Ghosting

‘Yes, but they – Wurst, and Knaust, and Pripasov – will tell you that your consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all your sensations – is, in fact, the result of your sensations. Wurst even goes so far as to say that where sensation ceases to exist there is no consciousness of existence.’

'I would maintain the contrary,’ began Koznyshev. 

But here again it seemed to Levin that just as they were reaching the root of the matter they again retreated; and he made up his mind to put a question to the Professor. 

'So if my senses are annihilated, if my body dies, no further existence is possible?’ he asked. 

– Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy

After reading this passage from Tolstoy’s masterpiece, I stopped and pondered for awhile on the entire discourse and its implications. The idea of existence has been broiling in the back burner of my mind for quite some time, and this small portion from Anna Karenin amped me back into full throttle. Likewise, I decided in lieu of Levin’s question – no, if one’s senses are annihilated and one’s body dies, existence is still possible. 

The professor in Anna Karenin assumes that sensory experience shapes and defines one existence, which is a fairly reasonable assertion. However, when you consider the assumptions the statement, there are implications rather questionable regarding basic humanity and human conditions: essentially, the professor assumes that existence is directly related to how much we can sense and feel from our immediate environment – assuming, of course, the professor equilibrates all sensations as equal (non-equal considerations of sensations are too subjective to really add or detract from this statement). This linear relationship is really the downfall of the sensory-existence argument for a few reasons: 

If this is the case, then those who have lost some amount of sensory function are less of an existing conscious. Take for example an amputee: now that they’ve lost an appendage, compared to their former selves these individuals are less of a conscious existence by virtue of having less surface area of their sensory nerves (while there is the phenomena of “ghost limbs,” strictly anatomically amputees have lost a certain amount of sensory functions). We could also look at paraplegics, who can no longer use their lower limbs – according to the professor’s assertion, these individuals are only half the conscious of a non-handicapped peer. We can easily look at other physical conditions that render individuals into relative handicapped status – blindness, hearing loss, anosmia, burn victims, etc – and see that the professor’s statement, while intriguing, is short-sighted: it essentially states that a existence is solely dependent on the cumulative sensations one is able to acquire and experience; on the latter fold, those who are not a normal physical condition are essentially “lesser” consciousness since their cumulative sensations are comparatively less by virtue of their own physical condition. The professor’s logic equates public figures like Stephen Hawkings and Roger Ebert as “lesser” conscious existences because both rely on artificial means to articulate their thoughts to the world. The implications of his argument extends to cases individual who is in a vegetative state, where their bodies still function biologically but the probability of them ever regaining conscious thought or cognitive function is less than the an elephant suddenly appearing in your living room out of thin air by virtue of metaphysics – according to him, they are greater conscious entities because their bodies can still pick up sensations. 

I disagree with the professor’s statement, simply because I define existence slightly but significantly differently: that one’s root existence is the conscious thought, and that this root existence manifests into the physical condition of a body that one’s cognitive function puppeteers and performs with. Additionally, if someone is effectively brain dead without any chance of recovery – then I believe this individual has effectively died, regardless of their body’s physical condition. This distinction between one’s conscious and one’s physical manifestation relates to the prime idea of this article: ghosting. 

I’ve watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (and 2nd GIG as well) on-and-off for a few years, and this past summer I rewatched some episodes again with my older brother. Each episode is dense, complex, and philosophically intriguing – so much so that if you stop paying attention for a few moments, you’ll likely be lost as to what’s going on and what the character’s are thinking. 

GITS: SAC take place in the future, where cyborg technology is sophisticated and commercial. It’s not uncommon to see someone with a cybernetic attribute walking around and living everyday life as per usual (in fact, nearly everyone has cybernetic eyes and chips in their brains, enabling them to receive information without a screen and so forth). This cybernetic society essentially ties everyone together on a metaphysical-like technological net – almost as if you could access the world wide web anytime, anywhere. Likewise, this means capable hackers can cause societal mayhem if unchecked – which is where Public Security Section 9 comes in, led by Major Motoko Kusanagi. 

Motoko is a unique character in the GITS: SAC universe because unlike most others, her body is completely cybernetic – she possess no natural biological function. Her condition is a result of a plane crash she was in when only six-years-old: she was in a coma until it became obvious she would die unless she unwent full cyberization. This process forced Motoko to completely separate body and mind to the extreme; unable to feel real sensations as a cyborg, she regards her body more as a shell her true essence resides and acts upon within – her ghost. 

Theoretically, in the world of GIST: SAC you could surpass “dying” by uploading your conscious into the collective technological “net”; and while your body would decay, your conscious still exists, and therefore you have not necessarily died (however, in the unfortunate case the server somehow crashed and wiped out all data, you really would cease to exist). More pressingly however is the idea of one’s ghost and shell being separate entities, that the relationship between mind and body is not entirely necessary for one to still exist. 

Here’s a thought experiment: say somehow, in some dimension you were able to separate your conscious from your current body and then occupy a different body – are you still the same conscious, the same person? 

I believe that if one still acts out certain behavioral traits and personality quirks unique to themselves regardless of what body, what shell they occupy – they are still that same individual. They still exist as a distinct conscious. 

In one episode of GITS: SAC, called “Runaway Evidence – Testation,” a rogue tank runs amok the city, hacked into the by recognition code of the tank’s designer, Kago Takeshi, who had died a week earlier. It turns out the “ghost” of this tank is actually that of Kago’s: due to religious reasons, his parents refused to let him undergo cyberization despite his serious medical problems, which invariably led him to physical dying at a early age; however, he manages to transfer his ghost into the tank, and before Motoko short-circuits the tank’s brain she discovers in a brief moment that Kago simply wanted to show his parents his new steel body. 

“Runaway Evidence” is an intriguing episode because it really addresses the core argument of whether one’s existence solely depends on the physical medium upon which they act out their conscious functions. While we never know if the tank performed similar personality traits Kago performed while biologically alive, its clear that the tank’s motive derives from Kago’s conscious, his ghost. His action are no different than a hermit crab migrating into a different shell. 

This all leads to the final portion of Tolstoy’s passage in Anna Karenin, where Levin asks if one can still exist if their physical being is somehow exterminated – that is, can one still exist without a shell? 

I believe yes, for various reasons. If you look around you, their a billions of information and narratives documented into multiple media forms – books, film, painting, photography, everything. Every word, every letter, every frame and every brush stroke that goes into each of these mediums was done by someone, a distinct somebody, and as we gloss over and intake the contents of each medium we invariably soak up the presentation, wording, dilution and creativity of this unique and distinct somebody. In the midst of these actions, we experience the remnant pieces of one’s ghost. 

In a less abstract level, you can easily consider the internet as a prime example of separating one’s ghost from their shell, mind from body. As a distinct individual on the net, you define yourself either which way you want, whether it be by writing, subject, ethnicity, age, interests, purpose, and so on; but, unless you know the unique user in real life, there’s no real way of confirming one hundred percent what a user says they are is really who they are in real life. On the net, we are defined solely by how we want to be, independent (not mutually exclusive) of who we are in real life. 

For instance, I could easily say that in real life, I look like this: 

Or this: 

Or even this: 

If I were savvy, charming and mischievous enough, I might actually get away with claiming my genetic origin as a Timelord, with a TARDIS and Sonic Screwdriver and all. 

More seriously though, is that our existence on the net is defined more or less by how we present ourselves in writing (and perhaps photography or video, inclusively). This is wholly separate from our physical being, our shell – yet we still exist in our the form of our distinct internet avatars, cached and all. We still communicate to one another via the internet medium: from the established email to live tweeting, we are speaking to one another, directly and indirectly so, distinct conscious entities in mental collision – and all of this independent of our bodies in the physical world. 

So to finally answer Levin’s question: yes, I believe you can still exist if your body has deteriorated or been destroyed, so long as your ghost remains a distinct entity through whatever natural or artificial means possible. This is the ultimate philosophical implication of ghosting, of one’s ghost of existence. 

The Terrible Power of Memory Manipulation

If there ever was a deadlier power over humans, memory manipulation stands alone as a deeply personal one. 

Many famous serials and stories use memory as a premise for their plots and people, which is unsurprising: immediately there’s a plot device of mystery and intrigue surrounding the character – whether it be internal or external – and for the rest of the story we want to see why, what, and how it all happened – the genesis, the origin, the forbidden fruit, we’re hooked on piecing together what exactly is going on. 

Memory manipulation, of course, occurs to varying degrees. There’s the traditional all-out amnesia, which can be seen all the way back from old folk and fairy lore like princes who forgot their true beloved in stories collected by the Brothers Grimm; there’s classic science fiction elements of wiping out a personality and replacing it with another, as seen in Total Recall starring Arnold Scharzenegger (“If I am not me, then who the hell am I?!”); the selective erasure from a portion of memory, which drives Jack Harkness to pursue and find out why a previous organization did so to him; residual memories that are passed onto the next generation by unique means, like in The Giver; stories that deal with real world medical issues of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s in Away from Her; and then the murky past that serves both as a beacon of light and a haunting, driving obsession to either resolve or run away from it, seen all too often in serials like Jason Bourne. 

Why are memory narratives so engaging? Foremost they are psychological: more than the physical actions at hand are the underlying pulsations of nerve signal, the undulating nuances of electrochemical messages spiking back and forth, to and from somas to axons to dendrites of neurons; yet beyond these neurobiological bounds there is something more science has yet (or if ever) to fully encompass and objectify what exactly composes the arena of irrational emotions – the enigma of psychology. 

We can never be sure if our memory is 100% accurate. Details are lost, omissions are consciously or subconsciously made, facts vary slightly, retellings and subsequent recounting dilutes the actual event more and more: it’s a very fickle component of our cognitive existence – essential, but fickle. Evolutionary, memory serves as a compilation of survival and social skills needed to get by – instinctual muscle memory and habitual memory, you could say. And while humans have evolved to exist on secondary resources (e.g. money) as a means to indirectly survive off primary resources (e.g. soil, water), thus leading to cultural and infrastructural development as we know it, memory still plays an integral part of our daily lives. Whether it’s habitually checking your car mirrors,  playing a piano piece without sheet music or even balancing on your bike – memory is all over the place, instinctually and habitually so. 

Memory is more nuanced than instinctual and habitual tendencies. There are instances we remember for various reasons. From what your boss told you this morning (“Do you still have my stapler?”) to how beautiful your spouse looks on the eve of your honeymoon, what we choose to remember is essential to how our lives function, and invariably these memories – regardless of intention or purpose – are driven by deeply personal reasons. After awhile, the truest aspect of memories is the emotion associated with them – emotions of love, hate, happiness, pain, joy, sorrow, wonder, trauma, all of it. In this sense, memories are incredibly raw in the undulating, hidden reservoirs of our cognitive conscious. This is why memory manipulation is such a engaging and haunting narrative premise to play off of. 

Take for example Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. John Anderton, upon discovering a glitch in the pre-cog system, soon learns that he will kill a man he has never met. Despite great efforts to evade a highly computerized (optimistically futuristic) society, Anderton eventually finds the room of the alleged victim, Leo Crow. 

This scene is crucial: Anderton sees the man’s bed covered with pictures of children, one of which is of the man with his missing (and likely deceased) son, Sean. Upon seeing these photos Anderton completely breaks down, and when Crow returns into the room Anderton violently rushes at and brutally beats down Crow in a fiery rage and passion. 

What’s noticeable about this climatic scene is that up until now, Anderton methodically and cooly found clues to who could possibly be framing him. Yes, there are moments of action, but nothing compared to the almost bestial fury he unleashes when he’s led to believe Crow was the pedophile who kidnapped (and probably killed) his only son years ago.  And despite the orgy of evidence evident upon the scene (as Danny Witwer later determines, “this [was] a set up”), Anderton lets go of logic to act upon his primal emotions of anger and pain, to unleash upon this alleged man all the emotional scars that never found solace or closure for all these years. Haunted by guilt and long, long episodes of desperation and disillusionment, Anderton holds his memory of Sean so closely to his heart that in a moment of weakness, he loses all his cool and nearly fulfills his own predicted destiny. 

Anderton’s reaction results from an external and intricate manipulation of a memory deeply personal and painful. It’s a very low blow, but considering the perpetrator accomplished other personal goals prior and after it’s not surprise they used such effective and cruel psychological puppeteering. His emotional response is a powerful one not because of what happened, but because it is raw and unrefined beyond any measure of objectivity. 

While Minority Report explored the consequences of a memory past, Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough Memento explored individual fragments of memory leading up to the final consequence. 

Structurally, Memento is one of a kind: it begins with a man being shot, and then a backwards (and eventually forwards) progression to where it all began, where we the viewer finally piece together what has happened to the character of Leonard Shelby, who suffers from anterograde amnesia (the loss of ability to create new memories after the event which caused amnesia due to damage to the hippocampus or surrounding cortices). 

Shelby is haunted by memories of his wife, who he believed was killed by the same burglars who caused him to suffer from retrograde amnesia. He gets by by taking pictures of people and scenery, and then writing himself notes about what he feels or knows about the subjects in the moment he can still recall these feelings or knowledge; that way, he hopes, he progress forward and not start over again from scratch. Lastly, the most important information that he can absolutely never, ever forget – he tattoos them on himself. Fool proof, right?

Wrong. As we can see from an outsider’s objective lens, the people around him manipulate Shelby’s artificial memory mechanism for their own exploits: Shelby’s landlord charges him for two rooms while he only occupies one; Natalie uses him to drive out a man Dodd from town; and Teddy uses Shelby’s investigative vigor to track down his own set of criminals (or so he says). 

There’s a lot of discussion about the fabula and sujet of Memento, but for writing purposes I won’t discuss them here right now. Instead, I believe the implications of Nolan’s breakthrough indie speaks volumes for a few reasons: 

As I’ve said before, memory is not 100% valid: it is a figment of collected information stored in our brains, clipped and edited to our needs and liking. Even if we document the actual events via writing, photography or film, there is always the question of who’s perspective these forms of documenting come from, and whether or not they capture enough of the whole event to merit factual validity. We don’t necessarily need these types of documents to remember an event, but they very much help us remember certain details and emotions that would otherwise be lost to the crevices of cognition. In Shelby’s case, he takes polaroid pictures because he needs to write down his thought process immediately: he relies on a artificial means of memory building, and though it is quick it is no where near the processing speed of the human brain. This limited time frame is just enough for people to take advantage of him for their own needs – and by extension, this time frame is the same time for something to seep in and “tamper” our documenting process. 

Minority Report masterfully combines film noir aesthetics with chique science fiction elements, highlighting a very classic form of memory manipulation – the haunting effect that drives the protagonist to act the way they do, an echo from the past leading to the ultimate conclusion. Memento, on the polar opposite fold, is a generously unconventional film that explores memory manipulation in the opposite way, where we know the conclusion but not the beginning, the echo from the past. Both films were released around the same timeframe (Nolan in 2000 and Spielberg in 2002), so it’s especially interesting to see how two films that explore memory resonate and diverge so much from one another. 

Memory is a very intricate arena of the mind, and any tampering of it invariably violates our own identity. At its core, memory manipulation is incredibly intriguing, terrifying, and deeply emotional – enough to make it a terrible power to have over another. 

Additional Recommended Reading

• Is There a Minority Report? (or What is Subjectivity?) – by Matthew Sharpe, PhD in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne. 

The Tragedy of the American Suburbia

She was working alone, and visibly weakening with every line. Before the end of the first act the audience could tell as well as the Players that she’d lost her grip, and soon they were all embarrassed for her. She had begun to alternate between false theatrical gestures and a white-knuckled immobility; she was carrying her shoulders high and square, and despite her heavy make-up you could see the warmth of humiliation rising in her face and neck – Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Frank and April Wheeler have it all: young, bright, enthusiastic, the world is in their hands. They can do anything, be anything, dream anything – it’s all there, at their fingertips. Frank is brilliant; April is artistic. Together, they could conquer anything they wish to, for at their prime they are nothing short of free and unbounded. 

Two years pass. 

A lily white house, two charming children, Frank at a desk job, April as a domestic – circumstances are suffocating them, choking them from their once promising dream of a future. Perhaps they married too young, had kids too young, settled down too young: the real answer is never an easy one to guess. But what is true of Yates’ ironic morality play is that it is a brutal and unforgiving portrait of the classic American tragedy – that of suburbia. 

The story opens with Frank biting his knuckles hard as he watches April’s skilled performance in The Petrified Forest get dragged down by her amateur co-actors and director: it’s a catastrophe. Frank conjures up ideas to comfort April, thinking of the best words he can offer to deliver his mournful wife from the slump. But he fails – and hard. 

They fight: she tells him to stop, he insists further, she insists back, he yells that it’s not his goddamn fault she didn’t become an actress and that she has the nerve to blame it on him – Cut! Stop! Fin! The rabble ends as he stops the car and she drags herself out, unable to look at him as he badgers her with what he believes is true but otherwise isn’t. The match is set, the play is planned, and the tale begins of a man and a woman who lose themselves in the midst of multiple performances they can no longer maintain. 

What’s so engrossing about Richard Yates’ story is that it not only addresses the psychological detriment of the American suburban life but also looks deeply into the performances and parts that each person, each character sets out to play in lieu of their watchful neighbors. And it’s these roles that each neighbor who credits into the American dream must eventually accept; if not, they ultimately reject their own investment and lie prey to the philosophical conundrums and pain they must endure in order to reestablish themselves in life. 

Our lives are a performance: emotions and thoughts are diluted down into language, words and paper, and the eloquence of which we speak and act them out is left to the interpretation of others regardless of how we may actually feel. Only when the curtain falls, the death knoll tolls so that we are released from such a theatrical life, the life in which we use the shell of our bodies to mime and mimic actions that we hope to convey our truest selves. 

Oftentimes our environment dictates what we are able to perform, whether we like it or not. The American suburbia is no different: in fact, in some ways it’s even worse. It’s pure standardization, a white bread mentality that indulges in urban sprawl, manicured streets, consumerist shopping plazas, cookie cutter houses, Stepford wives and commuting-to-work husbands. Worse yet, it is completely devoid of true, vibrantly artistic culture, culture which cannot exist in a environment insists so heavily on sterilizing anything that passes through it. So it’s no surprise that this alluring American dream draws in the gullible, only to crush those who do not abide by its stringent, unforgivably strict set of character roles it expects to be dutifully fulfilled. These prepositional roles are what Frank and April try so very hard to act out notwithstanding their truest natures that so very clash against the suburban siren of Revolutionary Road. 

Let’s start with Frank. It’s 1950, he’s worked odd jobs in his youth, is a certified World War II veteran, works a stable desk job, and by all means that’s enough to declare his status as a true man in American society. But he’s a thinker too, a philosopher at best who wants to challenge the status quo; he hates these confinements, relishes in his own pride of individualism, and cherishes his wife’s compliment that he is the “most interesting man she’s ever met.” These two aspects already put Frank at odds with himself: to be accepted as man, he must subscribe to the very society that possesses qualities he finds so distasteful; to be a true thinker, he must completely reject the same society that would procure him the birthright of male superiority. The choice is difficult: for Frank, to think is to be a man, but his definition of manhood is also beginning to be shaped by American society, which discourages the progressive thoughts he tries to act upon. 

Then there’s April. She’s classy, intelligent, independent, romantic, and crushed by the role of a perfect suburban mother. For this artist-by-nature to be confined by whitewashed windows, by perfectly laden aprons, by chirpy well-to-do neighbors – it’s completely unnatural, and staggeringly so. But she’s an excellent actress, too, and wants very much, too, to perfectly fulfill the obligation of the stay-at-home wife who awaits her husband everyday from work, pristinely and unfalteringly supportive of his endeavors regardless of mood or whim. This actor quality that defines April, this very quality is what puts her at odds with herself: to be herself, she must not act the part of the housewife, and forsake the pretenses that a suburban woman must act out; but to be a true actress she must bite the bullet, swallow her pride and play whatever roles are required without losing a sense of her true self. Yet the latter fold is that to be a true to herself, the actress April, the free April, she must completely forsake the role of a perfect suburban woman. To say the least, April Wheeler must make a difficult choice as well.  

Such are the dilemmas that these two characters must deal for themselves, and together they resonate and clash so frequently that the dissonance and synchrony of their flaring passions and temperaments reveal one thing, and one thing only: they are not happy, and they are trying to save not only themselves but each other from drowning in the sea of suburbia. 

Frank loses it first: frustrated at April’s unwillingness to cooperate by his terms, he succumbs to temptation and has an affair with the office secretary, Maureen. Herein is Frank’s first crumbling fall from his own self, driven by no other force except his own pride – in his manhood and his thought. The irony, though, is that if he were a true progressive, he wouldn’t impose his self-righteousness upon April in the first place; that instead he would listen to the subtleties of her body language, instead of placating her with an overbearing pseudo-Freudian psychoanalysis that is far from true or grounded. No, instead Frank begins the freefall from progressivism in lieu of maintaining his masculine status within society, indulging in what is otherwise one of the biggest double-standards to this day: the unspoken acceptability of a husband straying from his wife, while the unspoken reverse is unacceptable. This is his masculine right. 

Is he proud of this? Initially, no; it is a great weakness on his part, but it is a deep drive to prove his own manhood that he starts breaking at the very foundation of his original, progressive philosophy. It’s the beginning of a slow, degenerating process that eventually erodes at the very foundation of who Frank Wheeler is. 

Back to April: she is suffocating, and through her lonely disillusion an idea springs up – France! Paris je’Taime! The European epicenter of culture! Freedom! This, she believes, is the last chance for her, for Frank, for them to get away from the asphyxiating grasp of suburban America that clearly they cannot conform to without financing their true selves. She’s seen how Frank is beginning to deteriorate – how insensitive he’d been, how he’d yelled at her, how he’d almost hit her! – and she knows that the true Frank, Frank the philosopher, the thinker, the brilliant, will never grow to his full potential if he remains any longer at the company Knox. She’ll do whatever she can to make it happen: secretary job, passports, airplane tickets, moving boxes, selling houses – April Wheeler will make this happen. 

But it’s already too late. Frank has already succumbed to the lust of masculine right, and the prospect of moving to Paris frightens him. April to be the income earner, while he finds time to figure out his life – is this possible? Of course, but more pressingly, is this acceptable? 

Sadly, the answer is no. While the original Frank would’ve likely embarked immediately on such a prospect, the current Frank – the changing, compromising Frank Wheeler – is in limbo, drawn by his own pride to the allure of celebrated manhood, and to suddenly take off to a society with different standards, different values and be supported by his wife so he can revert back to his default self – no, no this is not possible for Frank Wheeler. He enjoys the flattery of American society, the praise of his superiors at the dull company Knox, the flings with the secretary Maureen: he enjoys it all. No, this Frank Wheeler does not want to let go of his comfort. He cannot forsake it, not even for April. 

His saving grace is that April becomes pregnant with their third child, forcing them to call off all their initial moving plans. The days of whimsy in the office are gone, the glee of his temporary existence in the office Knox is now replaced by a big, sighing relief of comfort: he is still in charge, the man of the house, the income bringer, the sole dependent of the pristinely white Wheeler house. He’ll get a promotion, this is certain, but when he realizes April may attempt to perform a self-abortion he flies in a flurry of rage. How dare she! How dare she risk their – no, his comfort! How dare she try to assert such feminine independence when he is the still the man in charge! The nerve of it all – how can she not see what a selfish action it is! It is his child, his bloodline, and yet she still dared to even contemplate early termination! How could she, how could she?! No, Frank Wheeler will not have any of that in household. This is his dominion, and he will have his say. 

And so he does, but at a fatal cost: his final assertion in the name of manhood, his final fall from true progressivism destroys April – in heart and soul. She sees now that this is not the Frank she fell in love with, the man who first treated her as his equal; this Frank, this transformed Frank, is a different man, the kind of man that the society she suffocates in celebrates with the vigor of cigars, whiskey, blondes and brunettes. He no longer performs the original Frank, the man of thought and brilliance; he now acts out the acceptable Frank, the man who only believes he is one of thought and brilliance while in reality he is no better or different than his chauvinistic contemporaries. The original Frank is lost, and April is alone to decide for herself what role she will ultimately transcend into – April the wife or April the true. 

She chooses April the true, the real April Wheeler, the one who wants to feel something substantial and in passion, more so than the packaged emotions and expectations that the suburban housewife must agree to. And in her desperation she consummates with her neighbor Shep Campbell, a man that she is easily repulsed by but does so anyway because it is a testament to see whether or not she can truly act as freely as before – and yes, she still can. Which leads her to her last and final attempt to assert her female independence in the Wheeler household: she performs a self-inflicted abortion, and ultimately dies from blood loss. 

April’s theatrical moment has ceased, the curtains folded, and gone she is from the center stage of her life as we now know it. At the very end, she maintained her true self amidst the ocean of oppressive suburbia, the poise of her essence and existence despite what else others might quip about thereafter. This is her dying grace, her retained dignity. 

And what of Frank? Why he’s completely destroyed by April’s final performance: all in an instant he realizes the mistakes he made, the pride of manhood that blinded him from reality, the stupidity of succumbing into mental stagnation – for a moment the original Frank is back in full force, grasping to bring back April into his embrace, to repent for all his inanity and insanity and insufferable ignorance, to move to Paris with her for their hopeful future… but it’s too late. 

April, beautiful and romantic and dreamer April, is gone. And with this final realization the real Frank Wheeler dies as well, his performance now an empty shell on the stage of a lifeless theater – the perfect masculine role of American society, devoid of thought, philosophy, hope, or dreams. 

There’s an interesting character named John Givings, who befriends the Wheelers before their untimely and ultimate downfall. His mother, Mrs. Helen Givings, is the perfect model of a peppy suburban woman, playing the role with such enthusiasm and vigor and self-righteousness and it’s almost sickening to see how utterly theatrical her socializing is; his father, Mr. Howard Givings, is apathetic, empty of care or thought and only so much inclined to turn on or off his hearing aid when he feels like it, and even then he is only half-listening and half-engaged in what is happening immediately. So for John to clash so vehemently and jarringly against his parents’ model behaviors, that he spits in the face of normality and the expectations of suburban character roles – it’s all a very revealing portrait of someone who is considered mentally sick, unstable and insane by 1950s American standards. 

Maybe John really is mentally sick, we may never know. But what we do know is that he doesn’t give a damn about pretenses, social etiquette, or any of the frivolous and frilly nature of human interaction: he is honest, straightforward, unflinching and blunt, unwilling to compromise his behavior into another performance that is otherwise acceptable to most. No, John absolutely refuses this, and for this same reason he is drawn to Frank and April Wheeler, both whom possess John’s rebellious qualities deep down inside. He likes that Frank acknowledges that there is a hopeless emptiness to the American dream, and likes it even more that April is a true female – not a woman, but a female. A unbounded, independence female entity, the equal of a male entity and devoid of social restrictions or circumstance that chain down women into women. 

So when he later hears the Frank and April have relinquished their last chance of freedom, John is of course disgusted, and knows immediately that Frank is the weak point: April, as female as she may be, cannot overcome the overbearing male dominance that is accepted by American society, and John understands that very well, though he does not completely ignore her faults either; John shoots his venom in the right direction, right at the core and pride of the compromised Frank Wheeler, right where it hurts and sores the most. John Givings is sickened by Frank’s hypocrisy, letting him know it immediately; and for that he is diagnosed far too unstable by his own mother, thus condemned to a longer life filled with more infrequency of visitations. 

John Givings is the classic jester figure of King Lear, the unfaltering consciousness that we wished for Frank, April and everyone to suddenly wake up to and to see as clearly as day. Passionate and logical, John is us – the reader, the viewer, the audience. John is us. Yet ironically he is considered insane by the very setting he occupies, and by extension we are also mad by the suburban standards of Revolutionary Road. 

But what is madness? Is it definitive, or is it relative to the societies in which we reside in? Is it so mad to dream of something greater, something better in the scheme of time? Is it so mad to hope for change that one may benefit from? And is it so mad to believe that there is always the possibility of freedom, which one may escape from the chaining confines of the current circumstances? 

Herein lies the greatest irony of Revolutionary Road: for if Frank and April Wheeler had stayed true to themselves, they would’ve been deemed mad yet become true revolutionaries. But in mortgaging their hopes and dreams they invariably festered into the stagnant sea of suburbia, betraying not only their best selves but each other while attempting to compromise and choose between their own roles and performances in life; and ultimately, both the real Frank and the real April die all together in the bitter, bitter end.  

This is the tragedy of Frank and April Wheeler. This is the tragedy of the American suburban dream. This is Revolutionary Road. 

The Mythology of Classic Disney

The boundary between reality and fantasy is porous and unstable; everything, including inanimate objects, is alive and responds magically to wishes and fears. There are mysteries and secrets everywhere, as in the lives of children, who are kept in the dark about fundamental realities – sex, death, money, and the whole complex mystery of their parents’ desires and disappointments – Elizabeth Dalton, from the Introduction to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, published 2003 by Barnes & Nobles Classics

Disney is a staple to American cinema. The name itself is a brand, hailing nearly fifty animated theatrical releases with its recent film, The Princess and the Frog, its 49th, and another unveiling this fall, Tangled, its golden 50th. 

But these recent films come nowhere near to the dare and darkness of some of the original Disney animated films, the fears evoked so deeply by fairy-, folk- and morality tales. Yes, they began the tradition of integrated musicals into animation that lasted for decades until arguably the turning of the 21st century, but these films – from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty – are in a class of their own, films that will likely stand the test of time because they tap into the subconscious of our childhood that we will never fully understand or ever let go of. 

My mother watched the classic Brothers Grimm inspired Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Vietnam when she was a little girl, and relayed to me how scary the experience was – thrilling, but traumatizing. There was the sudden turn of the forest’s mood – from charming and inviting to mysterious and dangerous in an instant – and the evil Queen, the devilish witch who was something else: vain, proud, selfish, jealous, and most terrifying of all incredibly human. She was something tangible, something we could see happening in real life, and by all means she shook your sense of security that much more. Feasibly, the evil Queen embodied the rage of the maternal figure that as children, we all feared would unleash and unveil amidst her soothing comfort and maternal care – a motif often embodied by evil stepmothers in collected stories of the Brothers Grimm like in Cinderella (interesting enough, the Brothers Grimm edited a lot of the original stories in a second publishing of their collected stories; one of the changes they made was to charge the evil doings of maternal figures to that of stepmothers, for in most of the original stories it was actually the birth mothers that committed such atrocities. However, they felt these details were too shocking and unappealing in the original publishing, and amended such changes in later editions). 

We looked to Snow White as the character we wanted to succeed, to rise above the injustice bestowed upon her evil stepmother; her dark hair only made her skin even lighter, a literal embodiment of her own purity and namesake. The friendly dwarfs were, in a sense, an extension of us, the audience: various emotions personified, each dwarf was a supportive beam to dear Snow White as she struggled to make ends meet. These dwarfs set the stage for later DIsney films, in which there is the straight-laced protagonist followed by a group of bubbly side-characters who interject interludes of humor and relief, something the audience wanted during long periods of narratives that are otherwise intense and dramatic. And the Prince – the blessed, angelic Prince – was the savior at the end of the day, the one who could bestow upon the kiss that awaken Snow White from her slumbering nightmare. He was that God-like entity that we wished to sweep down kindly upon the righteous and pious Snow White, the happy ending we believed she so deserved after all such trials of her strength of character. With that kiss, Disney generated the origin of the classic Disney series of fables that we still identify easily today – the classic Princess lore. 

Following Snow White immediately was Pinnochio, based on the beloved fairy tale of Florentine writer Carlo Collodi. Arguably, Pinocchio is Disney’s most Christian morality tale to date: a young puppet, brought to life by the God power of the Blue Fairy, embarks on a coming-of-age adventure in which he must distinguish between good and bad before he become a full-fleshed, pure human boy; his only aids for understanding such distinctions are his consciousness, embodied and personified by a chirpy Jiminy Cricket, and his nose – if he lies it will grow longer and longer until he tells the truth, and only then will it stink back to normal size. Symbolically, Pinocchio’s growing nose represents the increasing pressure and weight of accumulated lies on one’s subconsciousness; if the nose becomes long, Pinocchio will lose his balance and fall over, unable to proceed forward in life towards becoming a human boy, symbolic of a barrier on one’s progression towards moral purity. 

There is a scene where upon strolling to school – a symbol of enlightenment – Pinocchio is stopped by a wily Fox and Cat, ironically named Honest John and Gideon, who convince him to become an actor (a entity of the theatre, a realm traditionally deemed as one of heathen debauchery) in Stromboli’s puppet show, where he is initially lauded but immediately imprisoned by the greedy puppeteer, an iconic representation of the greedy show producer and entrepreneur. And though Pinocchio escapes his predicament of a life chained to entertainment exploitation, he is tricked once again by Honest John and Gideon to saunter off to an even greater vice, Pleasure Island. 

There is one scene in Pleasure Island that is particularly jarring. After the crowd of boys have indulged in their various pleasures – sweets and fats, rides and games, shooting pool, beer drinking and tobacco smoking – the island becomes eerily quiet, foreshadowing to a horrific episode that is disturbing even by today’s standards: Lampwick, Pinocchio’s companion, slowly begins turning into a donkey, and his horror and panic he begins screaming for his mother as a last resort for salvation. But it is too late, and we see his human shadow transform into a donkey, a beast no longer acceptable by human standards and now doomed to work in the salt mines like all the other naughty, sinful boys who have also turned into inarticulate jackasses. Pinocchio escapes this predicament too, but barely and scarred: he is marked by his donkey tail and jutting ears, indicative of the peril one encounters if one gorges for too long on immoral pleasures. 

The climax is arguably the most Biblical, alluding greatly to the tale of Jonah and the Whale: it is when Pinocchio goes to rescue his beloved and all-good father, Geppetto, who has been swallowed by the wicked giant whale, Monstro. Monstro represents a turning point in Pinocchio’s character, where he casts aside all selfish desires to pursue a seemingly suicidal but ultimately altruistic quest out of love; and in being swallowed by the beast, he conceits an ingenious plan to escape an untimely death. The pinnacle moment, when Pinocchio saves Geppetto at the cost of his own life, is the ultimate Christian message: a self-sacrificing feat out of pure goodness, a complete disregard for one’s own life, is what draws the Blue Fairy back and grants Pinocchio the ultimate form of pious virtue – human flesh and blood, a sense of human mortality that is forever more. 

If Pinocchio is arguably the most Christian fable in the Disney legacy, then Bambi is the most emotionally devastating. Based on the book Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten, the film plays off one of the greatest fears children could possibly have – maternal loss. 

There is a cold objectivism that Death heralds. It abides by no favoritism, and silently collects those whose times have ended. In Bambi, Disney enraptured our hearts and twisted it into a great, big knot at the height of tragedy: Bambi, while feasting with his mother, is forced to flee at his mother’s warning, hearing only a gun shot in the far off distance; when he comes back to find his mother, she is nowhere. Death has kissed her brow and has left Bambi behind, orphaned and alone. 

There’s a reason why children cry often at this scene: Bambi is them, still adolescent and unknowing, and the cruel swiftness of Death from an external, uncontrollable factor has left him abandoned and unguided. It’s a terrifying feeling, to feel abandoned; as a child, I used to panic when I didn’t see my mother for long periods of time, feelings of abandonment and helplessness taking over like a icy cancer. Bambi’s famous scene highlights this childhood fear, a cinematic extension and narrative realization of a childhood insecurity that haunts us all in the subconscious. The rest of the film is one of healing and growing up, of finding a path by one’s own accord and establishing oneself in the vast, vast world.

Bambi is a terrific feat in the coming-of-age fable, where he is comforted only by his remaining paternal figure (whom he strives to become, and eventually does after trials of adolescence) and his bubbly friends. Sexual awakening, flirtation, aggression, territorial pride, and a last encounter with the same external, uncontrollable factor that took away his mother and traumatized him as a child, mankind – all of these elements of one’s development are present, and ingeniously narrated by lush colors, fluid animation and by tapping into one of the great fears of childhood. Bambi is a great demonstration of the sacred bond shared between mother and child, and by narrating a tragic loss it echoed how essential such a relationship is, and how psychologically traumatizing it is to the child when the relationship is cut prematurely. Once something is gone, only then do we realize how important that something was, and such is what Bambi narrated so famously. 

Last in the line of Disney’s classic and haunting fables is that of Sleeping Beauty, first published by Charles Perrault in Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose). The Disney adaptation borrowed heavily from Peter Tchaikovsky’s 1890 ballet – in fact, the entire soundtrack is Tchaikovsky’s composition, save the chorus and lyrical addendums in the songs “Skumps” (the Drinking Song) and “Once Upon a Dream” – and the story is more inspired by the German variant collected by the Brothers Grimm, titled Briar Rose. 

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is striking in its explicit and implicit symbolism. On first glance, goodness is embodied by the three colorful fairies – the pink Flora, the green Fauna, and the blue Merryweather – and evil is embodied by the dark purple, black-draped and olive skinned Maleficent. Even their living quarters are drastically different: the fairies take refuge in a inviting and lush, maternal-like forest tree while Maleficent resides in a dark, phallic tower. These are the two competing forces of good and evil, two supernatural and majestical entities that compete for power and authority in the human realm. 

What is interesting is the subtle implications of the Brothers Grimm-inspired story, in which a infant Princess Aurora is cursed by the evil Maleficent, who is spiteful for receiving no invitation to Aurora’s christening. Aurora, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, is symbolic of the beginning daylight and its associated goodness and hope; yet instantly she is clashed by her polar opposite entity, Maleficent (translated “evil-doer”) who embodies the evils and gloom of a moonless, pitch black night. Already polar opposite entities clash with the birth of a new dawn, and the fairies come to the Princesses defense after the malevolent entity has placed her wicked curse. In an effort to deter Maleficent’s hex, the fairies take Aurora into refuge and rename her Briar Rose, and the King burns all the spinning wheels in the country. 

This is a particularly striking scene because it is allegorical of a paternal figure’s protection of their daughter’s virginity. The spindles of the spinning wheels are representative of temptation and lust, burned in a fiery precaution; additionally, the fairies sweep the Princess into a nunnery-like sanctuary, ironically naming her Briar Rose in lieu of her father’s symbolic actions. That is, the name Briar Rose is one of virginal temptation, a beautiful rose that is desirable but must be clipped (essentially deflowered) in order to be handled by anyone who desires such. It’s interesting that the fairies chose such a name in conjunction with her father’s protective measures, which together (the actions of the King and fairies) could be construed as representing a protective measure for ensuring virginal and sexual purity before his daughter is to be wed to the betrothed Prince Phillip. 

Alas, Briar Rose has her first sexual encounter with the charming Prince Phillip, and as they rendezvous in the forest we can see that she is, in a sense, no longer pure: that with her first encounter with a man her romantic fantasies have been realized, and that her sexual desires are not blossoming in full bloom. She is a nymph, now caught up in the worldly affairs of romance and chivalry, and is no longer the adolescent and innocent girl as before. The fairies, upon realizing this, are grateful that it is the day they must return her to her rightful throne to be wed – a symbolic move that again reaffirms their desire to keep the Princess pious and pure until her wedding day. Unfortunately, though, the fairies’ lapse in judgement (after using magic to create presents and a cake for Rose’s birthday) causes Maleficent to see their plan, and she is able to concoct a hypnotizing spell that causes the Princess to prick her finger on one single spinning wheel, upon which the Princess (and subsequently, the Kingdom) falls into a great slumber and not death (thanks to the protective powers of the good fairies). 

The spindle is a particular symbol of sexual awakening. In pricking her finger, Rose begins bleeding – the beginning of female menstruation. That she essentially dies from this encounter is equally striking in symbolism: in experiencing premature sexual awakening, Rose is no longer a virginal figure since she has given into the hypnotic temptation of the spinning wheel, influenced by none other than the evil and sinful Maleficent. The ensuing slumber induced by the fairies is a last resort attempt to preserve the Princess’s piousness, a way to ensure that she no longer pursues other (symbolically) sexually driven encounters before she is to be wed. 

In a strange way, we could easily construe Maleficent as a defender of feminine independence while the good fairies are defenders of the patriarchal norm. Yes, Maleficent is a wicked entity that wreaks destruction on the kingdom, but consider this: the monarchal system is patriarchal, and in disrupting its order Maleficent is essentially disrupting the patriarchal norm. On the latter fold, the fairies are trying to guide Aurora to wed her betrothed, essentially reestablishing the feminine subservience and adherence to purity before her first real sexual experience with her future husband. In cursing Princess Aurora to die by upon the spindle’s prick, Maleficent is allegorically discouraging the young royal from engaging in the fancies of men’s company; furthermore, she imprisons Prince Phillip, a effort symbolic in hindering any chivalric attempt to arouse the slumbering, virginal Princess. She ridicules the young Prince, essentially breaking norm in asserting her feminine independence above his masculine birthright, psychologically taunting him of his finite existence as a mortal male in the scheme of time. Lastly, there’s the climatic scene where Maleficent covers the kingdom in thorns and transforms herself into a monstrous dragon to defend her domain – it’s incredibly sexual and phallic in symbology. 

The thorns, like the spindle, are prickling and hindering in Phillip’s attempts to get to Aurora’s sleeping place, and are an ironic allusion to the virginal namesake of the Princess, Briar Rose: that is, in order to fully appreciate the beauty and sexual appeal of the young woman, Prince Phillip must essentially pluck her, and will only be able to do so when he destroys all the prickling thorns of the path (representative of a flower’s stem) before he encounters the sexual appeal of the blossom; he receives help from the three fairies, whose actions are very symbolic of the patriarchal ideals they conform to – that Aurora should be sexually awakened by none other than her betrothed, the chivalric Phillip. However, when he has nearly cleared away all the inhibiting thorns, Maleficent transforms into the dragon, a last ditch effort to prevent the advent Prince from asserting his patriarchal authority over the sleeping beauty.

This distinctly protective gesture is interesting: while most interpret it as a evil force deterring a noble and heroic effort to restore the natural balance, it must be noted that Maleficent transforms into a mythological creature that has distinctly reptilian qualities – the flickering tongue, the scaled skin, the segmented belly – and, in a sense, is almost androgynous in its physical quality. There is no explicit physical attribute that indicates gender in regards to dragons, and Maleficent’s dragon is just as indistinguishable save its booming, feminine voice. She viciously attacks the patriarchal embodiment of Prince Phillip, a effort that further demonstrates her scathing spite against patriarchal rule as she reaffirms her feminine authority. Only when she is pierced in the heart by the Prince’s sword does she die, a attack from the Prince that is arguably phallic and representative of patriarchal authority; that is, only when Maleficent is directly stricken by the phallic sword (essentially raped) does she die and relinquish her feminine control of the kingdom, and thus order and normalcy of the patriarchal monarch is restored, and everyone lives happily ever after. 

Scholars and philosophers have argued about what stories like these are actually representative of, and what values they endorse. Jack Zipe, in his Marxist analysis of the Brothers Grimm and their work, focused on the social and historical context, and the consciousness of the Brothers Grimm themselves; he believed that children were being indoctrinated by bourgeois ideals: 

The male hero learns to be active, competitive, handsome, industrious, cunning, acquisitive. His goal is money, power, and a woman (also associated with chattel). His jurisdiction is the open world. His happiness depends on the just use of power. The female hero learns to be passive, obedient, self-sacrificing, hard-working, patient, and straight-laced. Her goal is wealth, jewels, and a man to protect her property rights. Her jurisdiction is the home or castle. Her happiness depends on conformity to patriarchal rule.

– pg. 57 of Zipe’s Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion

Zipe’s pessimistic views of fairy- and folklore contrasts sharply with the more optimistic interpretation of Bruno Bettelheim. Bettelheim was not concerned with the historical or political context, instead focusing on the tales’ timeless and symbolic representations of childhood: 

By dealing with universal human problems, particularly those which occupy a child’s mind, these stories speak of his budding ego and encourage its development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures.

– pg. 6 of Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment

Whatever the Grimms actually intended for interpretation we will never know. But what is true of their collected and likewise authors is that these stories, these fables are striking and classic because of the various explicit and implicit nuances of symbols and implications they open up. The Disney Renaissance of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King drew from similar roots, but not quite as hauntingly as their predecessors achieved. These are the reasons why the four Disney movies I’ve mentioned – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty – are amazing feats of cinematic storytelling and have remained classic staples in the Disney legacy still to this day. 

Logic, the Fear Killer

The other day I read this piece on how BP’s gulf crisis may have caused the beginnings of human extinction. At the time my imagination took over and before I knew it, I was wondering what it would be like to live in a Cormac McCarthy The Road–style apocalypse – given, of course, if I’d survive the whole ordeal. 

It took me a good conversation to shake me out of the whole mindset, a conversation filled with level-headed rational and laid-out logic. I was smarter than that, I knew better – hell I knew this all, for crying out loud! Get it together, it’s ok, think you idiot, think. People take advantage of crisis for website hits and readers – this could easily be another one of those. Think about it: people have been crying the apocalypse for decades now, and here I am, still alive and well. And by all means if this was an legitimate concern, well by now the whole news networks would be all over it like sharks on a blood hunt. And of all things logic – classic, old school, clean cut cold logic – was the most comforting amongst this cloud of imaginative fear and uncertainty. The irony nearly killed me. 

Today I read that the whole “methane doomsday” is likely sensationalistic, that the rational behind Helium.com’s article is near void and a far less concern than other issues at hand (marine life, for one). Seeing this was an additional relief, and I started wondering why besides almost two decades of education – everything from science to humanities to logic to creative – why one moment of susceptibility left me quivering like a wet cat in the rain. 

The reason: I’d let go of logic, the fear killer, in that moment, and had instantly become spineless prey to believing anything and everything by some bloke who’d managed to tap into some innate paranoia of mine. 

I assume a great deal of our fears stem from a lack of understanding – of the world and of ourselves. For the most part, I make a conscious effort to not shun away from instinctual fear (unless it calls for survival, which is a whole different story); instead, I try to rationalize what’s driving this feeling, this subconscious gut feeling: is it a particular phobia of mine? Has this resulted in something “bad” before? (and what is “bad”?) Do I know what’s going on? Is this something I can overcome? (and if not, why?) Does this stem from some sort of insecurity? Can it cause me harm? (and if so, what sort of harm?) Etcetera. 

These questions, this constant self-questioning has helped me overcome a lot of hindering fears – at least the ones that are conscious. I suspect a great deal of dictators, violence, racism, and other social problems arise from human fear of the unknown and the tendency to instinctually ostracize such as “bad.” And when you lose sight of logic and the holistic outlook these ingrained thoughts, these subscribed feelings result in our own behaviors and how we act – and in the case of fear, we often act maliciously. 

I find that oftentimes with a logical strive to greater understanding – whether it be accepting differences, engaging in conversation, acknowledging our own limitations – that it remedies fear that would otherwise manifest into negative actions human history is stained red with. Rationality and logic are invaluable in this case. 

The subconscious fears I’ve found to be more difficult, and frustratingly so. In fact, just a while ago I suffered a near panic attack while watching an episode of Doctor Who, “The Unquiet Dead." 

Now given if you’re familiar with the "Doctor Who” serials, you’d know that the first serial has effects near B-movie levels (one of the main reasons I got into the revamped series). This episode was no different; what was jarring was that it played on an old childhood fear of mine – of ghosts endlessly antagonizing me, similar to like the ghosts of Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion” following me home and haunting the narrow hallway upstairs. 

Of course it’s a silly fear, but hell it caught me by surprise and for the first time in decades I was badly shaken. Of all things in the world this, this B-movie status episode, this episode of minimal effects – it was scary, and really badly so. 

It reverberated so much childhood viscerally that of all things I couldn’t sleep for a good few hours afterwards. Only after taking some time to think it through – why was I scared, what about it was traumatizing, did something happen before, and so on – did I finally figure out what bothered me so much, and only then was I able to sleep comfortably enough (with a mixture of exhaustion – daylight was starting to peep in). 

Logical thought – a progression of what, why, who, when, where, and how – was tricky while digging through a subconscious fear, but it was effective enough at the time. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over that stupid fear, but at least now I have a better grasp of what bothered me so much (plus there’s always the good laugh when I’m in the mood for self-deprecation). For now, it’s enough to know that rational is enough to dispel a good number of simple fears, and that from there I can at least progress above my own inhibitions and buried trauma. 

Note: apologies for the late post! The lack of internet was quite cumbersome on the plane trip.