The Maze
In John Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards the chapter ‘Life in a Box – Specialization and the Individual’ concerns itself with our Modern Selves, and he writes:
While our mythology suggests that society is like a tree with the ripening fruits of professional individualism growing think upon it, a more accurate image would show a maze of corridors, blocked by endless locked doors, each one leading in or out of a small cell. (p. 507)
This image has thoroughly permeated my conscious understanding of this civilization, so much so that I saw it reflected at work and brought it up in the essay I submitted to a magazine recently. Two weekends ago while channel surfing, I stopped when I saw a maze on the screen – the overhead shot from The Shining of the garden maze.
In a flash I saw that movie as a metaphor for our civilization. There’s the maze mentioned by Saul, and there’s the Hotel, shining psychic energy on the humans. The Hotel represents History, a looming structure, a legacy, built on the graves of people forgotten and ignored. The Hotel shines violence into the mind of The Man, who goes on a rampage and attacks women and children. Our civilization then is made up of violent minded men who excuse their actions by blaming History, saying, ‘its human nature’ or ‘its their fault because of something they did years ago (i.e. ‘Saddam gassed his people)’. The Buddhists would see a good example of Karma. Your actions past and present wear a new pattern into your life, so that it becomes your future action. And in The Shining, Nicholson is told he was always the caretaker, the photo at the end suggesting a karmic rebirth.
On February 8th’s The Colbert Report Alan Dershowitz suggested that we need to license cartoonists and comics, which I find reprehensible, but not that surprising coming from this apologist for American Empire. It’s clear enough that Dershowitz’s ethical compass has lost its magnetism. He was talking about these stupid cartoon protests. Dershowitz’s offensive comment was followed in turn for a commercial: ‘own the best horror movie of 2005; Saw II’.
Why would you want to? But of course, this all makes sense given how violent our society is: Dershowitz saying we need to license comics, he who has advocated the use of torture ‘in extreme situations’ and goes on to argue the neo-con idea that the war on terrorism will never end – that we’re living in the la-la-land of danger and violence and so no more trips to the candy store, no more right to say offensive things, no more release by making fun of assholes like him. And after this rosy vision of our civilization, where we’ve come after hundreds of years of trying to make life a good thing for all, and being told that we defeated Hitler so that we can all live in freedom and happiness, we can enjoy the freedom to purchase two-hours of fictionalized trauma to enjoy with our significant others, or worse yet, all by ourselves.
And yet, there is The Shining made 26 years ago, to show us our society. Our society where violence is causal while condemned with shallow words. Yet somehow our culture manages to create individuals like Gil Fronsdal (a Buddhist teacher) and John Ralston Saul; individuals not seemingly integrated into the violent aspects of our (North American) society. For that matter, there are people like Richard Simmons.
Somehow our culture manages to create criticism which tries to keep these forces of violence and madness in check. People like Dershowitz obviously don’t see the advantage of this. Licensed cartoonists would not be allowed to express the wildness of human imagination, nor would they be allowed to be critical. We need the outlet in our society to be offensive – it’s what’s keeps us from burning down embassies, and which strengthens our minds so that what we find offensive doesn’t inspire violence despite all the cultural signals which imply that is exactly what we should do.