Fear me! If you dare…

Today’s featured image: I don’t spend enough time outside. With spring slowly springing, I’ve been trying to spend some time outside of Visby. A couple weeks ago, I went for a long walk up the coast. I had thought to camp, but I never found a good spot. I did find this nice fire pit, so I scrounged up some wood and sat by the fire for a few hours as the sun set. It was cold, but lovely. I needed that to force me to sit in silence for a bit.

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I don’t watch a lot of movies. I used to wear that as a sort of statement of pride, as if I’m too good to for such things. But who am I kidding? I just watch YouTube instead, which is arguably worse. So when I do watch movies, I’m usually selective about it. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite because I probably won’t sit through a movie if it’s not promising. I’ve always struggled with the question, “What’s your favorite movie?” I used to say A Clockwork Orange because it sounded sophisticated and edgy. I recently watched it again, and I definitely missed the point when I was younger. While it’s beautifully done (Kubrick was brilliant) and it makes for the starting point of a deep philosophical discussion, I’m just not into older movies. I grew up with CGI and big-budget blockbusters. I struggle to get excited about what is supposed to be a thrilling night drive when it’s obviously a bunch of guys crammed into a stationary car in front of a projector screen. Speaking of CGI, I did have a phase of being obsessed with The Matrix, which is also an incredible film. I even quoted it just a couple weeks ago when I commented on a student’s draft that if he is going to address one certain topic, it deserves a full discussion, but he needs to be prepared to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes.” 

I once answered the favorite movie question with 300 because I thought it was a cool answer. I was immediately mocked for my choice of “homoerotic fantasy.” 

Then there was the Inception phase. Christopher Nolan’s work is beautiful and thought-provoking, but I think the main reason I watched the movie so many times was that I needed to justify having spent the money on the DVD, something I think I did only that once.

Then there was the Tarantino phase, and every one of his films is an absolute masterpiece (even Jackie Robinson), but especially the last two. I think there is a discussion of why Tarantino films are so satisfying buried somewhere in my critique of marxism.

And then my favorite YouTuber (go watch Like Stories of Old instead of reading my incoherent ramblings) introduced me to the work of Denis Villeneuve. All of his films are worth watching, whether a low budget black and white film about a real-life horror story, or a big-budget science fiction adventure (both Bladerunner 2049 and Dune are amazing; eagerly awaiting part 2). 

Yet, as much as I loved Villeneuve’s films, I watched each only once. Last year there was one film that I couldn’t stop thinking about until I finally watched it again and wrote all of my thoughts out in a letter to a hypothetical young man. I haven’t obsessed over it quite so much since. I think my mind made sense of what it needed to.

Overall, this seems like a pretty defensible selection of box office hits and cult classics, and really there are no big surprises. The target audience of these films is obviously ordinary young men like myself.

My most recent film obsession breaks the mold. Wait for it… I have a bit more building up to do. If you’ve already guessed it by the title of this post, I don’t need to justify this. You know it’s amazing.

It was also recommended by a YouTuber, a young Englishman living in Bulgaria, who goes by the handle exurb1a. I still don’t know how to pronounce that. I always thought “exurbia” like suburbia but in the exurbs. Then I noticed he has a channel called “exurb2a”, so I have no idea. The point is that he is about my age and is often wrestling with many of the same existential questions that I am. His answers are beautiful and inspiring, but he has certainly earned the moniker “the depressed turtle”. His stuff is a bit niche and directed at fellow Eeyores like me. 

Exurb2a has done a few movie reviews, and this one stands out in his repertoire like it does in mine, not least of all because he watched it on the advice of a five-year-old. However, his explanation made the film sound like exactly what I needed at the moment, so I immediately pirated it and started watching. Halfway through the first scene, I was hooked. It only got better. I laughed, I laughed so hard I cried, my jaw dropped, I pounded the table laughing at both the clever jokes and the corny ones, and then I just cried, like really cried, like tears-streaming-down-my-face-and-I-gave-up-trying-to-fight-them cried… multiple times. I have now watched the movie three times just this week. I can’t stop thinking about it, quoting it, and now writing about it.

And somehow all of this from the sequel to a Shrek spinoff coming over a decade after the original. Yes, the film that has struck all the right chords of my soul is….

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wait for it…

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scrolling ruins the surprise…

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I don’t think I can push this any further down the page…

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Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

A silly talking cat film carrying an MPAA rating of PG. You’re probably wondering how a PG-rated film can so effectively speak to a couple of not-so-young-anymore blokes struggling with the big questions of life, and frankly I don’t know how they did it. I caught myself thinking throughout the film “Wait, is this really a kids’ movie?!” Indeed, it’s not. It’s a family movie. I remember when I was growing up how my parents told me that Aladdin was such a great movie because it was written for both kids and their parents. Puss in Boots 2 is one of those films.

But it’s not just that they threw in a few jokes for the parents that would go over the kids’ heads. I’m pretty sure 80% of the punch of this movie is going over the head of most anyone under 25. It’s a story about getting older, facing up to one’s mortality, and learning to fight for life despite knowing that one’s glory days are behind them. Even five years ago, this film would not have resonated in the way that it does right now. Rumor has it that the plot of the movie was inspired by the voice of Puss himself, Antonio Banderas, age 62, after a heart attack caused him to reflect on his outlook on life.

I’ll limit the spoilers here because I do encourage you to watch it, but there is one line that deserves digging into. During an encounter with his past lives, Puss starts to walk away with a quip that makes me giggle every time: “You guys are jerks! Which is very conflicting for me.” He is met with the retort from one of his past lives:

“Without us, you will always live a life of fear!”

There is an inevitable contradiction in the process of individuation. In a way, one is becoming more of oneself, but in many ways that involves leaving parts of oneself behind. It is both a process of embracing one’s past while accepting that the past is truly passed. The movie reaches its climax with an excellent one-liner, but I actually think they could have dug into this point even more. Life requires constant change, but those past conditions lay the foundation for those changes. Puss needs to accept that he’s not invincible, but that doesn’t mean he needs to stop being Puss in Boots. It means he needs to rely on the competence he has built through those past lives in order to live confidently in his final life.

I don’t think it spoils anything to say there is a final showdown with Death.* Without those previous adventures, Puss would have no choice but to continue running in fear, or else accept his fate and leave behind what could be a fulfilling life. We cannot escape Death. We may cheat Death, but only if we’re unusually lucky. What we can (and must) do is to prepare ourselves for our next encounter with Death. Such preparation involves overcoming our fears to do whatever will make us stronger and more capable to handle the challenges of life.

For us in the comfort of the post-industrial world, how exactly we prepare to face down Death is anything but clear. Indeed Death gets most Westerners while they lie waiting with a failing body, sick from decades of misuse (disuse?). As the old saying goes, many die at 25 but are not buried until 75. These are the walking dead whom Tolstoy told us about. They are the cats at Mama Luna’s (watch the movie; it’ll make sense). They are whom Nietzsche called the “last man”. As Thiele (1990, p.88) describes the last man: “one may deny God [viz. a higher Truth] out of an irreverence of the self, and a desire to escape all evaluation, judgment, and responsibility.” This is the last man, the antithesis of Nietzsche’s übermensch, the higher man. Yet Nietzsche did not see the world in terms of such dichotomies, and definitely not in terms of static modes of being. Both the last man and the higher man reject the universal Truth (handed down by God, spoken by “the experts”, etc.), but the last man abdicates his responsibility to create and defend his own truth. The last man and the higher man are characterized not by their past or their labels but by their actions, especially the direction of their actions. The actions of the higher man affirm life by moving him (or her) towards greater strength. The last man moves towards weakness. 

In the affluent parts of the world, there is no shortage of temptations to draw one down towards weakness and dependency, slouching through life, embittered with the regrets of missed opportunities and resentful jealousy towards those who have taken advantage of their opportunities. No, that is not living. Such an existence is mere servitude, dependence on the good will of those who feel enough pity to carry one’s dead weight, and whose life is to last only so long as Death’s mercy persists. 

To live, to live fully and to affirm this one life we have, is to break free from this dependency, as free as our mortal coils will allow. Thiele (1990, pp.184-185) writes, “[Nietzsche] has discovered that the greatest freedom is found only in the continual overcoming of the greatest resistances.” This eternal struggle is continual improvement. For Puss, that means taking on bigger and badder foes. For us, it can mean myriad pursuits, whether it be in our careers, our hobbies, our home lives, or whatever challenges life throws at us. This constant striving to be better, stronger; this individual compulsion to overcome not only the external barriers of the world, but more importantly to overcome the inner barriers that keep one hiding in the shadows; this self-overcoming, especially the overcoming of fear, is what Nietzsche called the “will to power”.**

Self-overcoming, individuation, is not a process of leaving past lives behind, distancing oneself from them. This is impossible, and any attempt to do so leads inexorably towards a hatred of life itself. One who tries to kill their past self becomes “an irredeemable monster.”  (“Little Jack’s dead! I’m BIG Jack Horner!”) Instead, it is a process of integrating those past lives, past selves, past experiences into the current (actually extant) self. To be an integrated whole means “… living ‘an abundance of different individuals’ simultaneously” (Thiele, 1990, p.210).

This process is necessary for the proper development of the psyche. Our memories, our feeling, and our rational cognition can cause enormous suffering if they remain in conflict. Tension is inevitable, but that internal tension can be unified against some challenge to develop oneself into a fearsome adversary.

Puss has a catchphrase that I’m convinced doesn’t actually make any sense: “Fear me, if you dare.” But the beauty of this part of the story is that Death has his own catch phrase, and it makes him the perfect foil to our hero: 

Death does not content himself with slicing down an unsuspecting Puss. He insists on a fight. He is the greatest of resistances, and he demands to be overcome. The hero needs such a foil. (I mean the literary foil, not the sword. Puss carries a rapier, not a foil; oh god, now I’m really geeking out about this movie). 

We all should want this. It is only through such tests of skill that we grow stronger, more capable, more useful, more confident, more powerful. It’s why I have recently begun to consider seeking fear as a necessary component of my life. I have tried recently to do at least one thing every day that scares me. Despite how tame my comfortable life in a quiet town under the protection of the Great Swedish Nanny State is, there is no shortage of such opportunities. Most days, rock climbing or a swim in the ice-cold sea will do the trick. Even on routes that I’ve climbed a dozen times, there is always a point about 10 meters up where I feel my stomach drop as a hand starts to slip or when I need to make a dynamic movement that gives me no room for error. Of course, I’m tied in, and I’ve fallen many times. It’s just a part of climbing. That’s how we get better: by trying and failing. But it’s still scary to be that high off the ground, clinging to the wall by my fingertips and one toe. Usually, after an hour at the climbing silo is my best chance to go for a swim. Emboldened by my courage on the wall, the dark and cold water seems more manageable. The important thing is that it’s not less scary. I still dread getting in the water with every walk out to the pier. The difference is that in those times, I’m just more confident. The swim is going to be tough, but I know I’m tougher…. sometimes.

My greatest struggle recently, a fear that I have far too many excuses to run away from is the intellectual dueling of chess. Part of me wants to get better at chess, but part of me argues that it’s just a silly game. The pieces are the same as they’ve been for centuries, and besides, I already spend too much time sitting and staring at a screen. Indeed, writing this is a form of procrastination to avoid starting a game. I’m not sure why I find chess so terrifying, but I do. Inevitably, within a couple moves, adrenaline is coursing through my blood, my heart is pounding, I have tunnel vision, and I can’t remember anything I’ve studied. I refuse to play too close to bed time because I know I won’t be able to sleep.

And thus, despite the myriad good reasons for spending my time on something more directly related to my goals, there is one reason to keep playing that trumps all of them: I fear playing chess. To dare to accept the challenge of a duel needs no greater justification: it is an opportunity to overcome fear. The only thing to do is to play enough chess that it doesn’t give me the same level of fear as hefting a rapier against a sickle-wielding lobo come to harvest my soul.

On that note, I’m going to go play a couple games…

Ok, so I haven’t gotten any better at chess. I just got crushed. Multiple times. Good thing it wasn’t a fight to the death.

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Notes

*Apparently, one YouTuber who reviewed the film admitted that he didn’t expect the big reveal that the wolf was actually Death, and I don’t understand how he missed that. I actually thought the intention was for the viewer to recognize the dramatic irony when Puss is too drunk to see all the obvious clues that this is no ordinary bounty hunter. 

** No, despite what the Nazis would like you to believe, the will to power has nothing to do with social darwinism. Nietzsche’s ideas were repackaged to fit in a Nazi box by his white supremacist sister after his death. In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche mocks national socialism as an infantile ideology. Had he lived to see the rise of Nazi Germany, he probably would have just rolled his eyes.

References

Thiele, Leslie P. (1990) Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic Individualism. Princeton University Press.