud’s position is that he can good later; got to get the wealth first though—as if doing good depends on being wealthy—but Lou is not referring to philanthropy after retirement from working on Wall Street. Later in the story, Lou senses that Bud has been cutting corners ethically and perhaps even legally and tells the young enterprising man that money makes a person “do things you don’t want to do.” Bud wants to profit off insider info about his dad’s company, however, in order to snag the big fish, Gordon Gekko.

Carl Fox, Bud’s working-class father, tells his son, “Stop going for the easy buck.” But Carl is going after Bud’s industry and thus misses an opportunity to counsel his son on his tactics. To Carl, financial brokerage itself is problematic in that it does not produce anything. He contrasts brokers with lawyers, but both mediate parties who make things. To Carl, GNP is constituted by goods—not services. This is interesting because as an airline mechanic, Carl must know that oil is important to keeping an engine going, and thus things to be produced.

In the 1980s in the U.S. at least, finance was king and business schools were booming. I must admit that I got sucked into that vortex, quite unaware of what was happening in higher education, for I did not even realize that I was reducing education to vocation in the process. In a MBA course, I read what Robert Reich wrote about the American economy increasingly comprised of paper entrepreneurism. Manufacturing had been a casualty in the recession of 1981. During that recession, my hometown lost practically all of its machine-tool industry to Europe and unemployment stood at 21 percent. Gekko’s view of wealth as a zero-sum game fit with the empirical reality of companies moving their factories abroad to capitalize on cheaper labor markets and less onerous regulations. Gekko could have written speeches for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. “America’s a second-rate power,” Gekko says at one point. The federal government is a “malfunctioning corporation” rather than a functioning democracy. The trade and budget deficits were just two indications that the government was in a pathetic way. Pro-business Reagan would hardly have agreed with Gekko’s negative view of corporate America, however.

In too many corporations, Gekko explains at a stockholder meeting, it’s a case of survival of the unfittest. Stockholders have ceded control to non-owner managers, who are after all really just bureaucrats. As a result, too many companies have become bloated. Referring to the company’s management sitting on the stage, Gekko complains that the company has 33 vice presidents. Gekko’s claim to be a liberator of companies has some merit. In breaking up badly run, overextended companies, hostile takeovers cut the fat and move the evolution of American Capitalism in the direction of greater efficiency and effectiveness. What about Bud’s father, Carl, who would lose his longstanding job were Gekko buy another company, Bluestar Airlines, and sell it for parts? Performing radical deconstructive surgery on the U.S. economy involves people’s livelihoods.

Carl has Gekko’s number. This is very clear. “He’s using you,” Carl says to his son. Carl knows that Gekko is lying about intending to keep the airline running. Bud dismisses his dad’s intuition. It does not help that Gekko has become a surrogate father and that Carl is at least in part jealous of Gekko, even apart from Gekko’s wealth. It is important to know that Bud has not gained a second father, for Gekko is not loyal to other people, and certainly not to a young salesman. Gekko lies to Bud about intending to keep the airline together and let Bud run it. That he actually thinks he could run a business merely because he has some experience executing trades shows just how delusional greed can be. Carl provides a reality-test here when he points out to his son that brokerage does not give a person experience tantamount to being able to manage a large business. Blinded by Gekko’s statement, “I’m going to make you rich,” Bud thinks he can do anything. Both Bud and Gekko are in fact greedy and consequently neither man pays any heed to insider-trading law or financial ethics. The S.E.C. is presumably on holiday.

Such is the delusion that can come from greed, the desire for more. This desire is treated as an end in itself. That is to say, that desire is assigned absolute value. God is knocked out of its perch, and relationships go by the wayside. The root is self-love, wherein the self is situated as the center and end of all; truth is a function of subjectivity.

“Greed is good,” Gekko states at the stockholder meeting. Greed works; it clarifies, which I assume means that it puts priorities in order. This goes for “love, life, and money.” Not surprisingly, Gekko admits to Bud’s fake girlfriend, Darien, with whom Gekko has been secretly sleeping with, that he has tried to avoid love. Presumably it gets in the way of his first priority, money. Lest it be concluded, however, that Gekko is the Devil incarnate, we get a glimpse of Gekko appreciating the beauty of the ocean while walking on the beach on Long Island. Even a greedy person is a human being. Even so,  greed eviscerates relationships, especially in a commercial context for there is no loyalty on which business relationships can be built, for the quick buck is all that matters.

Once when I was going to extend my hotel stay at a Merriott hotel, I asked that my rate be continued. The hotel manager refused, saying that hotels are like airlines so the rate is whatever is currently available online, given whatever supply and demand happen to be at the moment. This is in line with the hotel maximizing revenue on a nightly basis. The narrow fixation and the absolute priority on revenue cut off a business relationship from developing. Because hotels differ from airlines in that flights end whereas hotel stays can be extended, I knew that the company’s technocrats had adopted a flawed, ill-fitting model. I did not extend my stay at that hotel; rather, I went to another hotel, and, once checked-in there, I put the Merriott “loyalty" program card, which a front desk employee at the previous hotel had given me, in a trash can. One-sided loyalty is an oxymoron. To be sure, the Merriott company got some revenue from me, but the company stumbled over itself in that it lost much more (without knowing about the future lost business). Any marketing ploy that refers to hotel customers as “guests” is disingenuous because the “hospitality” industry, at least in the U.S., practices such radical conditionality in customer relations. From my observations and reactions to managers at that Merriott hotel, I could sense just how inimical greed is to human relationships in a commercial context.

In general, greed cannot tolerate the ongoing bonds that sustain human relationships, whether business or personal, if those bonds constrict a gain that could otherwise be snagged. Greed’s interests are immediate because the desire for more cannot refuse even a momentary gain even if it means diminishing or losing a long-term arrangement. Even a person’s or company’s reputation is no constraint if there is an easy gain to be had. This does not mean that greed eschews long-term investments and even business relationships that are advantageous (e.g., a discount for frequent business). It’s just that greed cannot be relied upon by counterparties to stay on course should conditions change. Like a cheating spouse, greed won’t let a vow get in the way of instant gratification.

In the film, it is not surprising that Gekko has been cheating on his wife by having sex with Darien. Even business relationships are difficult if greed is all that matters. Larry Wildman, who is trying to buy a steel manufacturer so to improve it rather than break it up (whereas Gekko would break it up), calls Gekko a “two-bit pirate and a blackmailer” who would sell out his own mother. Presumably no one on the street is going to go into a deal with Gekko because he can’t be trusted beyond what is in his immediate financial interest.

Therefore, greed is shortsighted not only in wrecking the finer things in life, such as love, but also in terms of business relationships and even in terms of maximizing wealth in a time horizon beyond immediacy.  Rarely does a person enthralled with greed look into the abyss and find his character. This, Lou tells Bud just before he is arrested at the brokerage office, is what keeps a person out of the abyss. A narrow, “pinhead” mentality is the natural funnel that forms when a person allows the desire for more (i.e., greed) to encompass one’s experience and even existence. Sartre claims that a person’s existence precedes one’s essence. The danger in subjectivity being the basis of one’s essence is that absolute truth is abdicated. Subjectivity itself can narrow without thereby recognizing this and thus being self-correctable. More than looking into an abyss is necessary to grasp a normative anchor. In the film, neither Gekko nor Bud even look into the abyss.

Mary Magdalene

In the film, Mary Magdalene (2018), Mary Magdalene and the other disciples have two different interpretations of the Kingdom of God; these may be called the interior and the eschatological, respectively. The Kingdom of God is within, already and not yet fully realized, or not yet at all, as it will be ushered in by Christ in the Second Coming, which is yet to come. The film’s point of view is decidedly with Mary’s interior interpretation and against Peter’s revolutionary (i.e., against Roman oppression) eschatological take. After both sides fail to convince the other, Peter sidelines Mary in part also because of her gender, so she decides to preach and help people on her own. That the film does not portray Jesus and Mary as romantically involved is a smart move, for it sidelines a controversy that would otherwise distract the viewers from focusing on the question of the nature of the Kingdom of God. This focus is long overdue in Christianity, and is important because only one of the two interpretations—the eschatological—has dominated historically. The film is valuable theologically in that it gives the minority position—Mary’s interior interpretation—a voice. To be sure, Mary Magdalene is a controversial figure, so the choice of that character as a mouthpiece in the film for the minority theological position on the Kingdom is daring and not without its drawbacks. For one thing, she is a woman in a man’s world in the film. Outside of the film, in real life, a medieval pope denigrated her by erroneously identifying her as the prostitute in the Bible, and her reputation had to wait until the twentieth century for the Vatican to correct the error and label her as the Apostle to the Apostles. Finally, there is the Gnostic gospel, The Gospel of Philip, in which Jesus kisses her and the male disciples ask, “Why do you love her more than us?” That jealousy is present in the film, and plays a role in the dispute between Mary and Peter on the nature of the Kingdom. So, returning to the film, having her as the mouthpiece for a minority position that has not seen much light of day historically in Christianity puts the credibility of the interpretation at risk. Accordingly, it may not have much impact in shifting the emphasis away from the eschatological Kingdom in the religion, given the tremendous gravitas that any historical default enjoys.

The version of the Kingdom of God that has dominated in the history of Christianity has the Kingdom not yet here as it depends on the Second Coming of Christ. In contrast, the minority’s report, which Mary holds and advocates in the film, has the Kingdom being “already” and “not yet.” Whereas the Second Coming is external, being evinced in the world and on a collective level, Mary understands Jesus as preaching the importance of the interior conversion of the individual as being crucial to any change in the human condition externally in the world. Whereas the Second Coming commences a revolution against collective oppression and injustice more generally, Mary’s Kingdom gives primacy to each individual letting go of hatred and embracing love. Jesus’ second commandment, to love one’s neighbor, including one’s enemies, fits Mary’s version.

The film is unique among Christian films not only in providing a substantial and sustained dialogue focused on the Kingdom itself, but also in relegating the resurrection and the Second Coming to secondary roles. This corrective is overdue. When Mary joins the other disciples (for in the film, she is a disciple) to tell them that she has just seen Jesus risen, the men have much less trouble believing that Jesus would choose a woman as the witness than in Mary’s notion of the Kingdom. That is, the men seem something less than awestruck by Mary’s good news that Jesus has beaten death and is finally at peace, whereas they are very concerned about the Kingdom. This suggests that for them, the latter is more important. To them, the resurrection is just a sign that the Second Coming will indeed occur and bring with it the Kingdom on earth in a revolutionary battle against Roman oppression.

According to Mary Magdalene, the men misunderstand Jesus’ conception of the Kingdom of God. If she is right, they are relegating the resurrection to a mere sign for nothing. For one thing, Jesus’ insistence in Matthew 24 that “this generation will not certainly not pass away until” the Son of Man comes “on the clouds of heaven with power and glory” undercuts continued belief in the Second Coming itself, for it did not happen while Jesus’ generation was still alive. It does not undercut Jesus’ divinity to say that he is wrong about when the Son of Man would come on clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead, for Jesus goes on to say at Matthew 24:36, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the father.” That the Son is thus not omniscient (i.e., having complete knowledge) raises questions about the relationship between the Father and the Son, but for our purposes here, the problem is that Jesus makes a statement about when the Second Coming will occur then contradicts being able to make such a statement by admitting that he doesn’t know when the event will occur. The contradiction is in scripture itself. Making a claim about something that the claimer knows is beyond the person’s knowledge is itself a mistake. Were I to tell you that I will be arriving next Tuesday and that I don’t know when I will be arriving, you would scratch your head in bewilderment.

When a gospel narrative contains a contradiction in dialogue, it is tempting to eclipse the biblical narrative by going behind it to ask what historically might have been said (we don’t know) or whether a copyist could have inserted the line about the current generation to get the Christians then to wake up. Such a copyist would have erred in creating the contradiction if the line about the Son not knowing the day or time was already extant in the manuscript; otherwise, whoever subsequently added the line about the Son not knowing the day or time—that line likely added after the generation alive during Jesus’ lifetime had died (and the Second Coming had not yet occurred)—erred in failing to remove Jesus’ (or the earlier copyist’s) statement claiming that the Second Coming was imminent.

Whether taking the errors in the gospel as a given or trying to get behind them by speculating about copyists, I contend that giving the Second Coming pride of place in interpreting what Jesus means by the Kingdom of God is not a smart move. Recently, I attended an “Oxford Movement” Episcopal Church “high church” service during which the pastor claimed that the season of Advent pertains to the Second Coming rather than to Christmas. I walked out during the homily and got some breakfast. At the diner, a professor at Yale’s divinity school told me that Advent had referred to the Second Coming from the second to the eighth centuries (notably not from the start). He said Advent came to be associated with Christmas because that is lighter. He was insulting the association with Christmas (even though he going to do some Christmas shopping after breakfast!) “Well,” I replied, “then Advent should be before Christ the King Sunday rather than after it.” That Sunday culminates the liturgical year because Christ the King refers to the Second Coming (which ushers in God’s Kingdom in that interpretation), which is the end of the story. Then the liturgical year begins again with the season of Advent, which I had assumed was universally known by Christians as period of awaiting the birth of Christ, the light coming into the world. How could that possibly be a degradation? I was implying that the Second-Coming referent had been wrong, and thus the subsequent tie to Christmas was an improvement. The scholar demurred. To place a season called advent just before Christmas but claim that the season pertains to another event is misleading at best. It’s just dumb. In actuality, Roman history suggests that Christmas on December 25 only began in the fourth century, so the Advent that had begun to be observed in the second century was a completely different season from what Advent is today. To take what was a completely different season and superimpose it on another season just because they both have the same generic name (advent means “arrival, emergence or coming of” something significant) and claim that the latter season should have the same meaning as the former is asinine. Having a liturgical reading on the Second Coming (e.g., Matthew 24) on the first Sunday of Advent, after Christ the King Sunday, constitutes a liturgical error, given that Christ the King ends the liturgical year. Liturgists would be better off creating an advent season (calling it something other than Advent) that leads up to Christ the King Sunday, and keeping the Advent season of Christmas where it is (i.e., leading up to Christmas, after the Sunday celebrating the Second Coming as the END).  However, to add a season oriented to the Second Coming ignores the scriptural (and perhaps historical) problems with the Second Coming itself. Even if taken only as myth, the Second Coming is weakened by the scriptural contradiction, especially if that comes out of copyist errors, which may suggest that the myth itself was added. The myth may have been added because the world really did not change in the first century of Christianity; something more was needed to effect the change of heart preached by Jesus in the Gospel narratives. That which was needed, however, may have been a different interpretation of the Kingdom of God—precisely that which Mary advocates in the film.

Therefore, I submit that it is foolish to pin the Kingdom of God to a theological concept that is problematic even within the faith narrative alone (i.e., without eclipsing by asking historical questions). Practically speaking, to predicate the arrival of the Kingdom on the Second Coming, which did not arrive while Jesus’ generation was still alive, may push the arrival of the Kingdom off indefinitely, and thus keep Christians from acting so as to bring about the Kingdom now. To be sure, even if the Kingdom is to come in the future, the Bible indicates that Christians can do things now so as to be able to enter the Kingdom in the future. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that when “the Son of Man comes in his glory,” people who have cared for the poor, prisoners, and, moreover, strangers will “inherit the kingdom,” which is “eternal life.” Essentially, the Kingdom in this version is heaven, which may explain why Jesus says that the generation then alive would still be alive when the Son of Man and the heavenly Kingdom arrive. In caring for people beyond one’s friends and family, Christians can make it more likely that they will go to heaven.

It is interesting, however, that enemies are not mentioned explicitly even though Jesus commands his followers to love their enemies. This omission is problematic because, more than helping the poor and even neighbor-love in general, coming to the aid of one’s enemies (and detractors) would “move mountains” in bringing about interpersonal and world peace. The great fault in the eschatological version of the Kingdom lies in not being able to recognize that the Kingdom is present in a heart that overcomes its hatred in order to care even and expressly for enemies, and in a world that is constituted by such individuals who have voluntarily undergone the interior transformation that brings forth forgiveness and even caring where it is least convenient but most needed, given human nature.

Viewing the Kingdom as exclusively “not yet” may itself be erroneous, for Jesus says in Matthew 3:2 that the Kingdom is at hand. There’s a bigger, more intractable problem, however, because Matthew 3 states that the Kingdom is “already” whereas Matthew 24 has the Kingdom “not yet.” The two different interpretations of the Kingdom are both in the Gospel! This is problematic if, as in the movie’s theology, the Kingdom is and ought to be the main focus of Christians and Christianity itself. Supporting this primacy, Jesus states in Luke 4:43 that preaching on the Kingdom of God is the purpose for which he has been sent. This situates him as a means in relation to the Father’s kingdom; he—meaning his preaching—is the way to his Father’s kingdom. To take the way for its destination is to conflate means and ends. It is generally agreed that ends are more important than means.

It is imperative, therefore, that we delve into the rival interpretations of the Kingdom, which we can do by analyzing the dialogue between Mary and Peter in the room where the disciples are hiding on Easter. The film definitely has its point of view, which is in support of Mary’s interpretation. The film backs this up by showing Mary as being the closest to Jesus in a religious (not romantic) sense. For instance, in one scene, after Mary has walked away from the disciples to spend time with Jesus in a field, both characters literally and figuratively look down on the anti-Roman zealotry of the disciples.

After Jesus has risen from the dead, Mary goes to the disciples to give them the good news that Jesus has beaten even death, and is now at peace. Mary refutes Peter’s conception of the Kingdom of God as awaiting the Second Coming for the people to rise and Jesus be crowned king so Roman rule would finally be vanquished. “Jesus never said he would be crowned king,” she tells the disciples. “The kingdom is here, now,” she explains in dispelling the disciples’ misinterpretation of Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom. The disciples see no kingdom because the Roman occupation has not ended, but she insists that “it’s not something we can see with our eyes; it’s here, within us. All we need to do is let go of our anguish and resentment and we become like children, just as he said. The Kingdom cannot be built by conflict, not by opposition, not by destruction; [rather] it grows with us, with very act of love and care, with our forgiveness. We have the power to lift the people just as he did, and then we will be free just as he is. This is what he meant.” The kingdom, she goes on, is not the sort that is of revolution “born in flames and blood.” Peter dismisses Mary’s version, insisting, “just outside that door, there is no new world. No end of oppression. No justice for the poor, for the suffering.” In keeping with, and applying, her interior-oriented notion of the Kingdom, she asks Peter, “How does it feel to carry that anger around in your heart?” If Peter wants a new world, he first needs to swallow his demons—doing so is the only kind of change that can change the world. Nevertheless, he insists that the fact that Mary has seen the risen Jesus means that “he will bring the kingdom.” It is something not yet rather than here already in the heart ministering to anguish and hatred. “The world will only change as we change,” Mary retorts. Otherwise, what we’re left with is cascading revolutions and oppressions with the human heart unchanged in its balance against its own demons. Real change can only come from within, person by person, rather than collectively, as by organizations such as revolutionary governments. This is the point of view expressed by the film. The disciples opposing Mary have misunderstood Jesus. She is, after all, closest to Jesus throughout the film, so her claim of having understood better what he had in mind is credible.

The implications of the dialogue (and the film’s point of view) are important. For one thing, liberation theology is radically off the mark because it puts societal structures ahead of intrapersonal transformation. We won’t get economic and political structures that do not oppress without the people in business and government letting go of their anger and hatred, as well as their related power-aggrandizement and greed. Moreover, the focus on Jesus, including on his resurrection, is itself off the mark, but so too is the belief that the Second Coming will usher in the Kingdom, for it is “already” here even though it is “not yet” in the sense that not nearly enough individual hearts have transformed themselves for the proverbial mustard seed to manifest into a tree with many branches. Going person by person, eventually enough people will have let go of anguish and hatred and thus be better able to love their enemies for the Kingdom to manifest societally in a peaceable kingdom.

Perhaps the most radical implication is that the focus of the Church should be on helping individuals to face their demons and help not only strangers, but also enemies, rather than on worshipping Jesus. In the film, Mary asks the men if they had heard Jesus ever say he would be crowned king. Because in the Gospels Jesus refers to the Kingdom of God as his father’s Kingdom, it stands to reason that the Father is the king, and Jesus dutifully serves him by telling people about his father’s kingdom. This is not to deny Jesus’ divinity, for he is resurrected both in the Gospels and the film. Nevertheless, of the three manifestations (or personae in Latin) in the Trinity, Jesus Christ has received by far the most attention throughout the history of Christianity. The film does not go so far as to suggest that Jesus should not be worshipped. In the film, he is not worshipped, even by his disciples. Rather, in one scene he and Mary watch the men pray to the God of Israel (rather than to Jesus). Even once Mary tells the other disciples that Jesus has risen, they do not drop down and worship him in that scene; rather, their emotional attention is on the nature of the Kingdom, which is thus presumably more important to them. It is not as if the Kingdom itself can be worshipped, and the disciples do accept Mary’s claim that Jesus has risen from the dead, so it is reasonable to think that they would eventually worship him were the film extended. Such worship would not be their primary focus, however, yet neither would Mary’s version of the Kingdom. The film is thus tragic in that we see the disciples except Mary coalesce around Peter and his version, and we know that historically, their side has been dominant while a pope relegated Mary to being a prostitute. The challenge for Christianity may be in how to shift the focus from that of worshipping Jesus and waiting for the Second Coming before the Kingdom can be realized to the worship being a means to focus on Mary’s version of the Kingdom and the human agency that it implies and indeed even mandates. 

The Exorcist

One of the most iconic films of the horror-film genre, The Exorcist (1973) focuses on the duality of good and evil that the film’s director, William Friedkin, maintained is in a constant struggle in all of us. The dialogue between the two priests performing the exorcism on the one side and the Devil possessing Regan on the other not only reveal the duality, but also the essence of evil itself. Once this essence is grasped, interesting questions can be asked that are distinctly theological, as distinct from modernity’s trope of evil portrayed in terms of, and even reduced to, supernatural movements of physical objects. The decadent materialist version of the theological domain stems from modernity’s bias in favor of materialism and empiricism. In other words, highlighting supernatural physics as being foremost in representing the religious realm is how secularity sidelines religion, rather than how religion itself is. The bias of modern society is very clear in the film as the “professionals” go through alternative explanations first from the field of medicine, privileging the somatic (physical) and then the psychological domains of medicine. In other words, the narrative establishes (or reflects) a hierarchy of three qualitatively different levels of descending validity: the somatic is primary, and only then the psychological, and, if the first two do not furnish an explanation, then, and only then, are we to turn to the theological as metaphysically (i.e., supernaturally) real primarily shown by physical objects defying the laws of physics. Science, rather than religion, is thus still in the driver’s seat. The bias in favor of materialism is in the assumption that only after feasible hypotheses from modern medicine are nullified can theological explanations be considered (as credible). In this way, the film reflects the hegemony of materialism that has taken hold since the Enlightenment, and the relegation of the theological as “magical” supernaturalism, as in a bed levitating of objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The essence of evil is instead interior. If religion is a matter of the heart, then how could evil be otherwise?

In the film, the physicians searching for the cause of Regan’s bizarre behavior initially believe that a lesion in the girl’s frontal lobe is the cause. The two physicians are so preoccupied with a somatic (i.e., physical) cause that they ignore the mother’s account of the supernatural shaking of Regan’s bed. One of the physicians insists, “I don’t care about the bed!” The monopolization of the physical medically is here being ridiculed by the filmmaker, for it is ridiculous to ignore a bed whose jumping around so obviously surpasses the physical strength of a child. Secular modernity is being portrayed as defiant, even ideological in the very least in being narrow-minded and petulant and obstinate like a spoiled child.

When no lesion is found, the physicians recommend that a psychiatrist be consulted. Even then, the obvious indications of the involvement of a supernatural entity or force are dismissed. Implicitly, religion is reduced to psychology. It is as if Rudolf Otto’s text, The Idea of the Holy, could be reduced to Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo. In the film, the priest Karras is a pastoral counselor, and he is brought in precisely for his knowledge of psychology. So when the possibility of psychosis can be excluded and the psychiatrists recommend that a priest be consulted to perform an exorcism, Regan’s mother Chris brings in Karras. Bridging both worlds, he confronts his own lack of faith by admitting to himself that Regen really is possessed by a demon. The elder priest, Merrin, is firmly in the theological domain, and so he has no doubt that he is battling a supernatural being of pure evil.

We have finally reached the theological level, having dispelled medicine in its two major categories. Karras’ loss of faith is no more. Significantly, what ultimately convinces the guilt-ridden priest of the distinctly religious basis of Regan’s problem are not the shaking or levitating bed. Rather, Regan’s impossible interior knowledge is what convinces Karras that a being other than Regan exists in the possession. Only an entity other than Regan could know of Karras’ guilt regarding his recently deceased mother and be able to speak English in reverse as well as in Latin. These interior signs are more important to the theological domain than are the physical (i.e., materialism) manifestations of the bed levitating and objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The latter titillating optical displays make good movie-viewing but are hardly in themselves evil, whereas tormenting a priest about his guilt is because evil is the opposite of love.

Nonetheless, Hollywood has focused on how and whether to depict the Devil empirically—as yet another object that can be seen. In the film, The Ninth Gate (1999), the presence of the Devil is shrouded in bright light, contradicting the commonly held notion that evil lies in darkness because it is absent from the light of God’s truth. The viewers never get to see the Devil. In Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the Devil is only visible in one scene, when the beast rapes Rosemary. As in The Ninth Gate, the essence of evil is not depicted; the interior life of the supernatural being is not revealed even though it is much closer to the essence of evil. Likewise, in Poltergeist (1982), the characters’ astonishment is at how the souls and the supernatural entity appear visually.

The Exorcist is an improvement on those films in that even though the Devil itself is not shown (except in an archeological sculpture), its mentality is clear from how it relates to the priests through the dialogue. The blinding white light depicted in The Ninth Gate, the animalistic look of the Devil in the rape scene in Rosemary’s Baby, and the levitating bed and flying objects in The Exorcist do not do justice to the theological realm; in fact, they are distractions. They reveal modernity’s warped caricature of religion in reducing it to carnival tricks. The science of medicine can easily be viewed as superior. The emphasis on the empirical is itself in line with the materialist orientation of modernity. In simpler terms, depicting the theological in terms of physical objects is in service to the preference for modern (empirical) science. I submit that the nature or essence of religion is not material or physical; rather, the essence can be found in sentiments like love and hate.

It is in the dialogue between the Devil and the priests that The Exorcist goes beyond the other films in depicting the nature of evil, and thus of the Devil. That the entity possessing Regan enjoys tormenting the two priests is much more important than what the Devil looks like, or that it makes Regan’s bed levitate.

Once presented with the Devil’s nature, movie-goers can come away from the movie thinking theologically on theology’s own terms rather than on those belonging and pertaining to a qualitatively different domain (e.g., the natural sciences). For example, viewers might consider whether the Devil’s mentality, as depicted in the film, could be loved. Here, a crucial distinction must be made to avoid a Satanist (i.e., pro-evil) misinterpretation.  For the two exorcist priests to love the entity possessing Regan, they would be ministering to the entity with the intention of saving the mentality from itself or else riding the entity of the sordid mentality. Support for the claim that evil can be ministered to exists in  the Christian Bible.

In the Gospels, Jesus says of the evil men responsible for having him crucified, Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Rather than approving or loving their evil mentality, he is forgiving them for having it. In publicly pronouncing his forgiveness, he is ministering even to them, and as a result it is possible, given free will, that even they could be saved from themselves (i.e., the evil mentality). What if Jesus were to minister to the Devil tempting him in the desert? Can an entity whose very essence is the mentality be the recipient of a loving, unconditional heart?

On the ministering side, agape, or selfless love, is unconditional, and for this to hold, an entity that is evil cannot be excluded even if it excludes itself. Even caritas, Augustine’s interpretation of Christian love (derived from Plato’s love of the eternal moral verities) that includes self-love albeit sublimated to having God as its object, is universal benevolence. Caritas seu benevolentia universalis, according to Augustine. A good will (benevolentia) is not universal (universalis) if even the most squalid entity is excluded as an object of the love qua benevolence.

On the Devil’s side, can such an entity be rid of its mentality? I submit that it can, and thus the evil mentality is not the essence of the entity. Because Lucifer falls from grace, the fallen angel (i.e. the Devil) was once without the cold mentality. Therefore, that mentality cannot be the Devil’s essence. The entity can be distinguished from, and thus rid of, its current mentality.  

In The Exorcist, imagine if the two priests were to pray for the Devil’s soul even as the entity enjoys tormenting the two men. Forgive it, for it knows not the love of God. This is the perspective that enables a ministering to rather than an acceptance or approval of the mentality. What if the priests were willing to sacrifice their lives to save the Devil and not just Regan? It seems that the battle against evil would be won by unconditional love, but would the battle metaphor even fit were the priests ministering to the Devil rather than merely getting it to leave by shouting at it?  This would not be to love the mentality as if it were something to be praised; rather, it would be to state that love can not only survive death for the faithful, but also reach into the cold darkness of deep space devoid of God’s presence.

A young Satanist once told me that he loves Satan. “Then God is present in you after all,” I replied, “because God is love.” Love can reach into places that are presumably beyond God, where hatred reigns. Of course, it is one thing for a Satanist to feel love, even though misdirected to an entity with an evil mentality, and quite another for that entity to let go of its all-consuming hatred, ultimately, of God. In the Gospels, not even the Crucifixion dislodges the entity’s mentality from Jesus’ antagonists.

In the television mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth (1977), several members of the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, show no remorse even while hearing Jesus quoting from the Hebrew scripture while suffocating on a cross. One of the members says, “Even now, while nailed to a cross, he quotes from scriptures. Even now.” What would it take for the official’s astonishment at the sincerity of Jesus’ selfless piety to trigger a recognition of the wrong that he had just committed against an innocent person whose piety is evinced even under such extreme duress? After the Crucifixion, a Roman centurion who tortured Jesus rebukes Zerah, a scribe of the Sanhedrin who had instigated Jesus’ arrest, for continuing his obsession against Jesus. Not even having Hebrew guards stationed at the tomb are enough, Zerah insists, because Jesus’ disciples could lie that Jesus has risen, so Roman guards are necessary. After listening to Zerah’s relentless conspiracy theory, the centurion remarks, “What sort of person are you, if I may ask? His death is not enough for you.” Theologically, the message is that intractable stubbornness can continue to hold up complicity in the suffering and death of Jesus. By implication, the Devil surely is not touched by Jesus’ vicarious sacrifice on behalf of others. However, if enough people use the Crucifixion in the narrative as a model and instantiate it in their own confrontations with evil in other people, perhaps it will lose its force even where it is strongest. In other words, perhaps if instead of fighting against evil, we minister to those whose mentality is evil, the very notion of battle will dissolve, and with it, evil too.

In the film Mary Magdalene (2018), Mary Magdalene refutes Peter’s conception of the Kingdom of God as awaiting the Second Coming for the people to rise and Jesus be crowned king so Roman rule would finally be vanquished. “Jesus never said he would be crowned king,” she tells the disciples. “The kingdom is here, now,” she explains in dispelling the disciples’ misinterpretation of Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom. The disciples see no kingdom because the Roman occupation has not ended, but she insists that “it’s not something we can see with our eyes; it’s here, within us. All we need to do is let go of our anguish and resentment and we become like children, just as he said. The Kingdom cannot be built by conflict, not by opposition, not by destruction; [rather] it grows with us, with very act of love and care, with our forgiveness.” Apply this rendering of the Kingdom of God to Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemies and we have a kingdom ultimately built by ministering to one’s enemies, including coming to their aid, and, in so doing, vanquish our own hatred. Our foremost enemy is the mentality of evil. A person letting go of one’s own anguish and resentment first means letting go of that interior mentality, which is a prerequisite to changing the world by loving one’s enemies. In actuality, coming to the aid of one’s enemies can dissipate one’s own interior mentality of evil and thus bring inner peace, so the causal relationship goes in both directions. A person does not have to be at peace in order to extend love to one’s external enemies by ministering to them and thus dissipating external conflict, but having let go of one’s own hatred certainly helps.

In the Exorcist, the Devil tortures the priest Karras by reminding him of his guilt about having consigned his mother to a nursing home. Karras resists the Devil’s manipulation rather than views it as an opportunity to let go of the anguish. He could say, You know, you’re right. I screwed up, but I’m only human and I’m sorry. I do love my mother. He could then let the anguish go. Furthermore, he could pivot to ministering to his enemy’s anguish in feeling rejected by God. That would surely unleash fury. How dare you minister to me! It is pertinent to ask, what if one (or both) of the priests were to sacrifice his life while ministering as loving the enemy? That would be to instantiate the model of the Crucifixion. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” extends that model even to the benefit of enemies. Could even the Devil’s cold heart ignore that model being applied for the Devil itself? The answer, it seems to me, hinges on whether the Devil’s evil mentality is the Devil’s essence or merely an attribute; of the two, only the latter can be changed. I have in mind here Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident. I submit that an entity of the sort that can have a mentality can be distinguished from a mentality because of free-will, which pertains to such an entity rather than to a mentality. If this is so pertaining to the Devil, then surely people who have an evil mentality can be ministered to from the standpoint of unconditional love as benevolentia universalis applies to one’s enemies.

The preceding thought experiment on whether the Devil can be saved from itself is distinctly theological. We aren’t thinking about Regan’s possession in terms of her bed violently jumping and levitating. In being valid in its own right and on its own terms, thinking distinctively theologically relegates and perhaps even defeats the secular primacy of the world of physical objects, and thus materialism. The audacious and derisive encroachment on religion even to the point of rendering it as something primarily physical, empirical, and material, rather than as interior to the human condition, is accordingly pushed back. The essence of religion can be investigated and discovered on its own terms and thus rendered more accurate and complete.

Breathless

Jean-Luc Godard’s film, Breathless (1960), is according to many film scholars difficult to classify in terms of genre. Relative to uncovering the philosophy espoused in the film, genre-classification looks superficial at best. The film becomes a crime story early on as soon as Michel shots a policeman for no apparent reason, and Godard seems more interested in highlighting the film noir stylistic features, such as when Michel repeatedly mimics Humphrey Bogart in running a thumb across lips and perhaps even incessantly smoking, than in constructing a gripping crime-story. Godard deviates from the crime genre as most of the middle of the film is centered on Michel and his love interest, Patricia before fusing the romance with the crime plot. I contend that the “hole” in the middle of the film is actually full of Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism, which is based on human subjectivity and the choices that are made out of it (and no other basis).

The film’s large middle section is not an enigma, even though the narrative is more or less suspended, and neither is Patricia. She represents the problem of twentieth-century modernity as described and explained by existentialism in that she is too weak to make a choice regarding whether to accept Michel’s romantic overtures to be a couple. She has only her own subjectivity on which base her choice, but the weight of the choice is too much for her as she struggles in fear. In contract, Michel steps up to the proverbial baseball home base and definitively choses her. In terms of Sartre’s philosophy, Michel is strong and Patricia is weak. This is not to say that Michel is immune from her weakness. Nietzsche, after all, explains why the strong can be beguiled by the weak and thus made vulnerable in spite of being stronger.

Patricia is the femme fatale precisely because her subjective take on whether she is free—the most important value, according to Sartre—is so mixed up or boggled in her mind that she winds up sacrificing Michel so as to be able know her own subjectivity enough not to be afraid (of it?) and to make a definitive choice regarding them becoming a couple. Her subjectivity is hardly strong enough to be the basis on which she can make a definitive choice. Pathetically, she backs her awareness of whether she has feelings for him out of her decision to turn him into the police. I must not be in love with you because I just decided to report you to the police. I submit that falling in love with someone can be likened to catching the flu rather than being slightly hungry. When a person has fallen for someone or has come down with the flu, one's experience is itself so impacted that it is rather obvious that one is down for the count, even allowing for some lag time in which the person is under the illusion that life will go on as usual. It's not like, Oh, I think I may be hungry. 

Patricia’s subjectivity is hardly strong enough to be the basis on which she can make a definitive choice because she is so unaware of her own consciousness of herself, and yet according to existentialism, such consciousness is the only possible basis on which a human being can make choices, and, in acting on them, invent oneself ex nihilo. “The problem is that I don’t even know,” she tells Michel concerning what is wrong. This alone can furnish her with existential fear, or angst. “I’m not unhappy,” she tells Michel, “but I’m afraid.” In perhaps the best line in the film—a line that suggests that Godard has split the crime narrative in the film in two in order to open the middle up for philosophy—she says, “I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m not free, or if I’m not free because I’m unhappy.” She doesn’t even know if she is happy or unhappy! It is thus not possible for her, at least while in that condition of such limited self-awareness, to be authentic in herself and towards Michel. It is no wonder that he is frustrated with her state.

Heidegger would say that Michel is authentic. “Do you think of dying sometimes?” he asks Patricia. “I do,” he continues. “All the time.” He is not afraid to face the truth that he, like the rest of us, will eventually die. In what can be taken as a premonition, Michel blurts out, “I’m tired. I’m going to die.” In what can be taken as an indication that she has not faced the fact that she too will die one day, Patricia tells him, “You’re crazy.” He is actually well-grounded, and thus authentic, according to Heidegger. To avoid the realization—to hide from it—that death is inevitable is to lead an inauthentic life. In answer to Patricia’s question during an interview at an airport, a novelist says his greatest ambition in life is, “To become immortal, and then to die.” Of course, to be immortal is to not be able to die, so the answer just shows that the writer is evading his own realization. It is no wonder he is a sexist.

Michel is actually a stronger person than Patricia. He even tells her, “I’m more advanced than you.” Why? He has come to terms with his existence as finite, and this thus no longer afraid (as he was when he shot the policeman). As such, he can make an interesting choice that seems absurd or counterintuitive. Patricia reads Michel a line from William Faulkner, a novelist: “Between grief and nothing, I will take nothing.” It’s not clear whether nothing refers to not having any feeling, or not existing at all. Nevertheless, she asks Michel to choose between grief and nothing. At first, he demurs, and thus evinces momentary weakness in not being up to choosing based on his own subjectivity. “Grief is stupid,” he finally blurts out. “I choose nothing. Its no better, but grief is a compromise. You have to go for all or nothing. I know that now.” You have to go all in, rather than make half-baked choices. It is ironic that in being strong enough to choose based on his own subjectivity alone, his choice is for nothing rather than to feel something. It takes incredible strength of will to choose nothing rather than something. Perhaps it is in a human being having come to the realization that someday death will deprive oneself of existing (and out of this, an essence) that one’s choice can be nothing (i.e., either not feeling anything, or not existing) rather an uncomfortable emotion without freaking out.

 In contrast, Patricia does not go “all in” because she demurs on making a definitive choice until the end of the film, and even then, she backs into her choice by choosing indirectly by calling the police to report Michel. Until then, in not choosing, she is nothing because, according to Sartre, we are nothing but the choices (plans) that we make. It follows that Michel is in love with nothing, and yet he goes all in anyway. Put another way, it is not clear that he can be in love with her when she is virtually cut off from her own subjectivity. If she doesn’t know whom she is, and what she feels, and if she is incapable of making emotional choices, how can he love her? How could he trust her?  Well, this is perhaps his fatal flaw, at least in regard to the femme fatale. Even a more advanced, or stronger person is vulnerable. This is clear both to Hobbes and Nietzsche. Hence the latter recommends that the strong maintain a pathos of distance from the weak, lest the sickness, or bad odor, of the latter infect the stronger. Michel misses the “red flags” in Patricia’s indecision and her underlying emotional instability (e.g., her not knowing whether she is happy or unhappy), and thus misses the opportunity to walk out on her to protect himself from her possibly turning him into the police for the murder.  I submit that being in love is an existential space in which a person’s perception of one’s freedom drastically narrows.

Patricia, in Godard's film, "Breathless," is overcome by existential angst.

Patricia is dangerous to Michel because even though she knows that she is free to take or leave (or turn in) Michel, she has not come to the realization that she is indeed free. This is qualitatively different than having a sense of a de facto narrowing of freedom. She doesn’t know if her lack of freedom is causing her unhappiness, or whether her unhappiness is responsible for her lack of freedom. Jean-Paul Sartre would tell her, of course you’re free, for “there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom.”[1] Drawing on Nietzsche’s famous yet typically misinterpreted line, “God is dead,” Sartre concludes as an atheist (whereas Nietzsche had been a theist) that there are no divine commands to ground ethical decision-making and thus “legitimate our conduct.”[2] The only thing a person has upon which to base one’s choices (i.e., plans and actions) is one’s own subjectivity. We are “condemned to be free,” Sartre writes, because the only basis of our choices, and our very essence, is our subjectivity.[3] We can’t get divine decrees from a god who is dead.

Lest we succumb to Patricia’s paralysis of indecision, Sartre wants to assure us that his existentialist philosophy is optimistic, for it “leaves to [mankind] a possibility of choice” because we can invent ourselves through our choices without being tethered to an external authority or tradition.[4] More abstractly stated (by Sartre), “there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept.”[5] In making choices, we can’t rely on a pre-conceived notion of human nature as good or bad. Therefore, subjectivity “must be the starting point.”[6] This spells trouble for characters like Patricia whose subjectivity is elusive, and yet amazing freedom to characters like Michel for whom subjectivity is like a rock on which to invent oneself without being tethered to antiquated crutches.

Drawing on Sartre’s existentialism, we can go further, underneath or beyond (i.e., transcend) the movie’s dialogue, to more fully take account of Patricia’s difficulty in deciding on whether or not to be Michel’s girlfriend. Generally, a person whose choices are based in one’s subjectivity must surely feel a sense of responsibility for those choices once taken. We are responsible for what we are as individuals, and this is in terms of the choices we make. “Thus, existentialism’s first move is to make every [person] aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.”[7]  As if this is not enough weight on one’s shoulders, Sartre goes on to insist that the person is “responsible for all [people].”[8] This is quite a leap; whereas it is easy to accept that Patricia feels responsible for calling the police to report Michel’s whereabouts because her decision comes from herself—no god has decreed that she do so—that she is responsible for everyone as a result seems more tenuous to me unless I have missed dialogue in which she tells Michel that she made the choice not just for herself, but also to show herself as a normative, or model, type of person for others to emulate. Absent such dialogue, such a sense of responsibility from playing a role in the ongoing invention of our species is either absent in her case, in which she falls short of illustrating Sartre’s philosophy, or she is unconscious yet moved by the role-model responsibility.

Sartre maintains that how other people regard a person is important to how that person views one’s own subjectivity. So how one presents oneself—what sort of person one is—is important. The “absolute character of free involvement” enables everyone to realize oneself “in realizing a type of mankind.”[9] In choosing whether to accept Michel as her boyfriend or leave him, Sartre would insist that she has a sense that she is choosing what type of woman she wants other people to see in her. She and Michel have had sex. He very much wants to have sex with her again; in fact, he seems obsessed with several parts of her body at more than one point in the film. She surely realizes that having sex again if they are a couple reflects on her as a type of woman. Sartre would go further in contending that that being that type of person (for others to see as such) and not another type (sex without being his girlfriend) plays a role in the realization of mankind of a certain type.

According to Sartre, “(I)n creating the [person] that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of [mankind] as we think [it] ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose. As a result, my action has involved all humanity. . . . Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of [mankind] of my own choosing. [The person] who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but also a lawmaker who is, at the same time, choosing all mankind as well as himself, cannot help escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility.”[10] Each choice contains normative content in that a value is being created or invented that in turn reflects how our species should be. It is as if each choice of each person is reflected in everyone else and in the whole, and, furthermore, that these are reflected, as in a gaze, back on the respective choosers and thus informing their respective subjectivities. In short, an individual person’s choice, even in whether to accept someone as one’s boyfriend or girlfriend, carries with it a profound sense of responsibility even if the person is not aware of it. Patricia seems not to be aware of it, even in terms of what sort of woman she would be morally.

Perhaps the species-formation “macro” aspect of the responsibility lies in what Jung calls the collective unconscious. Even just economically, Adam Smith held that in a competitive market, both buyers and sellers are fixated on their own respective self-interests and are thus oblivious to the unintended “macro,” or common good. Even as inventors of values from clean slates as Sartre contends, we don’t see how the typical choices we make even in a day play a role in the type of humanity that we collectively are inventing. Whether mankind is good or bad is not preordained, and thus can only be the product of individuals making plans and acting, for these in turn are essentially what we are, which presupposes only our existence.

In conclusion, I contend that Godard suspends the movie, at least as a crime narrative, to present us with two distinct paths open to each of us as envisioned by existentialism. Michel is not afraid to choose, even though his decision to accept Patricia as his girlfriend (and wife?) is based on nothing but his own subjective opinion, which he must know is biased because he knows he is in love with her. Yet he does not waver once he had made the choice. This character provides modernity with a solution to the problem of the death of God. In contrast, Patricia unwittingly succumbs to the crisis of modernity in essentially being lost without external supports like religion or a moralist state. She is thus unable (or unwilling) to reach down into her subjectivity and pull out an answer. She doesn’t even know whether she is happy, and she does not realize her freedom. She can invent values, and thus the type of person that she presents to the world and can even impact the sort of species that humanity is becoming, but all of this eludes her. She is not an enigma; rather, she is a casualty of modernity’s casting away the past—the good as well as the bad. She is explainable as a character in terms of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy. If we have nothing but ourselves to fall back on in inventing ourselves from nothing, and knowing that the world is watching and may copy (or reject) us, making choices may scare the hell out of some people, while others, perhaps a few, may have the determination and guts to go forward boldly into that night of nothingness, which is ultimately death anyway. At the end of the movie, Michel pays the price of Patricia’s unmoored subjectivity and her resulting fear and unhappiness. He is not afraid even of death, and in fact he may bring it on by running away from the police. That his death is his choice may be reflected in the fact that he closes his own eyes. Yet even so, he is stronger than Patricia, and he, not she, can be taken as a role model playing a role in the type of humanity that our species should be.  

---

[1] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: The Wisdom Library, 1957), p. 22.
[2] Ibid., p. 13.  Sartre may be misinterpreting Nietzsche here, for he was no atheist. Rather, his claim was that in admitted vengeance into a being of perfect goodness, that concept of God is discredited. This is not to say that the divine itself does not exist (i.e., the living God). Sartre might reply, however, that without a viable idea of God, we have nothing to fall back on.
[3] Ibid, quoted material.
[4] Ibid, p. 12.
[5] Ibid., p. 15.
[6] Ibid., p. 13.
[7] Ibid., p. 16.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 41.
[10] Ibid, pp. 17-18