The issue of class guilt

The act of guilting someone

The issue of class guilt is a relevant one to most middle-upper class sections of the society, especially among a younger generation of people who are "educated". 

It exists because most of us can’t shake away that nagging feeling that we are only who we are, and only think what we think because of an upper class upbringing. And this is true. The importance of context cannot be argued away by any logic of essential identity.

But where this truly gets problematic is in the area of academics or “intellectual” discussion. If you’ve ever been throwing around literary or philosophical jargon casually in some conversation, it’s likely you’ve in some form encountered other people accusing you of your upper – classness. And it’s likely you jumped to defend yourself.

There are two problems with this social exchange though. Firstly, the problem lies with the fact that someone thought to de-legitimize an idea by referring to a discourse of social inequality.  It’s problematic because of an underlying assumption that any idea that isn’t liable to be understood by everyone isn’t probably legitimate as an idea. But such an outcome is inevitable with our system of education. As people gain more expertise in a field, it’s natural that their ideas will become less accessible due to others not having a grasp on basic ideas/jargon that is exclusive to the particular field. 

Secondly the problem lies with the act of defending your ideas. There is no cause to defend such an accusation, because their accusation is true. Your thoughts are the result of what social class you belong to. People of poorer social classes have other concerns and other ideas wholly exclusive to them as well. I don’t mean to equate the two situations, but am only trying to point out that ideas are born out of context. Even poor people have their own societal value and cultural codes just like any other section of society. The feeling of guilt over the fact that high-brow notions are not inclusive of them brings us to our next issue.

To guilt someone about something is to appeal to their understanding of your belief system.

The valuation of Intellectualism

The poorer class of society is one we are constantly reminded of in our arts and education. People everywhere seem to be paranoid that we’d forget about them, or even worse, just not care. In this way, they have become an indelible part of every conversation. I’d say even this very discourse is a result of such enculturation.

The negative side though is that we are all also taught the value of education and knowledge, and over time, it’s likely we ourselves continue to form a scale of intellectualism to different subjects and ideas.

These two notions mentioned above come into conflict within our consciousness. The issue here is that we’re well aware that the notions we discuss are what could be termed as “intellectual”. We’re aware of the narcissistic pride we get out of discussing these things. The problem though is that we feel pity that the poor do not also get to be like us.

I’m just going to disregard the notion that this is only concern and not cultural imperialism that makes you feel this way.
 I mean, if you only cared about the poor people’s well being, you’d just care about their physical needs. But like Americans and missionaries, you also feel like they should be able to know the things you do. After all, their cultural system cannot be legitimized because it’s only the result of a living condition that shouldn’t even exist, right? If your thoughts align with these lines of logic, then congratulations, you have just successfully removed the poor people’s existence from your mind, except as some thing to be uplifted and pitied from time to time. In order to frame things into perspective, this is no different from Americans having seen every black or Native American person as being a savage.

A personal anecdote

A few years ago, after having first watched Into the wild and having been exposed to other similar streams of thought (Throeau and Tolstoy and whatnot), I had a notion that I’d love to go off and live in the wild somewhere, away from societal conventions and ideas of responsibility, accountability and school and all that.

It was only a teenage escapist fantasy, sure, but when I’d shared this notion with a friend, she accused me of my class being the factor that decided this notion, and that I should be thankful for what I do have, since I knew nothing of meager survival, or how it meant to be not middle class. Back then, I’d just somehow tried to defend my position and thereby salvage my pride, but looking back, it indicates other problems to my mind.

What’s problematic here is that her argument completely denies the poorer class’ culture or their role in society, and views them as a default position when you’re not rich. But such an argument is problematic because poverty is the result of societal conventions. They are a part of society as well, and they hold distinct opinions on things as well, even if they might be completely different things from what I held back then. And it’s not as if I was suddenly poor, I’d become like people who have been poor all their lives. I’d still look at things based on past experience.

The problem here was with the fact that such a line of thought also denies me my own context, and instead forces a thought process of not wanting to do middle- class things onto me. Its powerful (powerful in the sense that it can quickly assert its authority) implication is that if I were poorer, then I wouldn’t treasure such a fantasy in the first place. Such ideas seem to function on a notion that only anything that is equal and available to everyone is legitimate in the first place. It’s an idealist, unrealistic idea that is toxic- albeit perhaps born out of good intentions- to any worldview as far as its agency-denying capabilities goes.

A Reconciliation?

I don’t know if such modes are thought are escapable. It would seem that such prejudices are essential to our identities and to the status-quo. I do not know if it’d be easy simply throwing all that off.

But I think a good start would be to look at the poor as people, who not only suffer, but have things they derive happiness from. They’re not simply objects to be pitied and helped up so that they can be more like us.

Oh, and time for a cheesy insert here to end this article (cue Good Will Hunting and stuff):

It’s not your fault.

Moral Orel and the impossibility of true religious belief

When I'd first started watching the show Moral Orel, I found it to be quite a funny show about stupid religious people being unreasonable and and doing all kinds of hypocritical things. Pretty straightforwardly exaggerated satire. Or so I thought.

Because being moral can be wrong too.

                                                        But then as the show progressed, I started noticing a serious topic that was being dealt with and that did exist albeit subtly throughout the first part of the show as well. For the first part of the show, it seems as if we as an audience are quite removed from what's going on due to how strange each narrative segment of the show usually is (what with resurrecting the dead into zombies and whatnot). But later on, as the show progresses, it becomes more serious in some parts, partly because the characters in the show no longer appear to be objects existing to be merely comedic in nature. What happens is that their human element is made more plain to see. And what we see then are simply stupid people just like the rest of us, acting out a certain way based on a belief system. These people aren't all that alien to us. In fact, if that's all they were, then there'd be little point in watching the show other than just to make fun of those "religious nuts".

 The show makes it a point to not merely criticize the people in this show. What it intends to do however is to criticize the religious belief system specifically.

The entire first season is mostly only about Orel as a character, and about how he goes about doing stuff he thinks his religion tells him to. The problem though is that Orel follows the instructions he receives to a tee. The show realizes this essential problem of religious faith today. They're convenient. The people following these religions have countless unspoken rules about how to make this religious system survive. Because without careful selection and the right kind of interpretation, these belief systems simply wouldn't survive. This is what the show is about. It's about the fact that not even the religious folks truly believe in their belief anymore. 

Nietzsche had said that Christianity's problem was that it's will to truth would sooner or later render it obsolete, because the truth is not in itself. But more than a hundred years later, we've seen that Christianity's will to survive has trumped its will to truth for now. 

However, there is an undeniable tension that is present. It's about all the ways in which the folk of Moralton have tweaked their religion to try to make it adapt to the changing world around them. This problem is further explored through Orel himself. As stated before, Orel's problem is that he follows the religion too well, which simply won't work out well because it leads to realistic outcomes as consequence to an unrealistic worldview. He has to then be indoctrinated correctly at the end of each episode by his father. 

The colorful cast of "Moral Orel"

Moralton is a town that has one central theme: repression.  It's about the repression of truth, even if truth only an entity that is merely a post- modern construct. It's about how people must fight this notion with all they've got, even if that means not believing in their beliefs anymore, so that they can pretend like things don't have to change. 

After all, change can be painful and uncomfortable, and it's something everyone tries to fight in their own way, and with a belief system of absolute truths, all we see are very non- absolute ways of interpretation. But the interpretation of the religious text is changing along with context, so that then raises an important question in the viewer's mind:

What are they really fighting against? 

Anthropomorphism and Morality in "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Anthropomorphism in narratives has existed since ages past, but for the sake of this discourse, the only historical context needed is one of the use of anthropomorphism in children's stories, and specifically films with anthropomorphous animals.

Perhaps it is unfamiliarity that makes children so interested in stories involving anthropomorphism, in the sense that although the animals talk and behave, and sometimes even walk as humans do, the very idea itself is one that is strange and- using the word loosely- imaginative and thereby appealing to children's need for newer stimulation for thought.   

This article discusses the historical context of anthropomorphism in children's literature, and this one offers a criticism of such anthropomorphism as being harmful to a child's learning because the child projects humanistic notions of living onto animals.

However, what is the main concern of this present article is what the use of such narratives tells us about the complex thought processes that exist behind the use of such narratives.

Is Anthropomorphism of animals harmful?

Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" could be called a  deconstruction of such narratives of humanized animals.  It does this not by removing the humanistic traits from its characters, but by exaggerating them. All the animals in this film are very human- like from wearing clothes to having jobs to experiencing  existential crises. 

"Who am I?"

                                   

Mr. Fox asks Kylie, his wife at one point, ‘Who am I?’ and then continues, ‘I’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? … And how can a fox ever be happy without a, a – you’ll forgive the expression – a chicken in its teeth.’

This is Mr. Fox's main crisis: of how he is forced to lived humanly within a humane society, when really, he feels like a "wild animal" as he himself says. He cannot steal chickens from farmers for example, because there is a moral code with a justification (he could get into trouble) behind it that prevents him from acting out in this manner. It is really anthropomorphism that is Mr. Fox's enemy.

 What this offers is a critique of applying humanistic values onto animals, because in essence, this signifies a philosophy of moral absolutism, where morality is not something that is simply born out of societal context probably as a means of survival. In other words, our moral values are limited to context, and are irrelevant when applying to other cultural contexts (or species, in this case). 

This interpretation explains the somewhat unusual ending of the film. Unlike most children's narratives where the character does something wrong and then finally learns from his mistake, thereby resolving his moral crisis, this film ends with Mr. Fox continuing to steal. This is not an immoral end, but rather could be seen as a moral fulfillment in that Mr. Fox has come to terms with his own moral standards. 

Mr. Fox's son Ash goes through a sort of crisis too because of the fact that he is unable to live up to his own societal standards. His own narrative also consists of himself trying to find fulfillment of  the self by negotiating with the societal standards that loom over his life. Ash's cousin Kristofferson on the other hand is valued in society for his athletic skills. This shows us of how these characters' complexes and crises are all in on way or another, driven by similar structures to morality that denote the position of the person (or animal, in this case) in society.

With its ending, the film is not suggesting that stealing may be good or bad. It does not attempt to take up a distinct position, but is rather simply trying to point out that the discourse of stealing is one that should be flexible, and that any absolute position adopted regarding the matter could limit our understanding of the discourse itself and its role in society. 

Without a transcendental signifier such as God, Truth, etc as is the case in a post-modern world, morality has to constantly be re-evaluated according to context because what you consider moral could easily also be considered a prejudice by others, and  may also be an unrealized signified causing harm to the self and to others, without even being necessary in the first place for one's context.  

In this sense then, the film deals with perhaps the most relevant issue to people from since ancient cultures, which is one of negotiating  the self's identity (morals and all) with the culture it belongs to. 

Does Society find your "intelligence" attractive?

You know how films since some  time ago consistently feature protagonists who are total geeks? Even shows like say, The Big Bang Theory does this. It's a reversal of the times when a lot of the protagonists were Jocks who were well- built and athletic. Of course, if it's  Spiderman  we're talking about, then Tobey McGuire gets  to be both a nerd and athletic-looking(obviously looking the part is all that matters) because well, a spider bit him .

And then there were all these people talking about how smart is the new sexy. Is it true? Are your days of loneliness numbered?(You're obviously an intelligent person! You  tell that to yourself all the time!)

Eh, I don't think so. Because contrary to what people would have you believe, societal standards are never about living up to the standard, but rather about appearing to live up to the standard. Now, when it comes to physical attractiveness, the idea is fairly straightforward: "if you look the way we want you to, you pass". But it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that this means that the standard of smartness means  being smart is what is required to be considered attractive. Let me rephrase my earlier statement to explain: "If you're intelligent the way we want you to be, you pass."

You see, when society has a standard of intelligence, it is not that this standard means that everyone within a certain range of IQ is attractive. Because society defines intelligence on its own terms. What really makes you attractive is appearing to be "intelligent", because appearances are all that matters in this scenario. We're not talking about if you get to fall in love that beautiful woman or that beautiful man(let's assume such things require more than mere appearances), but rather if these people would even find you attractive in the first place. But to get to how people perceive you, let's first discuss society's definition of intelligence.

One of the most common traits I've seen that are shown to be possessed by "intelligent" people is a certain degree of social awkwardness(Sheldon from TBBT, Sherlock from 'Sherlock', House from 'House'.....am I the only one thinking this or do these latter two shows' titles sound suspiciously narcissistic? Not implying anything!). This social awkwardness is explained by the idea  that intelligent people have a hard time communicating with people of lower intelligence(pop-science at its best!). But this is nothing  more than a stereotype. Yet,  it matters. Because now that this one characteristic is attached to intelligence, it is important that you act socially awkward to be intelligently attractive. It was never the intelligence by itself that made Sherlock or House attractive, but  rather the many characteristics attached to the intelligence associated with these characters. So, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that that shabby looking  person is actually a genius who does not care for societal standards. Except, he is following the standard for a non- conformist.

Another important way in which the system dictates what is intelligent is by having you dismiss things that a lot of people like as "mainstream" or"mediocre", and pursue some vague obscure works of art that more than anything helps define your taste. Regardless of whether you know it or not, those books you read, or the arthouse films you watch, are important to you primarily because they make you appear intelligent. These are all standards. If you even think that acting a certain way makes you rebellious, it's because a system has laid down the tenets of what makes a person rebellious. Of course, buying into it makes your ego feel all warm and fuzzy, so it's all fine, right?

Well, it is fine...until the system fails you. Because all of this is a lie. No one is really going to perceive your rudeness to be symptomatic of a genius' behavior, like that of House's. They are just going to perceive it as straightforward rudeness. Because it's easy to forget something: that characters like House and Sherlock act the way they do within specific contexts set up for them by the narrative so that they are perceived the way they are. So, if you're socially awkward and justify it in your mind by thinking that House and Sherlock are that way too, it is only you who makes this comparison of yourself  and no one else. To them, you're just socially awkward. You might not be liked  by other people, but you may comfort your ego by thinking of the narratives of all of these people who are not well-liked either but are highly successful anyway. You might think it's only a matter of time before people notice your genius and you end up successful, but yeah, keep dreaming...

It only matters to you: the artsy stuff you like, the justification for your behavior,etc. Just like the people buying all of the different varieties of make-up in the hopes that they will live up to a standard, you behaving the way you are is also only because you're trying to live up to a standard. And like all standards perpetuated by impersonal systems, the people in these systems care little about whether you live up to any standard. But you, or your ego, or your subconscious mind does care very much about these things.

And that's why you'll try so hard. But here's the kicker: It was rigged to fail you from the start. 

'Frank' and the culling of the ego (Why I like 'Frank' more than 'Whiplash')

Am I the only one who thinks 'Frank' is a largely better film than 'Whiplash'? Maybe not, but the latter is easily the more popular film, and is definitely the one more accessible to a mainstream audience. Because as  revolutionary as people claim it is, it still does a few things 'right' to meet an audience's expectations. A young dude who's the underdog, but has something distinctive about him(we're told  so by an authority figure, so it mist be right), and is pushed to his limits by some authority figure and finally rises out on top. The ending here is important because it gives us the audience closure and thereby a sense of catharsis. It does not matter if this sense of catharsis is based on a false premise (after all, the protagonist may just die of a heart attack for all we know) but the movie tries its best to inform us that success and  good fortune lie ahead for the protagonist. One of the ways we've  been acculturated to interpreting  and understanding 'art' is by identifying with the 'hero' figure and by sympathizing with him and looking at the world through his eyes. As such, the protagonist's success is ours too. We want to know that in the end, success can be achieved through hard work, and the fact that the protagonist did this seems to provide us with a sense of comfort  that could be argued to be a false one.

On  the other hand, in a film like 'Frank' which I would say relies on such a narrative technique so that the audience identifies with the protagonist, we  are not left with a catharsis the way we are after a film like 'Whiplash' because 'Frank' portrays the narcissism associated with the very idea of  protagonists and the way we interpret them. I don't think that we as  an audience want the underdog drummer to succeed because we see something distinctive about him also, but rather because we think we can be him. This does not mean that we want to be good drummers, but it may apply to any field in our lives. What's important to note is that we want the protagonist to 'win' because we want to 'win'. We are rooting for him because we see the world through his eyes and we want the world to conform to, or to justify this perspective. It is the definition of narcissism to think that your perspective is the only one, and that everything else exists only to justify this. I'm not criticizing such behavior in itself, but am only trying to point out the reasons why we interpret such a narrative the way we do. So, it's important to remember that the 'hero' figure does not have to be morally upright or particularly heroic to warrant our unconditional support(it is after all unconditional). He warrants this support simply by virtue of being the protagonist (see any number of antagonistic leads for reference: Walter White, the Taxi Driver(yes, i forgot his name), Batman (don't bother telling me he's heroic), Light yagami from Death Note, and so on). 

Unlike 'Whiplash' which can either be interpreted as a somewhat grotesque understanding of music, or an exaggerated critique of the growing sense of elitism attached to Jazz music, the music only exists to show us how 'difficult' it can be. On the other hand, in 'Frank', the music itself tells a story of the quirkiness and a feeling of exclusiveness that exists in any band. and there are multiple interpretations of music  shown to us as an audience through the different interpretations of the music the band members themselves hold. And this is why the protagonist's- Jon's- venture into the band causes problems: because he does not understand the varying interpretations of music that exist, and more importantly, how important these interpretations are to the identity of Frank and the other members of the band.

Just like in 'Whiplash', in 'Frank' too we are shown the world through the eyes of an aspiring musician (a keyboardist/songwriter) and once he gets into the band 'Soronprfbs', he tries to- in his own words- "earn his place in the band". And we see how he attempts to have his songs played in the band, even though Frank appears to be, even to him, a genius songwriter. 

To Jon, earning his place in the band is important because of his ego. He  wants the band to become famous because he's in it. And like usual protagonist stories, it's likely that you rooted for Jon even though he's not a particularly likable person. He is however, the most sane person in the band and with the most 'normal' sense of music. He still sees music as a combination of chords used in a fixed progression. On the other hand, to Frank, the chords do not matter and he revels in the possibility of dissonance within the music. Because like their dissonant music, Frank and Clara are difficult to make sense of in society. And anything that can't be made sense of is dismissed by society. But in their music, they find solace not because it's great or because it could make them famous, but because it is who they are and they put everything of them into the music.

In the beginning, you must have noticed how Clara is painted as a kind of antagonistic character and the only way Jon is able to interpret her behavior is that she's crazy, not even giving  a second thought of why she is the way she is, and chances are you bought his interpretation.  This is because Jon like the rest of society fails to try and understand these characters. He's only interested in having his lame and generic crap played by the band. But of  course, to understand Jon as a one- dimensional character would be a mistake, but it's easier to identify with Jon in the first place, since he is the protagonist.

However,  towards the end, we see how the band starts falling apart. Frank is still interested  in being loved and accepted by people unlike Clara and this is why he goes along with Jon to perform in front of all those people. And this seems to be why Frank wears the big head, because he doesn't think people can accept him because of  his appearance. He doesn't want this to  be a hindrance in how people judge him.

And it's only when Jon starts singing  his own song in front of the crowd that Frank can't take it anymore and collapses saying "the music is shit". It's after Frank runs away that Jon's catharsis begins because now  we see that he seems to genuinely care about Frank. Perhaps he did all along, in his  own narcissistic way. But now, he's able to make sense of Clara's actions as well: she was only trying to protect Frank. Maybe she didn't want Frank to know that they'd never be accepted by society the way they are. And Jon seems  to realize this when he apologizes to the band: "I ruined everything". It's self- pity sure, but he's now able to understand the consequences of his actions and with the way he perceived  his band members. It was only because he was thinking that these people existed only in relation to his own existence that he acted in a way that ended up causing damage all around. (You can actually see the protagonist in 'Whiplash' act in a similar way as well: he pushes away his girlfriend, acts like a douche towards other drummers in their group, and so on. But the difference is that in 'Whiplash', the protagonist seems justified in his actions because he's able to drum really fast by the end, and obviously that's all that matters!)

In the end, Frank is disillusioned and no longer bothers wearing a mask and we get to see his scarred  face. Because wearing the head has lost its significance to him. It's not that society now accepts him: they or rather we don't. But it is that he has realized that his fellow band members who are every bit as weird as  him will always accept him regardless of whether he wears a mask or not. Jon realizes why he mustn't stay in the band and why the band needs to maintain a certain sense of exclusivity. And as  he walks away, if you're still watching this film as you would 'Whiplash', you feel sorry for him. But if not, you should be able to see that this is Jon being heroic, this is Jon changing. But this causes his ego to take a hit and this is why we don't want this to happen either. We want to be told that he was right,  not that he's a better man.

'Frank' is not like 'Whiplash' in the way that it's not about Jon's journey to fame and fortune, but it's rather about his journey to understanding  that he's not some main character in a film.

And the more we realize this, the closer we are to accepting those who aren't quite like us. After all, it isn't that when Frank sings "Lonely little carpet tuft", he is doing  so without any reason. There are reasons behind the weirdness no matter how strange or unreasonable it may seem or sound, and all we need is a little bit of context to know this to be true.

It isn't brave to think you're the hero, but I think it is to accept you aren't. 

The movie is the Game (On David Fincher's 'The Game')

So I only just watched Fincher's 'The Game' recently and went right to reading what other people thought of it across the interwebs and unsurprisingly, people were comparing it films like Dark City and others of the '90s that tried to really hit it home to us that reality is only a construct. But it would be quite stupid if that was all a 2 hour film tried to say, right? So, I've tried to look for more than just that simplistic message.

And I think I've found  something.

Like the horde of films from Dark City to Inception, the film can be seen as a a representation of Baudrillard's simulation and simulacra that tries to tell us that what we believe to be reality can simply be a construct and some of these narratives offer a cautionary tale while others tell us why buying into the con is all we can really do  since the simulation is a hyperreality and we don't have an alternative. This film seems to fall in this second category.
Nicholas Van Orten is a corporate biggie who is cold, uncaring and one who seems to care only about his work. Alright, we've heard waaayy too many stories along such lines, right? Hang on, and hear me out.
When Nickie's (as his brother calls hims) brother Conrad presents him for his birthday with a card that lets him into a game that's run by a company called CRS is when Nickie's life has already begun to change. But we must ask the question, is that only when the game began?

As the game takes Nickie through increasingly dangerous (apparently, at least) situations, we see his  paranoia set in and how he suspects every person, and every line and every movement to be a part of the game. And as an audience, we do this too. We don't know ourselves when the game stopped being a game and turned into an attempt to rob Nickie blind. And we're supposed to feel this way. We're meant to buy into the movie's con, because quite  overtly, the film is about among other things, a film's narrative structure which itself can be seen as a simulation where we temporarily believe that what is happening onscreen is real. A film only affects us the way it does if there is a suspension of disbelief on our part. And for most films, we are quite willing to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy film and its often ridiculous tales. Except, we're asked to question this very act in this film, but I'll get to that later.

Throughout the film, we see Nickie's reality being destroyed or rather deconstructed by the film. It starts with the creepy clown imitating the manner of his father's death which was by suicide and which has had an obvious effect on Nickie throughout his life. The game  is constantly re-contextualizing all the different aspects of Nickie's life, including his relationship with his brother, his brother's role in the game, his money, etc. Actually, speaking about money, you could see the film as also being about Marxist theory in the sense that Nickie's life centered around his money is not based on usefulness but rather based on the desire to have money. It's a simulation in itself, the money that is.

But to see the film merely as being about the uselessness of money and finding happiness in life would be to simplify it without understanding how we've arrived at that answer.
Towards the end of the film, when it is revealed to Nickie that it was all, in fact a con, we see how Nickie doesn't believe them. How could he, after all? It was them who told him that that they were robbing him, and they did try to kill him more than once. But a more appropriate question than how he could believe them would be "What can he believe?". If all of reality could be a construct, then what is left to believe in?
And in a haze of confusion, anger and tiredness, Nickie shoots his brother as he's bringing the champagne out. They'd tried to tell him it was only a con. In his guilt, Nickie jumps off the top of the building, but he's made it out alive. Turns out that his brother dying was a con too. This would be about when you start questioning how far the con goes, and this is where Nickie stops. He's just glad to see his brother alive, because  to him, it doesn't matter if it's all a con, as long as he doesn't have to feel the guilt he just did a moment ago when he'd shot his brother and as long as he can feel loved for and be able to love in return.Think of it from Nickie's point of view: he ended up shooting Conrad only because of his disbelief in what appeared to be real, and he realizes that he can't risk disbelieving things since it might cost him something he's unable to live with(or without). Nickie's life changes not because he realizes what is not real, but because he doesn't know- and cannot be sure of- what is real.

Even as Nickie runs after the girl at the closing scene, we can see the biggest con of all: the movie. Everything we're seeing is simply the work of elaborate sets and pretty good editing. Before Nickie had shot his brother, they try explaining that they were simply using movie props and that the people he'd come across were all simply actors. But you've known this, haven't you? You've known that the people you're seeing are actors. But you were  willing to suspend your disbelief in order to understand the movie and enjoy it. And I still couldn't believe them. I mean, how could they have known Nickie would jump into where they'd predicted, or that he'd escape from the car underwater? You could argue that they'd known from the tests and maybe they had security measures in place. But that isn't the point. The point is that the narrative from the start was a con. It was always a movie. We just chose to ignore that fact.
Nickie buys into the con because there is no other reality to look for. The girl he has a crush on, his brother, his ex-wife, his father's death: these things are as real as need be. They are real to Nickie. These things have defined him and there's no escaping them regardless of the fact that they may have all been a con.

And that's why the movie is the game. From the start, it was set up to con us, and to con Nickie if you look at it the way The Truman Show narrated its story.

What else can he do but buy into the con?

What else can we do?

The Problem of a Perfect World in Narratives

So, I've arrived at the conclusion that before I write any more articles, I'll need to establish a few centers for reference so that whoever reads stuff on my blog(assuming there are such beings) can know a bit of the context in which I say what I say.  So, in this article, I'd like to discuss one of the latest of a problem we are faced with in a long line of such problems.

So first, let's try and understand the historical basis so we can better understand the problem we are faced with.

Narratives always contain the opinions and thereby the prejudices of its authors. As such, it's only natural that an author living in a conservative society such as 16th century England will have some of these conservative ideas reflected in his work as well. So, if his society believes that a woman's primary role in society is to look pretty and provide a means of passing on the man's legacy (child- bearing machines), then it's quite likely that an author who belongs to this society will hold this or other such prejudicial views(Of course, there will always be artists who challenge the existing notion of what is considered proper by society).

"This kind of art needs to be done....again"

 And so, throughout time, we see these ideas get transformed into deep- rooted prejudices, and these are passed on from narrative to narrative. The interesting factor here is that even when the society abandons (overtly at least) its old ideas as having been too conservative, the narratives still continue using them in a case I like to call 'narrative prejudice'. A part of this at least can be explained by the fact that artists are always influenced by older artists and their older art that came before them. This does not mean that they always follow in their footsteps. On the contrary, artistic movements are constantly rejected and are replaced by newer ones that the artists connected to them feel are more relevant.It may even be cyclical in the way that ideas related to older movements may be later seen to be more important than the existing ones. And yet, certain elements which we now know as 'tropes' continue to be used for reasons such as their convenience(this being that someone's already done it before, so not much thought needs to be spent on it) and familiarity. So, even if society as a whole now believes it is wrong for women to be discriminated against, narratives continued to use the old tropes that portray women as anything but.

Because women need to be badass

But of course, it's not long before society catches up with narratives that use such 'regressive' tropes and demands for a reformation in the world of sexist, racist and otherist narratives. And so, all of a sudden, the writers and filmmakers are faced with a problem of having lost a trope they relied on all these years to pass their work off as art, and they turn around and find- what they think- is the only possible solution to the problem: to do the opposite. Before you think that the opposite of sexism is  no- sexism or equality of the sexes, think again because experience has taught us that the opposite is simply a different kind of sexism. 
So, suddenly, the old damsels in distress are replaced by gun- wielding, ass- kicking, superwomen which is still as sexist as the 'damsel' trope or maybe even more so.  Because what this says is that women need to do 'masculine' stuff to be accorded respect. And all the while, if such a strong female character is still incapable of exercising her agency, then  we are faced with a problem as is seen in The Hunger Games.
So, now that society has recognized the limitations and implications of the old tropes where women were helpless and all black guys were aggressive or short- tempered, writers are quickly abandoning them only to replace them with just as bad tropes such as the trope of the black best friend.
I find it disturbing to simply throw in a butt-kicking shallow female character, or a couple of African- Americans(as if they're ingredients: a kilo of Mexicans, a couple of Chinese dudes, etc and done!) to justify the moral sense of the work itself. But then again, things always tend to work this way. Reactionary ideas can be as problematic as  the ideas they reject, as evidenced by the problem of a work like Game of Thrones rejecting the moral premise of The Lord  of the Rings.

In part at least, I think such developments are the result of the kinds of criticisms that were levied against works that used the old tropes. I'm sure these criticisms were well- meaning, but good  intentions are not enough to make other people make well- realized art. And honestly, I think the writers themselves largely miss the point since they just jump from one kind of racism and sexism to another kind each time the one kind is criticized.


And then, in time, I started noticing a curious shift in the way texts were dealing with these problems, and one of the first places I noticed it was in video games, especially role- playing ones such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect where regardless of what race or sex you choose for your character, the narrative treats you the same. The implications of this is that regardless of what kind of character you choose to play, it is your actions that define your character.  Now this kind of works in such a scenario because of  the fact that it's an RPG and such games are all about showing you the effects or consequences of the decisions you've made along your quest/journey/etc. There's also an element of convenience involved where the developers don't have to write different scripts or lines of dialogue based on racial or sex differences. Also, no one can accuse these narratives of displaying racist or sexist prejudices since well, they do not have anything overtly racist or sexist in them. Now, critique of such works praised these elements of 'equality' present in these narratives.

And all this seems fine until you look at it from another perspective. Up until a while ago, narratives used physical deformities or 'ugliness' to portray evil or morally reprehensible characters. Of course, these tropes have been subverted in various texts throughout the ages. And when it comes to films of the '90s and before, you were bound to come across the comic- relief character with some physical abnormality who is funny specifically because of this physical abnormality. But of course, criticism was levied on texts which simply used  characters with physical deformities as something to be laughed at or made  fun of. And it must have been around this time that the writers and filmmakers struck upon an ingenious idea: to remove the source of the criticism itself. In other words, they realized that a solution would be to simply 'remove' ugly characters from the work itself. So, whereas earlier we had villains be ugly, now the villains are sexy too. Hell, everyone's sexy now: from the protagonist to the antagonist to the comic relief characters. It's one bright world filled with rainbows!.... except it isn't. These texts still have no problem having violence and other 'ugly' themes in them, but they just want to have these while being politically correct. At least before, there *were* ugly characters (though  not in enviable places). Now the ugly characters don't even get to have a place in a narrative. They are ignored.

And now, you see that with the example of the video games I mentioned earlier, the same is being done with the sexes and races. The narratives of women or men, and racial minorities who are discriminated against are  simply ignored. It's a subtle kind of racism to have no racism at all in the text, since you're refusing to address the real problems of someone who is discriminated against in favor of pretending these people are not faced with any problems at all. In part, at least the perspective of audiences are to blame since we seem to think that since the author is fully in control of his work (especially when it comes to fantasy genres), he can remove all the unpleasant stuff that exist in the real world from his fictional world.
But what's the point of any fictional world if it does not deal with the concerns we're daily faced with in the real one?

And this is what I mean by the problem of a perfect world. Narratives that use such a 'Perfect World' setting are nothing but imperfect. Writing a female character just like you would a male one is  well- meaning I'm sure, but this does lead to the disappearance of a large variety of narratives. Pretending like ugly characters don't exist is  more offensive than portraying them in a  negative light(at least they exist), I think. Besides, it's not as if the perfect world is really perfect, it's simply more politically correct. Comic- relief characters now tend to be intellectually lacking(though I'm sure it won't be long before we lose narratives involving stupid people as well) or something else if not that. What I mean is that when a criticism is levied saying that people who are not very intelligent shouldn't be made fun of, what's happening is that instead of writing meaningful stories involving these people, writers are finding it easier to simply get rid of them.

And so all in favor of badass women, and beautiful people, what's happened is that the narratives of the not-so-badass-women and ugly people who too have the right to have their stories told, have disappeared. And I know that  I'd  rather have an imperfect world narrative than a politically correct one any day of the week.

The role of perspectives in narratives Part I: The Third- Person narrative

The third person narrative is perhaps the most popular form of narrative across art mediums such as film and literature. This seems to be primarily because of the fact that the third person narrative offers a lot of freedom to the author of the text (film being included under the category of 'text' as well).
In a first person narrative, there are serious limitations as to what content can be explored by the author, mainly because the author is restricted to approaching a given idea or story from a singular perspective. This does not mean that the text itself cannot have nuance or that it does not support multiple interpretations.
In fact, I feel like the focus of the first- person narrative makes it more effective in many cases than a third- person one. This is not something pertaining to the particular forms themselves, but rather to the widespread use of them in our culture.

One of the general ideas associated with a third- person narrative is that the narrator himself (yes, it can be "herself" or "itself" too, so don't bother calling me out on it) is an omnipresent, omniscient impartial being who simply narrates a given story impartially. Firstly, I'd  like to address a fallacy associated with this idea which is that the fact that an omnipresent, omniscient being is even following the story of a select few people (presumably) or is interested in exploring a select few ideas, or that it is following the events on a planet- all of this makes the narrator partial, primarily because the story itself is taking a certain direction and it should be remembered that the story is given meaning because of this focus lent by the narration. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be such a focus, but rather that the pretense needs to be dropped for more meaningful narration.


The problem with the author playing God and us as an audience reading it as such is that his/her text then denies the role of Perspectivism and instead implies that the way we are shown the story is the way the story is, and not the way it is seen. Such a viewpoint reduces the role of nuance and is more or less redundant in its approach to narration. For example, look at the kind of narration used in 'Harry Potter'. The narrative shows us the story from many viewpoints but we can easily sympathize more with Harry and the rest of the 'good' side more than with the 'evil' side. This is mainly due to a lack of sympathetic qualities given to these 'bad' guys, and this may just be because we are not shown as much of the bad guys' story. After all, hiding or revealing information is what leads us to form our respective opinions on particular events and characters.

You could argue that the use of the 'good and evil' troupe is primary to what J.K Rowling is trying to communicate: that good will overcome evil despite many obstacles. But the problem here lies with the insistence of the existence of a binary morality; that the world is divided into 'good' and 'bad', and that certain actions are simply 'good' and others are simply 'bad', but such an approach destroys the complexities existing in our world, and how we understand situations differently dependent upon context. A person going on a killing spree we see as a psychopath, but make that person William Munny from 'Unforgiven' who is only avenging his dead friend and is anyway killing 'badder' people, and we root for the character in his bloody mission. It is our ability to interpret situations according to context that helps us understand a wide range of narratives that might deal with similar situations from various perspectives. So, arguing that only a single perspective exists is both redundant and fruitless in our aim to understand and interpret art.

Clint Eastwood as William Munny

Now the obvious response to my statements would be that the perspective is simply that of the author's, but this simply makes the author the God in the text and- as I'd written earlier- such a God or omnipresent and omniscient being will always be a partial one. We need to understand then that the narration in any work is only exploring another perspective and is not the perspective.

Looking at our earlier example of 'Harry Potter', the evident limitation with how the Third- Person narrative here is used is that the fact that there is a god's- narrative seems to justify the world with a binary morality more than the motivations and interpretations of morality of the characters themselves, meaning that more than it being that the 'good guys' are just interpreting Voldemort and his lackeys to be' evil', the narration itself suggests this to be the case. Now you could tell me that this notion is false and that the narrator never called a side 'good' or 'evil' but such obvious representation that is both physical (bad guys wearing black) and behavioral (good guys will help their friends) clearly shows us  the agenda of the narrative. An author does not have to say something to imply it in his work. I'm not saying a god's narrative cannot be used effectively, but rather that it should be realized what the functionality of such a narrative implies. But ultimately, stories such as those in Harry Potter and The Lord of the rings is looking at the world from a Christian perspective where good and evil exist absolutely, where good people struggle  with the temptations offered by the bad side but the bad people have no motivations to become good (yes, there are exceptions). These are narratives of the good, and more than the use of these symbols themselves, I find it more problematic that an author sides with the good as if trying to justify his moral sense.

Now it should be kept in mind that regardless of the fact that an idea is conceived only from a respective perspective, this does not mean that they are somehow less important or less valid than if the idea was objective. This is because our very understanding of objectivity is subjective, according to post- modern philosophy. For example, the existence of science in our world is also a matter of perspective, but it is largely accepted as truth by a majority of people. Similarly, the symbols of 'good' and 'evil' can be permeating in every aspect of the world that its existence and relevance is widely accepted and is almost absolute. Almost. It is important to not remove the hint of uncertainty in any reading. In this sense then, the narrator in a work such as Harry Potter can be at best, viewed as one who accepts the symbols of "good and evil" as true or important.

Good Vs Evil

Some have pointed out to me that by a common understanding established between the author author and reader, the assumption of the absolute existence of values can help convey important ideas. In fact, in many older  texts and works of fantasy like The Lord of The Rings series, it seems almost certain that the author both views the world and intends for his world to contain absolute values, reflecting the inspiration drawn from the ideas presented in the Christian Mythos in which the ideas about absolute existence of good and evil, and thereby of sin is essential to its central idea of salvation. But while I will agree that looking to both the inspirations and sources of these authors' ideas, as well as examining the social relations between the author and reader can be fruitful, I do not see the assumption of absolutes to be valuable or relevant in a post- modern reading.

On the other hand, in a work like The Gormenghast Trilogy, good and evil lie solely in perspective where one character may see another as 'evil' because of certain conflicts of interest. As an audience, we may still find some characters to be more sympathetic than others but this is usually not because the world itself suggests this to be the case.


Throughout many viewings and readings of texts, I have come across a few most prominent kind of narration forms that I will now discuss. It should be kept in mind that these forms aren't exclusive of one another, and may be used in conjunction with one another.

1) The Unchanging Narrator: 

Now what I mean by the use of this term refers to when the narrator's use of symbolism and imagery remains the same, regardless of whether different ideas or character arcs are being explored. This is perhaps the most popular narrative form that's present in the third- person. You could almost say that the narrator is essentially a character in the text. The narrator in this case uses meaningful imagery and symbols to communicate his idea regardless of whether the characters  themselves identify with these images or symbols. What I find interesting here is that there are at least two layers of perspectives present, one of the narrator and then of the narrator's perspective of the characters' perspectives. Reading it as a god's- narrative instead as we discussed earlier is not often used to effect. Most novels and films seem to prefer such a form of narration since it offers consistency to an extent as far as perspective is concerned.
When such a form of narrative is used, the narrator can often imply ideas and have a sense of awareness about a situation that the characters themselves do not have. 

2) The Adaptive Narrator: 

The adaptive narrator on the other hand is  one who chooses to explore a situation from the multiple perspectives of- usually- his characters. The finest example of this is Peake's Gormenghast books in which even the sense of imagery and tone changes when the narration focuses on different characters in the story. There are multiple perspectives being directly explored here, and there is also the reduced role of the narrator as a character. In film, an example that comes to mind is Inarritu's Babel in which tone, music, and color scheme all changes along with the different situations that are explored in a non- linear fashion. 

Another example in film could be Koreeda's Wandarfuru Raifu in which multiple characters' recollections of the past are explored as each of  them try to find a single important memory, and so it is all about a post- modern sense of individualistic meaning that this type of narration suits well.
You should keep  in mind though that the narrator in this case can still convey an overarching idea that the characters themselves are not aware of through the contextualization of how these multiple perspectives make sense in a space of coexistence.

3) The Titular Character's Sidekick:

In this case, the narrator (reminder: narrator, not author) more or less holds the opinions of the protagonist of the given text, and as a result even when you have 'beacon-of-good' protagonist and some other evil 'dude', the perspective of the evil dude is also explored from the perspective of 'good' moral impositions and all included. Most works today, especially modern fantasy works seem to make use of such a form of narration where we have a 'good' side and everyone else is judged or identified by the standards set by this 'good' side. Of course, it has been used differently as well. One example would be TV Show House M.D in which Dr. House's opinion that the world is a sad sorry place devoid of love and happiness is justified by the events that are shown to us in the show itself (unless you are  taking into account the subversion of the entire show's premise in that last episode). It should be noted that this use of form is appropriate for the show, since it seems to support the narcissistic worldview of House  himself since it seems that an objective narrative is only proving that House is right (most of the time, and only until that last episode of course).

On the other hand, we see that a film like Birdman employs such a form of narration with greater self- awareness if it is supposed that the narrator is the character of Birdman himself/itself. This is an interesting exploration since you have a fictional character in the story being the narrator and since Birdman represents both the success and failure of Michael Keaton's character, so it tries to narrate the incident of the washed- up actor's seemingly last attempt at being successful in his career.

4) The partial god- narrative:

Now this is one we have already discussed in the earlier parts of the article. In such a narrative, the narrator is one who accepts certain symbols and interpretations of a person or community as the more relevant or true interpretation and narrates the story from this perspective. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, almost everyone on Middle- Earth despite conflicts wit each other accept Sauron and his army to be the embodiment of something evil. As such, you could say that the narrator is one of these people, in that he is narrating their ideas, desires, and fears. It makes it easier if the 'evil' side consists of mainly unthinking orcs and a giant eye with a power- complex. As such, it is easy to accept the 'good' side as good since there is no alternate argument for us to go by.
On the other hand, in an anime series like Trigun, this sort of narrative device is used to another effect. In it, the protagonist during the early parts of the show does not kill any 'bad' guy due to a naive sense of morality (which as we see leads to large destruction, though no loss of life) even though the 'bad' guys are usually portrayed as having no redeeming qualities.

The Protagonist of 'Trigun', Vash. 

We see the world as the protagonist Vash does who cannot comprehend why these 'bad' guys can't just be, well, 'good'. From Vash's and the good guys' side(yes, that's how we see it as well), the bad guys' motivations appear too shallow and not worth listening to and it's fine to leave them incapable of causing  harm but well and alive, since they never made any sense or raised any points that threatened the good guys' sense of morality or identity in the first place and plus, they're physically weak enough to not cause worry. But by the end of the show when an equally valid  and comprehensive argument backed by physical prowess (as it is to Vash in his context) is put forth by the main antagonist (this might only be so because we are for once, shown an argument) we see that Vash finds no other way but to kill him. This could be understood as a deconstruction of the 'good- vs-evil' troupe where the 'good' side is shown to be right by the literal elimination of  the 'bad' side's argument. As such, it presents us with an interesting aspect of conflict since we as viewers who are told the story from the good side are also faced with the conflict faced by the protagonist at the end of the show.

Well, that's all for now. If I think of any others, I'll add them later.