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.

Comments (1)

  • I don’t really care if I am Legend is that superb or not. Most if not all the Will Smith movies are good. The trailer looks outstanding. Plus it’s been ages since I watched a movie. 

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