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 sujetof 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.
Sometimes when I watch movies, I have trouble remembering that what’s happening on screen isn’t real. Yes, the story itself is fictional to varying degrees, but the emotions, the drama, the comedy – there’s a distinct human connection to all of these movies that play on the big screen. Animated or live action, film is a unique medium that possesses the quality of storytelling and documenting what’s occurring, played back for us viewers to engage in and experience full throttle. It’s the same reason some people can’t stand horror films, violence, sex, social awkwardness, or any distinct characteristic of certain genres – it becomes too real to see it in playback, regardless of the reality that we occupy; it’s also the same reason why we sometimes live vicariously through the characters that grace the screen, becoming inspired to change, act differently, or even emulate certain characteristics that we admire so much. This second reason is what Satoshi Kon masterfully explores in Millennium Actress, released in 2001.
If there was ever a film that demonstrated Satoshi Kon’s mastery of depicting dreams in conjunction with reality, I would argue Millennium Actress is one of the best examples in his filmography thus far. Compared to the exuberant and visually astounding sequences of inanity in Paprika and Paranoia Agent, Millennium Actress is more subdued, blurring the distinction between dreams and reality much more subtly and naturally and presenting stronger thematics and questions that result in a much more cohesive and moving story.
The story focuses around Chiyoko Fujiwara, a retired and reclusive actress who details her life and career to director, Genya Tachibana, and a cameraman, Kyōji Ida. With Tachibana’s insistence and enthusiasm, Chiyoko opens up about her childhood, and the events that led her from the beginnings of a modest child actor to a Japanese film icon before, during, and after the years of WWII. Interestingly, Chiyoko does not directly tell her life as events that actually took place, but through her acting roles that coincided with the different time periods during the release of her films, respectively. Moreover, Genya and Kyōji are often featured in her flashbacks, with Genya prominently taking the roles of her self-sacrificing savior and Kyōji still filming the events with his camera, in normal attire and all. The one thread that holds all these different stories together is Chiyoko’s lifelong quest to find her first love, a young artist she helped hide from the police during the fascist government of 1930s Japan. He leaves her a key to his art supplies, which she keeps for her entire acting career until her very last movie, the point where she immediately retires and distances herself from society for reasons I will not reveal here.
Millennium Actress, at its core, is a love story, but goes even further in exploring the blending of reality and fiction in films, the voyeuristic function of filming and watching these narratives, and how one may vicariously live through the very roles and characters they act out and watch on the reels of footage. Moreover Kon’s work is a masterful exploration of one’s hopes and dreams perpetuating their motivations and actions in real life, and the psychological effect of events in real life may simultaneously influence the universes of fiction. Most ingeniously, Kon never makes a active point of differentiating between dream and reality, leaving us to ponder about what is actually Chiyoko’s acting role and what is actually happening around her.
Recurring figures pop up in Chiyoko’s life story, either in the form of acting roles, real life personalities, or both: at times, it’s difficult to tell if what’s happening is a recollection of Chiyoko’s filmography or real life situation, given how the film cuts from one event and film to the next. These cuts are simultaneously abrupt and seamless, creating further ambiguity at times as to whether or not what’s happening to Chiyoko is just a film role or something that actually happened. Chiyoko’s acting rival is simultaneously a maternal authority and jealous colleague; the scar-faced policeman who pursued the young artist in real life frequently comes back as a hard-faced and cruel antagonist; and an old woman near a spinning wheel taunts Chiyoko of her impending doom and suffering, claiming the actress is destined to pursue a love tied to loneliness and despair. These projections of Chiyoko have fictional and reality weight, echoing from her real life acquaintances and psychological troubles that drive her to act so emotionally and effectively in her film roles. In fact, Chiyoko’s first director advises her to act from the heart, to take real life counterparts and incorporate them into the characters she must act out: this sets the stage for the growing and continuous ambiguity of Chiyoko’s life and filmography, and whether or not she ever differentiated between what was happening in real time and on screen.
This ambiguity is best demonstrated when Chiyoko is thrown into jail and interrogated by the police, only to be released when her true love is captured and proclaims he knows nothing about her; before she can see his face again, the police close the doors on her, locking her out from ever seeing him again. It’s a heartbreaking scene, like watching someone so close to their life dream suddenly having it swiped away from them in an instant of cold cruelty. This scene is one of the more difficult scenes to comprehend: her acting rival is present, condescending and blunt as per usual, and the scar-faced policeman is unkind as seen previously; however, she never sees the artist’s face, leading us to further question whether or not she was actually thrown into jail, acting out a part, or possibly knew what happened to her love but never wanted to admit it consciously. Additionally, Genya and Kyōji are in normal attire, and Genya is unusually uninvolved with what’s happening to Chiyoko in the flashback.
At first, the cut to this jail scene seems like another jump to one of Chiyoko’s films, but after some time it becomes ambiguous: is what’s happening real or fiction? Or is it simply a emotional recollection of what happened to her in real life? It’s difficult to say what really happened, but the scene presents another question that I found interesting: that is, is there a logical consistency when we recollect and retell our memories and the events that affected us personally?
Memory is always a difficult thing account for, especially with regards to accuracy. How can we be for sure that the events that happened to us previously actually happened 100%? The answer: we can’t. There are details missed, or mis-remembered, or purposely forgotten for our own psychological sake. Memories cannot be accounted for logically; they can, however, be accounted for emotionally, which is what Kon demonstrates so profoundly and sympathetically when Chiyoko recounts her life and filmography, and the ambiguity in between these two distinctions.
Like the key she keeps as a torchlight to her first love, Chiyoko’s emotions are what bind together everything that happens in Millennium Actress. The sudden leaps between scenes, the curious blur between fact and fiction – the only thing keep her, Genya, Kyōji and us in the loop is how strongly emotional Chiyoko is about everything that as happened to her, and most strongly her love for a man that she never saw again in her earthly lifetime. And as we peek into and document her memories, there is essentially a voyeuristic aspect that is inherent to all narratives, documentaries, retellings and biographies; that by coming out of reclusion and revealing a bit of herself in the most emotionally honest sense, Chiyoko highlights the voyeuristic quality of human curiosity and our desire to explores lives outside of our own. This is the genius of Satosi Kon’s tragic and beautifully sympathetic film, Millennium Actress.
*Note: I found out today while writing this that Satoshi Kon suddenly passed away at the age of 47 46 on August 23rd 24th, 2010. I’m shocked and extremely saddened by this news, as he was slowly becoming a favorite director and writer of mine, and I was really looking forward to his upcoming film The Dream Machine. He had a thirteen year career in anime, animating, writing and directing a total of nine films and television series, which include Paprika, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, and Paranoia Agent. My greatest condolences go out to him; he was a fine director and visionary who explored the maddening and enlightening aspects of psychology, dreams, and the blur between reality and fiction, and more so created strong female leads and characters consistently in all the works I’ve seen so far. It’s always sad to hear a relatively young and exceptional visionary die so suddenly; I can only hope his work will demonstrate for future generations his ingenuity and originality that made him such a distinctive presence in anime and film.
A Visual Progression of Millennium Actress and some explanations
Genya and Kyōji within Chiyoko’s recollection, breaking the fourth wall and demonstrating the voyeuristic aspects of filming and narratives, fact or fiction. The fourth wall is frequently broken with Genya’s and Kyōji’s presence, which can be seen in subsequent images…
This sequence is one of the earlier demonstrations of Chiyoko’s real life events blending into her acting roles, given how the scene in the above images transitions abruptly and seamlessly into the scene into the last image…
Genya is frequently Chiyoko’s self-sacrificing persona in her recollections, as demonstrated here. Kyōji is still himself, attire and camera and all.
Genya and Chiyoko acting out the scene in real life, much to Kyōji’s chagrin.
The scar-faced police officer frequents Chiyoko’s recollections as a cruel and unkind persona. He’s always looking for a man she helped in real life or in film.
Eiko, Chiyoko’s acting rival, also frequents the recollections as a maternal-like authority who is more worldly, condescending, and jealous of Chiyoko’s youth and naivety.
The pinnacle scene that really emphasizes the ambiguity between fact and fiction: we’re never quite sure if what happened here is a film role, a real life event, or both.
The old woman at the spinning wheel recurs as a proselytizing entity that foretells of Chiyoko’s emotional suffering. I wondered if Kon consciously referenced Sleeping Beauty for the spinning motif, or if it has some other literary or symbolic significance. The other likely reference is that to Buddhism, which philosophizes that patterns of humor behavior are like a wheel with eight levels, and to reach enlightenment you must break the wheel and overcome the eight levels of materialistic desires and earthly values.
One of the best demonstrations of Chiyoko’s projection of Eiko being an extension of her own mother, as the above image transitions suddenly into the below image…
The old woman again, who haunts Chiyoko as potentially the elderly appearance and future of the actress.
Genya as a young man on set, and as himself in real life. At this point, it becomes obvious that Genya’s projections into Chiyoko’s recollections very much have real life foundations, as we’ll see soon…
The above three images demonstrate Kon’s blurring of reality and memory, and again reiterates how documenting and watching such a personal story is voyeuristic on our part.
Genya’s recollection, paired up with that of Chiyoko’s, further demonstrates his outside knowledge of Chiyoko’s memories, and what he knows that she doesn’t. The first image is an older Genya looking back at his younger self, as depicted in second image of this pair of screenshots.
The train incident happens again, which we saw previously in an earlier recollection of Chiyoko’s. Even the framing is distinctly similar (see above images of a younger Chiyoko on a train if you’d like to see the similarities)
The above images are a fantastic sequence that really demonstrate Kon’s mastery of blending memory, fiction and fact into a illogical yet cohesive progression. It’s really quite an extraordinary feat, given how everything is tied together my Chiyoko’s emotional conviction. Genya makes another appearance, this time as an extension of his real emotions for her in real life.
The real life event where Genya saved Chiyoko from an earthquake accident, thereby establishing his previous projections with an real life foundation as the self-sacrificing savior.
The recurring old woman that Chiyoko sees, proclaiming her final taunt that drives Chiyoko to retire from acting.
Genya’s and Chiyoko’s recollections converging into present day, where she remembers him as the young man who saved her from the earthquake accident.
The last sequence that blurs Chiyoko’s reality and memories into a last farewell, where she believes she’ll continue looking for her love in the next life. This is a sad and beautiful ending to a mesmerizing story, with numerous other thematics I’m sure I’ve yet to explore with subsequent viewings.
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.
I recently watched “Let the Right One In,” a 2008 Swedish horror film that involves vampires. But this is not your typical vampire lore – not the like the classic “Nosferatu” nor the inexplicable cultural phenomena “Twilight” – for it has hints of despair and sweetness that are strangely nonsexual and exclusive to childhood. The girl, Eli, is a vampire perpetually trapped in the body of a 12-year-old girl; her companion, an older man named Håkan, is presumably her caretaker and harvests pints of blood for her (it is hinted that she does not enjoy a violent effort against her victims).
She meets 12-year-old boy Oskar, and they form a friendship. What happens throughout the rest of the movie I will let you see for yourself. But what did come out of the viewing was this question:
If you suddenly discovered you were able to live eternally (but not immortally) and essentially in the same form that you currently are that – if certain physical conditions were met – would not break down, what conditions would lead you to committing suicide or continue living on?
It must be reiterated that under such conditions you would not be immortal – that is, you would not die under normal human conditions but could perish by non-human conditions. For instance, if you suddenly became a vampire, you could theoretically live on forever if you stayed out of the sunlight, drank blood, and so on; failing to meet these non-human conditions will end if your peril and death. Let’s assume your new form is supernatural – not immortal, but not human.
First there’s the religion aspect. I’m not here to discuss what’s right or wrong, but it’s an important consideration in this hypothetical situation. For instance, if someone who was raised in a religion that deems suicide immoral, if suddenly they find themselves a non-human with living conditions they find insufferable – what then? Does the morality of a human-based religion still apply to the individual? For the token, what if the now supernatural individual becomes shunned by the same religion they were raised up in? Arguably, if their supernatural form is considered blasphemous, the individual is now at a moral dilemma: kill themselves, and they go against the morality of the religion; stay alive, and they go against the acceptability of the same religion. Either way, if the conditions I’ve presented apply, hypothetically a supernatural person is doomed by virtue of the described religion they adhere to.
Now assuming one’s prior religion does not establish any sort of stigma against suicide – if you were in a position to kill yourself after transforming into a supernatural individual, would you do it? This stems from one’s definition of life and the experiences prior to such a pivotal change. For instance, Eli was twelve years old when she turned into a vampire; with relatively little human life experience up until this point, we can assume that she chose to continue living as a vampire rather than offing herself early, and at the time we see her in “Let the Right One In” she has garnered enough years and experience as a vampire to be ok living as one, regardless of the conditions otherwise discomforting and inconvenient.
On the other hand, one of Eli’s failed victims, Virginia, turns into a vampire, and eventually manages to kill herself in the hospital by asking the residing doctor to let sunlight into the room. Contrasting to Eli’s time of transforming, Virginia’s point of change takes place at a much, much later time in her life where she has garnered enough experience and years to appreciate her life as a human, so to suddenly transform into a supernatural being – one who’s living conditions are strikingly different from the conditions of a human – accepting and coping with such terms is maddening. To live as a vampire would be to abandon her spouse and companions or risk killing them to sustain herself, and it’s a circumstance that drives her to commit suicide (arguably, it would have been much more merciful if Eli had killed Virginia to begin with, but alas how a meal ends interrupted).
As a supernatural being, are you living with a particular purpose beyond sustaining yourself? Assuming the condition applies, this question boils down to distinguishing two types of supernatural beings: those who take the opportunity of their own existence to engage in some goal, and those who simply maintain their own existence. Presumably, most are more inclined to view the first type in the positive (unless their goals were destructive) and the second type in the negative (unless the self-maintenance does not infringe upon anyone). This also calls into question when one becomes indifferent to their supernatural existence: if they suddenly stopped having a purpose or desire to exist, where do they go from there?
In second to the above question, are you living at the expense of others? This particular condition is tricky since it calls upon the ethics and guilt of one’s supernatural existence. For one, is it right for one to live off the life of others such as a vampire? Strictly from a biological point of view, yes – this is not unfair. Generally omnivores worldwide, we humans have killed animals to sustain ourselves, so a vampire preying on a human is no different from this practice. To restate, this is strictly a biological argument. The associated guilt and blasphemy of living off another being leaves to be determined by said supernatural individual: if the need to survive is great enough, supposedly this would overcome all barriers of guilt and consciousness.
However, what if one’s lifespan has been increased by taking others’ lifespans for themselves? This a variation on the idea of one living at the expense of others, though it is a variation that I believe needs consideration since it cannot (or with great difficulty) be argued for from a traditional biological perspective. For instance, in “Fullmetal Alchemist” the main character’s father, Van Hohenheim, is a living philosophers stone: that is, he is able to (theoretically) live forever and accomplish amazing feats of alchemy at a devastating cost – his philosophers stone is derived from the half the souls of ancient civilization Xerxes with over a million individuals, a civilization that he grew up in. His existence is at the expense of his friends, comrades and beloved nation.
Now if the main story of Fullmetal did not exist (and it’s something I’m not going to reveal here for those interested in reading/watching), would it be more ethical for Hohenheim to continue on living and maintaining himself in hopes of discovery, research and possible reversion of the process, or is it best if he deplete his own stone and allow the souls of Xerxes to finally leave and rest in peace? In this case that does not apply to the actual story of Fullmetal, it depends on what greater good he chooses to serve and place his goals upon.
Then there’s the living condition – is it insufferable or doable, and is the quality of life worth it? This comes down to what the individual wants and values. In asking people some questions I found that this aspect is considered the least, and only when I impressed upon them the idea did they usually reconsider their stance. For instance, I asked my mother what she thought about eternal life and found her to be enthusiastic about the prospect: from her perspective, it was an opportunity to continue learning infinite aspects of the universe, and though she would grieve at the lost of loved ones the idea of endless discovery was absolutely alluring.
When I inquired about hypothetical conditions that could potentially restrict her, she initially shrugged them off with a “I’ll just deal with them”; I then specified such conditions (eg. “What if you were like a vampire and could only go out at night… wouldn’t that would mean you’d be greatly restricted to access different institutions you’d like to look into?”) and pressed further about the quality of life that she could possibly experience as a supernatural. After using a very specific, particularly pessimistic example and condition my mum began reconsidering her position (for which she called me a bloody mood killer).
It is inevitable that your loved ones will age and die while you, the supernatural individual, remain the same; psychologically, the stress can be immense and it is your judgement call if you’d be able to handle such. And it’s not just about losing family and friends – meeting new acquaintances, potential friends and lovers, initially heartwarming but inevitably leading to a shared despair – that the relationships you create and share are drastingly temporal since relative lifespans of people and yourself do not correlate: that is, though humans all die there is at least a finite sense shared between all relationships; a supernatural being who can live eternally does not share this same finite sense and is instead left to accept the cold truth as a observer – observers of our loved ones’ demise as their finite lives run out. There is a difference of relative time, and this leads to utter tragedy and despair.
Herein lives another dilemma: if you had the ability to offer loved ones the same physical conditions you abide by – would you do it? More pressingly would they agree to such conditions? This dilemma assumes that you were ok with such conditions to begin with in offering others such an option. The implications, however, are dire: if the person you offer accepts, then that means you both will become observers of time, lonely companions till conditions arise that result in one or the others’ death but nonetheless you are both in the same boat; if the person you offer declines, that means they disagree with the conditions you live by, and by extension are openly judging you for who you are, what you are and how you live – in a sense, while they may not find your existence unacceptable they may find the conditions of your existence unacceptable.
They leave. Because they should or because they find someone else. And some of them, some of them… forget me.
…I suppose in the end, they break my heart.
Here is the most heartbreaking aspect: assuming you were unable to offer eternal life, what happens when you fall in love with somebody? You know full well that this person is mortal and that their time will run out and that you, a mere supernatural being, can do nothing to stop this process of time – so do you allow yourself to engage in these emotions or do you repress them? An additional angle is that if the person you love and who loves you back – if circumstances (besides the passage of time and aging) prevent them from being with you and there are elements that could force you both to be separated from one another – do you take this risk? Do you risk your own emotional stability by falling in love with the inevitability that it cannot be? Is the risk of eventual heartbreak enough to deter you from pursuing a simultaneously timeless and finite love?
This last question is particular striking to me on a personal level. Philosophically, I believe in the temporality of everything, and while it is necessary to look to the past for learned lessons and to the future for dreams the most important thing that matters is what is happening here and now because in another instant here and now will have vanished and been replaced by another here and now. I make an effort to appreciate the smallest things, for when time has passed they are often the things I miss the most. The fact that I can still type quickly, breath good air, still have all my teeth, engage in physical activities, have all my appendages intact, can see, can breath, can eat – it’s amazing how easily I take things for granted, and it takes a conscious effort to break away from subconscious assumptions of permanence.
So to fall in love despite the possibility of circumstance destroying such, that eventually all things die – is it worth it?
Personally and paradoxically, yes. But for myself that’s all I can speak for as an ordinary human. Human or supernatural, finite or eternal life, to each their own.
When I was a child I used to sprint up the stairs after turning off all the lights downstairs. It was a routine: the kitchen, switch off, run to the telly area; the telly area, switch off, run to living room; the living room, switch off, sprint for dear life up those stairs.
I believed a ghost would follow me if I stayed in the dark – in retrospect it resembled something like the pokemon Gengar – and irrational as it was, this fear held onto me strong for many years. I imagined its wide grin, spiky head and pointed fingers, round body as tall as me, simply staring with those big old eyes – always, always staring.
I never could imagine what it would do if it caught me – I was too chicken for that. All I could muster up was that if this thing, this little devil, this ghost caught me – well that would be a very bad thing, wouldn’t it? And it was just enough to send me off sprinting, tripping on the stairs and jumping into bed as quickly as could.
All of this drove my mother nuts, who was mostly annoyed with my shenanigans when I tussled up her bed (“you’ll break the springs the rate you’re pouncing on them!”). Now it’s all a memory, and a rather funny one too; still, to this day I habitually turn off the lights in the same manner before, and every once in awhile I’ll find myself walking up the stairs faster than usual once the lights are all out.
So what is fear exactly?
A good portion of our life is uncontrolled. Weather, disease, economics, death – we can map these out, react to them, possibly predict their course but ultimately we can never foresee the future. And that’s just it: what we cannot control, what is beyond us can be awe-inspiring and utterly terrifying.
This lack of control is a slight to our own ego, our pride in existence; in a sense it makes us feel subservient to a greater force that is arguably unpredictable, a greater power per se. And that’s just it: here we are, proud humans, being tampered with with things outside of our control that essentially render us helpless.
Of course, such things are to be expected. We can only stay in control to a certain extent – what we eat, what we wear, what we like, how we talk – but beyond that our natural instincts instruct us to expect and anticipate the unforeseeable and the unforeseen. It’s survival instinct at its finest, and it’s also how and why our fears can get the best of us – in real life and in fiction.
Classic horror narratives and century old folklore play off these aspects of fear. From the Slit-mouth demon to the Hound of Baskerville to Sadako, these stories and their respective narrators played off our innate and subconscious characteristics, puppeteering the smallest of elements into grossly gripping disturbances to psychological peace. We know something is going to happen – just what it is is the real question, and perhaps the most maddening part.
When we are put at suspense and dangled in wait, the built anxiety becomes stronger and stronger until suddenly it’s there – hand, a face, a cackle, a blur, a element. The element itself may not be wholly terrifying, but the wait, the anticipation is what triggers an instinctual fear. The longer it is, the more our imaginations take hold and by the time it reaches we can only pray its presence is only half as bad as we hope it to be.
What makes the element itself additionally terrifying is subjectively personal. For Bruce Wayne, it was bats; for Hamlet, it was his father’s ghost. The manifestations that trigger fear and subsequent horror have varying meanings and implications of our own subconscious and psychology, perhaps more than we can explain ourselves. I was fearful of the Gengar-like ghost because subconsciously, I was cautious of fickle classmates who in one moment were my best friend and in another moment mischievous and plotting; the ghost was my insecurity materialized, a devilish grinner who simply antagonized my imagination with its mischievous aura. I know this now, only may years later with extreme contemplation, and even then I’m not sure if I’ve hit it quite right.
In film, the framing, pacing and sound (or lack of) of a uncontrollable element is essential to create any effective suspense and subsequent horror. From Dutch angles to extreme close-ups, the filmmaker is in total control of what we are able to see and hear, lending them masters of our expectations and the elements that trigger our instincts of fear. In the dark of the theatre we are helpless, subjected and subservient to what is unfolding on screen. We know not of the element and its effects until it occurs, and until then we are left to calculate algorithms of possibilities to prepare for such shock, ironically resulting in more stress and anxiety before element X even appears. Arguably, the less element X is seen the more suspenseful and terrifying the narrative becomes – for we are nearly always left in the dark, vulnerable and sensitive still to the sensation of such an wild card entity. And when it actually strikes down by God is it horrifying.
Fear is instinct, anticipation, expectation – all together. It is essential for survival and stems from the inevitably of elements beyond our control that perhaps incept in our own insecurities as well. In a sense, fear lends itself solely to sensation in which we react to it immediately, commonly in the form of horror or flight. The psychological aspect, the subconscious angle is perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of it all, and perhaps something we may never fully understand despite decades of Freudian teachings.
So what is fear? Perhaps we are destined to never know beyond its sensation of anticipation and elementalism. It may simply be instinctual, ingrained in our own existence. And by God, it surely is a fascinating and bewitching element to manipulate and study in narratives and storytelling – something that I hope to investigate with future articles.
