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Architectural Notions and Aesthetic Criteria

In the contemporary domain of art philosophy, T.S. Eliot, Audre Lorde and Walter Benjamin express many written thoughts that’ve got a lot of relevance to modern art. Three art collectives (“cults”) that produce modern art that reflect their ideas are the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), Meow Wolf, and Banksy. In their work, for art to maintain its aesthetic dominance, they must find more relevance than ever before. Architecture that’s composed of many different works of art including music, revisionary art, stories, sculptures, photos and more are a result of an age in which the technological advancements have made art so accessible. Due to this, great art in architectural wonders that were historically regarded as exclusive to past era’s are now seen in CoSM’s “Entheon”, Meow Wolf’s “Convergence Station”, and Banksy’s “Better Out Than In” installation after the “residency in New York”. Each of these collectives have individual artists operating to produce works of art that share common themes. This essay will discuss that architectural cult-based art heads the forefront of philosophical and social aesthetics in this digital age where individual existential peril imposed by such rapid advances in technology has driven a cultural thirst for trying to better understand the human place in the universe, for which specific artistic criteria is discussed.

The nature of needing to have the ability to sensually experience something will have different effects on how it’s internalized depending on the senses used to receive it. This is more than basic human senses, and instead generally refers to advanced usage of an individual sense, such as not only being able to see something, but experiencing it in multiple dimensions – some art will look different just with visual depth perception. That being said, immersion is a criteria I consider very important here in considering architectural artwork. There are limitless distractions in this modern world and by preoccupying many sensory inputs, modern aesthetics won’t lose someone’s attention due to a lack of immersion. Just like a film with dozens of layers of different art, so too does an immersive architectural experience have a capacity to dominate and command ones attention. This notion of immersion is important because it’s become a commodity itself, supplementing one’s money spent. Thus, aestheticized triggers must be crafted to capture one’s attention so as to compete against something else such as politics, theology or philosophy, or even other forms of entertainment.

This introduces more criteria for modern art in that an art ought to compete for one’s attention. Banksy competed with graffiti artists for space on a wall, just like Meow Wolf is competing against other attention seeking enterprises seeking profits, and CoSM is competing against individual detachment in corporeal pursuits. This competition naturally displaces less desirable forms of aesthetics, and unnaturally can be used to form the same political aesthetics as any other attention seeking thing. Thus, the aesthetic criteria is that the art must compete against politics, religion, cultural perceptions or other entertainment in some way in order to be relevant to the society in which it stands. Audre Lorde discusses this in her essay, “Poetry is not a Luxury”, where she writes, “But as we come more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.” (Lorde para. 6). The implication here is that through a deprioritization of imposed European identity, which includes a political identity, one’s left with their individual feelings. This is their individual capacity to choose what to pay attention to in differentiating competing priorities, where they can find in that all that is needed in order to create and share art. Artists Alex and Allyson Grey and their CoSM community have done this as well.

The criteria so far discussed, immersion, competition and seeing past nationalistic ideals are so far what’s been outlined as reasonable aesthetic criteria by which to include artwork into a canon of modern architectural aesthetics. There are further criteria that’ve been sufficiently outlined by the other writers mentioned earlier. T.S. Eliot made an important insight into aesthetic criteria in that it must relate in some way, either through support of or conscious rejection of, and therefore a continuation of, relatable nationalistic identities. He implies this when he writes, “He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe — the mind of his own country — a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind — is a mind which changes…” (Eliot para. 6). What’s implied here is that as the world transcends national barriers, so too do folks move past understand the “Mind of Europe” and toward a “Mind of Earth”, as ones own mind comes to understand that “the mind of his own country” is an arbitrary definition and isn’t limited to national borders alone due to the interconnected nature of this digital world. Therefore, societal impact ought to be a criteria by which to analyze modern art.

Walter Benjamin also introduced important aesthetic criteria in likening aestheticized in his discussion on architecture in his essay, “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction”, where he writes, “Architecture has never been idle. Its history to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art.” (Benjamin 242). This quote is important here, in the context of architecture, because it implies that these buildings are not static things but instead contain a liveliness of their own. This liveliness can be maintained through change and progress, thus establishing a criteria that revolves around a certain “elasticity” where a building could be changed or adapted slightly as to provide it authenticity. This authenticity can be perceived as an ability to reflect trends found in the society in which it sits, such as one changes clothes. This criteria is important to this essay because each of these collectives use buildings in this way to relate the art they portray to “the masses” that the art is intended for and progressively adapt the buildings to reflect current or new topics regularly in the enduring representation of the building.

CoSM itself is a great example of the actions of a private art collective which has enacted the beginnings of political change in the state of New York, a state with the same GDP as the country of Italy and the third largest state in the USA. The political change lobbied was toward the legalization of psychedelic drug ownership and usage for recreational purposes where Bill 2023-A3581A currently sits for voting for its third year. CoSM regularly hosts board members of Non-Governmental Organizations that are involved in the legalization and acceptance of psychedelic drug usage in the United States and worldwide. In particular, CoSM’s “Entheon” is an architectural work of art clad in the art of the owners Alex and Allyson Grey and their community. This building has gone past simple art and has aestheticized interfaith beliefs and in doing so has acquired a political status that’s precipitated a lot of stunning graphic art. CoSM’s also contributed to the fields of theology and philosophy with its numerous publications. This building, Entheon, is a great example of art that Audre Lorde refers to in her essay, “Poetry is not a Luxury”, which aids in the process of using art instead of fascist or capitalistic notions of oppression when she writes, “For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.” (Lorde para. 14). What Lorde means here by implication is that artists will survive by identifying with parts of themselves that are outside of traditional hierarchies of power and this is done by applying these untested notions in their artwork in pursuit of something more than what they were handed. The proposition is that the results are the antithesis of warlike aesthetics in that they retain powerful representation in popular culture. Specifically, such artists from CoSM contributing to album art for popular music artists and others based on their interfaith beliefs rooted in psychedelic spiritualism represent a specific example of this in practice. That these folks practice theological and spiritual universalism from an aesthetic stance and not a traditional theological one makes them unique in the world according to Audre Lorde.

Entheon fits the four criteria above in that it has societal impact, is authentic, provides immersion and competes in different ways. Competition for CoSM’s Entheon is different as many spiritual speakers from different faiths are invited to speak regularly, therefore competition is seen as acceptance and amplification of differing belief systems. Any inspection of the facility will be immersive due to the immense amount of art contained within it (Especially the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors itself) as well and its capacity to redefine society by presenting advanced aestheticized philosophy and mathematics is certainly a route to change the lens by which people apply their notions of what society is to different things. It’s authentic because the founders are still alive, the campus is growing and the building itself is constantly given new art and the building genuinely feels alive in many ways.

Moving to the next collective, Meow Wolf appears to be an attempt to aestheticize old buildings and warehouses by covering their interiors with art, thus making them profitable fronts to effectively maintain and hold on to valuable square footage. In doing this, their buildings have been given permanent architectural art installations whose scale provides an immersive experience that doesn’t necessarily transcend theological notions of existentialism, but suffices to be an impressive and engaging corporeal existential experience that incorporates an indoor theme park style with hours of artistic exploration available to consumers.

On the surface, Meow Wolf’s “Convergence Station” is devoid of deeper spiritual meaning, and the theme of being on an alien world duplicates an individually relatable notion folks have these days that they’re living through some moment of discovery of something that’ll profoundly impact to the world – that they’ve entered into an alternate progressive civilization. Entering onto a set that’s as expansive as this provides a highly immersive experience that momentarily allows one to feel as if they’ve gone past that moment of discovery which can be a welcomed break from the constant imposition that one’s got to be “something greater” for a while. It’s unique as the alternative for many is to instead disassociate from a persistent world, or otherwise withdraw from perceived and inescapable societal pressures. It’s like an accessible Disney world because it pops up in cities and all the architectural modifications and art are in one big building.

Installations such as this facilitate respect for intelligent non-human life, which pervades much ongoing existential discussions now. On this, Benjamin writes, “For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation [of architecture].” (Benjamin 242). What he means here is that in order to acknowledge one’s universal place mere moments from the realization of Artificial General Intelligence, people would struggle more in accepting this particular form of progress if collectives such as Meow Wolf didn’t go to such extents as they do in order to present architectural artwork and art as is seen in Convergence Station. This is done by replacing human habits with new ones introduced by skilled applications of architectural aesthetics.

In regards to aesthetic criteria in this essay, Meow Wolf’s Convergence station competes with other forms of entertainment in Colorado successfully in that it’s a profitable and growing business that’s now found in a few other states. It provides a level of societal impact because it focuses otherwise untended individual artistic efforts, resulting in a level of impact that also provides to the artist a similar “escape” to the one that a consumer’s looking for in entertainment. It’s immersive because of the level of attention to detail blends one’s familiar world into a totally different world which allows one to separate themselves from society for a time. Walter Benjamin might call it an artistic use of mechanical reproduction in an age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay, “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he writes, “The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.” (Benjamin 236). What this implies that due to the relative disuse of architectural aesthetics for “the masses” in 2024, this is met with a large apprehension in installations like Meow Wolf, as a palpable hesitancy to accept it as a true artistic contribution persists. Changing the impression of society in regards to the use or disuse of a building by filling it with artwork and charging people for admission has had a growing societal impact as the results have generally been more enjoyable than other forms of entertainment accessible to folks.

The final consideration for this essay is Banksy’s art from the “Better Out Than In” diatribe, which includes, The Street Is In Play. This one art example out of the whole event, and all other contributions from Banksy, was applied in the same manner as graffiti in that the applications of the art were perceived as being in an undesirable location either by the people that owned or controlled the location or by people that might just have regarded it as offensive to put things where they perceive they didn’t belong. Others may have been largely in support of the implied messages often found within the art. The simplistic nature of the art cuts directly to the point, the essence of the art, implying that there might be some meaning behind the particular location the art is applied to. This notion of application isn’t generally a topic of the art itself, but to the unique nature of buildings as substrate as opposed to blank paper, file or canvas; therefore, it becomes egregious to not consider the medium itself as a part of the art. In support of this, Benjamin writes, “Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.” (Benjamin 241). What he means here, is that acceptably constructed and maintained buildings have historically served as the beginnings that reflect the nascent categories of new forms of artistic aesthetics to which “the collective” approves or disapproves its authenticity. In this case, the application of Banksy’s art to these buildings represents a rejection of modern aesthetics in relation to oppressive forms of capitalism and authoritarian rule that’s left many buildings bare and ready to accept this message.

The idea of Banksy “himself” operating under anonymity has provided recent appeal in that it can’t be proven that this was the result of a sole individual acting alone, and as such ideas of being an anonymous collective of artists is being circulated. Tyson Mitman wrote in his news article, “Unmasking Banksy”, that “Banksy is now a collective of artists who work together to produce thoughtful, provocative and subversive pieces and installations.” (Mitman para. 9). This may just be a legal angle pushed in order to circumvent lawful action, therefore potentially classifying the application of art as an act of civil disobedience by a class of people. The picture displayed in The Street Is In Play implies that the artist’s sending a message that the authoritarian laws are actually animating the art left on the buildings. The collective “cult” of Banksy, in turn, presents the idea of such a thing as an anonymous group of people, a faceless “silent minority” that applies masterminded masterwork art and is a unique application in this world that’s so quick to miss differentiating the faceless perceived-authoritarian rule from the “authorless” art that mirrors its impositions.

“Better Out Than In” is relevant to this essay because it satisfies the artistic criteria in that the artwork is simple but immersive as the messages will tend to stick with a viewer due to their simplicity. The work’s authentic and provides an impact to society in an age where cameras ensure persistence when messages can simply be painted over. The work does fall short in competition, in that as “unwelcomed graffiti”, much of it was simply covered up by a simple application of paint, which was abundantly available due to how commonly graffiti is applied to buildings and then covered up to maintain the neutral appearance preferred by the same political class that the artwork imposed itself upon.

In comparing these three applications of art, Convergence Station and Entheon both rely on unity to express their message. Convergence Station contains a strong theme of unified intelligent species converging in one fantastic station that solidifies the concept of there being some singular point in the physical universe in which intelligent life converges. Entheon expresses both outwardly and inwardly the unification of all religious doctrines and expresses this through sacred geometric art to elicit a common link between them. Banksy’s art is divisive and expresses a struggle between the real life wants and needs of people under a political rule that is perceived to displace them as time passes. When T.S. Eliot wrote, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone” (Eliot para. 4), in this light these art collectives are functioning collaboratively to explore and confront existential notions of human existence and in doing so make it abundantly clear that the application of individual talent can create unified impressions of tradition that was otherwise left to operate independently, and instead find a deeper meaning in unity. All three of these groups provide the precise example of what Benjamin meant in his writing on “cult-based art” that’s derived from micro-communities that’ve developed a unified but powerful expression of cultural beliefs that stun, overwhelm, immerse and amaze people. Because of this, all of these efforts deserve to be in this canon of modern architectural art.

In this essay it was discussed that there are a few criteria including authenticity, immersiveness, competition and societal impact of art that serve as an aid in being able to identify or otherwise differentiate modern works of art in this age of aestheticized capitalistic and corporate lifestyles and the resulting existential crises that precipitate from the basic human contemplation of exactly what a human is doing here as they spend increasingly large amounts of time performing dehumanized actions. Three great authors and their philosophical notions of art were discussed, and three art collectives and their art was discussed in regards to the relevance to the artistic criteria presented in this essay.

In conclusion, cult-based art heads the forefront of philosophical and social aesthetics in this digital age where individual existential peril imposed by such rapid advances in technology has driven a cultural thirst for trying to better understand the human place in the universe, in a universe that’s perceived to be much more complicated with each passing scientific advancement, for which specific artistic criteria can be applied to understand it. Architecture that’s composed of many different works of art including music, revisionary art, stories, sculptures, photos and more are a result of an age in which the technological advancements have made art so accessible. The modern pursuit of aesthetics in architecture is generally oriented toward unity and a rejection of oppressive politics and many more great modern architectural collaborations can be investigated in support of this.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations, Harcourt, New York, New York, 1968, pp. 219–253. https://bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/39502283480001161/file/ viewer Accessed 19 Aug. 2024

Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Boston University, bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/39502310600001161/file/viewer. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Grey, Alex, and Allyson Grey. “Entheon.” CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, www.cosm.org/entheon. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Laboureau, Sebastien. “Better out than in, New-York, 2013 – Banksy Explained.” Banksy Explained –, 30 Jan. 2022, banksyexplained.com/better-out-than-in-new-york-2013/. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Lorde, Audre. “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” Sister Outsider : Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY, 1984. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.bu.edu/bsi/ebookviewer/ebooksid=6ee66191-f424-414d- a173-ef8224895812%40redis&ppid=Page-__-24&vid=0&format=EK Accessed 19 Aug. 2024

Mitman, Tyson. “Unmasking Banksy – the Street Artist Is Not One Man but a Whole Brand of People.” The Conversation, 29 Jan. 2024, theconversation.com/unmasking-banksy-the-street-artist-is- not-one-man-but-a-whole-brand-of-people-215293. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Wolf, Meow. “Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station: Immersive Art.” Quantum Department of Transportation, www.convergencestation.com/. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Existentialism in The Seventh Seal and Affliction

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.

On Killing Your Angels or Torching Your House: Considerations From Charlotte Brontë and Virgina Woolf

In her story, “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography”, Charlotte Brontë tells a story of a female human Victorian woman passing through a series of internal character struggles that progress as Jane Eyre moves away from a life of being undifferentiated from mere furniture or pasture animal in a man’s home to, instead, becoming an extension of his own body in what’s today commonly, but not exclusively, called a “ride or die relationship”. Virginia Woolf describes her reaction to this metamorphic process of personal growth from farm to table in her essay, “Professions for Women”, as she describes the continuous depreciation and rejection of these reins. Between Brontë and Woolf, the concept of what a woman is to “be” or not is discussed in varying degrees of certainty that invite much room for discussion that shows similarities and differences in opinion between the two authors that reveal substantial complications in the notion of shared personality traits that had been so ingrained into traditional female identity.

Woolf opens with saying, “The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in other professions.” (Woolf 235-236). What she means here is that prior to this success, the level of access to professions, for women, was prohibitive in relation to cost demanded by the application. It’s a callout to past society that featured women predominantly as adornments of a home, such as the one Brontë describes in “Jane Eyre”, where women were depicted as being left with relatively little access to money and generally found themselves in subordinate positions under the “guidance” of a “master” of a home, often a firstborn son or their husband. This was a remnant practice of Christian religious tradition so prevalent in European culture following the conquests of the Holy Roman Empire that left the societies bereft of their original traditions and instilled a unified practice that came to dominate all aspects of Western society. Woolf perceives professions “outside the home” to’ve required sums of money that were beyond the reach of women, in order to obtain access to them. That she discusses other professions in which success would be had indicates her reasonable opinion that there are certainly other professions that she feels women would excel at.

This mentality parallels Brontë’s ideals as in the first and second parts of “Jane Eyre”, in which Brontë writes of a woman that definitionally must live in a confining way due predominantly to limited access to money, and by extension of this the agency and autonomy that money could afford. Brontë doesn’t explicitly write this, but it’s implied by the third part of the book where Jane’s bestowed inheritance money and then her personality changes. Had Jane been given money from an early age, she wouldn’t have had to be raised by her aunt that hated her, nor would she’ve had to attend the cheapest and most dangerous boarding school, nor would she have set out on a life that lead her to such conditions that lead her to meeting Mr. Rochester. It was because these three things were so “cheap” that Jane was so successful at doing them, for her clear level of aptitude and talent would’ve enabled her to excel at any opportunity. This was apparent on various character descriptions such as the one from Bessie who says of Jane, “I dare say you are clever, though.” (Brontë 113). Jane was also called an early riser, quite a lady, not so unsophisticated, not naturally austere, along with many other similar character descriptions of her pre-inheritance self. These descriptions of Jane in Brontë’s story form a narrative of a woman that’s not lacking in capability or talent, and was one who excelled in these positions not because they’re cheap to her but because they were those which were accessible to her.

Woolf and Brontë indicate that this homebound lifestyle and type of work indicated a level of naivety in women that impacted their perceived ability to meaningfully participate in society and it was only upon internalizing and accepting falsehood, and by extension accepting the corruption of ones psyche (particularly women’s) at a societal level, that enabled the continuation of such a practice in society. Woolf revealed that a woman to is be fierce, someone that would eviscerate these types notions at every opportunity (she writes of killing a personified “The Angel of the House”), whereas Brontë depicts Eyre as a fiercely independent woman, at the end of her story, whose existence will revolve around her monogamous partner. Woolf describes this by using the metaphor of “The Angel of the House” and the external perceptions of men being impediments to this profession despite its accessibility when she writes, “The consciousness of what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about her passions had roused her from her artists state of unconsciousness. She could write no more.” (Woolf 240). This was to indicate the stifling effects of men simply being perceived to exist as holding opinions from the state which she writes as to surmount a metaphoric assault on through her writing were sufficient to impede her professional ability to write. She further explains later in saying that it’s a personal struggle and there are many more “ghosts to fight” in exactly the same way that contemporary results are often the opposite of her possible expectations, of these resulting impressions of men on women who speak their truth.

Brontë indicates a redoubling of these effects of subordination and sacrifice after persisting through the dispensing of falseness, instead asserting that it’s Jane’s priority to do exactly this. In “Jane Eyre”, Brontë writes, ““To be your wife is for me to be as happy as I can be on Earth … Sacrifice? What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content, to be privileged to put my arms around what I value, to press my lips to what I love, to repose on what I trust, is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice … I love you better now when I can really be useful to you” (Brontë 23:11:00 – 23:12:11). In saying this, Jane was alluding to her recent acquisition of autonomy and agency through the inheritance and Rochester’s subsequent and commensurate loss in it through his “house” burning down. In Brontë’s story, Jane has more closely embraced the notion of “The Angel of the House” that Woolf writes so vehemently of and in doing so it becomes apparent that their individual opinions vary based on the individual circumstances and a blanket statement of what a woman ought to be wouldn’t suffice to explain either authors thoughts on the matter alone despite both of their discussions being valid and pertinent to the discussion.

Neither one of them claims what a woman is to be, exactly, although their opinions do overlap as they discuss individual aspects. Both seem to agree on what a woman was, previously. Their current versions of what a woman is vary, and each could be imagined to say that there would be no individually appropriate profession for exclusively women, any more than previously that role was supposed to be in the home in a past society. Woolf closes in discussing time as the barrier to defining this, time to reflect and continue, to explore. She indicates this when she wrote, “Those are the questions that I should like, had I time, to ask you.” (Woolf 241). She is saying that a review of all extant literature is necessary to find aspects of womanhood and identify them, and encounter those ghosts, in order to further define what that would be.

This essay’s discussed two writings, one from Charlotte Brontë and one from Virginia Woolf that explore what the role of women are in this modern world. Between Brontë and Woolf, the concept of what a woman’s to “be” or not is discussed in varying degrees of certainty that has room for discussion that shows similarities and differences in opinion between them. Neither one of them claims what a woman is to be, exactly, although their opinions do overlap. Both seem to agree on what a woman was, previously, but their current understanding of what a woman is to be varies necessarily so based on individual circumstances that rely on equity and equality regarding level of access to professional society in order to retain autonomy sufficient to justify continued participation in reasonable society.

Works Cited

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Narrated by Olivia Lane. Gates of Imagination, 2024, Audible, Accessed 5 Aug. 2024.

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Amazon, 2023, Amazon Kindle, Accessed 6 Aug. 2023.

Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women.” The Death of the Moth: And Other Essays, Hogarth Press, London, 1942, pp. 235–242. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

War Is Not A Luxury

War Is Not A Luxury1

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realize. This is war as illumination, for it is through war that we give name to those ideas which are – until the war – nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true war springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.

As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, “beautiful/and tough as chestnut/stanchions against (y)our nightmare of weakness/2” and of impotence.

These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.

When we view living in the european mode only as a problem to be solved, we [won’t]3 rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were what the white fathers told us were precious.

But as we come more into touch without own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experience and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.

At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the possibility for fusion of these two approaches so necessary for survival, and we come closest to this combination in our wars. I speak here of war as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word war to mean – in order to cover a desperate wish for might without insight.

For women, then, war is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into nuts and bolts, and then into tanks and missiles, then into more tangible reduction of enemies. War is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our wars, carved from the rock experience of our daily lives.

As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning ground for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and war. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into armaments so they can be ensured. And where those armaments do not yet exist, it is our wars which helps to fashion them. War is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy. We can sometimes work long and hard to establish one beachhead of real resistance to the deaths we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or threatened by those canards we have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek for safety. Women see ourselves diminished or softened by the falsely benign accusations of childishness, of non-universality, of changeability, of sensuality. And who asks the question: Am I altering your aura, your ideas, your dreams, or am I merely moving you to temporary and reactive action? And even though the latter is no mean task, it is one that must be seen within the context of a need for true alteration of the very foundations of our lives.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us – the warrior – whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. War coins the actions to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom.

However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours? “If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!” shouts the child.

Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves – along with the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply, and so many of our old ideas disparage. In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only war to hint at possibility made real. Our wars formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.

For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutionalized dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to power as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As warriors. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our wars that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, so speak, and to dare.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core – the fountain – of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds.

For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt – of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making peace, giving birth, mourning our dead – while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.

1This is a revisionary re-write of Audre Lorde’s essay, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” (1977), and was created for the sake of a separate identically-titled essay that prompted me to do this, for the sake of examples discussed within that essay. It was on cross-referencing Lorde’s piece against Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935) that lead to a combination of their beliefs here in this re-write. The two are intended to be read together, but each should stand alone just as well. The original source material for these two essays is cited at the end of this re-write along side Lorde’s original citations that she placed at the end of her essay.

2

First published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, no. 3 (1977).

From “Black Mother Woman,” first published in From a Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, Detroid, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982) p. 53.

3I wasn’t sure if this word should have been in the original or not, because Lorde was referring to both ideas and actions in the original. Either way, I think it belongs in the revision and because of this I put it in brackets. It was actually the perception of this potentially missing word that spurred the full revision, otherwise it would have been left as the few examples in the essay.

War is Not a Luxury

The proposal that poetry’s a substitute for war as a source of artistic inspiration relies on the relative aesthetic value of politics to the populations that these notions are applied to. Both Audre Lorde in her essay, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury”, and Walter Benjamin in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, note considerations which reveal that their discussions run parallel to each other. Benjamin indicates that there’s a beauty in war that illuminates and inspires poets and artists under Fascism, whereas Lorde discusses the concept that poetry itself is this source of illumination (inspiration) for the poet (artist) or woman (human). Lorde presents an anti-fascist (Socialist) argument that posits that aesthetically politicized art is what lends itself to inspiration of an artist in times of institutional dehumanization. This essay will discuss similarities in their discussions which reveal that that cultural or national aesthetic value of politics is a determining factor of whether artists are inspired by war or art depending on the national climate at the time, in which either art or war can be substituted for the other depending on the different situations.

The idea that the pursuit of war in place of the pursuit of art in regards to aesthetic inspiration for artists is a parallelism that was at the center of Benjamin’s understanding through his entire life. At the end of his essay, he referred to the de-attenuated nature of fully-mobilized cultural activity that embodied the aestiticization of war through Fascist politics until such a state that all available resources were dedicated to the notion of “might is right”, in place of cult-based art, was achieved. To elucidate this, Benjamin writes that, “The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.” (Benjamin 243). What he means here, through reverse-implication, is that poetry (art) is just as guilty as war of the same violation in “forcing the masses to their knees”. With poetry, this is through the illuminating effects radiated by a masterpiece poem, or film, whereas with war it’s literal.

Benjamin sets the narrative that the Fascist (political) class used war as its primary aesthetic focus for the proletariat (working, non-political) masses, whereas communists (Marxists) would instead favor the application of aesthetics to art (he discusses print, film, photography, painting, architecture of buildings etc …) which is what he means when he leaves his parting line on war, “This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.” (Benjamin 244). What he means here is that the impact of war, like the impact of art, implies that World Wars 1 & 2 were “masterpieces” of war, whereas the Ethiopian Colonial War referenced in his essay would be “a fine work” of war, and various militaristic skirmishes and the like are equivalent to individual “essays” of war. In comparison, all these examples of war serve as sources of inspiration for the “artist” that romanticized the notion when he quoted Marinetti in saying, “War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with fiery orchids of machine guns…” (Benjamin 243). This quote is important because it proposes that war itself becomes the source of illumination for these aesthetic notions that would find their way into an artists art apart from the war. During the war, the “art” itself became tanks, new armaments, military formations, and the other various outcomes of war as a direct consequence of it.

War, for the Fascist Benjamin writes of, is the same source of illumination that Lorde indicates poetry is for women (by extension this means “proletariats” using Benjamin’s term, in referring to the non-political working class). In Lorde’s “Poetry Is Not A Luxury”, she says, “This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are – until the poem – nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.” (Lorde, 1977, para. 1). Here, she says that the poem comes before the ideas that inspire the artist. For the sake of this comparison of illuminations of artists to Benjamin’s work, let’s replace notions of “poetry” in this previous sentence from Lorde with those of “war”, as if Benjamin’s Fascist wrote Lorde’s essay. The resulting sentence becomes, “This is war as illumination, for it is through war that we give name to those ideas which are – until the war – nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.” The importance of doing this shows exactly how similar the line of thought between these two authors was. Anywhere Benjamin refers to war in his writing, one could replace all notions of war with poetry. The reverse is true in Lorde’s writing, in that any reference to poetry in her writing, could be swapped with war, leading to different but valid conclusions in the domain of the political effects of each. I’m picking Lorde’s writing as an example because it’s shorter, and her prose is more easily palatable for the sake of making this argument.

When Benjamin says “War is Beautiful…”, he’s implying that the notions of war and art in Lorde’s and his essays are interchangeable concepts, and implies that transforming the title of Lorde’s essay into, “War is Not a Luxury” would adequately describe the notion of war as being a source of illumination for a Fascist, instead of poetry as Lorde wrote (Benjamin 243). Lorde wasn’t a fascist, and thus likely didn’t intend to imply that, “War Is Not a Luxury”, in her writing. However, under the Fascist imperative conveyed by Benjamin, whereby all forms of politics have become aesthetized, in the same way art is aestheticized, when replacing references to poetry in Lorde’s writing with reference instead to war, her entire essay becomes absolutely harrowing, but retains a similar form of argumentation that would agree with Benjamin’s reasoning at the end of his essay.

Consider instead if Lorde had written, “For women, then, war is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into nuts and bolts, and then into tanks and missiles, then into more tangible elimination of enemies. War is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our wars, carved from the rock experience of our daily lives.” instead of, “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury … Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems …” (Lorde, 1977, para. 8). Further rewritten citations aren’t required here to indicate that the verbiage precipitated in Lorde’s essay runs parallel to Benjamin’s conclusions that he left us with and a full rewrite of her essay in the context of war of Lorde’s essay is an exercise outside the scope of this essay.

Her prose style is important to the way she makes the argument because it’s clear that Lorde’s writing as if she’s been personally attacked. Due to this, she writes in the same way one could imagine someone at war, thereby indicating that in place of war, there’s writing such as this to substitute. This would’ve been her natural and expected reaction to the oppression she would’ve been experiencing at the time of writing this, as she lived through the US civil rights movements through the 1960’s and every day at that time would’ve seemed much like a war even in 1977. Whereas Benjamin writes of the field of war, she very much writes as if one were to write from it.

In conclusion, this essay’s covered the parallels between sytlistic thoughts shared between Audre Lorde and Walter Benjamin in their essays that were 40 years apart. The proposal that poetry’s a substitute for war as a source of artistic inspiration relies on their relative aesthetic value in politics to the populations that the notions are applied to. Benjamin indicates that there’s a beauty in war that illuminates and inspires poets and artists under fascist regimes, whereas Lorde discusses the concept that poetry itself is this source of illumination, of inspiration, for the poet or woman (human). In setting these two pieces beside each other, the aesthetic values of art and war become very apparent in that their relative levels of politicization that directly correlate to being sources of inspiration for artists and poets in each authors perspective.

Works Cited

Lorde, Audre. “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” Sister Outsider : Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY, 1984. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.bu.edu/bsi/ebookviewer/ebook? sid=6ee66191-f424-414d-a173-ef8224895812%40redis&ppid=Page-__-24&vid=0&format=EK Accessed 29Jul2024

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations, Harcourt, New York, New York, 1968, pp. 219–253. https://bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/39502283480001161/file/ viewer Accessed 29Jul2024

Memento and Theories of Personal Identity

There are three theories of personal identity presented in the third chapter of Mary Lich’s, “Philosophy Through Film”, that include The Physical Continuity Theory, The Same-soul Theory and The Psychological Continuity theory1. This essay will cover what these conjured terms mean, and their application toward describing the problems related to personal identity found in Christopher Nolan’s Memento. The movie will also receive a brief summary of relevant information for this essay, prior to discussing the relationships between all of these things.

In Memento, we’re presented with Lenny. Lenny’s got a condition that impacts his memory and visibly interferes with his notion of personal identity. Every few moments, randomly since a point in time in his life, he forgets everything that’s happened since that moment. Lenny navigates a live of external manipulators and observers, and uses physical objects in place of his memory on a personally validated scale of trust based on his pre-existing notion of values that he ascribes to these physical objects in valuing their importance to him without the ability to form new memories. The event that induced this affliction on him seems to’ve also damaged him psychologically in that he’s later described in the movie to’ve got flaws in his memories surrounding the event that caused him to not be able to form new memories. Physically, Lenny appears to be the same guy he always was, aside from his disheveled hair and tattoos.

The first of these theories from Lich is that of Physical Continuity. It encompasses the notion that there exists such a continuous process that’s sufficiently empowered to maintain a level of confidence held by an external observer to a system such that the amassed physical composition of matter in non-mass-manufactured things with identities (such as human identities) being observed is thus, by extension of the continual execution of this process, considered to be continuous by mere implication and assumption. In humans, this continuous process would be maintained when we eat and breathe, which provides physical inputs (energy, minerals, elements, chemicals) to this presumed-valid physically biological process that both culls and reproduces the physical cells that “are supposed to be all there” by a process that’s implied to regulate this process in order to sufficiently retain the proposed identity that’s wholly contained within that resulting mass of person.

The second of these theories from Lich is that of Psychological Continuity. Of particular interest in this discussion’s that Lich doesn’t mention The Psyche to be a part of one’s psychological continuity, likely as an attempt to prevent folks from conflating her notions of Same-soul and Psychological Continuity theories due to the crossover between the field of Psychology and Mythology that the notion represents. Lich says that, in much the same way of “clusters” of mental abstractions, an identity is psychologically continuous when its various parts that include, “my personality, disposition, value system, long-term desires, continuous stream of consciousness, memory,” are continuous (Lich 63)2. The term “psyche” wholly encompasses the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind of which these clusters of terms she did offer are all sub-parts of. Were it to be the case that one’s conscious or unconscious self changed drastically enough, they’d no longer be psychologically continuous, because multiple psyches can’t exist in the same continuous identity per Lich. There’d be two identities in one physical body and while there are studies of this happening, it’s not generally the default case that they consciously conflict with each other. That Lenny carries “memories” of these different personalities indicates that he’s not personally psychologically continuous, but finds a limited ability to be so through physical notes such as photos, handwriting and tattoos.

The third of these theories from Lich is that of Same-soul. Under the domain of this theory’s precisely the religious connotation of a disembodied, immortal soul. Note here the choice of wording to be in line with the other two theories herein presented, because a biological death would likely terminate one’s assumed identity as described in both previous theories unless, in either case, there was to be a general acceptance that to not be terminated would necessarily incorporate aspects of this theory. Therein lies the discussion of both “mortal” and “immortal” souls that naturally precipitates from this discussion whereas a “mortal” soul’s displayed in Memento as the multiple psychological identities portrayed by Lenny potentially “die” every few moments as he forgets his memories. The “alternative Lenny’s” cease to exist, therefore discontinuity is partially implied and thus leaves the notion that there’s a reliance on “immortal soul” or “physical continuity” for explaining the continuation of his assumed identity3.

All of these theories could apply toward one’s understanding of Lenny’s personal identity in some way.

Lenny’s identity in the domain of physical continuity is certainly a very apparent one, even the referenced character of Sammy Jankis. Both of these people could be identified based on their physical appearance and physical characteristics, which Lich mentions to be the stand-in for the determination of physical continuity. In this regard, there are a singular Sammy and Lenny in this movie. In the case of Sammy, Lenny’s insurance company denied Sammy’s claim to be paid for physical disability on the grounds of a psychological problem affected Sammy, and not a physical problem with his body that created his assumed identity (Memento 39:29 – 39:55).

The situation’s similar for Lenny, but the additional revelation by Teddy that Lenny mixed up details of his own life and Sammy’s presents an issue (Memento 1:42:45 – 01:43:48). As an external observer, we can’t know whether Teddy’s lying or not, and it’s later revealed that Lenny was complicit in lying to himself with his internal monologue that lead him to investigating and killing Teddy (The opening scene) by manipulating his “source of memory”. The notes were his source of identity, thereby making Lenny complicit in being psychologically discontinuous, which cast doubt on there being a physical problem with Lenny (Memento 01:47:31 – 01:48:33). What continuous bit of personal identity could’ve spurred such a reaction where, despite having different psychological identities across moments, Lenny retained a series of seemingly continuous identities in the physical continuity and same-soul theories? As was stated in the story, Lenny wasn’t originally a killer, and wouldn’t conceivably have the resolve to set himself up to knowingly murder someone out of “wanting to make things right” because he would’ve originally thought murder to be wrong (Memento 01:47:15 – 01:47:20). That this was an aspect of his original personality (possible, but not discussed), or otherwise one originating from the notion of a soul, could explain the behavior. According to Lich’s Same-soul theory, it could be argued that Lenny’s source of identity was coming from a soul, because he didn’t biologically die, and it could be said that his soul would’ve never “detached” from his body, allowing him to maintain an imbalanced notion of identity.

This essay’s covered three theories of personal identity as introduced by Mary Lich which were discussed in relation to understanding some of the issues regarding personal identity. Each served as a cross section to attempt to further navigate the nature of personal identity from a philosophical perspective in film. A summary of the movie Memento pertinent to this essay was included and then various assertions were made that indicated that the characters depicted, Lenny and Sammy, challenged notions of personal identity despite being physically distinct and individual people.

In conclusion, the disjointed psychological nature of the resulting identities on display in Memento worked to show various aspects of personal identity that’d draw a viewer to consider that, despite a lack of apparent psychological continuity, there seemed to be a level outside of simple psychological identity and there possibly was something that unified their personalities despite being psychologically discontinuous. A much more robust discussion regarding the deeper aspects on personal identity could be had using Lich’s theories and just this movie, but the aim of this paper was to simply introduce the notion that these tools are sufficient to analyze philosophical content in film.

Works cited

Lich, Mary M. “Personal Identity.” Philosophy Through Film, 4th ed., Routledge, New York, New York, 2021, pp. 58–82.

“Memento.” Newmarket, 2001.

1 These theories are first introduced by Mary Lich. As a disclaimer, it’s a devastatingly grievous effort for one to look into the history of the existence of these three theories prior to Lich almost offensively hallucinating them in her book. Any reader of this essay will be left with an infuriating lapse of understanding were they to not have the associated contextual discussion that Lich incorporates while casually introducing the terms, without much reference or discussion on the nature of their origin. A cursory investigation would lead to observing that these terms are an iniquitously regurgitated gallimaufry of notions appearing to originate from John Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Brittanica’s current (23Jul2024) entry on Personal Identity and then conjointed with a destitute application of pauperized mathematical notions such as that of “continuity” which in the context of reading this book is understood to be a nebulous term that loosely correlates to the mathematical and logical notions of the concept. Please momentarily suspend any retained and sufficiently advanced understanding of Continuity discussed within all of linear algebra, series, vector, multi-variable or discrete mathematics, stopping maybe around the level of depth with which one might take away in understanding the notion of Mathematical Continuity after Calculus 1 or 2, in very much the same way one might believe in the Santa Claus story when they were six years old. Disclaimers aside, it’s helpful to note that new ways to model thought experiments such as embedding philosophical thought into the film medium begs the idea that new tools of analysis to accommodate these new models come to ones aid in very much the same way you won’t go and buy a tool until the day you need it. Locke et. al. certainly didn’t have the same level of access to film media that we do and as such couldn’t’ve precipitated tools with which to consider as precisely the notions able to be displayed in them. Consider that I was initially so put off by these notions that I felt the need to figure out how to add footnotes and visited the thesaurus in one morning, for which I have Mary Lich to thank for having expanded my horizons here.

2 It’s important to note here, that Lich refers to other folks as having presented the abstractions as examples of basis that sufficiently constitute psychological identity when listing these terms, but then continues in her discussion without really asserting these to be a part of this theory. Also lacking is a citation of these sources outside of referring to John Locke and David Hume at the end of the chapter – but it should then logically follow that she would’ve provided two sentences, and not three that she did, when she refers obliquely to “some” and “others” in listing these properties.

3 These three theories, by design, are presented as a way to be arbitrarily exclusive in order to enable them to be used as tools of cross sectional analysis of personal identity using familiar and popular concepts. Valid arguments can be made that’d equivocate The Same-soul Theory to The Psychological Continuity Theory through the notion of Psyche and from there reduce The Physical Continuity Theory to some metaphysical argument rooted in quantum mechanics that’d likely sufficiently reveal that all three of these are one part of a more generalized theory, but that’s not the focus of this essay that aims to use these theories as presented to explore notions of personal identity – because yes I will build a house with nothing but hammers for tools is that’s all I’m to have.

An Individual Tool of Clarity

In the French Rococo period, Jean-Honoré Fragonard created one of the more wonderful pieces of art that captured a powerful and enduring representation of the general milieu present in 1767 in his painting, “The Swing”. Gertrude Stein’s since offered a powerful tool of critical analysis in her discussion of, “What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them”, that can greatly enhance a discussion of how this painting’s a masterwork. This essay will open with a brief discussion of various individual interpretations of this painting, that’re revealed to be reliant on the individual’s perspective and identity. For this, one must be able to recognize the entity masterfully crafted into the painting in order to identify anything so’s to clarify the art to themselves and others. It’ll then close in tying these interpretations to Stein’s paragraph on the notions of clarity and the lack of clarity in a masterpiece from her essay.

In the painting, front and center there sits The Swing, the paintings namesake. Intertwined in the painting are displays of an overgrown and untended Nature, appearing as vine-like. These all are adorned with Fragonard’s familiar, intricate and numerous brush strokes that incorporated an aura of a vibrant naivety in his use of lines and color scheme on display. The foliage-work’s so numerous and radiates a sense of overwhelming ignorance that says, “This is to be the Paradise that’s lost”. Depicted also are the architectural works of man falling into a sort of disrepair in the background. What appears to be a gardening tool underneath the swinging woman’s been discarded as carelessly as the woman swings extravagantly and opulently across the scene with the aid of her helper as she engages in a hedonistic display of tantalizing sexuality with the man lying down on the left side of the painting.

In knowing the history to follow, this work’s a statement on the carelessness of an era in which all forms of “progress” fell into disregard for the sake of catering to the whims and wants of The Aristocracy as the servant class grew increasingly discontent. This theme’s indicated by the shadowy man in the background, who could be a servant, of sorts, for lack of a more appropriate term. He serves as part of the depicted entity in this painting. Further personal critical analysis of this painting isn’t needed to convey the message that the depiction I see’s different from the one that the artist would’ve seen, and this again’s different from that which any other viewer might see. An analysis is outside the scope of this essay that’s focused on the tool Gertrude Stein introduces to discuss the nature of aspects inherent to masterpiece work.

The alternative (“official”) explanation by art historians of this work, is some story about it being commissioned by a suitor engaged in an affair with the woman as he’d depicted to hide in the bushes while she’s swung by her shadowy cuckold husband in the background. This is just a different interpretation of this narrative, even the original commissioning was said to have it be a religious bishop figure take his place whereas the shadowy man depicted might very well be presumed to be depending on one’s identity. In that light, note the position’s such that this man cannot ever push her, she’s too elevated. Thus he can only pull her, as one does to the reigns of a horse. The general notion that the suitor lying down was obscured by an overgrown bush that’s since fallen into a state of being untended still holds true; however, regardless of whether or not this shadowy man in the background is her husband, friend or servant makes the overall impression of the work not too different from the others in regards to the entity depicted in the painting, but still invokes clarity for a particular individual and not necessarily another.

That all of myself, the original artist and the original commissioner may all hold these different notions of the painting through the lens of our individual identities is exactly the nature of what Gertrude Stein meant when she’d expressed the level of clarity through identity and entity using one’s memories in relation to a work. The entity contained within The Swing is a powerful statement on nature, those who have things and those who lose things, and hedonism. This is the nature of the entity in this art, masterfully placed there by Fragonard. For the sake of creation of this work, he would’ve placed his memories aside and allowed the work to come to existence through his talent, as Stein so discussed.

Stein says, “The minute your memory functions while you are doing anything it may be very popular but actually it is dull”, in trying to explain what she meant by clarity. In this case, had Fragonard used the originally requested Bishop or something else that came from memory in place of the shadowy man, the work would’ve just been a fine piece according to Stein, but not a masterpiece (DeKoven 498). Stein implied this just after she’d said, “If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to any one but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not” (DeKoven 498). What she means here’s best explained by her notions of identity and entity, in that identity’s based on the individuals memory and that’s what she describes as an inhibition to making a masterpiece in “thinking” while doing. Accessing parts of one’s memory tied up in identity creates a barrier to making a masterpiece. Stein implies that entity is the essence that’s left, that we see in a painting such as “The Swing”.

Clarity’s obtained by accompanying the entity on display with the identity of the person that’s appreciating it. That this work’s open to such a style of interpretation yielding powerful implications is what makes it a masterpiece according to Stein, because Fragonard’s memory doesn’t bar anyone else’s identification of what’s going on in this painting. Had the painting been painted with the bishop depicted as was originally in the commission, it would’ve said something very different, and thus risked its status as being able to be a masterpiece. It then would’ve incorporated into it an inseparable bit of identity that may’ve inevitably corrupted the discrete unit of entity displayed in the painting according to the logic presented by Stein in her essay and thus rendered it no more than a possibly popular work but not a masterpiece.

In this case, the identity of the author’s one whom very much was patronized by the Aristocratic patrons that funded his pursuit of art, and it’s unlikely that he would’ve valued it in the same way myself or someone else would’ve. That it invites most anyone with an eye for it to discern a clarity in studying it by being so able to be interpreted speaks much to it being able to be considered a masterpiece according to Stein’s own words. Furthermore, it’s not likely that any other artist could’ve originated such a painting as this, and this fact is critical to this being the masterpiece that it is. The perceived individually obtained clarity is that all of these notions folks have aren’t clear in the painting alone and require much in the way of further discussion and discourse such as found in this essay. Essay-writing such as this is what Stein would refer to as something that may be very popular but actually it is dull in her mentioning secondary writing.

In conclusion, Jean-Honoré Fragonard created one of the more wonderful pieces of art that captured a powerful and enduring representation of the general milieu present in 1767 in his painting, “The Swing”. This essay’s covered various clarifications of the same work based on understandings of different memories involving an interpretation of, “The Swing”. These individual interpretations, while clear on discussion, aren’t fully encompassing the clearly depicted entity in the artwork. This is because the interpretations rest on identity that’s formative in grasping the entity therein depicted. Various interpretations of the meaning inherent behind the entity depicted that’s loosely a powerful statement on nature, including those who have and those who lose, and hedonism. This means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It was discussed that Steins notion of clarity in regards to entity and identity greatly enhances the ability to have a good discussion on this work of art for which her literary criticism as a tool is invaluable to doing so.

Works Cited

DeKoven, Marianne. “Gertrude Stein (1874–1946).” The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Marianne DeKoven et al., Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 479–530. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5501026.26. Accessed 22 July 2024.

Fragonard, Jean-Honoré. “The Swing.” Smarthistory, smarthistory.org/jean-honore-fragonard-the- swing/. Accessed 22 July 2024.

Film Analysis: Citizen Kane

This movie is largely about the various personal accounts of the memories people have of other people. In this story, the various recollections of people are used to reconstruct an image of Mr. Kane who, himself appearing at the center of the story, doesn’t have his own personal account of himself accounted for in this story that incorporates at least 6 iterations of how people viewed him. Largely they recounted the aspects of their lives that the man directly influenced, such as for Susan’s recounting it was so heavily skewed about her singing career and Kane’s influence on this. I don’t think that hearing Susan’s story alone couldn’t give a reasonable understanding of who this guy actually was, in the way this story was written so as to show the various reflections of people for which there were many variations. She wouldn’t have heard him say the word rosebud per the film, therefore representing this as part of his personality outside of that formative moment.

In doing this, the assertion is such that there are inferences that can be made about interpretations on what personal identity is.

I had it asked of me once – that if you had to communicate to an “immortal soul” that wasn’t omniscent, where you were in the universe – how, exactly, would you go about doing this? It was one of the better questions I’ve had asked of me, ever, regarding personal identity and I’m certainly over-interpreting the nature of the question a bit, but much can be thought of in considering this. For one, it’s a large assumption that this immortal soul would even know what this thing was we call a physical universe, let alone the notions of energy and vibration – this entity conceivably exists apart from that, so how then how could one ever hope to tell it where you were? Suppose that it could perceive you, and was empowered to reach you, here, and in some way, you had to have the ability to communicate to it in such a way as to be able to find you, for a period. What would you consider to tell it? Would you start by attempting to tell it your own recollections of the formative events of your particular origin and childhood such as found in the rosebud interpretation, or would you rely on external recountings of yourself such as in the enigma interpretation to sufficiently tell such a thing where you’re at?

In general I consider each individual reflection of who Kane was in the film through individual recollection to be an allegory to the petals of a rosebud, where while there were all different petals on a rose varying from large to small and differing slightly, all still pertained to and were a part of the rose, which I considered to be a metaphor for Kane’s personality. In this case I find the mention of it to imply that Kane was the rosebud and as the stories were presented progressively through the story, viewers were able to get a more clear picture of the whole rosebud, the whole person, Kane.

In this light, I consider Kane to be slightly different from the stories presented, even. The point here is that I am in agreement with the enigma interpretation regarding Kane’s identity in that while each individual reflection, idea, or interpretation of who Kane in particular elucidating a particular aspect of his personality, many of the stories were required to be viewed through the accumulated lenses of who Kane was in order to come to understand Kane as a person. I don’t believe it was some single event of childhood alone that was the singluar formative event that created the identity that he carried with him in his human life. While I consider the event of his childhood to certainly be a formative event, it is one among many, more proximal or central to himself than many, that formed the agglomerated personality that could explain who Kane was. He wasn’t just chasing his lost childhood in this film any more than he was chasing any other lost thing to him that I perceive.

It was interesting to note that as the story progressed, I observed Kane being cast in an increasingly different light, as a progressive march toward a person that wasn’t exactly like the one the story opened up with. (blossoming or wilting like a rose). As he exited his wife’s room after she left, he walked by many people with internalized reflections of him that we could not outwardly see, nor could they all be the same. Then in the next scene he walked in front of a mirror with many iterations of his reflected self, all identical, that we could easily see. Possibly this was alluding to the fact that Kane’s personality was unchanged and iterative, and it was the interpretation of who he was that varied due to it having been cast in the shadows and biases of his peers’ recollections and individual personalities. This contrasts with the words he used to discuss with Susan prior to them separating – the discussion of what the people would think. I think this would mean that the perceived notions Kane would’ve imagined of the internalized versions of himself held by other people were taken into account to express himself and thus formed parts of his identity. This thereby gave some level of truth to the notion that an external observer could forge parts of an identity and the resulting person is an enigmatic aggomeration the constituent and recognized interpretations of the person being considered, which in this case was Kane.

It’s clear that his holding of the snowglobe indicates him holding onto his childhood, in memory and in doing so it’s likely the loneliness that he experienced through his whole life of having lost his mother who did what she thought was best to separate the guy from his father by sending him off. In doing this, Kane was inflicted with a childhood wound that caused him to collect impressive amounts of things through his whole life. My closest consideration here to this film is the sonnet Ozymandias. In this case, Kane’s life and identity were the result of constant reactions to external stimuli for which that event was one large part of.

I think that both of these concepts (rosebud vs. enigma interpretation of Citizen Kane) are mutually exclusive in that the essence of one interpretation involves that which was not had by Kane, whereas the other is defined explicitly by that which Kane lived through. To me, this is as straightforward as saying there would have been an apple there, but there was not, and separately that there was not an apple there and then there was – it’s quite possible that I’ve internally oversimplified both of these concepts but in general I conclude that the rosebud interpretation of the events of the movie are often conflated with the subsequent character traits that result in that in the same way folks can initially visually identify a person or thing most of the time, closer observation of the thing generally reveals further details.

An Individual Tradition of Corruption

In discussing T.S. Eliots’ notions on conformity, where in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” he writes, “to conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art,” much can be said in discussing its relation to Roman Polanskis’ Chinatown (Eliot 4). A cursory reading of the statement is that it’s an incorrect assertion in that, were one to replace the target of the statement with another target, such as a human, it may become apparent that the context in which the statement was made is critically important. For example, would a person no longer be a person, so long as they were to conform? Re-reading the sentence with a different target, it goes, “to conform merely would be for the new person not really to conform at all; they would not be new, and would therefore not be a notable person.” This exercise aside, the general essence of the statement is geared towards the assertion that uniqueness is an inseparable part of quality work, and the most important differentiator in this sentence is the word “merely”. It becomes apparent that Eliot was making the distinction between simple imitation and nuanced novelty superimposed on conformative elements of tradition.

Using the notion of conformity as a gauge, with regard to whether or not it makes Chinatown a better or worse ranked movie for having conforming elements, is nonetheless a pursuit in analyizing the movie for its full range of aspects, topics and techniques. First, it conforms in that the movie is based in California. Briefly listing various selections on elements in which conformity could be discussed include the genre, plot, characters, set design, film techniques such as montage, other film techniques such as leitmotif, the selections of music in the film, the usage of sound effects, the film angles, the general motions of characters (such as Jake moving up sets of stairs or hills in his ascent into deeper levels of awareness and knowledge), and more. A wholly comprehensive analysis of these individual aspects in order to assess or rank the level of merit this film deserves is largely outside the scope of this paper, but the general combined effect of them in regards to their merit in relation to conformity can be covered.

The story opens with the opening credits, trumpet music blaring in the background, reminiscent of that nostalgic noir tone that was to set the mood, and even the font is matching the style, and the opening credits are golden brown-hued to display a muted appearance and the brightest part of the opening scene is such that the darkness appears around the edges – this focuses the viewer.

These are all conforming aspects, as this movie was not the first to do this, but this conforming to a norm nonetheless aptly sets the stage for the work of art, as a border to a painting or a title to a song. Choices such as these speak much toward the ability to have a unified and shared ability to convey tradition in ones work that Eliot wrote of later in his essay where he wrote, “the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order,” (Eliot 3). The notion that there’s a general implication of conformity to this conveys the tradition of the time through relatable concepts such as relatable characters (detectives) or familiar opening credits. Any film in particular could also do this, and just for that, no, it’s not a “work of art” for its opening credits or Jake Gittes, alone.

For Robert Towne, the writer, having died two weeks ago at the time of writing this essay, it’d certainly make sense to distinguish the different types of works of art that this film represents. For one there’s the story, “Chinatown”, by Robert Towne, and then two there is the film, Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski. There are musical works of art (The opening credits include “Chinatown Theme” by Jerry Goldsmith), literary works of art, visual works of art, statuesque character portrayals, and many more that are all embedded into this particular film that’s individually called a work of art in itself. It’s a conglomerated work of art that, when all pieces are fit together, make something more than each one of the individual works of art in this film could really ever be standing apart from each other. Whether it’s that opening trumpet tune that could go on for hours, the picturesque landscapes that could serve as an individual photograph on any wall, the story in a book that could easily find itself on a bookshelf – this film is a masterpiece that adorns itself in works of art. This is the modern nature of what it means to be considered a “classic”.

The general notion is that there are parts where this movie conforms – a detective story, an investigation, the film style, a romantic interest, the plot order, roles of males and females of the period, etc… Then there are parts where it doesn’t conform to expectations such as the plot twist of the grandfather-father and the sister-mother, the economic corruption at a societal level, the stories within the stories are what make this movie a highly rated classic of high merit. On the surface what had initially appeared to be an otherwise straightforward investigation turned into a statement on national politics, sociology and culture at the time. This, while still maintaining the outward appearance of a “detective story” pushed this film outside of boundaries of conformity and left the viewer seeing a level of corruption that was indescribably impressionable but unable to be succicintly defined in any concise explanation of the theme at the end of the story. It leaves one wondering if they’ve simply been passively watching a murder mystery or if they should be taking political action at the end of watching the film.

A major aspect that set this film apart from others was the presence of a very clear and apparent “bad guy”. This revelation wasn’t until the later parts of the movie and as such didn’t shatter the notion of it being a noir film. At the end, just about anyone could say that the grandfather was an overwhelmingly evil person, not simply for having murdered the engineer. But, this alone is a “conformal” level of evil. The motive behind his actions and his character portrayal in that the murder wasn’t done out of simple petty revenge or to satisfy his immediate needs, but instead had far reaching consequences that spoke to the general dissheveled nature of Los Angeles at the time. It was a city in the desert in need of water, where, “without water the dust will rise up and cover us as if we never existed,” (Chinatown 06:10-06:17). This means that without water, there was no future for the city.

This older man, Noah Cross, could bring water to it and thus make “the future” possible. The well-intentioned audience is supposed to hate him for this, but also him saying that it’s for “the future” made his point valid despite the wicked way in which he pursued it through murder and lies. But, in order to overwhelm this potential forgiveness of character flaw, the mans backstory as a rapist grandfather-father of his own daughter was used to induce a level of corruption to the narrative that empowered the viewer to disregard any remaining logical resistance in their faculties to this character being morally ambiguous and instead conclude that the man was strikingly and obviously a bad guy. This is something that cannot always be said of the noir genre, and in this regard was what set it apart as a work of art, in light of Eliots written assertions on the notion, such as to be able to caputre the nature of a complex emotion and also put it on display for folks to view in this film through this development of character. This guy, Noah, both “wants a future” and “bred his daughter” – but children are the future! How a viewer should internalize the resulting emotional conflict is left to their individual nature as there’s no straightforward way to process the complex emotional reaction presented here.

In conclusion, uniqueness is an inseparable part of quality work. Simple imitation and nuanced novelty superimposed on conformative elements of tradition are key elements in creating any new work of art through film. T.S. Eliot’s written literary theory would support this notion, and a further analysis may be given to this film in relation to those claims, or any other, but few are to rank higher than Chinatown in its merit of supporting his claim.

Works Cited

Evans, Robert. Chinatown. Performance by Jack Nicholson, et al., Paramount, Paramount Home Video, RCA, 1974, https://www.amazon.com/Chinatown-Jack-Nicholson/dp/B000HZM4FW. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Boston University, bu.leganto.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/readinglist/citation/39502310600001161/file/viewer. Accessed 16 July 2024.

The Truman Show and Allegory of the Cave

The Truman Show serves as a contemporary cinematic version of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” because the allegory had presented many ideological symbols that manifest in the movie. These ideas are also present in the characters and events in the film. Truman’s reaction to the life he was living was more a result of him not getting what he needed, more so than being put into a fake world.

Moving in line with the plot of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, the underground den is symbolically represented by the great dome on the world in the movie displayed (The Truman Show 01:02:00 -01:02:02). The characters were there from childhood or birth as was discussed in “Allegory of the Cave”. In a similar fashion to the cave, the parts of the human beings that Plato references as chained by their legs and necks are, in the movie, represented as psychological controls on behavioral aspects of the characters personality. For Truman this included the boat accident with his father and a lifetime being surrounded by propaganda that deterred leaving such as can be seen in the travel agency literature where magazines for cruises and the hazards of flight poster adorned the wall (The Truman Show 42:30 – 43:50), and the bonds of social interactions by the willing participants in the scheme all served the purpose of “chains” in the movie, despite not being physical ones as was mentioned in “Allegory of the Cave”.

The “fire blazing at a distance” in “Allegory of the Cave” was more of a metaphoric representation of a tool used to empower a false narrative – this role was taken on by the creator of the show, Christof, although there were sources of illumination that he directly controlled – the sun and the moon. Christof could also said to be responsible for having provided “the screen” referenced in “Allegory of the Cave”. This was equivalent to the physical environment that Truman could move physically freely within. The puppets referenced were the actors in the dome that received the commands from the script writer(s) that were represented as the people behind the moon (in the movie), that administratively and technically supported the people acting inside.

Truman’s “ascent” toward knowledge of the real world took place with repeated disruptions to the narrative that went on around him. These progressively added to his growing skepticism that lead to him initially questioning smaller parts of his life such as his job, choice of wife or location in which he lived, to larger concerns like the world was a stage for him, presuming his best friend Marlon and wife Meryl to be impostors who were lying to him, and ultimately the realization that the world really was not as it appeared. Each subsequent step along the way had a refractory period where Truman would resume wearing the “shackles” and accept the reality he was given as he continued ruminating, sometimes for long periods of time in between events. One long span was the one from his college days with Sylvia who had attempted directly disclosing his situation, to what appeared to be the beginning of the film when the camera fell from the sky.

Returning to “wearing the shackles of naivety” after all of these disruptive events would support the part in “Allegory of the Cave” where Plato writes that Socrates says, “Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects where are now shown to him?” (Plato 2). This was important because there were many, many times when Truman was “let out of his shackles”, but not having “left the cave” at those points he quickly resumed his undisturbed life, choosing to accept that the reality that was afforded to him was truer than the objects that were shown to him as was written.

Truman enters his reality-breaking montage which started with the radio station picking up someone discussing his movement (The Truman Show 29:30 – 30:40). The point in the “Allegory of the Cave” that is being reflected here on from this event in the movie is where Socrates says, “and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities” as he goes on a dismissive tirade that would otherwise put himself and his wife in danger as he was driving erratically, through a forest fire and a nuclear plant accident, unable to “see anything at all” (Plato 2).

The creator of the film, Kristoff, used philisophical logic to assure that there was a rationale, that was set against the vein of philosophy presented by Sylvia during their quick phone conversation during the interview later in the movie (The Truman Show 01:06:26 – 01:08:15). These two philisophical notions were discussed in a way that was different from the general Sophistry that was utilized by the actors on the set. The actors of the show used Sophistry to convince, or otherwise convey the particular direction that they wanted Truman to go or to act. This included whether he was to have the general feeling that everything Truman did was correct or acceptable behavior which was evidenced by Meryl’s constant smile and laugher when Truman was putting her life in danger when they drove around in the traffic circle.

When Marlon’s dismissive nature was used in order to cause certain behavior of Truman, this caused Truman’s current focus to fade from his view such as Marlon’s dismissal of the notion of Fiji as even an idea that a “normal” person would have. Important context here is that Marlon certainly would’ve heard Truman discuss Fiji before, having been his best friend since childhood (His mother identified him in the scrap book), when Truman would’ve conceivably applied the sticker to the top of his trunk in his younger years. That Marlon dismissed the island, even went as far as saying he didn’t know it, when Truman discussed it with him when drinking beers, is an example of the type of Sophistry that was used to convince Truman to come to a conclusion that was not likely in his best interests to have come to – for Marlon’s best interests were had and not Truman’s.

In dismissing Truman’s intentions to visit Fiji, Meryl mentions their car and mortgage payments and the cost setting them back five years and accuses him of being childish. In doing this she deflects beyond all rationale and reason, and certainly it becomes apparent that a paycheck isn’t all that’s keeping her quiet. It’s an ideology that’s keeping her quiet, here. She uses Sophistry to ensure that the philisophical notion prestented by Christoff was maintained as correct. Her character idolized the notion of being able to control a reality that offered some modicum of stability in the same way there were many others like just this “cave” that did this too, albeit to lesser magnitudes and the collapse of her narrative there meant by extension a similar failure in narrative elsewhere as a situation that appeared to be in control would spin out of control.

Appearances of situations being used to control situations were used by Marlon as Truman barges into the store with a life changing disclosure about how the whole world revolved around him and Truman was immediately met with skepticism and dimissal in order to maintain an orderly appearance so as to prevent Truman from perceiving the reality of the situation he was in. A great example of how this was done is the choice in story writing to have Marlon remove the chocolate bars from the vending machine while Truman was going through his story, in order to maintain the appearance of stability all for the sake of both the audience and Truman (The Truman Show 34:50 – 35:25). The tactic was to keep Truman in the focus of the camera, which Marlon knew the position of, for better TV show ratings, for as long as possible. The action indicated how manipulative the actors could be in order to maintain an orderly appearance even as the reality of the fake world was coming down around them.

The finale here indicates the root of Trumans discomfort, which he shared very quickly in a single sentence as he said “You never had a camera in my head” (The Truman Show 01:33:10 – 01:33:20). The admission that he knew that the creator he was controlled by didn’t have a camera in his head, was the disclosure, and is a rebuttal to both “The Allegory of the Cave” and the philisophical notion of not having something to fear of the prisoner in both of these stories. Up until that point, the philisophical discussions and concepts portrayed through the film hadn’t discussed that had there been an uninterrupted stream of consciousness to Trumans head, being piped to and controlled by Kristof, it could then be perceived that the story might have been very different in its ending. This power had only previously been attributable to a God, which Truman knew Christoff not to be.

This essay has discussed the various characters, events, plot, dialogue and scenes that likened the movie The Truman Show to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. It discussed, much like the allegory, the ascension of Truman’s awareness happening in stages with refractory periods in between. Truman’s reaction to the life he was living was more a result of him not getting what he needed, more so than being put into a fake world. Had the world been able to supply the few things that he needed, he may have continued letting things slide in the same way he suddenly became hyper-aware of things like traffic appearing magically. He didn’t just immediately piece all of this together, he’d progressively been adding it to a list of repressed thoughts throughout his entire life. It was for a lack of getting what he wanted (The magazine woman depicting Sylvia was part of this) in exchange for giving what he had to give that he reacted in the way that he did.

In conclusion, The Truman Show serves as a contemporary cinematic version of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” because the allegory had presented many ideological symbols that manifest in the movie. These ideas are also present in the characters and events in the film.

Works Cited

Weir, Peter. The Truman Show. Paramount Pictures, 1998. BU Libraries. https://digitalcampus-swankmp-net.ezproxy.bu.edu/bu334689/watch/248B9BB26D265015 Accessed 17Jul2024.

Plato. The Republic. Book 7. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Richard Hooker, 1996.