this is not an exit

Or,

I am not an exit.

posted by derridada @ 5:43 PM 46 comments

A Prophet of Destruction.—

I

"Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him." —Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

My apologies to Daedalus, but the Nietzschean overman—if we are to ever have one—must of necessity be a sociopath. Our categories of good and evil have been so thoroughly defined by Christianity, and therefore by charity and compassion, that the man who is to live beyond such categories—indeed, who must war against them in order to secure and maintain his identity—must do so neither with charity nor with compassion. There is no longer such a thing as the "noble pagan life.” Christ ate up our ancient world and all our ancient luxuries. And we who have come after him, and we who have, in turn, eaten of his flesh and thereby have tasted a life so rich and holy that to allow a life lived in opposition to Christ any nobility would be the purest pitch of blasphemy; that is, we who have accepted Christ: we must know in the very heart of our heart—the heart become sacred—what so complete and exhaustive a rejection of Christ, such as that perpetrated by Nietzsche, must entail. It is not that Nietzsche was born too early and that his philosophy was therefore misunderstood because humanity had not yet gone far enough toward a rebirth of paganism and a godless world; it is that Nietzsche was born too late. He was born into a world that by its structure and Spirit no longer tolerated a merely human life—which, we must remember, for Nietzsche meant superhuman life, but for Christ and for Christians meant nothing less than hell, a life lived closed to God.

Ontologically, mankind can no longer suffice for mankind. We must rise above or over mankind, not with a gesture of our human will, but with the will of a heart that beats in rhythm with the will of the Father. Contemporary man’s wealth of unhappiness is the surest proof that our will and our lives are not our own.

II

This is not an exit because a blog cannot be a means of any real communication, if by communication we mean a meeting of two persons in selfless dialogue. We never listen, but we are always speaking. A blog is just another way of staring into a mirror. And even now I am talking only to myself.

posted by derridada @ 4:37 PM 2 comments

A constipated account of the Steppenwolf.—

It is the singular paradox of 'Steppenwolf' that its perhaps chief conclusion—“schizomania [is] the beginning of all art” (193)—also serve as its premise: that Harry Haller and Hermine together constitute a fictionalized account of Hermann Hesse; that the 'author,' understood aesthetically as the very premise of the novel, be dualistically realized in 'character,' an aesthetic component which, in contrast, marks one of the principal achievements or conclusions of the novelistic enterprise. Such is, of course, paradoxical only by assuming a certain distance between artist and art, by positing not that the artifact or character is created ex nihilo, but that it is not, at the very least, symmetrical with the author’s own substance or self. As to the question of the validity of such an assumption, or whether or not literary modernism and postmodernism have succeeded in ‘deconstructing’ or making this assumption suspect, I will not venture a guess; I will only maintain that this assumption reflects the prevailing cultural zeitgeist concerning art and artist. The domain of art, in other words, according to the mass of men and clever demarcations of chain bookstores lay in the contrived, the invented, and even most cleverly disguised of autobiography is nothing but poetic nonfiction.

The similarities, however, between Hesse and his characters would appear to lend themselves to such an interpretation. There is more than a mere correlation of initials that unites Harry Haller and Hermann Hesse. Both are the Steppenwolf, the work’s primary symbol which, in turn, provides a further model of the work’s schizomania. For “in him the man and the wolf did not go the same way together . . . .” Indeed, “one existed simply and solely to harm the other,” and, Hesse continues, “when there are two . . . in one soul who are at deadly enmity, then life fares ill” (41-42). This division exists within the fictional Steppenwolf, Harry Haller, only because it has been suffered and lived by the more concrete and more tangible Steppenwolf, Hesse—as he subtly confesses in his introductory note. And the novel, “dealing, as it does, with problems of that age” (v), that is, of the age fifty and the ego’s fragmentation before the ever-growing power and presence of death, “pictures a disease and crisis” (vi), explains Hesse. The crisis is, of course, all his own, but is exaggerated by the introduction of Hermine, the serious yet humorous and insouciantly self-destructive “pretty dancer of the Black Eagle” (104), whose face was supposedly “just like a boy’s” (107). Specifically, the face was reminiscent of Herman, a childhood friend of Harry, and whose name, and therefore Hermine herself, is a mere character away from Hermann. This relation between author and character is only compounded when, later in the novel, Hermine disguises herself as Herman to attend a masked ball (166). And if one remains unconvinced of the symmetry of Hesse and Hermine, then by way of her resemblance to Herman, he may see her as an extension of Harry’s own character, a further fracture in his schizomania, and therefore an extension of Hesse and an augmentation of his presence within 'Steppenwolf.'

Hesse has, then, albeit rather inconspicuously, inscribed himself within his own novel, has intersected himself with his own text. I imagine this intersection to be perpendicular, as though Hesse were standing strait up from the flat line of inked paper beneath him. And, I again imagine, or perhaps more properly, speculate, that this was very intention of his disguising himself within the masquerade that is 'Steppenwolf': that by way of a sustained and poetic exploration of his own shattered self, he may produce a “romantics of atonement” (216), an aesthetic redemption, a “second, higher, indestructible world beyond the Steppenworlf” (vi)—“a positive, serene, . . . and timeless world of faith” (vi).

posted by derridada @ 3:50 PM 0 comments

An Examination of the Author's Nymph(omania), or Big Time Sensuality, or again, On Why Thomas Aquinas College is a Fishbowl

‘. . . two charming nymphs fed me at their breasts, Drunkenness, daughter of Bacchus, and Ignorance, daughter of Pan.’ — Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

. . . . .

I

If one were to follow the development of my intellectual existence from infancy—that is, from the age of fifteen, when I was first introduced to the life of the mind through 'The Old Man and the Sea' and Calvin’s doctrine of predestination—up to and across the threshold of my current nihilism, then, he would necessarily take into account the eminently non-rational forces of Bacchus, Pan, and chiefly, their respective children. For the god of wine and the god of priapism have, from time to time in the past few years, felt it necessary to honor me with the company of their offspring. This is, and I readily confess it, a somewhat euphemistic way of saying that I myself have, from time to time, both invited and enjoyed the company of strong drink and of passion, but I indulge in mythologizing for precisely the same reason that mankind has always done so: I cannot help but think that, at least in some small and certain manner, my Drunkenness and my Ignorance are not entirely my own fault. You may deem it an experiment in Barthian ‘mythotherapy,’ where ‘the same life lends itself to any number of stories—parallel, concentric, mutually habitant, or what you will’ (The End of the Road), for my intellectual life—the life of responsibility and supposed free choice—and the life I feel as though I am not leading—my mythological, nay, my Greek life—are indeed the same life. I have, in other words, the unfortunate experience of both desiring and being desired—I am consumer and consumed; and though I ‘hang on [Drunkenness] as though increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on’ (Hamlet), I know that my ‘purple-stainéd mouth’ (Ode to a Nightingale) will never thirst for her as she thirsts for me.

It is she of whom I wish to write. I shall not disclose the more risqué and doubtlessly more interesting escapades of Pan. And his daughter, Ignorance, will interest me only in a broad and de-sexualized sense. For I was ignorant, hopelessly ignorant, when I entered as a freshman at Thomas Aquinas College. And it is within the intellectual and pastoral bounds of this supposed Arcadia that I seek the primal origins of my mythological Drunkenness, the zero-point in my slow loss of freedom.

II

It remains, then, to question if there were precursors. Were there within me certain habits or desires that could be reasonably understood as prefigurements of Drunkenness? Or, did I possess by nature a propensity toward serving her; was I born into necessary abuse—is wine as thick as blood, and are they one? As to the latter questions, there is, sadly, a history of alcoholism in my family. I am, after all, Irish. And for the former question, I believe it to be reasonable to compare my seemingly lifelong melancholia with my recent infatuation with strong drink. For despair and drunkenness are, for anyone who has experience of both, similar addictions. I conceive of them as not only symptoms, but also as the very substance, of an extreme and focused ‘interiority.’ That is, they cut one off from other men and leave one primarily to the company of oneself; and when jointly indulged, they always do so in equal measures. It is possible that I am falling into the nasty, Augustinian habit of projection, that because both despair and drunkenness have been for me, and without fail, solitary affairs, I feel it necessary to interpret such behavior by others as therefore ‘interior,’ isolating, and finally, subjective. Perhaps, however, if I were to again narrow my topic to an amalgamation of the two addictions, to ‘despairing drunkenness,’ to ‘the drinking of crisis,’ or, so to speak, to ‘critical drinking,’ then I may avoid such a mistake. And to anyone who has drank in my fashion—in the spirit and posture of inner suffering—I am sure my claim that isolation inevitably accompanies drunkenness will not appear misguided or unfair.

My account of ‘critical drinking,’ however, is only for the sake of demonstrating the manner in which Thomas Aquinas College is conducive to such a practice. I am thinking, of course, of the administration’s stance on the therapeutic effects of drinking. Specifically, I am thinking of when, upon the beginning of our sophomore year, both Dean Mclean and Dean Letteney explained to the entire male student body in the dorms of Saints Peter and Paul, the college’s newfound abstinence from serving alcohol to minors. They were quick to apologize and even quicker to concede the school’s ‘pressure cooker’ environment and to state their understanding that students would, more or less, often feel it imperative to relieve tension and stress by means of alcohol. As I listened, I found myself nodding silently in agreement, for what else could the school do? If the administration were to proceed in the hallowed tradition of beer and pizza after every all-school seminar, could it not then be subject to prosecution by state authorities? And what of the school’s characteristic intensity, its perpetual and near crack-addict level of tension? Was the administration to dumb-down the curriculum? Thankfully no, since the curriculum is perhaps the one thing Thomas Aquinas College has going for itself. But what about extending the curfew, or allowing the victims of work-study the understandable ownership of an automobile? No, again; for what would the institution be without all the trappings and the pleasures of a common military boarding school? I was subject, as I said, to my fair share of ignorance during my career at TAC. And it was only upon reflection, in the ‘garret’ existence of my voluntary exile that I realized what the Deans were in fact telling us: the school was to be our distant and neglectful parent; and Bacchus, I am sorry to say, was to be our nanny.

And of the stages of my supposed intellectual existence? And of the necessary consideration of Drunkenness as a contributing factor in its evolution? I have mentioned my eternal melancholia, my innate despair and isolation. I have mentioned my habit of drinking, my steadfast inebriation. I have not, however, mentioned the extent to which they have poisoned me. Again, those who have partaken as I, know the terrible insights and haunting conclusions capable of a man beneath the lucent fog of drunkenness. They, too, know the persistence of such revelations, and their power to affect and govern hours of sobriety. I have seen such things that I cannot forget, and that make all the promises of hope seem as mere straw. I have seen the nothing within my being, the void and the emptiness of man’s life and, even, of man’s suffering. It is to the college I owe my appreciation for establishing an environment which allows such visions for those of my temperament, for fostering its patented and asinine attitude toward the ends and enjoyments (my tip of the hat to Augustine) of alcohol. There is no solace in the idea that I am not the only one to have left the college a lesser man. On the contrary, there is only sadness, and, to a certain extent, anger. How many of us has this pristine institution, dedicated to the preservation of Aristotelianism and the philosophia perennis of St. Thomas, helped along the desolate and darkling path toward nihilism and the loss of hope?

III

If I have overstated my condemnation of the college’s attitude toward alcohol, it is only because I believe they have understated the dangers of this attitude. This is, for me, my final assignment of blame. It is not, therefore, an evasion of responsibility, but is, instead, a request that the college think more responsibly when it speaks, in its typical ex cathedra fashion, about alcohol.

The hidden fees Thomas Aquinas College has subtly attached to its tuition, fees for the purchase of your own personal mythology and Grecian fate-complex, I have paid with my suffering. And although the school would, I do not doubt, claim that such things contribute toward ‘the formation of liberally educated and genuinely freethinking men and women,’ I know from experience that this is hardly the case. I am reminded of something Ken Rice, a man known and respected by all on campus for his sage wisdom and penetrating intellect, once told me in a restroom of St. Peter’s Dormitory. He said that TAC girls are different from the ‘world’ per accidens and not per se. By this he meant that they ‘will do everything but give up the ass.’ They will drink in order to release their pent-up tension or merely to become flirtatious; they will sing along with Lil’ Jon, only they will not practice what he preaches. What folly and what despair have I known by witnessing such a spectacle! Yeats, albeit unknowingly, penned the school’s anthem many years ago:

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh. — (A Drinking Song)

All these things aside, however, I do, and do desperately, miss those with whom I once drank.

posted by derridada @ 9:12 AM 18 comments

The Problematics of Authenticity: a fragment

‘I even invented a history for myself as I went along, I mean I—how shall I express it—I fell into a certain manner that was not my own and that yet seemed, even to me, no less authentic, or plausible, at least, than my real self. (My real self!)’— John Banville, The Book of Evidence

. . . . .

I

— . . ., that is, if you will forgive me. I could not begin otherwise. Only punctuation overcomes personality. Its universality buries any ‘original talent’ and stifles the individual. Not that I am claiming that words may hold any genuine, or ‘authentic,’ presence: the voice of the author, of meaning, or even, of God. All language is borrowed, schizophrenic. The voice is not mine here, now, always writing in the pursuit of ‘John Banville.’ The voice is yours, is Shakespeare’s, Milton’s, Churchill’s, McEwan’s, Hemingway’s, Faulkner’s, and most of all, Joyce’s. Listen to the rhythm, syntax, structure, and mood of my prose: who am I mimicking? Steiner or Lewis? Derrida or Rorty? Or, and I believe the more likely possibility: all the above, with a soupcon of Neitzsche? I am not attempting to sound clever, mind you, though I certainly would not mind achieving such an effect. My point is merely this: how does one begin writing in search of authenticity, whether it be a novel or blog, journal or poem, if already at the outset, at the beginning, one is ‘always already’ in the act of affirming a specific identity? How does one justify one’s existence, one’s self, upon the page, when a self must be assumed, as though a shroud, for the act of writing to be possible? And I am sure you are asking: what self, what identity? Have I not claimed already that I, Mr Ferrell, am not present, am not identifiable within the spaces of this, my own writing? Of course. I (I!) claim it still. I claim my identity as though it were my death shroud, that is, I claim my corpse, my absence. When writing,‘the air through which I move is murmurous with absences’ (Shroud).— I am not here, yet you assume I am. You assume—that is, you cloth me with a familiar face, an oft-heard voice, the entire personal history of my interactions with you. Or, again, you assume: this time meaning you posit the possibility of an identity if you were to meet me, and subsequently, to nurture a lasting friendship with me. My point, again, more narrow and more refined—oh, let us take a specific example. More precisely, let us place centerstage our central example: a certain Mr Banville. My point: how is it possible that Mr Banville detail a problematics of authenticity, an outline of selfhood so uncluttered with quotidian reality that it stand in seeming Euclidean nudity, when each of his novels bears the imprint of his name? Upon each cover, a modest, almost unassertive: John Banville. You see, it is my suspicion that the self is nameless.

One could, of course, not begin. One could choose not to communicate. A series of unbroken ellipses, commas, hyphens, and colons could substitute for breaking the hymen, the virginal silence, which separates each and every human being from all others. Mr Banville may offer us hundreds of pages of abstract symbolism devoid of all reference to human experience, a mathematical equation for nothing—inkblots and white paper—which, finally, does not equate, does not mean. This, however, is exactly what he fails to undertake. Quite the contrary, he makes an attempt at a calculus of the human self, at its science, understood as the principles and processes which govern its existence and its own, shall we say, identity. In a word, he is seeking an account of Dasein, and, the unreliability of his narrators aside, he could more than pass as an accessible and intelligible Heidegger. The rigor with which he pursues his science is Newtonian, the vocabulary sometimes Ptolemaic, but the spirit is always that of the poetic. I am thinking, specifically, of Keats, the poet laureate of the selfsick, hopeless, and dying—three seemingly necessary requirements for narrating any Banville novel. But of the self and of the self’s authenticity; of the physics of its movement out of itself and into the everyday; of the banality of the everyday; and of trifles and trivialities and suffering and the despair of the everyday: these are Banville’s sacred truths. It is a sanctifying gesture, a sacrament, that he write of them.

This notion of sacrament, however, must be contextualized. It must be set within his novels, that is, within their settings, which, no matter the geographical location, are always just this side of purgatory. This aesthetic pursuit of redemption, I must add, and the impeccable style with which it is realized, is reminiscent Nabokov’s Lolita, and each of Banville’s anti-heroes is more or less an approximation of Humbert Humbert: madly brilliant, alluringly wicked, and supremely eloquent. The question as to what self is to be redeemed, however, remains. Is it fictional or autobiographical, created ex nihilo or a description of Banville’s own fractured ‘I’? Which is, of course, to ask whether he is savior or saved. But what knowledge may we have of the secret, inner life of his self, or of his motivations for writing? The question as to his person, and whether or not it compasses both divine and human, that is, if it be Messianic with a text as its Jerusalem—such a question cannot be answered. We must therefore punctuate and thus universalize our study once more, with an account of the self in abstract.

. . . . .

The second part, which was to follow, I possessed neither the energy nor the focus to complete. It was to expound upon the central questions and insights of the first section with specific reference to Banville’s novels. And for the sake of brevity—and mostly for the sake of intelligibility, given that such is the limit of my experience with Banville—only three novels, The Book of Evidence, Eclipse, and Shroud, were to provide the context for his aesthetic search for both the redemption and the definition of a singular human self. I leave it, then, to the reader to check my speculations against the novels themselves. But if they be found wanting, know that I shall remain convinced that ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’ are without names. I shall always believe names to be mere surfaces—the depths which they cover are the very hearts of things.

. . . . .

And, finally, I leave the reader my apology: this fragment is, I am sorry to say, entirely a rough draft.

posted by derridada @ 6:34 PM 4 comments

The Desperate Kingdom of Polly Jean Harvey.—

The Desperate Kingdom of Polly Jean Harvey.— Life and law and law without life. For life is not to be bridled. Life, then, without law, but never lacking the persistent accompaniment of PJ Harvey.— If I were to say, or, if I were to admit, that I have long searched for a life without strictures and boundaries save those limits of human imagination and creativity which constitute the despair of artistry; and if I were compelled by honesty to admit failure; then I must applaud she who has found the ‘big exit’ from the conventional, inculcated, civilized, and lawborn—from all things born of hesitancy and repression.— From law as an inheritance of being, an ontogenetics. In short, as human nature.— Then I must applaud PJ Harvey for teaching me the visceral and venerable truths of an unblemished humanism where ‘if not by birth, [I may] have [a new life] by wit; [and] all with me’s meet that I can fashion it’ (King Lear).

posted by derridada @ 5:28 PM 4 comments

Only Poetry Overcomes Metaphysics.—

Only Poetry Overcomes Metaphysics.— I have sometimes forwarded the belief that philosophy, and therefore, metaphysics, is reducible to one of the many assorted fictions gotten by the power and scope of mankind’s imagination. Indeed, I have more or less chosen to interpret the entire endeavor of philosophy from the perspective of the literary critic—that is, by dissecting the salient texts into their components parts, the philosophical equivalents of symbols, metaphors, themes, motifs, and most importantly, character. Is it to be unexpected, then, that I find the near-summation of my own philosophy in a poem by the great Jew and suicide, Paul Celan? His is a poetics of survival —namely, of Auschwitz—and a hymnal for ‘the other side of mankind.’ And if you are reading this, and if I am still with you, and if you wish to respond, I inscribe here the return addresses of this postcard: the luminescence of the bare and swinging lightbulb of survival, and the dark fields of the hopeless side of man.—

Piling-on of words, volcanic,
drowned by the sea’s roar.

Above,
the surging mob
of anti-creatures: it
hoisted flags—image and copy
vainly cruise timeward.

Till you hurl forth the
word-moon that makes
the ebb-tide’s miracle happen
and that creates
heart-
shaped craters, bare for beginnings,
for kingly
births.

posted by derridada @ 11:19 AM 3 comments

Amsterdam & Million Dollar Baby

The preliminary question of euthanasia is, finally, a question of perspective. That is, even before one reaches something remotely similar to an informed opinion or political position concerning euthanasia, he must first begin with merely a perspective which, when explored, will bring into focus a specific aspect of its practice. There are two recent works of art—Ian McEwan’s 1998 Booker prize-winning novel, 'Amsterdam,' and the current Oscar-contender, 'Million Dollar Baby,' directed by Clint Eastwood—which accomplish precisely that: the former as an insightful ethical consideration of the wider social ramifications of state-sponsored euthanasia, and the latter as a profound meditation upon the existential dimensions of euthanasia as a viable solution to battles which are ‘beyond endurance.’

We begin, therefore, by distinguishing the ethical from the existential. Although these options hardly exhaust the possible perspectives from which one may evaluate euthanasia, they are perhaps the most important and may very well encompass, or, at the very least, suggest, all others. 'Million Dollar Baby,' for example, maintains an overtly religious dynamic which culminates in the priest’s condemnation of euthanasia. This condemnation, however, merely provides a context, a backdrop, so to speak, against which Eastwood’s existential dilemma may significantly and meaningfully unfold. 'Amsterdam,' likewise, presents a startlingly precise psychological portrait of the insecurities and psychoses which may combine to result in a person’s signing away another’s life. But, again, only insofar as such a scenario may illuminate and complement the primarily ethical thrust of the novel. One finds within each work that purity of heart which Kierkegaard described as the readiness to ‘will one thing,’ and it is this focus that allows the respective artists to marshal all the tools of plot and drama to the aid of their central insights.

'Amsterdam' begins simply enough, in fact, seemingly without the slightest hint of the ethical or metaphysical. Indeed, it begins as ‘two former lovers of Molly Lane [stand] waiting outside the crematorium chapel with their backs to the February chill.’ We are given at the outset the most common of human drama—that of mourning, grief, and love; common enough, it would appear, as to be as diaphanous as ‘vaporized breath,’ or, not vaporized at all, but breath merely—that is, white noise: indiscernible and indistinct from the plethora of trite and contrived and hack novels which overpopulate the shelves of bookstores. What does distinguish 'Amsterdam,' however, and quite frankly, places it above most novels, is its brilliantly realized plot which, at apparently every point, tends toward an ethical denouement that stands an indictment of contemporary Western society. It is Clive, Molly’s former lover and England’s greatest modern composer, who most perfectly embodies this society’s ‘his fate, their fate, different paths’ mentality—an impurity of heart which is to will only oneself. Without a doubt, Vernon, another of Molly’s lovers, too is representative of such hopeless individualism and unbridled pursuit of happiness. But it is Clive who possesses the vast mouth of a Kurtz which ‘[gives] him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he [wants] to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him’ ('Heart of Darkness'). He is the pinnacle of the West not because he orchestrates Vernon’s demise—Vernon, likewise, is guilty of Clive’s death—but because he leaves nothing outside of himself. All is eaten and ordered toward his benefit. Even his art is merely ‘a representation of himself.’ The movement of expansion, then, wherein society as well implements a philosophy of benefit, of consequences and practicalities, is not far away. In other words, publicly sponsored evils are traceable to private vices—are Holocausts born of a single Hitler’s sins and insecurities. McEwan is telling us that euthanasia is hellspawned of the visible darkness within the souls of the damned: those who believe in others only insofar as they are beneficial; who believe themselves to be everything or a synonym for reality, and therefore, finally, believe in nothing, nothingness, nonbeing—death.

'Million Dollar Baby,' on the other hand, avoids an ethical evaluation of euthanasia. Instead, the story unfolds with consummate dramatic skill to the voice of Morgan Freeman, the sympathetic narrator, who withholds all moral judgment. For Eastwood’s concern, unlike McEwan’s, is the existential, and not in the Sartrean or ‘postwar’ sense: there is no reference to ‘absolute freedom’ or ‘meaning event’—indeed, nothing so prosaic; and he manages to altogether avoid the methodology of ‘60s existentialism, with its drug-induced euphorias and salvific sex. Rather, there is only the question, stretched taut and inevitable, of how lives are justified—of how Maggie, who has lived her life knowing one thing, and one thing only, that ‘she was trash,’ can amount, or become equal, to something greater than her life. She reserves the right to only one inequality: that of birth and death. Her hope is that death will seal a something more significant and of greater value than the circumstances of her birth. For Maggie, as for Frankie—who leads a tortured life of guilt and loss of faith—life is what is to be overcome: life as personal histories of suffering and alienation: life as lamentation. This overcoming, this meaning, however, is not public. 'Million Dollar Baby,' in fact, denies public meaning and the public pursuit of a meaningful life. This may, at first, appear to contradict the very premise of the film: that it concerns boxing, perhaps the most public of sports because it satiates most perfectly the public’s innate love of violence. Yet boxing is merely the central symbol of the film, its primary icon, which points toward the personal struggles hidden within the hearts of all men. For no one fights for safety in boxing; no one fights for the body, that which is seen by all. One fights, instead, for that which is within, for soul and spirit, for pride and a reason for living. And thus we are not surprised that Maggie’s pride does not fully blossom until she is left bodiless, paralyzed, and reduced only to memory. Her meaning and significance is the fruit of meditation, and her fate, albeit cruel, illustrates Eastwood’s belief that meaning is an affair of the heart, is personal and of sweat and the spirit.

But how can a film about euthanasia be existential, that is, concern itself with existence and affirm its value, when the essence of euthanasia is the forfeiture of existence? Precisely be means of a reevaluation of values, where existence is affirmed only in relation to meaning. In other words, the life/meaning hierarchy is inverted, and meaning is exalted above life. We learn that for Maggie, life is nothing without meaning. The continued paraplegic existence offered her by modern medicine is nothing but the prospect of forgetting the significance her life once enjoyed. Frankie, too, euthanizes his career as a boxing trainer after slowly watching it drain of substance. It is unfortunate that, unlike Maggie, Frankie is seemingly reduced rather than redeemed by his decision. For Maggie, death is the best gift she can offer her life. It is the only possible closure, and the only means of transcending her birth. It is an action befitting the definition of euthanasia— a good death.

Please, I ask that no one willingly misunderstand me. It was not my intent to condone euthanasia. Politically, I am vehemently opposed to the practice. I only wanted to adopt the sympathetic disposition of Mr. Freeman, and give poor Maggie the chance to mean something not only to herself, but to me also. The truth is that no film in recent memory has so made me want to believe in the resurrection as 'Million Dollar Baby.' For no film in recent memory has so perfectly dramatized the cruelty of a world where death is the greatest solution to the failure of man’s power. And as for 'Amsterdam,' it has taught me the near divine quality of a divinely plotted yet merely human life.

Errata.— It is quite possible that I may have misidentified the principal thrust of 'Amsterdam.' Given that McEwan is a psychologist of the first order and a man whose innate powers of insight beg comparison with Conrad, Joyce, and Dostoevksy, I would be more than willing to grant the possibility that his main concern may be the psychological cause behind the abuse of euthanasia, or perhaps, a more general psychological account of the possible illicit consequences of legalized euthanasia.

And forgive my placing quotation marks about 'Amsterdam' and 'Million Dollar Baby.' I am unable to italicize and quotation is my only means of emphasis.

posted by derridada @ 11:39 AM 8 comments