A Fate Worse Than God

At the end of the movie American Beauty, a post-murdered Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) tells us, the audience, that he is, despite all appearances, grateful for "every single moment of my stupid, little life". Now, there's a philosophical pinata in this movie, and it's been written about and commented on by professional and layman philosophers aplenty. A common theme that emerges among those who look at American Beauty philosophically (and I assume even those who don't), is the question of the meaning of life. At first glance, Lester's life seems pretty pathetic -- loveless marriage, crap-ass cubicle job (from which he is fired), and a daughter who propositions the neighbor kid to off her dad, not to mention Lester's growing obsession with the best friend of his teenage daughter. We look at Lester and see someone worthless, someone who has let life pass him by, someone who, if he disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice. Lester's life stank of the quiet desperaton that Thoreau wrote of in Walden. However, even though we know that Lester's life has come to nothing, at the end, he's still grateful for every single moment of his life. So, there are no wasted moments after all. At the end, Lester found meaning in something that seemed so meaningless. But for the rest of us, in the real world, how can we tell that, in the end, we'd be so grateful like Lester? How do we determine that the lives we have are worth living? The 18th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was nice enough to give us a method for solving one of life's most vexing questions: Is my life worth living? Nietzsche's solution? Eternal return. Nietzsche's "eternal return" goes a little something like this: a demon come to you and says "this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it... every pain and every joy... everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you..." . Nietzsche says if our response is that we "throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus", that our lives are not meaningful. that is, if, at the prospect of having to live your life over again for an eternity, you greet the news as someone would greet a death sentence, you had better rethink how you're living your life, and fast. Because your life sucks. Most of us would say yes to the demon if we had the possibility to change things we had done in our past -- to improve on ourselves, to change things for the better. Most of us wouldn't have a problem if the demon presented us with the situation that wheatherman Phil Connors experienced in the movie Groundhog Day. Phil was stuck living the same day repeatedly, but each time he began a new day, he was able to change his actions. Eventually, Phil discovered that the point of repeating the same day over and over was so that he would change something about himself. At the outset, Phil wasn't a very nice guy. Repeating Groundhog Day allowed Phil to see where he was going wrong. The day became a kind of cosmic mulligan. He did it 'til he got it right. Only when Phil improved himself was he allowed to move on to February 3. But with Nietzsche, there is no release. There is no moving on to the next day. And absolutely no changing things, either. What would we do if we realized that, wnlike Phil, we couldn't change what happened? We would have to live every excruciating detail of our lives forever? I suspect that only after a few times, we would end up alot like Michael Palin in the "Deja Vu" sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus. It doesn't take long before Palin's nerevs are frazzled, knowing that the same thing will happen over and over and over again. (if you haven't seen this sketch, watch it). The idea that is scary is that there aren't enough good times to make the truly awful times bearale for an eternity. For every fantastic birthday or trip to Cancun, there's that time that you were attacked by the neighbor's dog, or the time you spent a week in jail for unpaid traffic tickets. Those times sucked. In Nietzsche's eternal return, the demon gives us a choice. We can decide whether we want to take him up on his offer or not. But what if the afterlife (or whatever lies beyond our plane of existence) is more like what happened to Phil Conners? What if we don't have a choice? What if when our lives end, nature or God automatically pushes the "repeat" button? What if repeating our lives was something that wasn't meant to teach us a lesson about life so much as it becomes a punishment for our lives? There's this movie that came out in the mid-80s called High Spirits. It's reallya forgettable movie, but there's a character who is doomed to live the night of her murder for an eternity. Every night, she and her husband Martin reenact their wedding night. Martin accuses her of cheating (which she wasn't), chases her down and then stabs her. She dies and then the next night it's back to the same thing chase and stab again. By the time the audience sees the unfortunate bride and her husband replay her murder, they've been at it for over a hundred years. (Once again, however, she is released from her eternal bonds by love. She finds the true love of her life, played by Steve Guttenberg. Win some, lose some, eh?). But this poses a very interesting question. Ok, Nietzsche wants us to find meaning in our lives, but what if the real meaning is in our death? There's this idea that meaning has to be cultivated over a lifetime. That, taken as a whole, life either has or hasn't meaning. But why is this so? There are plenty of people who say that their entire point of view about life changed in a single moment. All the meaning of one's life can be crammed into one, singular moment. So why not live that moment for an eternity? That's ok, only if the moment we are living is worth living for an eternity, but what if it's one of those punishment moments? What if, if we are doomed to eternal punishment, we have to live the single worst moment of our lives for an eternity? In the movie Salvage, a young woman is forced (again, for seemingly inexplicable reasons, well at first anyway) to live the day of her murder over and over. As she begins to realize that she's repeating the same day over and over, she attempts to find ways to stop her murder from taking place. But, it seems that no matter what she does, she always ends up at home, where the murderer brutalizes her before murdering her and burying her body in a field. We think, like she does, if she can just figure out what's going on, much like Phil in Groundhog Day, she can break the cycle. But here's the thing. She's not repeating her murder to figure out anything about her life at all. In the grand scheme of things she really doesn't matter at all. It's because it's not about her life, it's about her death. She is a part of someone else's punishment. She's not stuck in her own eternal return, she's struck in her murderer's eternal return. He is being punished for murdering the young woman, her boyfriend, and a bunch of other people. He has to feel her pain, but the only way he can feel her pain is if she feels the pain of being murdered. That made me think, if a person chooses to take the demon up on his offer, exactly whose lives are involved? Is everyone you know doomed to be a part of your eternal repetition? If they are not, are they just facsimilies of the people you know? Is eternal return a group effort or is each person's recurrance solipsistic? (and if that is, how can I be sure that my life isn't now?). If I'm in something like Groundhog Day, and if everyone else wasn't repeating the day as I was, who were those people that I was dealing with? Were they convinvingly realistic looking holograms like the holodeck on Star Trek:TNG? If Igot to know those hologram people, did I really know the people that I thought that I knew once time returned to normal? You know, this may have all been an exercize in overthinking. I should try to just sit back and enjoy what I'm watching instead of analyzing everything for it's "philosophical significance".

Ash Williams and the Meaning of Life

"life is a tale, told by an idiot,

full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

-- Shakespeare

It seems strange to say that I like my horror movies with a coherent plot. I seems even stranger to say that I appreciate a horror movie that has philosophic significance. And now, I intend to write about not one, but three films that possess both plot and philosophy: Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy. The Evil Dead, subtitled "the ultimate experience in grueling horror", released in 1982, and it's sequel (?) Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), follows the adventures in terror of Ash Williams, who, along with an assortment of companions, unknowingly (through the recitation of passages from the Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead), conjure up evil spirits that, over the course of the film, knock off each of the unfortunate unintentional conjurers "one by one". The first of the trilogy The Evil Dead, starts off with nothing spectacular: five college kids (including Ash, his sister Cheryl, his girlfriend Linda, his buddy Scott, and his chick Shelly) head up to an isolated cabin in the woods where they drink moonshine, smoke weed, and generally do what young folks in a typical horror flick set in an isolated cabin in the woods so. While snooping around the cabin, Ash and his male companion, Scotty, stumble upon an ancient reel to reel, which just so happens to be the property of an archaeologist who just so happened to be translating passages from an ancient Sumerian text containing incantations and rituals for demonic resurrection. Well, as expected, reawakened evil immediately sets to systematically possessing and killing (most horrifically) each of the young, nubile campers. As dawn breaks, Ash, the lone survivor, emerges covered in blood from the cabin. But as Ash breathes a sigh of relief, having survived an encounter with the evil dead, we follow a remaining evil spirit through the woods, through the cabin, eventually running headlong into Ash himself as the camera fades to black. We assume that Ash has not excaped the evil dead, but instead has become the last of its victims. That is, until 1987, when Evil Dead 2 was released. It's been rumored that Sam Raimi, having taken so much heat for the excessive violence of the first Evil Dead film, wanted to make a movie that was more appeasing to the censors. That may explain why Evil Dead 2 is less of a sequel than a remake of the original film. The film opens as Ash and his girlfriend Linda are heading up to the totally deserted, so far away from civilization that, if you were attacked by an onslaught of demonic forces, no one would hear you screaming cabin in the woods. Once again, Ash, while rifling through someone else's stuff, stumbles upon an old reel to reel containing a recordings read from the Necronomicon. And, as expected, Ash and his girlfriend are besieged by the spirits of the evil undead. After beheading and dismembering his girlfriend, Ash is (eventually) joined by a different group of deadmeats, including the archaeologist's daughter, Annie, her assistant Ed, a hillbilly with a serious case of hyperhidrosis named Jake, and his too cute for this guy in real life girlfriend named Bobby Joe. As this film ends, Ash and Annie must read from the Necronomicon to send the evil back to its own time. During the film's climax, Annie is killed (she's stabbed in the back with the Kandarian dagger), but the beleaguered Ash is sent back in time with the demon. Luckily for Ash, this time he is not unarmed, and he slays the evil creature with a blast from his shotgun (identified as his "boomstick" in Army of Darkness). The film ends as Ash is being hailed as a hero. The last of the trilogy, Army of Darkness, opens where Evil Dead 2 leaves off. Ash finds himself held captive by a medieval army, being led off to his death. During Ash's trip, he guides us, by way of voice-over, through a flashback. We once again see Ash and his girlfriend Linda (this time played by Bridget Fonda) heading up to that god-forsaken cabin in the woods. We've seen it all before: Ash and Linda head up to the cabin, Ash finds reel to reel, Ash plays reel to reel, Linda is caried off by demonic forces, Ash battles the evil dead, Ash goes back in time, Ash ends up a slave on his way to death. However, the adventure (this time) does not take place in the cabin. Ash must retrieve the Necronomicon and banish the evil dead by reciting the words: klaatu barada nikto. Ash fails to say the words correctly. And this is where the philosophy begins. The original The Evil Dead seems simple enough -- it follows the formulaic plot employed by dozens of genre films: stick a group of twenty-somethings in a remote place and kill them off one by one. By the way, it's cool to have a few obligatory boob shots and some pot smoking before someone gets sliced in half or shot through the head with an arrow (the plot is pretty repetitive, except I do believe that The Evil Dead is the only horror film that I know of that contains a scene where a character is violated by a tree. Not with a tree, by a tree). But there is something else at work here. It is the character Ash himself. As The Evil Dead closes, we are left to assume that Ash has suffered the fate of his companions. Yet, Ash returns in Evil Dead 2. Not only does Ash come back, he comes back with his girlfriend Linda , and we know that Linda died in the previous film. Ash, however, seems completely unaware that any event that is happening in this film already happened in the first film. We could take the films at face value assuming that Sam Raimi liked his plot so much, and enjoyed tortuing star Bruce Campbell so thoroughly that he felt the need to remake his first film (that might very well be true), but we are given a clue that there is something else going on on a deeper level. While searching through the Necronomicon for the incantation that will send back the evil spirit to its own time, Annie and Ash happen upon a page bearing a picture of a man standing, arm raised up holding a chainsaw. When Annie flips to the page, Ash gasps. He tells Annie that he feels as if someone has just walked over his grave. The picture in the Necronomicon looks, with an exception on the white pants, like Ash. Annie tells Ash that the traveler was predicted to come to vanquish the evil. Ash remarks that the traveler "didn't do a very good job". Finally, in Army of Darkness, Ash is thrust back in time where, with chainsaw on hand, he leads Richard and his army in a battle against the deadites. The priests tell Ash that he is the traveler that was predicted to save the people from the forces of evil. And, as Ash observed in Evil Dead 2 , the traveler didn't do a very good job. When I first noticed that there was something odd about the continuity of the Evil Dead films, I had assumed that the underlying plot was time travel. It was easy enough to assume this because in Evil Dead 2 destroying the evil required opening up a portal in time. That was before I had heard of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche posited that we can judge the overall value (or meaningfulness) of our live by asking ourselves this basic question: would you want to live your life over again? Nietzsche, being the excellent humorist that he was, added one small catch -- the life that we live eternally would be the exact same life that we had already lived. We cannot change a thing about our lives, we must live each day, month, hour, and second as we had lived the first time around -- for an eternity. Ash, at first glance, seems to be stuck in some sort of loop. He seems to be repeating his life over and over (at least three times). But, not only does Ash seem unaware that he is repeating his life, each Evil Dead film is slightly different from the one the preceeded it. In each film, the group at the cabin is different. In each movie, the actress playing Ash's girlfriend Linda is different. And each ends differently. So, in a strictly Nietzschean sense, Ash's life is not the same. Also, Nietzsche's question is one about life's meaning. There seems to be no such scheme for Ash. Ash just goes through the motions and learns absolutely nothing in the process. The fact that Ash seems unaware of the fact that he repeats the same routine ( to paraphrase a nine inch nails song. Similar subject, listen: "everyday is exactly the same" by nine inch nails), seems to suggest that Ash could not make the decision to live the same life repeatedly. So, by my estimate, Ash, at least on this matter, is not Nietzschean. But as I was eliminating Nietzsche, I started to think of another doomed to repeat himself kind of guy: Sisyphus. Sisyphus, having been condemned by the gods, is doomed to push a large rock uphill, only to have the rock slide back down the mountain when he reaches the top. For Sisyphus, he is condemned to repeat the same futile act for an eternity. No matter what Sisyphus does, the rock will roll back down the hill. I thought, this sounds more like Ash than Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. The first clue to this interpretation of the Evil Dead trilogy came in Evil Dead 2, where Annie and Ash are looking through the Book of the Dead. To the viewer, the picture of the traveler clearly is Ash, and Ash's reaction suggests that the man depicted in the book is him. Annie tells Ash that a prophesy tells us the the traveler was sent to the past to destroy the evil, which suggests that there are higher forces at work in the scheme of things. Prophesy tends to deal with matters that are assigned by the gods that humans must abide by or fuflill. So, we can assume that Ash's predicament may have been arranged by the gods, like Sisyphus. So, like Sisyphus, perhaps Ash has been condemned to repeat the same futile act, namely having a sucession of girlfriends named Linda killed by evil demons, being sent back in time to rid civilization of evil demons, and ultimately screwing up, which will require him to repeat the task all over again. But, unlike Camus' Sisyphus, who ultimately finds happiness in his condemnation (he comes to gain happiness through the attempt to roll the rock uphill. The rock staying there is no longer a goal that Sisyphus seeks), Ash remains unaware that he is condemned to repeat his life over and over again [on the DVD commentaries for the Evil Dead films, both star Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi express a disdain for the character Ash. It seems that, from their point of view, Ash may be too stupid to figure out that he has been to that cabin before. For example, Sam Raimi calls Ash an "idiot, coward and a braggart". (DVD commentary Army of Darkness)]. Sisyphus is able to derive some meaning out of his futile existence. However, Ash, it seems, lives a life best expressed by Shakespeare. His life is full of sound and fury, but ultimately signifies nothing.