[SIDENOTE: Oh, and one thing that I think I was the only one in the room to get was the visual reminiscences of the first Halflife game in Patema's tunnels world, especially the broken foot bridge and the ladder up the wall ... I spent so many hours locked in to the visual world of that game at once point]
My main purpose in writing is to use two responses to the film, two theories about it's topography, as an example of what Owen Barfield takes about as pre-modern making of theories to "save the appearances" and modern issues surrounding a radical myopic quality in modern "scientific" thinking (what I call, below and in many other posts, actually "scientism"), particularly the inability to grasp that actual type of conversation taking place in what I, and I think Barfield, would say is really going on in literature (like the "outside" or "topside" people of Age's world in PI, not having the conceptual rubrics to grasp the reality)
So, one has to watch the film and, unless one is much better than me at analyzing things like this in the moment (which is not hard to do, meaning being better than me at it), read the plot description on the wikipedia page. The basic difference in interpretation is the topography. In the ones the kids I was watching with were describing (provided I am understanding what they were saying correctly), which originated from their older brother who is in college, Age's world is the real surface and the place to which Age and Petema go to briefly in the sky of that world is a chunk that broke off of the earth in the original accident with gravity and is sort of hanging up there. I'm not sure if that means in orbit just over Age's immediate city and its surrounding countryside or what, which is one of the reasons it's harder for me to buy this reading, that is has to keep coming up with new things. It might have the advantage of accounting for the big pit in Age's world if that is the chunk that went into the sky, but there are still many more questions than answers that can be based in the actual data in the film (especially if you go with militant demands of scientific accuracy to real earth, which begs the questions of (1) how does is stay in orbit in exactly the right place to be the sky for his world and (2) at the height they are when they get to that place, the air has to be pretty thin, if not non existent because all the way outside earth's atmosphere).
Before I go any further, I have to admit two possibilities: (1). The kids misunderstood their older brother's explanation (entirely possible, as the two who were most avidly explaining, one of them trying to do so even before the movie was over, are 12 and 9), or (2). I totally misunderstood the kids (which is also entirely possible: I had a really good and big Mexican dinner with two 20 ounce beers, so food coma could have been wrecking havoc on my mental landscape ... stranger things have been known to happen).
Now, my topogrpahy, supported (and in no small part clarified for me) by the wikipedia author, is that the final surface found is the original and true surface of the planet, with the now-corrected/fixed proper gravitational orientation of earth=down. Age's world is a construction down under the earth made for those who got trapped in the inverted gravitational state and Patema's people [NOTE: this is corrected from the original of this post, which had "Age's peopl" here] are the descendants of the scientists who messed things up but then righted most things but couldn't save everybody, so they made this place for those who couldn't be righted to exist, and they themselves (the scientists) accept the penance of living in the tunnels "under" (really above) that manufactured world. Then the place in the sky of Age's world that the two reach for a little bit is a sort of roof (from Age's perspective) or floor (from Patema's) of the cave that has mechanisms to make the the "sky" appear to have stars.
[SIDENOTE: There may be a third possibility, but I think the perspective problems are of such magnitude as to preclude even the most robust suspension of disbelief, or at least that is my opinion: both Age's world and the final found surface are the surface of the planet, and Patema's zone is a tunnel all the way through the planet. For one thing, if everything else works the same with the circular planet etc, Age's gravity should work the right way when they get to the final surface, the same way it would if he walked around the globe to that opposite point, and a bit like the reorientation at the zero-G point of the pass through tube in the 2012 remake of Total Recall, and that would ruin the whole "opposites need to attract rather than fight" theme.]
I call these two explanations two "topographies." In each there are three planes and one intermediary place: there is the final surface found, which I am calling the true surface, then there is the surface of Age's world, and finally there is the plane of the place in the sky of Age's world that he and Patema visit briefly. The intermediary place is the place of tunnels inhabited by Patema's people, which shares gravitational orientation with both the final surface found and the sky plane in Age's world. That is the basic datum from which one must start in constructing ... not from the finished picture that one wants to see of a diagram of the situation looking this way or that.
And that is, finally, what I am talking about with drawing this all in as Barfield's "saving the appearances." The appearances in this case are those basic data of three planes and the intermediary place and one gravitional direction being shared by two of the planes and the opposite gravitational orientation being what operates in the third plane, Age's surface. Beyond this, things are constructions to explain those appearances. Barfield talks about the ancient astronomer's coming up with their theories to "save" or explain the appearances of the movements of the heavens. The key thing that he relates is that none of them were that bothered when they differed. They knew the theories were just attempts at models that would explain things, but they never assumed that any one of them would save all the appearances. In a sense, they were built to be adjusted.
I'll throw in something else here from a very famous writer who himself stated Barfield as a huge influence on his own writing ... C. S. Lewis. In The Discarded Image (one of Lewis's last books, and by his own statement, probably the summing up statement of his vision of what he studied as an academic), Lewis talks about maps and how maps done in medieval times were laughable from the perspective of operating at sea by them. But nobody ever laughed at them because no mariner ever consulted them to navigate. They knew that the purpose of the map was never for practicality of navigation. For that, they relied on other sources, descriptions provided by others before them, sort of like our appearances of the three planes for PI: you simply know that, to go in this direction, you detach this weight from connection to the flying ship etc. The point of a map in those old times was to tie those appearances into something other than pragmatic utility, to bring them together in a model in the realm of cosmology. They are two different projects, the practical and the cosmological, and they relate to two very different models or things, actual maritime tradition and medieval maps (Actually, I myself notice this difference in trying to actually navigate using google maps or i-maps). The map we make out of the appearances of the planes in PI will likewise be oriented to a purpose, and one that must be larger than the map, beyond the map, giving the map itself purpose ... a what to save the appearances for.
Basically, at least from what I could tell of what the kids were saying, and very interestingly given the name of the film ... our proposed theories or models (mine and the college-aged son) might be the inverse of each other (my "real" down is his "up," but more importantly, my "inner" is his "outer"). The real thing, though, as I was noting above that Barfield said of the ancient astronomers, isn't who is "right" or "wrong" on the material level. The real point begins with the fact that we are both simply coming up with models to "save the appearances," to explain the phenomena in the film. Like the various ancient astronomer's Barfield speaks of, we come up with differing theories ... but we also shouldn't take any one theory as possibly THE right one at the outset because at the outset we shouldn't be myopically focused on "accuracy" or even necessarily "consistency." Both models can be considered as equally valid at first, and maybe in the end both valid, like those pictures that if you look at it one side up, you get a young woman's face, and if you look at it the other way up, you get an old man's face ... both are true of the picture. It doesn't have to be advocating relativism across the board to say that one particular situation lends itself to two distinctly different interpretations with both being right in themselves in relation to the appearances (in the case of those pictures, the two would only ever be definitively mutually exclusive, and thus require radical relativism to coexist, in a world in which the existence of old men completely precluded the existence of young women, or vice versa). Both can be considered equally valid at first statement, although it is entirely possible to establish invalidity or unsoundness as well (somebody saying "and if you turn it this way, it looks like elephants going at it" and you can legitimately say "no, that is not there ... the old man and the young woman can be demonstrated, the elephants can't"). But in all of this, we are talking about approximation and differing levels of internal coherence and explanatory power ... never about one definitive "scientific" (in the modern scientistic, materialist sense of the word), completely "accurate," explanation (Barfield hits heavily on this radical shift in thinking about "theories" in which the idea of "one right theory" was a radically new way of thinking that entered with the scientific revolution).
And here is where I get into some of the contention and, for somebody from my direction, occasional frustration. Accuracy for accuracy's sake, to me, is pretty much not of much use or interest. For one, I don't think it is possible for any author of any literature that will wind up being interesting as literature about human questions. As I have written in my post on "story time," I think theme always breaks consistency of material details at some point if the theme is at all interesting. I don't think even completely non-literary scientific report accuracy is as possible as scientismists wish to believe it is.
But even aside form the question of whether complete accuracy or internal material consistency is possible, there is the larger question of whether it is desirable for its own sake. As I have said in other posts, I do think that striving for as much of it as you can get is in important part of literature being incarnational and not gnostic. But therein lies the point: it has to be in the service of larger things that can be discussed in such terms as incarnational or gnostic ... it doesn't qualify on its own. When radicalized in isolation and being able to be on its own for its own sake, it is neither incarnational nor gnostic ... it's materialist.
Talking about incarnational and gnostic and materialist is talking about qualities of literature in general. The elements I would pin out in PI are not at that level yet; they are the things in the movie that would be eligible for consideration in determining whether or not a film's/story's message and/or method makes it more or less conducive as support. But before we get to that point (which I'm not going to do in this post), we have to theorize about what concrete symbolic etc elements there are beyond the material set up that might be symbolized in the material set up, the topography. As I said, the topography has to be in service of something larger than itself. If my position on the topography is correct and the final plane is the actual now rightly oriented surface and Age's plane is inside the earth, then there is (I would guess intentional) Plato's cave going on a bit, which would then bring in some of the themes of Plato's cave, such as reluctance to accept understandings that challenge our original understandings. Even without Plato's cave, there is a lot of theme going on in those who are actually the inverts according to the original planetary gravitational organization . There is also possible symbolism in the fact that the "inverts," Patema's people, have no plane to call their own, no "ground." "Ground" is not only a heavy theme in contemporary theory, such as in Judith Butler's challenging of the language of "ground" in discussing gender, but also a trope in science fiction that has significance for evolution of society/race/etc. beyond older understandings: I always found it to be a very interesting aspect of Asimov's first Foundation novel that, on the planet on which the story starts, so much has been built both above and below the original "ground" that that point is at best an arbitrarily determined one now).
If my topography is right, there is also possibility of "scientific explanation" (at least in the radically thorough way that scientism winds up trying to practice it) being, like the number in Arnofsky's Pi, some depth at which the human mind cannot long dwell without being overwhelmed and torn apart (Pi) or burned up (PI ... get it? nice little spin on the names of the two films). Age and Patema spend only long enough there to realize the singular scientific datum that the "sky" of Age's world is a constructed mechanism to create an illusion, and even that "knowledge" oppresses the mind, represented by the heat from the "stars" that smites upon them, to borrow biblical language for fun.
Beyond that, and I'm not sure whether this film lends itself or not, I simply haven't thought about it enough and don't have time at present to do so, being as the core mechanism of the film has to do with gravity manipulation, there may be some themes possible in common with what I wrote about in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.
It is definitely true that one of the emphases of the film is beyond the topography and on a personalist level, that Age and Patema have a connection together that enables them to function together (her weight offsetting his gravity in his world and making him able to fly-jump). One of the interesting things is that the gravity thing makes them naturally repel from each other, which makes the choice/intentionality aspect of them being together much more accented.
My final point:
I must be clear that I think that beginning to do a topography in the first place is insightful on the college-aged son's part. It shows initiative in looking for relationality in the same way as I have talked about going from mere quantification to looking at juxtaposition and other placement relations in talking about interpreting the magically appearing 14 feet in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in my post on method and other places. And that is one of the things a map is about versus mere verbal description (e.g., Maritime tradition): being able to better understand the relationships by visualizing them. But I also think it has to then connect with more to be a meaningful endeavor. It has to connect up in a way that is more than latent or potential or subconscious. Once one has started down the path of the conscious endeavor of interpretation, one needs to go it to the right place (which isn't necessarily my topographical interpretation; it's connecting topography with literary matters like characterization and theme). Even though the beginning is good, stopping partway merely then provides fodder for other, mistaken types of interpretation, like scientism's conquest of literature.
I'm not saying the inverted version or the "all the way through the earth" models might not be able to have legitimate interpretive possibilities along the lines as mine, and maybe even some that both make mine not feasible AND beat mine as far as being demonstrable. I'm saying that it makes me a little sad that I don't think that the attempt will ever be made by those who side with that model (if it it were to be done, it would probably have to be done by myself playing devil's advocate) because, from what I can tell, analyzing symbolic and emblematic connections beyond the most simplistic versions of allegory is not on the radar enough even to be interested or disinterested in. That's not something intrinsic to that model, it's something coincidentally in the particular group of people whom I know who would get into that theory. But I also think there is a certain regrettable difficulty for people coming from a certain background, what I am about to call "Christian scientism" (NOTE: PLEASE KEEP THIS TERM DISTINCT FROM THE SPECIFIC CAMP KNOWN AS "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE"; my use here simply means the attempted assimilation of Christian thought to the philosophical [often unconscious] position that I and others call "scientism," the belief that historical material fact is the base mode of truth and that scientific discourse is the base mode of all discourse) when they try to grasp questions beyond scientific realism and strict moral exemplarism (this is the hero of the film and thus he is good univocally and therefore this thing that he does is good and therefore this is a way you should act ... basically a very didactic focus ... one that can't be avoided in the way that humans process stories, especially when young, but also one that takes into consideration only individual actions and only on one plane, basically, it does for the meaning of a story what allegory does to the plot, which is to borrow it from another work, which can be useful, but is always pretty limited in how far its value goes). It seems regrettable to me that I might be the only one who would even have it on radar to look at the possibilities of symbolic application of the topography as a possibly pertinent factor when asking the question of the respective validity of these two topographies in the film.
In a sense, this could be put again in terms of the language of "appearances." In the scientistic perspective, even the best case scenario of the attempted melding with Christian thought beyond scientism, at best, if there are "appearnces" to be saved beyond mere material accuracy/consistency, they are not interlaced with the material appearances. Radical scientism will not even admit of any symbolic or emblematic or metahphorical meanings at all (the whole best role of literature is always to present stories in which science always leads to something better ... propaganda rather than literature .. .actually, to be honest, quite often it is mixed, but all the larger elements often have a fairly contrived feel of things only really understood in quote marks, as in "I'm not doing simply propaganda for science, see, I have some 'psychological characterization' in there, where he yells 'fuck' at her twenty-five times and then they have sex" ... that is a statement by such an author, a statement by such an interpreter would be "see, I do know about and look for more than propaganda, because I know that the gratuitous cussing and sex is really characterization").
But even in the attempts of Christian scientism, which admits of metaphors and symbols, the link between those and the literal meaning is never organic, that I can tell. There is always a sharp divide between the metaphorical and the literal, a strictly defined dualism. Something in conceived of as "happening" between them, but its a bit like how something "happens" between mind and body in Descartes's ghost in the machine. The thing that I advocate that I think neither radical scientism nor Christian scientism has is a connection between the literal and metaphorical/symbolist that is an appearance that also needs to be saved. Radical scientism can't have that because it doesn't even have any idea of the metaphorical/symbolic as an appearance needing to be saved/accounted for. And even though Christian scientism does allow the existence, they really only sort of halfway have it because they don't often define it as something that mush have organic connection to the literal, a methexis, a participation in it to even be what it actually is (for more on Reale's work on methexis in Plato in his project of "Plato's second journey," see the last chapter of Enrico Mazza's Mystagogy). And so, while Christian scientism does in word save more appearances because it saves "metaphorical/symbolic" appearances, it doesn't (I don't think) understand those fully or accurately, and so they don't really save those appearances as much as they at first seem too, and possibly because you can't save them well without saving the participation, and the participation is the one thing they least save.
I'm not claiming I can do the job adequately ... I'm just saying that I think it is a step closer to the truth to realize that the project of analyzing literature means saving those three kinds of appearances, the literal, the metaphorical, and the participation between them (very much like soul as the relation between body and spirit), rather than simply the literal/material, as does seeking simply a model that explains the physical landscape or topography consistently. I think that mine/wiki's does even just that project at least as well, if not better, but it goes beyond (or, in the case of Wiki, has the potential to go beyond) that to explaining the metaphorical topography and its organic connection (personally I think the aspect with which I started this whole thing, the vertigo, which is a fear, is a psychological landscape that can be maybe the participation between the physical topography of the gravitationally inverted planes and the moral topography of the metaphorical possibilities [those arrogantly thinking that their up is the definitive up, when in fact they are the deprived ones, etc. might = assuming prematurely that one has the "right" take on things]).
I think that the older brother of the kids with whom I was watching it has the ability and the interest in such things, and even for those in that circle about whom I wonder if or doubt whether that could ever be the case, it's not a "fault" thing or a "virtue versus vice" thing on the subjective level necessarily. Such things do have the potential, as do all things of this type, to be that (virtue or vice or fault) in a given situation, but they don't HAVE to be that in any given situation and the assumption should not be made without solid evidence that there is a question even of intellectual honesty. I do think there is an objective "better"ness to being able to get not only the symbolic analysis itself but also the broader issue of the relations between elements such as topography and the thematic messages of a film, and the even broader yet question of Barfield's position that the idea of "accurate theory" underwent a radical shift in meaning in the scientific revolution when it became "THE right theory."
And it does sadden me some to see others laboring under the effects and fallout of scientism when coming to literature because it seems like a lot of mental and emotional is spent in trying to get the "right" answers that satisfy both aspects, "science" and "faith," when the whole problem may be the fact that both words are in quote marks that the person had foisted on them and then felt like they had to satisfy. It's a bit like the tortured labors some have put themselves through trying to beat "science" (meaning the scientism of the scientific revolution) on its own grounds without realizing that it will never work because its grounds are too shaky to support even scientism's internal coherence as a stated system, let alone coherence with the observed outer world ... but so much mental and emotional energy is spent in the endeavor. I mean, I spend a lot of mental energy in things like this blog, but then again, I'm bipolar II and hypomanic general thought patterns are an ongoing issue in life and always will be, so, like the hyper-active kid, I have a bit extra of that energy to blow off anyway. But some of these people have more than enough on their plate and to be getting on with without having to bear the burden of continually rolling the stone up the hill of trying to prove the (I would claim non-existent, and thus the Sisyphus allusion) supposed compatibility of scientism, which they probably got from people who imbibed it themselves unconsciously from trying to beat "science" on its "own grounds," with Christian thought. Maybe I'm wrong and they actually can get it but are aware of even further difficulties and, like Age's world, I am the one assuming I know the real broader "truth" when in reality I am the one living in ignorance underground (or maybe I'm just crazy about it all in the first place ... which is always a possibility). All I can do here is lay out what seems to me to be the case as best as I can.
[END NOTE: I should probably note here that I think that one of the reasons I am drawn to write on this movie on this blog, in addition to finding the movie very engaging in its imagery, is the fact that I am lazy and a nice small-scale topography like this gives me the opportunity to talk about topography as symbolic without having to get into more serious big-ass ones like 1 Enoch's tour inside the earth (topography also gets used in one of the other two main second-Temple apocalypses, 2 Baruch, when Hebron becomes the new place with messianic significance because of its Davidic history, as the capital of his reign before he moved it to Jerusalem, now in 2 Baruch opposite corrupt Jerusalem, with Hebron symbolizing the marginal and [once populated but now] deserted place opposite Jerusalem's populated corruption). I mentioned C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image above, and that book has heavy discussion of seriously enormous cosmological topography in the classics world as well as in Dante's Divine Comedy and other medieval works like Pseudo Dionysius's Celestial Hierarchies. PI is a much nicer smaller-scope instance on which to sort through some ideas ... and as I say, I like it alot ... and as I also say, I'm lazy.]
Addendum January 22, 2018
This is the same evening of the day I actually wrote this post, but at night after I rewatched (while on my elliptical machine) the found footage horror film As Above So Below, on which I have already done a post (but if you happen on the present post and follow that link, read the rest of this addendum before you do, as it has some adjustments). The thing I picked up in this watching of that film that I want to note here us that it has a scene relating to visual maps versus statements of experience in dealing with actually navigating topography. The main character Scarlett is arguing with their French guide Pappilon about which way they should try and she is showing him the map and using it to argue for going the one direction, and he asks her something to the effect of "What does that map show you? Can it tell you which ones are caved in, or which ones are full of water? I am the one who has been down here!" So, that's another nice little example of differences of sources for knowing a topography for different purposes, as I was discussing above concerning Lewis's' comments on maps versus maritime tradition handed down and the making of a topography map for PI.
Now, if you want to check out that post on As Above So Below. You should read these adjustments first. (1) I was off on some of the sequence: she hugs her father's hanging corpse before she sees realizes that she is the stone. This doesn't bother me as much though because it simply means that she has made the realization of the confessional path early, maybe on a subconscious level, and maybe this is even the thing that makes her able to realize what it all means when she puts the fake stone back and sees herself in the mirror. I think maybe too that the way she sees herself in the mirror is important: her face is covered in blood from when she got pulled into the blood canal; you might even say "baptized in it," but so as not to get too over Christianizing things, what the blood symbolizes is the brutal experience of actually confessing/confronting; the her in the mirror, the one who is the true philosopher's stone, is the one covered in blood who has been through this hell (literally, in the Dante sense, having gone through the door that says "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"). There is actually a lead up to the realization of the confession model in that, after Papi bites the dust (literally) but before all the shit starts really hitting the fan, when they first see the robed watcher go by and run down a side tunnel to hide, George tells her, "Whatever happens down here, the week in Turkey was the best week of my life" ... he "rectifies" things by forgiving her for leaving him in a Turkish jail while she pursued the lead. And that is the other lead up and tie out, that that language of rectifying is prevalent: it's what signals to her that she has to return the stone, and then when she comes back, while it is her kiss that heals the neck wound, in order to make the jump she repeats the line to them, telling them they have to rectify their horror by speaking it. I do think that there is something in her materially becoming a magician but I think that the message is that that can't be all there is: material control is not the highest good ... reconciliation and personal healing is. And notice that, while she is the magician, because she can heal George's neck and make the grabby hands disappear from the blood trench and all, she is not the ultimate magician, because she cannot herself simply make them survive the leap into the hole: they have to speak their horrors themselves, their traumas or sins, for that ultimate magic to happen.
(2) The other thing I noticed is a stronger Dante reference. Dante's Inferno begins "Midway through this course of life ..." In this film, in the materials they find on the tombstone in the museum (I think, or it could be on the bull in the Iran tunnel, not sure, but I think it is in the material on the back of Flamel's tombstone in Paris), there is a line about "midway between" that is a key in figuring out where they think the depths lie mechanically and all that, but what I think it really is as far as the film as a piece of literature is a clue to Dante being the interpretive model. I may have mentioned it in that other post, but if I didn't, Le Taupe's key line "the only way out is down" is pretty much straight up (or rather down) the Inferno and St John of the Cross's "The way down is the way up."
No comments:
Post a Comment