Trench love. How romantic does that sound? There is just something basic, something almost sacrificial about that phrase that conjures up images of raw, animalistic passion in the face of death, a sort of odd combination of martyrdom and instinctual reproduction. Who wouldnt want to experience the pleasure of sexual release just one more time before the Luftwatha makes one final, devastating pass? Isnt procreation the last dying wish of every man on a doomed and descending aircraft? To heck with worrying about oxygen masks and floats when you are ten thousand feet over the Atlantic in freefall. Maslows hierarchy suggests that human needs must be met in some order; and sex is number one, everyone; right up there with the need to breathe, eat, shelter, and sleep. So bear with that pitiful creep on the plane and the two Iraqis making out in the afterglow of a roadside bomb in a snipers crosshairs. Maslows hierarchy might just explain the whole trench love phenomenon.
There is a poignant scene in the old, yet unforgettable situation comedy, M.A.S.H. that may best depict our trench lovers. As Hawkeye Pierce and the voluptuous Hot Lips Hullahan are hunkering along the baseboard of some small shack in a remote Korean battlefield, the two suddenly realize that they are uncontrollably attracted to each other and begin to make passionate love between explosions and an occasional tear. Incidentally, there is a basic need to be clothed in Hollywood, so the nudity was omitted in the show, and coitus assumed. Absurd? No. Its Maslowian. According to the pyramid, the two were behaving as Maslow, himself, would have predicted.
This Hollywood scene must validate the hierarchy. Certainly, there are other instances of putting ones safety on the line to satisfy ones basic sexual desire. This scene is natural; it cannot be an ad hoc fallacy. The kissing Iraqis and the plummeting passenger are anecdotal examples, sure, but certainly two of perhaps billions (pinky to lip and eyebrow raised). There is just something disturbing about looking at Maslows evolving pyramid, and reconciling the idea that sexual gratification comes before safety and security. Equally so, the idea that sex ranks first (with food and water and fig leaves), and affection and belonging come third as if sex has nothing to do the latter, is reprehensible. Maybe this explains why there is no outcry when a man cites mismatched libidos as a reason to divorce his lonely wife. Judges understand Maslow. Aha.
Isnt human connection primary? Ask any fetus. But I ask you, the biologist, doesnt loneliness have some potent chemical correlate, like sex has its testosterone? Lets name it now. We will call it Allleftalone. It is produced in the thymus and disappears in proportion to the glands disintegration. That might explain why Maslowians might consider alleftalone less dominant than testosterone, which remains into late adulthood and can always be replaced with Viagra supplements. There is, for the lonely, however, no synthetic alleftalone. The best we can do is SSRI therapy, which might make you suicidal. At least it makes you want to sleep which is a primary "need." Another possibility is injectable amphetamines, which makes you feel like you are surrounded. It is yet and unlikely to be approved because it rots your teeth and, oh by the way, kills you. Dont forget,I am reminded by some screaming inner animal, we are NOT talking about parental love or the selfless love of Christian agape, we are talking about the trench! Damn my id all to hell. He doesnt care if he is alone or with three people or with a beast. Where is Freud when I need him, and where did my superego and thymus go?
So, safety isnt the primary need. Then what is shelter: Maslows safety concubine? We have a primary need for a wigwam, is that it? Or a hut? Is shelter an umbrella? How about the bomb shelter I built over in Jersey at the expense of countless hours at home? Does that qualify as a safety concern, or should I burn my airline tickets when we are invaded and bed down with the spouse? Give me a sexual break! I suppose Maslow would say that I was building an underground sex parlor, not a bomb shelter. Yeah, Baby, he says, with horn-rimmed glasses and an English accent. Maslow can explain why two soldiers, bunkered down trying to evade shrapnel, experience an intense and overwhelming need to procreate, heterosexual or otherwise. But he cant explain my bomb shelter! Wait, can homosexuals reproduce?
Heres the protocol for all us wannabe X-ray techs according to Maslow. 1) Understand where the patient is on the hierarchy and attend to those needs in order. Patients will have concerns about sex and food and whether they are covered. Remind them that lunch is at noon and dinner at five. Make sure they have a gown or gonadal fig leaf. And oh yeah, offer them the yellow pages so that they can look up the number of an escort service assuming they are single and willing, of course. This need for sex is more potent than any fear of falling, so have the yellow pages ready and secondarily, a gate belt and sponges. 2) Every patient comes into Medical Imaging fearful to know and to understand. But wait, this ranks fifth. This is way up the pyramid of needs, somewhere ahead of spirituality. Oh wait, thats not a need according to Maslow, even though Nitzche said that if there wasnt a God, it would be necessary for man to invent Him. Sounds like a need to me. But, I need to make sure their esteem is good. To hell with anyone elses. But, they need to feel belongingness and love, too. Lets see. Belongingness and love has nothing to do with sex or spirituality or other-esteem according to my id, or knowledge, so that leaves 3) polite conversation and aesthetics. Light a candle and have fresh cut glads about the room to make it feel more like home (glads are as resilient to radiation as a Venus flytrap). Wait, I cant probably have fire around 84,000 volts of electricity. If there are allergy concerns about the glads, than pictures will do. Nod as if you care about what is said, just like you do in your recliner when your mate says something unintelligible. Aesthetics is extremely important, right up there with self-actualization, which probably has an autoerotic component. 4) Take decent film, and shield the gonads but not necessarily in that order.
Remember, trench love is in the back of every persons mind. You may need to fend off exhibitionists in x-ray. Just look at the floorboard fire of Major Hullahan and she was a nurse.
We are talking about trench love, so watch your creepy touch. You might just be arousing the battlefield beast within this 400-pound female sumo wrestler. Who doesnt want to experience the intimacy of raw lust in a cloud of pulverized Korean Japanese Maples or in the sterility of a medical imaging room, where that hovering cancer looms like a Blackhawk helicopter? Wait! Intimacy and raw lust probably arent inclusive. Darn it! But ah, it all brings to mind an image of the late Francis Scott Key writing our national anthem while undergoing a Craniogram somewhere in a remote Philadelphia sick ward. How schizoid, yet how romantic.
Final thoughts on Maslow. First, he must have known someone who died from, for lack of a better word, horniness. How awful to die of a ruptured seminal vesicle. How painful to be consumed by a firestorm of raging testosterone? Perhaps though, Maslow was onto something. Could the trench love theory possible explain the phenomenon of death by spontaneous combustion? Voila! He has done it! Human beings can burst into flame from sexual deprivation, just as though they might waste away from starvation. Scary, scary stuff.
But perhaps I have it all wrong. Perhaps I am a victim of my own religious beliefs. Have I made the basic mistake of equating love with sex? Has my religion obliterated the gray area between these exclusive ideals? Was my abstinence a betrayal of my manhood? Is marriage, the context in which I have lumped these two needs, a Euro-Christian convention that has artificially divided my vas deferens from my heart? Will my wife really refuse me this release until I consent to buying her a blindfold and chaps? Wait! Where do blindfolds rank? I can only pray that my overactive id be irradiated, and my mismatched libido doesnt get me in trouble with my shrink, and wind me up in x-ray where some cute young thing with creepy touch threatens that gray area that I hold so dear.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Crazy at 17
If you had an African American friend growing up, did your teacher treat them the same way he or she treated European American students? Victor was my childhood best friend. He was of African descent; he was also the class clown and wore his spankings like badges. Some might say we are only sensitive to our own pain as a child. To an extent, I believe this to be true. This might explain why I dont remember if he was treated differently in school, and why I never reacted much to his being treated differently by my own family. Hes not around to ask these days. Heres my take on interracial friendships.
At age 11, I joined a little league baseball team. That is how I got to know Victor. Our coach didnt treat us any differently. In fact, Victor had privilege. Plain and simply put, he was better then the rest of us. Because of it, he started first base, batted cleanup, and I learned to pitch. Malanowski, in a 2002 NY Times column, talked about the boon of black-and-white buddy movies like Die Hard, Shawshank Redemption, and Men in Black, that pair a white friend with a black one. This is a lucrative strategy for the box office. Incidentally, its one of the nobler aspects of Hollywood to unite different races in a common quest. Whatever the intent, Victor and I were like Danny Glover and Bruce Willis. We played hard, stuck together, and if we had anything to say, would die hard.
I dont remember a Black History Month in grade school. I dont remember any racial education. Brammer wonders if the fact that we dont recall the typical differential treatment of our former black friends is evidence of our own indifference. It was our schools one black teacher who left the most indelible mark on me. She said, Once poor, you will always be poor. It stands out because I remember waiting for her to tell me she was kidding, laugh, or ask me to rebut her. She didnt, and I couldnt. She dismissed me, and that was that. I doubt the rich kids were any more aware of my oppression than I was of similar comments made to African Americans by white teachers. Ignorance or indifference, it possesses the same sting. We feel our own pain best.
About the time of Alex Haleys publication, Roots, which my mother purchased and read to us after PBS aired its made-for-TV miniseries, teachers began offering a few examples of strong African Americans, here and there. Soon, the strong black images were replaced by old, wounded images of Kunta Kinte. Around the same time, it seems like they dropped the simultaneous examples of helpful whites. Gone were the heroic aspects of Kintes struggle and those of the white abolitionist. With such glaring omissions, its no wonder, Beverly Tatum (1999) expounds, the white children sat frozen in a haze of guilt and the black children, uncomfortably in the shame of victimization. She writes,
The Africans who were brought here as slaves were not all passive victims, and all whites were not bad.
She implores the educational system to provide concrete examples of each.
Nearing high school, Victor and I recalled our old days of playing baseball, staying out late, peeping in windows and stealing dirty magazines. We didnt lament our fatherlessness. Like our school paddlings, we glorified our struggles and cursed the wind as we rode on, chiding our mothers for missing so many of our games despite our own sin.
Once, an aunt and uncle pulled into my driveway to drop me off after we had won. Victor wasnt invited, and he walked home. With a mouthful of french fries, I exited the car to see Victors mom running out the back door of our home. Shortly, my mother was receiving the family lecture of dont be seen with them and you wont be bothered by them, referring to the problem we had been having with the neighborhood black boys flirting with my beautiful, blonde haired aryan sister. The only ones I knew that were peeking in windows were Victor and myself.
Rapidly, the truth began to blur into fantasy. My father quit calling, the family stayed away, my mother slept more and missed more games, became more suspicious and more dependent on her family for support. Dorothy stayed away, too.
I once asked my mother, Is Everybody a Racist? The suspicion comes from disappointed expectations. I was disappointed, but I couldnt put my finger on why or in whom. This was a dangerous condition. In my mothers youth, it was as much a symptom of mental illness as a justification for incarcerating us disappointees in lunitic asylums.
My mother answered my question by telling me a story of her own institutionalization. But what did that have to do with racism?
She said her hospital years were the best days of her life. She fell in love, blossomed into a woman, made friends of all colors, found refuge in a way, and strength in herself to have a family. Why she was committed had something to do with why she didnt attend many baseball games. She let it lay at that.
The images of Victors mother running out the back door, like she was a common thief, stayed with me...and remains with me to this day. I resigned myself to believing my mother was just sick like my family had always told me. It was as easy for me to ignore my mothers pain as it was for her to spare me the suffering she endured.
I wanted Victor to ride in the ambulance with me but they wouldnt take him. My Mom wasnt breathing or moving when Victor and I woke up that morning. Perhaps black people didnt ride in ambulances, at least in the front. I didnt know. My family didnt let him ride in their car either. All I knew was I was alone.
My mother used to say that Id be better off with those aunts and uncles. She got her wish. I moved in and soon, Victor and I were separated.
Years later, I had a chance to talk with Victors mother. She told me that she hadnt seen Victor in a long time. She lamented missing his games, and said she missed my Mom. I asked Dorothy why she fled my house the way she had on that sunny summer day so long ago. Always a woman of few words, she said she spent most of our games visiting with my mother because they both needed a friend. She said they couldnt be with each other at the games. I started to ask, Why not? but remembered Dorothys reaction to seeing my family pull in when she was in our home, and the lectures my mom endured.
I wonder if my mother might have had a friend that she stopped to talk to on her way home back in those days before she went crazy at 17.
Brandyberry (1999) implored her white friends to reach out, despite the consequences. Perhaps my mother did so long before it was fashionable. Perhaps she stopped to comfort someone from another race, talk, or share some happy times in her youth, like Victors Mom had with her...and me. Maybe that person happened to be black. Maybe thats why she was committed. I suppose its hard to say, but I can always hope thats the way it happened and be thankful I had a Mom like her and a buddy like Victor. You never bothered me, I told Dorothy, and she hugged me as if I were her own son.
*************
Brammer, R. (2004). Diversity in counseling. Belmont: CA: Brooks/Cole.
Brandyberry, L.J. (1999). Pain and perseverance: Perspectives from an ally. Journal of Counseling and Development, 77, 7-9.
Buckley, W.F. (1994, December). Is everybody a racist? National Review, 46, ___.
Malanowski, J. (2002). Colorblind buddies in black and white. [Electronic Version]. NY Times, Nov.10.
Tatum, B.D. (1999). Its not so black and white: An educators wisdom on teaching about slavery and other race-related issues. Instructor, 108, 29-31.
At age 11, I joined a little league baseball team. That is how I got to know Victor. Our coach didnt treat us any differently. In fact, Victor had privilege. Plain and simply put, he was better then the rest of us. Because of it, he started first base, batted cleanup, and I learned to pitch. Malanowski, in a 2002 NY Times column, talked about the boon of black-and-white buddy movies like Die Hard, Shawshank Redemption, and Men in Black, that pair a white friend with a black one. This is a lucrative strategy for the box office. Incidentally, its one of the nobler aspects of Hollywood to unite different races in a common quest. Whatever the intent, Victor and I were like Danny Glover and Bruce Willis. We played hard, stuck together, and if we had anything to say, would die hard.
I dont remember a Black History Month in grade school. I dont remember any racial education. Brammer wonders if the fact that we dont recall the typical differential treatment of our former black friends is evidence of our own indifference. It was our schools one black teacher who left the most indelible mark on me. She said, Once poor, you will always be poor. It stands out because I remember waiting for her to tell me she was kidding, laugh, or ask me to rebut her. She didnt, and I couldnt. She dismissed me, and that was that. I doubt the rich kids were any more aware of my oppression than I was of similar comments made to African Americans by white teachers. Ignorance or indifference, it possesses the same sting. We feel our own pain best.
About the time of Alex Haleys publication, Roots, which my mother purchased and read to us after PBS aired its made-for-TV miniseries, teachers began offering a few examples of strong African Americans, here and there. Soon, the strong black images were replaced by old, wounded images of Kunta Kinte. Around the same time, it seems like they dropped the simultaneous examples of helpful whites. Gone were the heroic aspects of Kintes struggle and those of the white abolitionist. With such glaring omissions, its no wonder, Beverly Tatum (1999) expounds, the white children sat frozen in a haze of guilt and the black children, uncomfortably in the shame of victimization. She writes,
The Africans who were brought here as slaves were not all passive victims, and all whites were not bad.
She implores the educational system to provide concrete examples of each.
Nearing high school, Victor and I recalled our old days of playing baseball, staying out late, peeping in windows and stealing dirty magazines. We didnt lament our fatherlessness. Like our school paddlings, we glorified our struggles and cursed the wind as we rode on, chiding our mothers for missing so many of our games despite our own sin.
Once, an aunt and uncle pulled into my driveway to drop me off after we had won. Victor wasnt invited, and he walked home. With a mouthful of french fries, I exited the car to see Victors mom running out the back door of our home. Shortly, my mother was receiving the family lecture of dont be seen with them and you wont be bothered by them, referring to the problem we had been having with the neighborhood black boys flirting with my beautiful, blonde haired aryan sister. The only ones I knew that were peeking in windows were Victor and myself.
Rapidly, the truth began to blur into fantasy. My father quit calling, the family stayed away, my mother slept more and missed more games, became more suspicious and more dependent on her family for support. Dorothy stayed away, too.
I once asked my mother, Is Everybody a Racist? The suspicion comes from disappointed expectations. I was disappointed, but I couldnt put my finger on why or in whom. This was a dangerous condition. In my mothers youth, it was as much a symptom of mental illness as a justification for incarcerating us disappointees in lunitic asylums.
My mother answered my question by telling me a story of her own institutionalization. But what did that have to do with racism?
She said her hospital years were the best days of her life. She fell in love, blossomed into a woman, made friends of all colors, found refuge in a way, and strength in herself to have a family. Why she was committed had something to do with why she didnt attend many baseball games. She let it lay at that.
The images of Victors mother running out the back door, like she was a common thief, stayed with me...and remains with me to this day. I resigned myself to believing my mother was just sick like my family had always told me. It was as easy for me to ignore my mothers pain as it was for her to spare me the suffering she endured.
I wanted Victor to ride in the ambulance with me but they wouldnt take him. My Mom wasnt breathing or moving when Victor and I woke up that morning. Perhaps black people didnt ride in ambulances, at least in the front. I didnt know. My family didnt let him ride in their car either. All I knew was I was alone.
My mother used to say that Id be better off with those aunts and uncles. She got her wish. I moved in and soon, Victor and I were separated.
Years later, I had a chance to talk with Victors mother. She told me that she hadnt seen Victor in a long time. She lamented missing his games, and said she missed my Mom. I asked Dorothy why she fled my house the way she had on that sunny summer day so long ago. Always a woman of few words, she said she spent most of our games visiting with my mother because they both needed a friend. She said they couldnt be with each other at the games. I started to ask, Why not? but remembered Dorothys reaction to seeing my family pull in when she was in our home, and the lectures my mom endured.
I wonder if my mother might have had a friend that she stopped to talk to on her way home back in those days before she went crazy at 17.
Brandyberry (1999) implored her white friends to reach out, despite the consequences. Perhaps my mother did so long before it was fashionable. Perhaps she stopped to comfort someone from another race, talk, or share some happy times in her youth, like Victors Mom had with her...and me. Maybe that person happened to be black. Maybe thats why she was committed. I suppose its hard to say, but I can always hope thats the way it happened and be thankful I had a Mom like her and a buddy like Victor. You never bothered me, I told Dorothy, and she hugged me as if I were her own son.
*************
Brammer, R. (2004). Diversity in counseling. Belmont: CA: Brooks/Cole.
Brandyberry, L.J. (1999). Pain and perseverance: Perspectives from an ally. Journal of Counseling and Development, 77, 7-9.
Buckley, W.F. (1994, December). Is everybody a racist? National Review, 46, ___.
Malanowski, J. (2002). Colorblind buddies in black and white. [Electronic Version]. NY Times, Nov.10.
Tatum, B.D. (1999). Its not so black and white: An educators wisdom on teaching about slavery and other race-related issues. Instructor, 108, 29-31.
The Invisible: A Movie Review
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Invisible: A Movie ReviewNick, an aspiring poet and writer whose father has recently died, presents his mother with his opportunity to study writing in London. She dismisses the endeavor without discussion and Nick is left to decide weather or not he will leave his home or remain with her in an unwitting, yet pathetic internal enmeshment. Meanwhile, Annie, whose mother has recently passed, wrestles with the meaningless of a life of crime, violence, and lost love.
The movie opens at a birthday party with Nick Powel, our hero, being toasted by his mother. She presents him with a beautiful watch that becomes a symbol of their relationship, and later, a tangible clue that could lead police to her son’s dying body. I knew I was in for a healthy dose of new Hollywood’s ugly bastard child, Annhilism, when Nick cut the eyes out of his likeness birthday cake, ate them, and then fantasized about swallowing some saltpeter and a couple of spent shotgun cartridges. Nick’s friend, Peter, then gets a fingernail excised by our heroin, Annie, a beautiful high school wannabe gangstress, via Stiletto knife, who wants payment for loaned “merchandise.” Nick meets Annie by attempting to pay Peter’s debt in cash, but the gesture is unappreciated, prompting Nick to whisper, “You are broken!” to the stoic and eerily-detached femme fatale. It is easy to assume she is the either the victim of—or willing participant to—causeless anger—Hollywood’s handsome bastard child, but we find that the whisper resonates in our heroin at a deeper level. Unfortunately, like many of the teens of our time who aspire to paint their fingernails and souls an empty and meaningless black, she lacks the magnanimity to confront her existential malady with something other than rage. We are left contemplating the usual suspects of the origins of our heroes’ challenges: Europeanism, the evil clergyman, patriarchy, and/or the absent father. However, my presumptions were happily wrong! It was the loss of a beloved parent, a trauma portending some existential collision between the grieving children.
Annie and boyfriend/car thief, Marcus, steal a Mercedes and impulsively, Annie decides to swipe some jewels for added pleasure. When Marcus demands to keep the jewelry because of Annie’s growing impulsivity, Annie dissents. Her defiance prompts Marcus to place an anonymous call to police, turning Annie in and setting up the motive for the redemption-impetus—a misplaced revenge. Annie confronts Peter, thinking he had been following her and that he had seen the incident. Believing his friend had flown to London, and fearing for his own life, the beaten Peter provides Nick’s name to the angry Annie. Our hero, who has sought the contemporary counsel of alcohol, agonizes over his decision not to go to London and the possibilities of becoming a taxidermist and opening a Hotel—hints of Norman Bates, the quintessential puer eternus. An anonymous girlfriend finds the watch in his pocket and asks why he is wearing the old watch (given him by his deceased father) instead of the beautiful new watch. Since "everything good is dead," Nick tosses the plane ticket to her breast, and we observe him walking angrily down a darkened street kicking trash cans over as if he is welcoming the fate he has been poeticizing about. Annie and a group of thugs approach him and Nick is brutally beaten and left for dead in a storm drain at the bottom of a wood. Nick soon reappears and quickly discovers that no one can see him, save the dying, and he realizes that he is still alive. He begins the urgent task of working for his would-be killer’s redemption, hence his physical salvation, and the mystery turns on the hand of weather or not the troubled Annie will lead police to the sewer/tomb.
I found the story believable, in a troubling sort of way. One wonders why this teen girl, an Alissa Milano lookalike/fugitive wears a ski cap 24/7, whose long locks are revealed only twice: while showering in the high school locker room (where she has broken into to sleep), and during resolution. The transition from covering one’s locks to letting the hair down could be a visual metaphor for Annie’s spiritual transformation, if it is to occur. Behind this emotional trainwreck seems to be Annie’s unresolved grief of her mother’s recent death, and her father’s relationship to a woman that finds no necessity in nurturing, for example not preparing supper for her or her little brother. Who wouldn’t be troubled with a beautiful girl gouging her bedroom wall with the same Stiletto she’s just ripped a fingernail off with, in sight of her 8 year-old brother as she listens to acid rock on an MP3 player? This is the prototypical annihilist-in-short waiting, who seems to prefer punting a stranger’s head like a football to flying a plane with her little brother.
Fortunately, the line to hell called annihilism is cordoned with a redemptive rope, albeit a heavy one, guarding people from the abyss to each side, of which Heaven--in this case, redemption--lies on distant ground. Annie does go to the trouble to make her hungry brother a peanut butter sandwich before a little nighttime “football.” As well, her tears over her mother’s grave add to her redemptive potential. The guilt over what she has done to Nick also develops as Nick’s body slips closer toward death. Driven by faint ghostly admonitions, Annie seems attune to Nick’s plight, suggesting she herself is near-death. She is merely in line. Still toying with the confessional lifestyle, she breaks into her victims home and rummages through his old photos and papers, displaying her newfound empathy by appreciating the photo of a place where they both spent time with their lost parent. One can almost hear hell’s waiting line shrinking. But, when she realizes she attacked the wrong person, she attempts to correct matters by shooting the real nark, and in quasi-Shakespearean fashion, is shot near the womb as if Satan's sentinals had spotted a runner. In fact, the believability in this series of events is that an insatiable grief can drive anyone to desperation, irregardless of gender, irrespective of religious convictions dare I say; and without discernment, the most accomplished man or woman can fall prey to folly as easily as the troubled teen. This we see most remarkably in Nick’s grieving mother, who must wrestle with her own conscience in the face of losing both husband, and son.
I recommend the Invisible if you are willing to put yourself in the shoes of our troubled teens who have lost someone very special to them and have found themselves in a world where solutions are often dispensed like advice from oracles at the end of some long, sinister waiting line. If the path seems long and the faces exiting, sullen, perhaps one is standing in the wrong line. The angst of living near death is what Heidigger called the Abyss, that empty, forboding space that surrounds each of us at difficult times. Sometimes critics forget that we may be on one side of this chasm, by good fortune of by merit of possessing the rappelling, hiking, and scuba apparatus that was needed to cross. Let us not forget those that have been raised without preparation or warning are the fools that we hate, but their folly is not a death sentence or even a judgment. Confession needs to be made, for the things that we were given that we did not deserve—grace, and for the salvation of those that lacked that which they did deserve—mercy. My prayer tonight is that I be more gracious and more merciful, and for the Annies and Nicks of this world—God help us all out of line and into the Abyss where atonement awaits.
The movie opens at a birthday party with Nick Powel, our hero, being toasted by his mother. She presents him with a beautiful watch that becomes a symbol of their relationship, and later, a tangible clue that could lead police to her son’s dying body. I knew I was in for a healthy dose of new Hollywood’s ugly bastard child, Annhilism, when Nick cut the eyes out of his likeness birthday cake, ate them, and then fantasized about swallowing some saltpeter and a couple of spent shotgun cartridges. Nick’s friend, Peter, then gets a fingernail excised by our heroin, Annie, a beautiful high school wannabe gangstress, via Stiletto knife, who wants payment for loaned “merchandise.” Nick meets Annie by attempting to pay Peter’s debt in cash, but the gesture is unappreciated, prompting Nick to whisper, “You are broken!” to the stoic and eerily-detached femme fatale. It is easy to assume she is the either the victim of—or willing participant to—causeless anger—Hollywood’s handsome bastard child, but we find that the whisper resonates in our heroin at a deeper level. Unfortunately, like many of the teens of our time who aspire to paint their fingernails and souls an empty and meaningless black, she lacks the magnanimity to confront her existential malady with something other than rage. We are left contemplating the usual suspects of the origins of our heroes’ challenges: Europeanism, the evil clergyman, patriarchy, and/or the absent father. However, my presumptions were happily wrong! It was the loss of a beloved parent, a trauma portending some existential collision between the grieving children.
Annie and boyfriend/car thief, Marcus, steal a Mercedes and impulsively, Annie decides to swipe some jewels for added pleasure. When Marcus demands to keep the jewelry because of Annie’s growing impulsivity, Annie dissents. Her defiance prompts Marcus to place an anonymous call to police, turning Annie in and setting up the motive for the redemption-impetus—a misplaced revenge. Annie confronts Peter, thinking he had been following her and that he had seen the incident. Believing his friend had flown to London, and fearing for his own life, the beaten Peter provides Nick’s name to the angry Annie. Our hero, who has sought the contemporary counsel of alcohol, agonizes over his decision not to go to London and the possibilities of becoming a taxidermist and opening a Hotel—hints of Norman Bates, the quintessential puer eternus. An anonymous girlfriend finds the watch in his pocket and asks why he is wearing the old watch (given him by his deceased father) instead of the beautiful new watch. Since "everything good is dead," Nick tosses the plane ticket to her breast, and we observe him walking angrily down a darkened street kicking trash cans over as if he is welcoming the fate he has been poeticizing about. Annie and a group of thugs approach him and Nick is brutally beaten and left for dead in a storm drain at the bottom of a wood. Nick soon reappears and quickly discovers that no one can see him, save the dying, and he realizes that he is still alive. He begins the urgent task of working for his would-be killer’s redemption, hence his physical salvation, and the mystery turns on the hand of weather or not the troubled Annie will lead police to the sewer/tomb.
I found the story believable, in a troubling sort of way. One wonders why this teen girl, an Alissa Milano lookalike/fugitive wears a ski cap 24/7, whose long locks are revealed only twice: while showering in the high school locker room (where she has broken into to sleep), and during resolution. The transition from covering one’s locks to letting the hair down could be a visual metaphor for Annie’s spiritual transformation, if it is to occur. Behind this emotional trainwreck seems to be Annie’s unresolved grief of her mother’s recent death, and her father’s relationship to a woman that finds no necessity in nurturing, for example not preparing supper for her or her little brother. Who wouldn’t be troubled with a beautiful girl gouging her bedroom wall with the same Stiletto she’s just ripped a fingernail off with, in sight of her 8 year-old brother as she listens to acid rock on an MP3 player? This is the prototypical annihilist-in-short waiting, who seems to prefer punting a stranger’s head like a football to flying a plane with her little brother.
Fortunately, the line to hell called annihilism is cordoned with a redemptive rope, albeit a heavy one, guarding people from the abyss to each side, of which Heaven--in this case, redemption--lies on distant ground. Annie does go to the trouble to make her hungry brother a peanut butter sandwich before a little nighttime “football.” As well, her tears over her mother’s grave add to her redemptive potential. The guilt over what she has done to Nick also develops as Nick’s body slips closer toward death. Driven by faint ghostly admonitions, Annie seems attune to Nick’s plight, suggesting she herself is near-death. She is merely in line. Still toying with the confessional lifestyle, she breaks into her victims home and rummages through his old photos and papers, displaying her newfound empathy by appreciating the photo of a place where they both spent time with their lost parent. One can almost hear hell’s waiting line shrinking. But, when she realizes she attacked the wrong person, she attempts to correct matters by shooting the real nark, and in quasi-Shakespearean fashion, is shot near the womb as if Satan's sentinals had spotted a runner. In fact, the believability in this series of events is that an insatiable grief can drive anyone to desperation, irregardless of gender, irrespective of religious convictions dare I say; and without discernment, the most accomplished man or woman can fall prey to folly as easily as the troubled teen. This we see most remarkably in Nick’s grieving mother, who must wrestle with her own conscience in the face of losing both husband, and son.
I recommend the Invisible if you are willing to put yourself in the shoes of our troubled teens who have lost someone very special to them and have found themselves in a world where solutions are often dispensed like advice from oracles at the end of some long, sinister waiting line. If the path seems long and the faces exiting, sullen, perhaps one is standing in the wrong line. The angst of living near death is what Heidigger called the Abyss, that empty, forboding space that surrounds each of us at difficult times. Sometimes critics forget that we may be on one side of this chasm, by good fortune of by merit of possessing the rappelling, hiking, and scuba apparatus that was needed to cross. Let us not forget those that have been raised without preparation or warning are the fools that we hate, but their folly is not a death sentence or even a judgment. Confession needs to be made, for the things that we were given that we did not deserve—grace, and for the salvation of those that lacked that which they did deserve—mercy. My prayer tonight is that I be more gracious and more merciful, and for the Annies and Nicks of this world—God help us all out of line and into the Abyss where atonement awaits.
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