An existentially philosophical difference between truth-seeking and narrative-creating is that, as one takes formative aspects of their individual identity and ethics acquired through time, they then apply or assert truth values to real-life situations in order to justify their relative cultural identity using internalized philosophical or sophisticated means based off of sensory or external inputs that’ve been evaluated accordingly. In this domain, truth-seeking often requires sensory, external input, and narrative-creating is generally the output of the individual as an attempt to elicit truth or assert it externally. Two movies that are great examples of this are The Seventh Seal, and Affliction. In, The Seventh Seal, the existential implications of one’s biological death and a theosophically muted presence in it (“God’s silence”) are considered. In Affliction, the implication of one’s altered mental states, genetic predispositions, and environmental conditions are shown to impede the individual discernment of truth and creates a divide between individual intentions and actions. This essay will differentiate these implications using ideas presented in Christopher Fahy’s, The Order of Rage, and Mary Litch’s chapter on “Existentialism” in her book, Philosophy Through Film.
In the opening scene of The Seventh Seal, Antonius, a noble knight who’d returned from fighting in the crusades, was waiting for death as the plague inflicted his country. He had a chessboard set up on a beach, and was aware that Death had been with him for some time. They engage in playing chess with each other and they’re seen exchanging moves as the movie progresses. Death and Antonius sat on the beach, which symbolically represents an edge or barrier between worlds such as the two worlds that separate Antonius’ life from his nonexistence/afterlife. Before they played, the pieces were already assembled, and the results of the last game were left on display. This means that Antonius had been playing chess recently, therefore Death should’ve anticipated his request had he actually been with the knight for time as was claimed. Possibly this was an appeal to the nature of the knights character as the game with Death would’ve interrupted his other ongoing game.
Chess as a game was symbolic here, as a symbol of Antonius’ lived and currently ongoing life, lived logically and with purpose. The delay of Antonius’ death that Antonius and Death agree to in playing their game of chess is symbolic in that Death allows for Antonius’ life to be lived in the intervening time between moves. It’s a game that ordinarily can be won by one player or the other, but in this case their shared knowledge was that it was only Death that could ever win this specific game of death, chess, or life. Therefore, the only gain perceived by Antonius was the length of time in which the game was to be played. It wasn’t that the knights moment of death had come in the beginning of the film, but the time in which it’d been delayed had become so palpable as to be perceived as a reality by the knight. The implication here’s that Death was with Antonius from birth, and was obliged to allow him to live his life.
Later in the film, Death impersonates a priest who Antonius gives a confession to. In doing so, Antonius unknowingly forecasts his plan of attack in chess to Death. Antonius calls death a cheater for tricking him. Antonius then comes to realize that he plays chess with real Death in the ensuing monologue, for this entity’s evaded his detection, and therefore must be an exceptional character. Death didn’t trick Antonius into forecasting his next move, he tricked Antonius into believing in the ability to have meaning in his own life. This is implied as the admission that Antonius believes in God thus follows as he exclaims, “… And I … Antonius Block … am playing chess with Death.” (The Seventh Seal 00:24:10 – 00:24:20). Antonius’ resulting grin seems to indicate that he’s acquired the capacity to believe that his life can have meaning, and his game with Death has instilled in him this capacity in that he believes it’s true that his life can have meaning. In her book Philosophy Through Film, Mary Litch discusses in the “Existentialism” chapter the question of, “Is there some purpose or meaning to the existence of living things?” is an important existential consideration (Litch 225). This is relevant to Antonius’ story because the scenes mentioned in this paragraph indicate that Antonius answered this question with a “yes” after his encounters with Death.
Later in the film, Death indicated that Death also has no knowledge of God, when he says, “I have no secrets … I know nothing.” (The Seventh Seal 01:25:10 – 01:25:25). This implies that Death itself has the choice to believe in God, or not, as well. It’s implied that Death would’ve always existed since life began, and from the moment of conception would’ve had this choice. This is different from Antonius who would’ve grown into this belief, meaning that the implication here’s that belief in God on faith is a matter apart from time itself as the existence of Death is a consideration apart from time.
In his search for truth and subjective meaning in his life, Antonius follows a progressive story in which he builds on his past encounters in order to justify his “meaningless” existence and successfully finds this using his beliefs, morals and identity in order to come to terms with his mortal existence. He permits these external inputs to guide his future movements, and in doing so finds peace in the accepted truth that formed his narrative, which is not quite the same existential crisis as was depicted in Affliction.
In Affliction, Rolfe Whitehouse narrates a story about his brother, Wade Whitehouse. Rolfe tells about their alcoholic father and upbringing, and of Wade’s life as it falls into disarray as Wade succumbs further to alcoholism. Wade simultaneously works multiple jobs as a cop and ditch digger (a filmographic metaphor) and is pictured as a bad father to his daughter, until his final psychotic break where he murders two people and assaults two more shortly before his disappearance. The culminating psychotic break that lead to Wade investigating and killing an innocent hunter (Jack) after stalking him as his life implodes is itself similar to Antonius Block “wiping all the chess pieces off the board”, indicating Wade’s forfeiture of individual agency as his maintained narrative collapsed. Because of the way the story’s told, Rolfe speculates that Wade murdered his father and burned the barn down. Rolfe also speculated Wade killed Jack True, and while it’s witnessed that Wade was disturbed and assaulted a bartender and his fiance and daughter, that’s all that can be said by a witness that could testify to it.
An individual pursuit of truth is the reason that I think that the story in Affliction wasn’t an existential crisis in the relative sense, but instead was an individual offshoot of existential peril driven by a psychotic break fueled by Wade’s alcoholism. This assertion makes an assumption that Rolfe wasn’t trying to justify his own narrative in telling this particular version of the story, which is outside the scope of discussion in this essay that takes the story presented at face value (Christopher Fahy does a very good job at discussing this separately). There was Wade’s typical representation as an angry abusive drunk, but then there were a few separate instances where he entered into isolated periods of conflict and returned back to them in pursuit of getting what he wanted. What Wade thought he wanted was to be a good father, to be perceived as having successful careers, the kind of guy that does the right thing. These internal wants didn’t match his external actions as a person, because he was actually bad at all his jobs, he was unhealthy and disliked by his daughter despite his stated intentions to be the opposite of this. Because of this, it could be said that Wade wasn’t an authentic person. If this guy was really “Wade”, his actions ought to line up with his words and thoughts, this is what’s meant here by being authentic.
Why was it that the Wade portrayed was so hung up on maintaining a mental image of himself during conceivably the best times he’d ever lived but was unable to meaningfully act in a way that his current situation in life demanded? Each response he formulated was a step toward getting back to where he was at instead of progressing to a rational outcome. This disconnect effectively created “two Wades” – one that had good intentions and was looking for truth and one that acted against these to maintain a false but preferred narrative. One Wade didn’t actually want custody of his daughter or to actually have her admiration, he instead wanted people to have the external impression of him as being a good father. One Wade didn’t want to be a cop, he instead wanted the external impression of himself as being a good cop. One Wade didn’t want his own narrative, he wanted a relative narrative of himself that was favorable and in doing so disregarded self preservation because he’d no capacity to overcome his own lived identity that was dependent on the external interpretations of himself by others and what he perceived those impressions to be. During a conversation with his daughter trying to discern his ex-wife’s impressions of him, Wade says, “I’m a cop I gotta listen to the complaints people make. I’m not a kid any more, you change.” (Affliction 00:04:46 – 00:04:55). What Wade means here’s that he takes into account external perceptions of himself based on complaints he receives “as a cop”.
It’s interesting to note here that in his essay The Order of Rage, Christopher Fahy indicates there were also two different Rolfe’s in addition to the discussion here of there being two different Wade’s. Fahy writes, “But memory, whether one’s own or another’s, always contains subjective content.” (Stoehr 41). What this reveals is that one brother was able to fill in these gaps with one kind of subjective content (Rolfe) while the other didn’t do this or used “false” subjective content (Wade). Both performed this process of filling in gaps in memory with subjective content as they felt was needed. When Wade did this, it was easier to identify as his subjective content was usually derived from the time in his life before he disconnected in adulthood, when things were going well. At the end of the movie, Rolfe implies that Wade stopped existing outside this story in saying, “We want to believe that Wade died that same November. Froze to death on a bench or a sidewalk. You cannot understand how a man like you and me could do such a terrible thing. Unless the police happen to arrest a vagrant who turns out to be Wade Whitehouse, there will be no more mention of him. The story will be over, except that I continue.” (Affliction 01:50:00 – 01:50:30). This is important because it’s equivalent to Rolfe describing Wade’s “death”.
Wade’s lapses were largely due to alcoholism as a form of detachment which was an impediment to forming his own narrative based on conjured objective truth, which he he’d no capacity to correctly discern due to his perpetually inebriated status. Wade was disassociated from himself, chemically, and is correctly perceived as inauthentic to an external observer. He didn’t know, in his own life, what was real and what was not, the murder, his daughter, how like his father he was, his wife, his jobs, etc.. because his physical senses were chemically impeded and as such couldn’t obtain or internalize objective truth. Wade’s father Glen was similarly disassociated as he’s recalled as violently beating wife and children, forcing them to do illogical tasks such as cutting frozen wood, letting his wife freeze to death while he was inebriated – these too are the results of a chemically disassociated state. What’s different between Wade and Glen is that Glen seemed slightly more genuine or more authentic, due largely to his outward acceptance that he was a bad person which is implied when as he laughs at his son sprawled out on the ground and says, “You goddamn son of a bitch. I know you. You’re my blood you’re a goddamn fucken’ piece of my heart!” (Affliction 01:40:50 – 01:40:59). This was the moment in the movie that it was revealed that contrary to the opening five minutes, people don’t always change as it becomes clear to see that Wade wasn’t very different from his father, despite Wade saying otherwise.
One’s understanding of this movie will vary greatly depending on the level of impact that alcohol’s had on their life, but regardless of what aggravated Wade’s existential turmoil, alcohol addiction or not, at some point Wade’s life became totally meaningless as he pursued a life detached from reality. He held onto the notion that his life used to have meaning as an attempt to continue to give it meaning, but this was not possible – the situations and events that gave his life meaning previously were no longer working for him in the sense that nothing he did meant anything, to anyone. He could’ve ceased to’ve existed and all that would’ve been left in his place was the same hope he had for his own life, which one could argue would’ve been a better outcome but this is not in the scope of this essay. That being said, both Antonius and Wade did “die” at the end of both of these movies.
As Affliction progressed, Wade’s manipulative nature became more apparent. As he watched control of his narrative slip away, he responded by abusing the people who he was trying to manipulate. This is characteristic of a bad person, not a hero. Fahy wrote of a lighter take on Wade, likening him to a naive hero (Oedipus is his example) when he wrote that Rolfe, “…encourages his epistemologically naive brother and helps to create the catastrophe.” (Stoehr 45). I disagree with the notion that Wade was epistemologically naive, as it implies an appeal to Wade’s perceived innocence. As a cop, Wade knew that investigations required evidence, but used his brothers proposition to justify his manipulative narrative. I feel that this is an oversight by Fahy here because to call an alcoholic naive inappropriately frames a particular narrative in my opinion (and possibly reflects Fahy’s own personal beliefs in regards to understanding alcoholics at a level commensurate to the high analytical level in which Fahy writes to in this essay). I don’t think Wade could be called naive in any way because he willfully and purposefully disassociated and disconnected himself from the truth. This was so that he’d purposefully end up in situations involving punishment, as a way to prove that he “protected himself”, because he was suffering. Therefore, to Wade, what he did must’ve been the right thing because he was suffering due to it. This was a sick person, not a naive one. Naive people don’t just commit murder after being a cop and you don’t call the blind naive. Oedipus was naive, as was symbolically represented by him physically blinding himself after his realization of error – Wade did this to himself before and perpetually while maintaining error. Fahy’s total avoidance of the understated effect that alcohol and alcoholism plays in this film’s story in which over a quarter of the time the characters were drinking, in a bar or drunk is certainly a topic of discussion outside the scope of this essay.
It wasn’t that Wade didn’t know any better – he knew better and chose not to do better by impairing his own memory and thus taking on a guise of naivety that he displayed to the world. He was a monster wearing a good guy mask. This is evidenced by his opening discussion with his daughter when he indicates he’s not a troublemaker anymore, despite actually being one. If anything, Fahy’s interpretation of Wade is off base in that it skews his views overall in his essay in casting Wade in an even remotely heroic light. Wade more clearly fits an antihero definition, and I find it difficult to understand how Fahy can refer to the portrayal of Wade by Rolfe as heroic in any way (especially a Homeric hero) as in my view this is an evil, wicked, wretched excuse for a human being and the only pity I hold for him as a viewer is for the idea of the child he was that suffered the tough childhood he lived through that made him such an antihero for this anti-tragedy that would’ve been the opposite if Wade were to be an authentic person. I find no redeeming qualities about Wade-the-described-adult and regard him as almost better off gone at the end of the story. This was unlike Oedipus – whose loss to society came with great cost to the society that he helped build. Thus, by anti-tragedy I mean that what happened here was that the ill-conceived plans of a wicked person that was always trying to get away with things didn’t come to fruition and society was better off for it. As much as I’d like to take into account Rolfe’s aspect of narrating the story and discussing those details, Fahy has done well in discussing this, so I’ve decided to focus on the story that Rolfe presented for the sake of not expanding the scope of this essay any further than is feasible for this discussion that’s primarily focused on sensory input and its relative importance to human existential decision making.
In both of these movies, themes of truth and morality seem to be requisites for individuals in comprehending their existential perils in their search for subjective meaning in their lives. Individual understanding of the truth lead Antonius Block to come to certain conclusions that guided his actions in line with ethical thinking and behavior that correlated to his actual values, whereas Wade’s lack of obtainment of truth through detachment impeded his ability to form narratives that were in line with his internal values (identity) that he claimed to hold. Identity’s formed from the results of all of the actions and their results and thus relies on continuous feedback from one’s own interpretations of oneself and their understanding of others interpretations of themselves (just like chess). These movies reflect that these understandings and imprints of one’s identity naturally form the narrative that’s critical for one to understand their existence that’s constantly changing based off of changes in identity at which time truth evaluations are made and corresponding actions are then taken.
That Wade was a crooked cop, a deadbeat father, an abusive alcoholic, a preoccupied liar and more reflected a very hypocritical person. This wasn’t a man living in an absurd world, he wasn’t forced into absurd conditions in his adult life, it was his own absurd actions that brought these maladies to him in his pursuit of a narrative through willful disregard of objective truth. This was different from Antonius living through both the plague and the crusades as both were clearly absurd notions that would impede one’s ability to live a reasonable life that existed apart from Antonius’ actions. Contrasting this, Wade had two good jobs, a good family, a good wife, a good home, but his unhinged actions lead him to assaulting his fiance and daughter, committing arson, killing two people and accosting a bartender in his pursuit of detachment.
Rolfe’s account of Wade’s story can be presumed to be plausible in that there’s an alcoholic male and alcohol and a world and things he wants – these are generally regarded as all that’s needed to potentially inflict seismic amounts of damage to an otherwise unafflicted world. However, the level of absurdity presented in the story itself, because Wade’s character’s so inauthentic, may easily tempt a viewer to consider alternatives, looking for justification or plot holes in Rolfe’s retelling of Wades individually pathetic life. This correlates to The Seventh Seal because Antonius was looking for these same plot holes in his impending doom. Antonius relied on his sensory functions and external inputs so much in his life that he initially demands to see God himself to believe that his life woul have meaning, because his capacity for perception was so refined that it was all that he’d known. This is not the case with Wade, who’s bereft of these senses due to his inebriation.
In The Seventh Seal, Antonius attempts to create a narrative for the continuation of the family’s life (Jof, Mia and their son) in exchange for the sacrifice of his own time in stalling death. In Affliction, Wade sacrifices other peoples narratives in order to maintain the continuity of his own preferred one. The scene where Antonius sits with the family and they feed him was the moment in which he secured the decision to find meaning in protecting them in the future – this was the action that was to give his life meaning after having secured truth in determining that life even can have meaning after his confession to Death. This manifested later as a decision in which he’d spend his time in order to occupy Death’s attention so as to give the family much more time to escape the forest and flee from Death’s capture. This individual sacrifice in time was so little to Antonius, who knew his time was up, but stood to mean so much to the family. Thus, what stands out here’s that each characters interpretation of time as Wade and Antonius seem to be trying to answer the question of whether or not there was anything that anyone of them could create that could be greater than anything “God” could create in a state where “God” was perceived to be silent, or not present.
Antonius revealed his interpretation of time after making sure his own narrative could come to a logical conclusion following his scene where he’s confessing to Death his future plans with a priest that’s revealed to be Death playing a trick on him. This is important because once he’s secured the belief that his existence could mean something, he then had to “make” it mean something. In exchange for Death cheating by impersonating the priest, Antonius later pays Death back by knocking over the chess pieces. Just as Antonius remembered the arrangement of his own game, his own life, when Death cheated him, Death in turn remembered how the chess pieces were arranged when Antonius stalled for more time. In this exchange, Antonius was lead to the conclusion that he created a better narrative than the one he perceived to be intended for the family, which was that they also were intended to be taken by Death, in which he viewed himself as responsible for the delay through the exchange.
This again contrasts the story shown in Affliction, where Wade’s acting with free will of his own to sacrifice or deny external narratives in his pursuit of subjective truth, without really taking the time it took to do this into account. Wade sees truth in him being a good father, a good cop, a good person and by thinking this he operates on a false personal narrative in which his interpretation of his identity doesn’t match with the objective reality he lives in. He egregiously pursues an innocent hunter on the grounds that he believes him to be guilty of murdering Twombley and this confirmation bias is the basis that formed the lens through which Wade evaluated truth. Because Wade thought he was a good father, he couldn’t understand why his daughter disliked him, because he thought he was a good person he thought that he was any different from his father, because he thought he was a good cop he investigated and murdered an innocent man.
These errors in Wade’s judgment were rooted in him being under a chemically induced state that perpetually prevented him from correctly perceiving the nature of his own reality. This consideration that chemicals, physical things, both alter the mind and interfere with the process of internalizing objective existential beliefs was the core of this movie. If the chemicals hadn’t had this effect, Wade would’ve been a different person looking for different truths and forging different narratives, and more importantly finding different ways to disconnect, but the person he actually was didn’t change as easily as simply asserting this to be the case. Wade didn’t pursue joy and meaning as was seen in Antonius Block, there was only the personal pursuit of returning to that best point in time in his life, similar to how one “chases the dragon” in a term typically reserved for addicts in their first few highs. Wade’s addiction that warped and forcibly disconnected his actions from his thoughts heavily impacted or otherwise displaced his free will, agency and authenticness. Wade Whitehouse wasn’t pictured in this movie, portrayed was Wade years ago as his life turned from good to bad. Left in Wade’s place was a guy that didn’t have the capacity to differentiate his life now from then. The end of the movie implies that Wade doesn’t exist, for this, as if the moment Wade died was the moment he lost his good life, for whatever reason.
By implication, this would mean that it’s through a human ability to both process and collect sensory information across time that people use to confront their own existence. In support of this, Antonius says, “Must it be so cruelly inconceivable to know God through one’s senses?” (The Seventh Seal 00:20:35 – 00:20:45). Affliction shows that these senses can be impacted in such a way as to create situations where truth’s disregarded in the pursuit of a “greater” truth depending on the perceived narrative trajectory. Wade thought that were it to be the case that the hunter didn’t receive his rightful punishment, then Wade would bypass the need for lesser truth (Jack’s actual innocence in killing the politician or not) in order to protect the “greater” truth (that Wade was a good policeman who finds the bad guy) and in doing so it becomes an existential consideration that not only are there varying degrees of magnitude or importance of truths, but that some of them can be disregarded in the pursuit of greater truth in trying to create “something better than God can create”. By disregarding lesser truths, Wade erroneously concludes that the more important truth was all that was needed in order to maintain the narrative that he was a good cop and a good person.
Because Wade killed Jack Hewitt, or because he investigated Jack, Wade saw himself as a good cop. It didn’t matter to Wade if they guy was “bad” or not because Wade wasn’t “investigating a murder” and instead was “protecting his brother from his father” because he perceived that there must be punishment for killing ones own father-in-law. Wade alludes to this when he says, “That makes me mad. That somebody can shoot somebody, his own father in law, and not be punished for it. Don’t that piss you off?” (Affliction 01:05:00 – 01:05:12). This means that Wade’s perceived need for punishment is a residual aspect of his psyche that enabled Wade to justify the murders in that the trauma that manifested as punishment that was inflicted on him by his father for his defense of his family gave him the twisted notion that defending something should be met with punishment by an aggressor in that defense of others without some resulting dire cost of the defender is no defense at all.
That Wade implied punishment was due and no injury was initially suffered by the condemned hunter Jack was actually that not any defense at all had been performed, in that each time Wade injured his father in defense of his family, Wade was met with punishment. Wade had erroneously perceived that it was himself that was at fault for his father being mad at his brother or mother, and in coming to their defense he took the brunt of the damage inflicted by his father. Wade’s adult life reflected that he was still suffering though that abuse, or showing that he’d previously done so. While Wade’s father was abusive for different reasons outside the scope of this essay, in assigning punishments to people, Wade erroneously concluded that some protective action was taken through a logical fault. Thereby, through self-punishment the illogical conclusion that it was acceptable to damage others was appropriate in Wade’s perspective. Wade’s inability to perceive the objective truth here was due to the chemical affliction which stunted his sensory inputs and as such he could no longer come to valid conclusions.
In tying these two characters together, Antonius knew that his time was up, and what differentiates these two is the perception of time available to them. Wade used his time to further his own narrative, Antonius used his time to further the narrative of the young family. It was because Antonius knew his time was up that he was to find in his actions something more than what God might create, thus making his existence meaningful. It was Wade’s inability to comprehend the progression of time that he spent so much time doing everything but creating something better than what God could create. The knights journey was progressive and Wades was circular. Both faced existential crises, very different from each other, but linked in their circumstances regarding perception of time based on sensory input in their pursuit of finding meaning in their lives by pursuing actions in trying to create something better than God could create. Antonius’ sensory input was seemingly aided by a theistic belief in a God, whereas Wade seems never to have been introduced to the notion of a theistic approach to life, or had otherwise since rejected it and was depicted as getting lost in the weeds of his detached life.
This essay’s discussed that The Seventh Seal and Affliction offer insights into existentially philosophical dilemmas about the effects of sensory inputs in regards to existential peril. The knight Antonius Block followed a progressive path based on his external sensory inputs that permitted him to spend his time in such a way that he could find meaning in his life by extending the time available for a young family by momentarily distracting Death. The manipulator Wade Whitehouse followed a circular path that resulted in disruption and destruction of any hope for finding meaning in life for himself, due to his inability to discern objective truth from fiction as a result of being chemically detached from his senses. Both movies indicate that human existentialism is an exercise in answering questions on the individual level that apply to all living people. It was discussed that the absurd actions of Wade contrast the absurd environment that Antonius lived in, and two additional discussions were brought in as examples to support claims made in this essay.
In conclusion, the existentially philosophical difference between truth-seeking and narrative-creating is that, as one takes formative aspects of their individual identity and ethics acquired through time, they then apply or assert truth values to real-life situations in order to justify their relative cultural identity using internalized philosophical or sophisticated means based off of sensory or external inputs that’ve been evaluated accordingly. In this domain, truth-seeking requires sensory, external input, and narrative-creating is generally the output of an individual as an attempt to elicit truth or assert it externally.
Works Cited
“Affliction.” Lions Gate Films, 1997. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.
“The Seventh Seal.” Svensk Filmindustri, 1957. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.
Karofsky, Amy, and Mary M. Litch. Philosophy through Film. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2015.
Stoehr, Kevin L. Film and Knowledge: Essays on the Integration of Images and Ideas. McFarland, 2002.