The Trouble with Mood Lighting

(Ever since renewing my covenant with you, the reader, I have adopted a much more outgoing and socially conscious tone to my entries, speaking at length about the overtly self-serious topics of politics and religion,which many of you no doubt find regretful. But take heart, my hopes and dreams are still firmly anchored in trivial minutiae, and it is to that great cause which I devote this third and final lecture on moral relativity.)

Here's the thing. I do believe in a satisfying, intellectual sort-of-way that most people default to thinking about the world as either black and white or shades of grey, but I also have to accept that this premise is totally refuted by simple observations of American cinema. Generally speaking, people want a hero. Most people (if you exclude the French) feel uninvolved with stories that lack ethical polarity, where characters all mire around in the same indefinable swamp of activity that's neither very good or very bad, but just kind of...morally lame. We don't tend to like anyone in these kinds of fictional worlds, and maybe it's just because they hit a little too close to home - they make for poor allegory or fantasy fodder.

On the other hand, there does seem to be a large cross-section of the viewing public that embraces the opposite: clear moral tales where the good and evil factions are blown out into their opposite extremes. And I think many people rely on films and television for reinforcement and approval of the simplest black and white aspects of their beliefs. And yet, though low-brow action romps (where the Bad Guys are clearly marked as black-cloacked consciousless bastards - usually Asian men wearing sunglasses) may be incredibly popular, hardly anyone would accuse them of being good films, ie films of merit or importance. I would argue that the only films that can really get away with simple morality while still retaining some dignity are aimed at kids - grand epics like Lord of the Rings or Disney's typical offerings. Sure, the best of these attract just as many adults, but adults who are acknowledging at some level that they have chosen to enjoy a children's movie. Black and white ethics are stark and overly-simplified, which is perfect for kids. No one's going to fault them for that.

So if "great films" aren't going to contain obvious morality or a void of morality, where does that leave us? I personally believe that the true common ground, what people are really looking for from their cinematic landscapes, does not lie within the half-hearted swamp of 'somewhere in between,' but firmly in the worlds of both. Moral ambiguity is important - it makes for dramatic intrigue and sophisticated characters, but for whatever reason, the missing ingredient is almost always incomprehensible evil. Good is important too, I guess, but no one really struggles with Good, it's not a subject that keeps people awake at night. No, if Hollywood wants to bolster its sagging profits they'd do well to inject a little more unquantifyable menace into their recipe. And it doesn't have to be a really bad guy vs. a kind of normal guy, no (although this worked remarkably well in No Country for Old Men) - the evil just has to be in there somewhere, and it has to be dramatic.

Let me give you some examples, by illustrating what I consider to be "great" films. There's a risk here, that by showing my hand it leaves my whole argument vulnerable to subjective disagreement, but I'm willing to do it because I know I'm right. And also because these films we're chosen by other people. Here's the top 10 films from IMDB's top 250, as voted by the countless denizens of the Interwebs:

1.	9.1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	372,678
2.	9.1	The Godfather (1972)	317,736
3.	9.0	The Dark Knight (2008)	271,151
4.	9.0	The Godfather: Part II (1974)	180,116
5.	8.9	Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966)	106,149
6.	8.9	Pulp Fiction (1994)	311,196
7.	8.8	Schindler's List (1993)	206,116
8.	8.8	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	156,748
9.	8.8	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	217,063
10.	8.8	12 Angry Men (1957)

There are some dark films on that list. And those are the best (I'm going to mentally omit the last two, because I don't like Star Wars and 12 Angry Men kind of undermines my premise) rated films (in theory) of all time. Sampling selectively from the rest of the top twenty-five, we also get Psycho, Fight Club and The Silence of the Lamb, which all feature some pretty potently dark material, beyond the realm of most people's worldview comfort, balanced with a nuanced and very complex perspective on the vagaries of good and evil. Look at just the top three. Here we get multiple instances of confessed criminals, gangsters and vigilantes, all of whom balance poor decisions with good intentions, often trying to just make the right choice at important moments: doing right by their family and friends, fighting larger evils, etc. These films don't fit neatly into my dichotomy at all, and I think that's why they're effective. If you're going to subscribe to their worlds, the ethics aren't handed to you (or denied you altogether) - you've got to mull it over a little bit.

There's something else at work here, though. Ungraspable evil specifically goats most grey-vies, even those who normally find terms like 'good' and 'evil' impossibly over-simplified. If someone is kind of evil, and even if they've done something pretty obviously bad (like sexually assault someone), there's almost always room on the morality scale for sympathy. All you have to do is look further down the spectrum for perspective (ie people who have sexually assaulted lots of people) , and then you can start to think about what unfortunate life events must have lead to this person taking such a regrettable course of action. Well-adjusted, confident people don't spend their time dicking over others; human-on-human violence is almost always the result of fear or trauma or righteous indignation. No one really considers themselves "evil," and one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, etc. These are all platitudes obviously, but they're true, and doubly so if you've got a bit of divergent grey-ness to your worldview. But take someone who's unapologetically evil, inhumanly unremorseful, someone for whom there is no further on the morality scale to go (if you darken a pitch-black room, can anyone tell?) and that really gives something for everyone to chew on, regardless of ideological bent.

It Doesn't Matter if You're Black or White (Unless You're Into That Sort of Thing)

In my last entry I made the brief (but oh so compelling) argument that I'd found the true difference between liberals and conservatives, the atomic philosophical point that fuels the perpetually antagonistic stalemate of partisan politics and compels the twenty-four hour news channels into unyielding fervor. It is not about gun control, or abortion, or varying emphases on the term "freedom," nor any other conveniently superficial issue. No, it's simply a preference of expression - whether you believe that the 'answers' to the world's 'problems' should be expressed in terms of absolutes or thoughtful relativity, black and white or shades of grey. I'm going to write more about this now (and this time we'll see if I'm familiar with English words other than 'nuance' and 'distinction').

Even if you buy my first premise, you might be asking why I insist on linking the monochrome/greyvie population with the two major political parties. Won't such cavalier oversimplifications of people's hard-fought worldviews satisfy none and alienate all? Maybe. Actually, ironically, I bet that only the monochromes will feel put-off. The grey-vies will probably be pretty into it. Let's continue.

Black and White means Good and Evil, the basic proposition of traditional Judeo-Christian morality. Sure, everyone makes both good and bad decisions throughout their life, but at the end of the day you end up in one of two places: perpetual bliss or eternal damnation. There's no middle ground in finality, despite the middle ground of most people's decision-making career. Perhaps it's a matter of weighting percentages, as in you just need to shoot for 51% good to make the cut, but that seems a little arbitrary. For many it's a matter of having been saved by belief, so that their less-than-perfect track record on Earth is given a dramatic (and some would say unfair) boost in the final tally.

Eastern religion is usually attributed with the 'grey' slant on good and evil - there's no judgment here, both bad and good are necessary aspects of life, caught in an eternal dance where one never surpasses the other and neither ever disappear. This is the ying and yang, Shiva as Creator and Destroyer, and a whole rainbow of reincarnation options when it's all said and done. If you're kind of good, maybe you'll get to be a lion. If you're kind of less good, maybe you'll be a gazelle instead. There's no angst here as to whether the morality switch has been flipped on or off, because it's really more of a dimmer. The mood lighting of the soul. Am I saying that all liberals are Hindu at heart? Well, yes, but that's not very American, so no. I'd go with "kind of Christian," but...forget it, let's just call it Anglican and move on, shall we?

(I do think there is middle ground here, especially if you bring Emanuel Swedenborg into the discussion. Here we have a view of spirituality and the afterlife that seems compatible with both worldviews - DT Suzuki hailed Swedenborg the Buddha of the North for this very reason. This casting of heaven and hell still presents a basic dichotomy: Heaven is Good, and Hell is Bad. But, and here's the rub, there are infinite degrees within heaven and hell. Some people live "on the outskirts of heaven," others in the lower earth, or the desert, or to the north. There's a whole other heaven for polygymast Muslims who had the other nine commandments down. It's a varied place, with many shades.)

So this gets back to the political thing. I don't really care if you or I are grey or monochramtic in how we consider the minutiae of our lives, because we'll work with whatever we've got, but what kind of leader do you want? That's the question that I think most election rhetoric is really trying to get to. Do you want someone who will take a hard line on anything and everything, or someone who will thoughtfully muse on the possible repercussions of a given subject? Warrior chief or a philosopher king?

And I know you think I'm overstating the point, I hear your complaints, but in this case you're wrong. There are such thing as thoughtful conservatives, true. But when a grey-vie is reflecting on a situation, he knows there's no ideal outcome, and has already resigned himself to a compromise based on the various mitigating factors. The final decision is probably something like "okay, the best we could have done under the circumstances." A monochromatic worldview still allows for moral ambiguity, but only in the short term. The goal isn't to reach a compromise, but to make a decision - everything considered, is this good, or is it bad? And 'bad,' in this case, is an all-or-nothing proposition. Once the discussion's over, that thing, whatever it is, is not with us. Therefore, it is most likely against us (if you're unconvinced, just think Freedom Fries). And there's a good reason why most black-or-white decisions fall mostly onto the conservative platform. There are certain concepts that seem *obviously* good, like having babies. When you make the subject more complex, it becomes ambiguous, and there's no obvious good on the other end of the spectrum (not having babies?). If we're just shooting for 51%, this will fall back on the simplest good nine times out of ten. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, the next obvious question: aren't there hard-nosed liberals in the world, who make black-or-white statements about those very same ambiguous outcomes? Yes, there are athiests who get together in groups just so they can all not worship a god together. Yes, of course, and these people really are the worst human beings on the planet.

Election Special!

Like many people (specifically the kinds of people who also do this), I spend a lot of my time shoehorning other members of the species into neat little boxes. I’m not in any way proud of this, but when I’m interacting with people I don’t know very well I often find myself sizing them up, cataloging and indexing them for easier future reference. It comes out of insecurity I suppose, as if I need to make sure that their existence won’t shatter my preconceived notions of the world, that I can go on thinking the way I do about society and culture despite the addition of a new and unmeasured variable.

For the sake of efficiency I would really like to know just how many boxes there actually are, and I devote altogether too much mental bandwidth on this specifically fruitless pursuit. In many ways my mythology acts as a kind of workbook for this process, and I have the unfortunate tendency of burdening my characters with entire fundamental philosophies just so I can put them in a room together and watch them hash it out. Unless you’re George Orwell (and you’re probably not), that’s probably one of the surest ways to ring a subject completely dry of any potential nuance or depth.

My favorite classification system is the two-box model, always expressed as a fully contained absolute, as in: “There are two kinds of people in the world: the haves and the have-nots; those who have read Dostoevsky and those who haven’t; people who wash their hands after they pee, and people who don’t pee on their hands, etc.” I enjoy the audacity of these statements, the unapologetic finality of their formulation. There’s something invariably compelling in believing that a two-box declaration could be true, even if it does demean its subject by suggesting that an issue can be neatly divided into two mutually exclusive and polar opposite properties. I believe this is why so many of our foundational institutions are based on the premise of a two-box declaration - liberal or conservative, rich or poor, saved or damned, us or them - because they’re fundamentally easy to grasp.

My two-box-set of choice comes from Borges, who claimed that everyone is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. I often pull this out when I reach an impasse in a debate, because I really do think it encapsulates an insurmountable difference in world view. And if I just can't agree with someone, I content myself with the admission that they're probably just a member of the other group (I'll leave you to guess which party I subscribe to, though I will say that Aristotle strikes me as a bit of a prick). The nuances of the distinction could make a blog entry (or a series of books) on their own, but it basically comes down to this: an Aristotelian believes that meaning and truth are found only in front of the eyes, and a Platonist believes they’re found behind them. Either the world exists on its own, and we’re here to observe it with our limited senses and do our best to describe our findings, or we’re the ones creating and experiencing the meaning all along, and we simply project our creations out onto the world. This is often recast as science vs. faith, or rationalism vs. empiricism (if you're a philosophy dork). Either way, I'm a fan.

In the past couple weeks, however, I’ve stumbled across what may be a new favorite. It’s a fairly basic formulation, but I think it neatly summarizes the national divide that dutifully rears itself every four years (much more often for most people) as Americans again decide whether it’s the Republicans or Democrats who will save/destroy the way of life that they’ve come to enjoy and rely on. Of course, many people are too mature to be goaded into this debate; they’ll tell you that all politicians regardless of title are liars and shameless opportunists, and these people are obviously correct. But for me that makes national politics just another interesting component of the American mythology, be it one that has further reaching implications (arguably) than what’s currently happening on Lost.

And no, my revelation is not that all people are either liberal or conservative. That’s flagrantly obvious and not even true on its face - very few people are explicitly either, though they may back one side or the other when up against the fence. No, I’ll let you guess the parameters of my new divide, as it occurred to me during the first official McCain/Obama debate a few weeks ago, hosted by Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren. When asked at what point a human fetus becomes a human life (which is an ever-so-slightly more nuanced way of rephrasing the pro-choice/pro-life debate), Obama answered,

“Well, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something I — obviously, the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. And so I think anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one. But point number two: I am — I am pro-choice. I believe in Roe v. Wade. And I come to that conclusion not because I’m pro-abortion but because, ultimately, I don’t think women make these decisions casually. I think they wrestle with these things in profound ways, in consultation with their pastors, or their spouses, or their doctors [and] their family members. And, so for me, the goal right now should be — and this is where I think we can find common ground — and by the way, I’ve now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform — is: how do we reduce the number of abortions? Because the fact is is that, although we’ve had a President who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down. And that, I think, is something that we have to ...”

And then McCain, for his part, answered:

“At the moment of conception.”

This was basically the tone of the entire debate. And it was useful to me, because it revealed a fundamental difference between the two candidates that I wasn’t expecting to see. That distinction has blossomed in a couple conversations I’ve had since then, to the point where I’m now willing to embrace it (until I’m forced to move on) as probably mostly true, and it goes like this: there are two kinds of people in the world (or at least in this election cycle) - those who believe the world is black and white, and those who believe it’s shades of grey.

Discuss.

I was going to expound on this further, but I think I’ve reached a logical word limit, so I’ll write more in a followup post.