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elliclerwhile i'm irresponsibly hiding away from social media (which is what this always comes down to), i've been (re)watching 'Black Mirror'.
'Bandersnatch' didn't do much for me; it just reads like depression being splashed out on the big screen in colourful strokes; i hope the author(s) of this project are all right?? anyway, the most coherent conclusion i was able to draw from this mostly incoherent cry for help / statement of societal and ontological despair is this: we are not constrained by anything so much as our own natures. (this is, of course, less of a reading of the text and more me finding the only philosophical framework in which the text seems to me to make any sort of cohesive sense; otherwise it's just a kaleidoscope of muted boring meaningless despair.) however long you juggle the pieces, the nature of the protagonist, who is mentally ill, does not allow you to reach a satisfying conclusion and to happily help him overcome his difficulties. his core neuroses are the basis of his (unsolvable) problems.
we turn left instead of turning right, in the most important and deep cases at least, not because of circumstance, external pressure, or lack of understanding or pre-emptive knowledge about the possible consequences of our actions - all of those are true, and occasionally truly heart-breaking; but the real problem at the heart of the past we regret and the future we fear (that we might come to regret) is actually we ourselves.
i've been listening to a popular course on ancient chinese philosophy on youtube (it's fascinating and it's also by a bona fide canadian professor), and i believe this is some interpretation of the concept of tao. it's not precisely 'destiny' as europeans understand it (fatalite, ananke, cold cruel blind chance); it's more like... the nature of things, the nature of us humans, that leads us to be the way we are. we can struggle against the flow of tao and cause ourselves needless misery (for example, by endlessly regretting our actions without understanding why we couldn't have done it differently; 'Bandersnatch' only literalises this idea by giving us a way to 'redo' the past and be endlessly frustrated by our lack of success) or we can follow 'the flow' while making our natures more permeable to heaven's will and not allowing our human concerns to influence us or to obscure our view. this isn't just a crapload of pseudo-spiritual bullshit, even though in my retelling it does sound like that :) but, you know, it's about the wisdom to know which things we cannot change and accepting that.
i also rewatched my favorite episode of 'Black Mirror' - the very first one, 'National Anthem'. it's so great to see that my taste stays consistent, and the thing that seemed great some years ago is, in fact, just as great today! the whole of the episode hinges indeed on the montage at the climax of the story: 'the public's enraptured faces as the whole of the British nation is glued to their screens, unable to look away from an unbearable humiliation a single man is going through, while you, the actual viewer, are watching just as helplessly, cringing away but unwilling to turn it off, hiding behing your hand for a second at a time and still having your eyes inexorably pulled towards the screen again: how is he going to do it, it must be so hard, i can't even imagine; a mix of indecent curiosity (you're allowed to stare into the man's very soul at a moment of horrible degradation and weakness) and a good drop of schadenfreude as well. this moment is filmed so well that it hooks you and makes you feel complicit; without it the story would just be a mildly entertaining morality tale.
this is not the first time in recent experince i'm noticing that the way the story is told becomes more important than what it's actually telling; without the magic of reaching for my empathy so powerfully it would just be a stale exercise in rhetoric. it's somewhat surprising to me that art is making me think new things by making me feel new things, i wouldn't've expected it and yet it's perfectly true. empathy in certain situations where you've never experienced it before makes you re-evaluate your understanding of the world. (or, as Astolat puts it, 'some experiences have a disproportionate effect on our personalities'.)
'Bandersnatch' didn't do much for me; it just reads like depression being splashed out on the big screen in colourful strokes; i hope the author(s) of this project are all right?? anyway, the most coherent conclusion i was able to draw from this mostly incoherent cry for help / statement of societal and ontological despair is this: we are not constrained by anything so much as our own natures. (this is, of course, less of a reading of the text and more me finding the only philosophical framework in which the text seems to me to make any sort of cohesive sense; otherwise it's just a kaleidoscope of muted boring meaningless despair.) however long you juggle the pieces, the nature of the protagonist, who is mentally ill, does not allow you to reach a satisfying conclusion and to happily help him overcome his difficulties. his core neuroses are the basis of his (unsolvable) problems.
we turn left instead of turning right, in the most important and deep cases at least, not because of circumstance, external pressure, or lack of understanding or pre-emptive knowledge about the possible consequences of our actions - all of those are true, and occasionally truly heart-breaking; but the real problem at the heart of the past we regret and the future we fear (that we might come to regret) is actually we ourselves.
i've been listening to a popular course on ancient chinese philosophy on youtube (it's fascinating and it's also by a bona fide canadian professor), and i believe this is some interpretation of the concept of tao. it's not precisely 'destiny' as europeans understand it (fatalite, ananke, cold cruel blind chance); it's more like... the nature of things, the nature of us humans, that leads us to be the way we are. we can struggle against the flow of tao and cause ourselves needless misery (for example, by endlessly regretting our actions without understanding why we couldn't have done it differently; 'Bandersnatch' only literalises this idea by giving us a way to 'redo' the past and be endlessly frustrated by our lack of success) or we can follow 'the flow' while making our natures more permeable to heaven's will and not allowing our human concerns to influence us or to obscure our view. this isn't just a crapload of pseudo-spiritual bullshit, even though in my retelling it does sound like that :) but, you know, it's about the wisdom to know which things we cannot change and accepting that.
i also rewatched my favorite episode of 'Black Mirror' - the very first one, 'National Anthem'. it's so great to see that my taste stays consistent, and the thing that seemed great some years ago is, in fact, just as great today! the whole of the episode hinges indeed on the montage at the climax of the story: 'the public's enraptured faces as the whole of the British nation is glued to their screens, unable to look away from an unbearable humiliation a single man is going through, while you, the actual viewer, are watching just as helplessly, cringing away but unwilling to turn it off, hiding behing your hand for a second at a time and still having your eyes inexorably pulled towards the screen again: how is he going to do it, it must be so hard, i can't even imagine; a mix of indecent curiosity (you're allowed to stare into the man's very soul at a moment of horrible degradation and weakness) and a good drop of schadenfreude as well. this moment is filmed so well that it hooks you and makes you feel complicit; without it the story would just be a mildly entertaining morality tale.
this is not the first time in recent experince i'm noticing that the way the story is told becomes more important than what it's actually telling; without the magic of reaching for my empathy so powerfully it would just be a stale exercise in rhetoric. it's somewhat surprising to me that art is making me think new things by making me feel new things, i wouldn't've expected it and yet it's perfectly true. empathy in certain situations where you've never experienced it before makes you re-evaluate your understanding of the world. (or, as Astolat puts it, 'some experiences have a disproportionate effect on our personalities'.)
