December 13, 2007

• Tragic Figures

  I used to hate the show
  Smallville. I mean there were things that I thought were ok about it I
  guess or else I would have never watched it at all. You get the
  excessive eye candy and fan service, so I guess you could watch it just
  for that. In addition the season premier’s and finale’s are decent or
  at least a cut above the regular season episodes. If you even have the
  slightest passing interest in the mythology of Superman it can be a
  little interesting to see how Clark’s story unfolds and how they
  manifest his powers using modern day special effects. The season
  premiers and finale’s are good for that aspect since you get the cool
  powers stuff with a minimal of the soap opera fluff that takes up 99%
  of every other episode.

  But what I really hated about the show was the very premise
  of it. The idea behind Smallville is to make Superman more human and
  believable by showing how he grows up and all the hardships and sorrows
  he faces. And so throughout the series they play all this sappy music
  and over dramatize stuff and try to make you feel so sorry for poor
  poor Superman.

  And I just can’t get on board with that. I can’t suspend my disbelief. 
  He’s SUPERMAN for christ sake. What does he have to complain about? I
  mean really. What the heck is so bad about his life? Give me even ONE
  of his powers and I guarantee you I’d be dancing in the streets I’d be
  so happy. Super hearing, Super strength, X-ray Vision, Heat vision,
  Cold Breath, Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, the ability to heal
  by standing outside in the sunlight. Sheesh. What I’ve got to fight
  some super villains in exchange for those powers? Big frickin deal.
  Sign me up. I’ll take it in a second.

  It’s even worse because you the viewer *already* know how the story is
  going to unfold. When he’s done dealing with all these silly little
  childhood dramas, he’s going to be Superman, loved and revered by all
  the worlds people, savior of humanity many times over. He’s going to
  fall in love with the woman of his dreams and basically things will
  work out between them, more or less. We know this. We also know he’s
  going to get to live on a space station and hang out with super heroes 
  every day. How awesome is that? And he’ll even have a pretty nice day
  job as a reporter in the mean time.

  So boohoo Clark. Cry me a river. How are we supposed to believe his
  life is so tough because he has to deal with green cryptonite and red
  cryptonite and phantoms and a friend who betrays him and unrequited
  love and lost love and all the other nonsense they try to squeeze into
  the story to fill season after season of bullshit.

  What’s with this rant?  I have a point. I even think it’s a rather
  interesting point this time. Bear with me if you dare. I’m getting to
  it.

  Another show that created similar feelings in me was the show Heroes.
  In this show the character Claire is  the biggest example. She seems to
  whine and whine to me and I just don’t get what she’s so upset about.
  Her power is incredibly awesome! She’s like wolverine. Eternal youth,
  immortality, and her blood can be used to heal people. And she has an
  awesome dad who would do anything for her and on top of all that she 
  just happens to be incredibly beautiful.

  So when she spends half the first season complaining about how terrible
  it is to be different, I just rolled my eyes. And when she spent half
  the second season complaining about how terrible it is to not be able
  to be different I just wanted to gag. Her character is just a big
  stupid teenager cliche. It is a manifestation of the stereotype of all
  people in a certain age group being all “woe is me” all the time. And I
  just call bullshit on that.

  There are other annoyingly tragic figures in Heroes too. There’s Niki
  and Peter for example. But they at least have more reason to complain.
  I mean Peter is worried about a little thing like *exploding* because
  he can’t control his powers and Nikki has an evil psychopath living
  inside her for a while. Still, I think, even if I were them I’d be a
  little more positive about my lot in life. I mean they’ve got to take
  the time out every once in a while and look at themselves and think
  “Wow. I’m incredibly awesome!”  Why don’t they do that? If I had their
  powers I sure would.

  That’s why I like Hiro in that series. When he discovers his powers he
  gets happy. He gets excited. He’s mastered time and space! How awesome
  is that? That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you find out you have
  a super power. That’s how I’d feel. So what if I have to face super villains? And as for people potentially
  experimenting on me… well let them try! I’m the master of time and
  space after all! Bring it on!

  A friend of mine introduced me to the preaching of Joel Osteen. It
  isn’t usually my kind of a thing and neither of us are very religious
  but I occasionally find it interesting. He’s a very talented speaker
  and much of what he says is quite true. He reminds us of things that
  are obvious but that we nevertheless far too frequently forget.

  In the last episode of it I saw he was preaching about this topic sort
  of. He talked about how negative we are all in this society. And how
  important it is for is for us to sometimes take a moment and look back
  at ourselves and see the good in us. To stop and say “I did good”
  rather than keep saying “this sucks” or “I suck” or “Man I screwed up
  so bad”, etc. etc. That’s what I find missing in Smallville and Heroes.
  The characters rarely take a moment to pat themselves on the back or to
  look at all of the good aspects of their lives. Claire never stops and
  says “you know, even though all kinds of screwed up things are
  happening in my life, at least I can regenerate and whatever else may be
  true, that’s just frickin awesome.”

  But I said I used to hate these programs because of these aspects
  and that’s true. I don’t feel that way any more, or at least not as
  much. Why not? What changed? 

  Well I thought about this from a
  different perspective. Everyone I’ve ever encountered has had hardships
  and dark times and moments of sadness and vulnerability. Everyone I
  know has sometimes spoken about it or blogged about it or mopped about
  thinking about it. Everyone has a tragic aspect. A part of their life
  that they look at and wonder “oh why oh why did it turn out this way”
  and “if only it could be different”. 

  But you know for any
  given person there’s probably somebody out there who if they were to
  hear the story of your tragedy would think about it in much the same
  way as I think about Clark and Claire’s stories. “Oh big deal!” they’d
  say, and “What the heck do you have to complain about?”

  Likewise
  there’s probably somebody (and maybe a lot of somebodies) out there who
  reads my blogs and thinks “oh what a whiner!” and “geez, if I could
  write like him, I wouldn’t be complaining.”  And when I describe
  experiences and events that happen in my life they think “oh stop
  complaining! My life is SO much worse than that!”

   Just like I
  read many other blogs and think “well damn, I wish I could write half
  as well as that!” And I read about the extraordinary experiences others
  seem to be having, the incredible lives they seem to be leading even as
  they sprout their angst filled description of their hardships and
  sorrows and I think sometimes in my heart of hearts, sure I’d take that
  life. In a second. It isn’t half so bad as the writers make it out to
  be.

  Maybe there’s a theoretical worst life in the world that
  somebody has that nobody would trade for but for most of us I think we
  see our lot in life as bad because it’s the only one we’ve ever had.
  It’s our personal tragedy and as much as we lament over it, there’s
  somebody out there who would take it in a nano second.

  Wouldn’t
  it be interesting if we could do a sort of random life exchange. It’d
  be an opt in system of course.  IF you love your life as it stands you
  wouldn’t be forced to change it. But all the rest of us who at some
  point or another even if it is only for a single instant feel
  overwhelmed by the tragic nature of our experiences could just choose
  to be added to the life exchange pool. Then they’d just get a new life
  randomly assigned from amongst all the others who’ve opted in the pool.

  The interesting thing about such a system is that every
  potential life you could get is going to be tragedy in some sense or
  another. Somebody thought it was a tragedy and indeed tragic enough
  that they felt at some point like giving up and taking a different life.

  And
  yet… I wonder if it wouldn’t end up with people being generally
  happier? Everyone gets a new life and when they look at that new life
  they see it much more positively than the original occupant just
  because it’s different, just because it’s unique, just becuase it’s NOT
  their old life. The one they felt was so intolerable that they had to
  run away from it?

  Or am I wrong?  Would the people who engage in
  the exchange suddenly experience through comparison a greater
  appreciation for their OLD lives. So much so that they want it back?
  They might say “Man I didn’t realize how GOOD I had it before! What the
  heck was I thinking going into this life exchange?”  So maybe we have
  to add in a sort of 30 day life-back guarantee. Your life is reserved 
  for you for 30 days so you can jump back  to it if you want but after
  those thirty days are up your life might be given away at random to
  another life seeker. So you’d best decide well. Old life or new? Which
  do you want? It’s likely to be a tough choice but then again even if
  you miss your thirty day window, if your new life gets intolerable you
  can always re-enter the roulette and get another random life. Maybe you
  even get lucky and get your old life back or something even better.

  Anyway
  thinking about all of this lead me to start to doubt my earlier disgust
  at the depiction of tragic heroes. Maybe it’s ok, I thought, for
  Superman to be a tragic figure? And maybe it’s ok too for Nephyo to be
  a tragic figure? Sure other people have got it worse, maybe much much
  much much worse, but so what? Is it so bad a thing to see and recognize
  the tragedy in our lives and to feel bad about it every once in a
  while? Maybe that’s just a part of being human too?

  I’ll probably never like Smallville.
  It’s just too cheesy. And Heroes I only watch for the cool powers since
  the plot is never ever going to make a lick of sense. And maybe I’ll
  never be the hugest fan of Clark Kent or Claire Bennett, but I don’t
  think I’m as likely not to be disgusted by them anymore. They’re over
  dramatized, over idealized versions of characters, but even so they’re
  just like everybody else. Drama and tragedy. It’s not so bad. Is it?

  A
  friend of mine once suggested the idea that someone could be attracted
  or repulsed by the tragedy in another’s life. That the sorrow and
  sadness could appeal to you or it could push you away. And that a more
  tragic figure might be more preferable to some than a not tragic
  figure. Or a more tragic figure might be impossible for others to deal
  with than a less tragic figure. So it’s that idea of preferences I
  blogged about before (12/10). I’d never thought before he mentioned
  that that tragedy was a feature of people that could attract or repel.
  It makes sense though, but I just never thought about it in that way.

  And so I thought about this and wondered where do my preferences lie
  along the continuum of tragedy? Am I attracted to or repulsed by the
  tragic? My prior opinions of Clark and Claire seems to suggest a
  repulsion but at the same time many of my other interactions in life
  suggest the opposite.

  I’m not entirely sure the answer to that question, but I do think that at least understanding
  tragedy is really important to me. How the tragic aspects of someone’s
  story shapes who they are. How it makes them who they are and what they
  are and why they think the way they do and act the way they do. I
  really care a great deal about understanding people, especially people
  I come to care about. And I think understanding the tragic aspects of
  their lives is essential to understanding a person.

  More than
  that though, I do thing I have a lot of a low level attraction to
  tragic figures too. And yet I don’t think that’s weird or bad either.
  Think of it this way, would you enjoy a story that had no sadness in
  it? Would you care about the characters in a book if they experienced
  no sorrow, no angst, no fear, no dread, no uncertainty whatsoever?
  Would you keep reading if nothing bad ever happened to anybody and
  everything just worked out with a minimal level of effort?  I certainly
  wouldn’t. I would despise such a story. It would repulse me to no end.

  And
  it’s like that with people too. If I meet someone who just seems so
  dang insufferably happy all the time, it drives me nuts. I want to
  strangle them! I just don’t believe it! There’s gotta be something
  there that they are hiding I think. Life is never all sunshine and
  lolly pops.  Everybody’s got a tragic aspect. Everybody’s life has
  drama in it. I can’t confirm those statements with 100% accuracy since
  I haven’t examined every person’s life, but I believe it whole
  heartedly nonetheless.

  At the same time, I also think I have a low level repulsion for certain kinds of tragic figures too.

  Consider the short story “The Second Kind of Loneliness” (see
  yesterday’s post).  I’m sure most people end up reading this and end up
  thinking about how bad loneliness sucks. They will feel bad for the
  main character. Maybe they think that they can relate to his feelings.
  But overall they just think at how terrible it is for society to let
  someone become that lonely and how important it is for human beings to
  interact with people and become a part of groups. That old adage that
  human beings cannot survive alone. That’s the line of thought most
  people will have. Sure they may be a little disgusted by the choices
  the main character makes, but that feeling will be dwarfed in most
  people by how sorry they will feel for him. In short they will pity him.

  Which is exactly what he would have hated the most.

  Me, I too think that I can relate to this character. I think I can
  relate a lot more than most people. I felt exactly like he’s felt. I’ve
  been alone in the woods starring at the night sky isolated from the
  world and feeling that brooding loneliness. And I’ve been at a party or
  a gathering shy and unable to relate to anyone feeling that other kind
  of loneliness too. I’ve felt it far too frequently. And yet I don’t
  feel sorry for the main character in this story. Not at all. I don’t
  think what a sad life or how terrible that things turned out that way
  for him. Nor do I even particularly feel angry at him or disgusted by
  him.

  The main character’s problem is, in my opinion, not that he was lonely.
  That isn’t it at all. So many people are lonely and lonely in so many
  different ways but they deal with it. They live their lives. They find
  happiness or at least a level of low level joy to get them by. Somehow
  they cope. Why couldn’t this character?

  No, his problem is in my opinion that he lets his tragedy, the tragedy
  of feeling alone, become his entire life.  It became the focus of his
  existence. Nothing else mattered to him. He felt no other joys and no
  other pleasures and thought of nothing except in relation to how it
  related to his tragic loneliness. Every interaction he ever had made
  him berate himself for being too lonely, for lacking courage, for being
  too self-pitying.  Even out in the extraordinary expanse of space alone
  amongst the stars he can’t find simple appreciation of the beauty he
  sees. Rather the vast emptiness of space is but a metaphor for the
  emptiness of his own life. It’s all part of the tragedy.  The lonely
  soul who is so much more on the inside than anyone knows. As beautiful
  as the vastness of space, but just as empty too.

  He made another mistake too. When faced with this tragedy and letting
  it build up and become more and more a significant part of his life to
  the point that he couldn’t stand it anymore, instead of facing it, he
  did the worst thing he could possibly have chosen to do.

  He ran away.

  He thought he was running away from the loneliness. He thought that it
  was being around people having to interact with them, being awkward and
  shy and afraid were what was making him lonely. He thought he could run
  away from interactions and escape that second kind of loneliness. He
  thought he could escape his tragedy.

  But what he ended up escaping was everything else that was good in his
  life. He ran away from Earth and all its joys and pleasures, hardships
  and sufferings. He ran away from the chance to grow or change or become
  something else. Yeah he escaped those awkward moments when he might say
  or do the wrong thing, but at the same time he lost everything else
  too. Nobody could hate him or  be disgusted by him when he was alone on
  that star ring, but nobody could praise him or commiserate with him
  either. He abandoned his entire life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
  And all that he was left with, ALL that he had left, was the thing he
  couldn’t escape no matter how far he went, no matter how far he ran.
  His loneliness. His tragedy. Because in the end when all is said and
  done, our tragedies are inside of us. You can’t escape them by running
  away. And in the end doing so only makes you feel worse. Much worse.

  Reading about this made me feel, not dislike, but a sort of low level
  aversion to this character. The opposite of the attraction I feel
  toward some aspects of tragic figures. The way in which he coped with
  his tragedy disturbed and repulsed me.  It just feels so wrong. There’s
  so much that is extraordinary in life to take pleasure in and to find
  joy in that you don’t need to become so overwhelmed by one aspect of
  your existence, even if it is such a big aspect as one’s feelings of
  loneliness.

  And you know you can do that with any tragedy not just the tragedy of
  loneliness. A person can become overwhelmed by a tragedy of loss or a
  tragedy of impending disaster or a tragedy of conflict or a tragedy of
  exclusion. Everyone has at least a little bit of tragedy in their
  lives, in their pasts, and in their imagined future. But not everyone
  lets this tragedy become their soul defining characteristic. Not
  everyone feels as if those feelings that arise from the tragedy in
  their lives are their only feelings or the only feelings that matter to
  them. Not everyone makes the mistake of running away from their tragedy
  only to find it an ever looming un-escapable presence dwelling in every
  tiny corner and recess of their minds.

  It’s doing that that creates the problem in a character like the main
  character of “The Second Kind of Loneliness”. It’s when you are
  consummed by your tragedy that mere sadness and doubt and fear gets
  transformed into shame and sorrow and bitter guilt. It’s then that you
  might contemplate killing yourself. Or it’s then that you can become as
  the main character in this short story did, a monster.  But if you let
  yourself be the totality of yourself. To see the good and the bad, the
  sad and the joyful, then I don’t think a little thing like feeling
  lonely or any other tragic character aspect can destroy you. It will
  only make you stronger.

  On the other hand now that I think about it, if it is a mistake to be
  consumed by your tragic aspect, I think it is just as much if not more
  of a mistake to overly ignore your tragedy. I don’t have any good short
  stories that illustrate that, but I have observed it in the real world.

  There are those who don’t want to live as part of a tragedy, don’t want
  to think about the bad things that have happened or are happening or
  might yet happen to them. They just shut it all out and pretend like
  nothing’s wrong. They want a world that is without that sense of
  darkness or fear within them. So they pretend it doesn’t exist or that
  it didn’t influence them to make them who they are. They want a world
  that really is all sunshine and lolly pops and they live a life in
  which they strive to bring that about in their daily livings.

  And I feel as much an aversion to that attitude as I do for the overly
  tragic figure. Because I know it just doesn’t last. Tragedy can’t be
  suppressed and repressed and made to just vanish and disappear. They
  don’t go away that easily. Instead they build up when ignored behind
  the scenes hurting you more and more until one day you won’t be able to
  take it anymore. The stress of trying to be something that nobody ever
  really is, the sorrow-free existence will drive you insane just like
  the excessive obsession with one’s sorrow drove the main character of
  “Loneliness” insane.

  It’s ok I think to every once in a while stop and say “Man this sucks!”
  It’s a good thing I think to every once in a while admit to yourself
  that you wish that things could be different and that you hate the way
  things turned out.  It can be an entirely good thing I think to one day
  go off somewhere and scream and scream and scream and shout and rage at
  all the things that aren’t the way you want them to be and that didn’t
  turn out quite like you wished and dreamed. Or to write long rambling
  blogs or journals about it. Or to find someone receptive and rail at
  them and tell them all about all the stuff that hurts.

  It’s ok to be pissed off about life. It really is. Doing so doesn’t
  mean your a bad person or that you are wasting your life. It isn’t
  really so bad a thing to pity yourself sometimes either. Doing so
  doesn’t mean that you aren’t making the most out of your existence.
  Doing so doesn’t always hurt you. Sometimes it helps. It’s a lot better
  than shutting it all in and pretending like everything is all always
  alright.

  I think it’s all just two sides of the same coin. Whether you are
  running away from your life in hopes of escaping your tragedy or you
  are running away from your tragedy in hopes of escaping your life it
  just won’t work. Running doesn’t help. At best it can give you a
  temporary reprieve. But at worst it can end up exacerbating the
  problems. Since your life won’t disappear and your tragedy won’t go
  away not as long as you live and breathe. But the running can make you
  feel terrible. I’ve done both of course in my short life time. That’s
  probably why I have an aversion to both attitudes. In my experience
  running away always feels worse by far than facing the thing from which
  I was running.

  I don’t know if I really said all the things I meant to say on this
  topic but I think I covered the important stuff. So I guess I’ll just
  end it right here. I’ll close with an amusing only slightly related
  youtube video just because.

  • 9:51 am
  • 1 Comment