Do you ever think that people aren't really people, but merely points along your personal narrative? Visual cues designed to allow the protagonist, i.e. you, to move forward?
A lady at the bus stop began talking to me about her mother, Lucy, who had terrible asthma but the loveliest singing voice. The neighbours knew when she was home for the day. “Lucy's home today,” they'd say. Instead of being the kind of neighbours who'd tell this woman to shut the fuck up, they enjoyed the sound of someone genuinely joyful.
She also told me about the time her mother was ridiculed for wearing a beret to church (not a proper hat), and when she couldn't afford to put money in the collection plate, she didn't go. She took her daughter outside where they could hear the service and they sang along in their backyard. Everyone missed her. The priest asked her about her absence and she said she didn't have a hat. The next week, the priest gave a sermon and said something like, “it's important to worship God, it doesn't matter what you wear on your head when you do it.” lucy was embarrassed.
Lucy also made cakes and sweets all the time, randomly. She'd tell her daughter to invite her friends around for afternoon tea. She always made desserts for their local doctor, who drove past their house every night on his way home. He'd just come in and eat dessert. It wasn't unusual to wake up in the morning and find him alseep on their lounge. She also told me about a teacher who'd pretend to keep her after class so that the other children wouldn't see that her lunch was wrapped in newspaper, and one day in class mentioned that some of the great figures of the past may have been so poor that their food was wrapped in newspaper.
She said she found herself thinking of those times fondly, because even though at the time it seemed embarrassing, horrible and unfair, she realised how lucky she was. Her mother's beautiful voice, the afternoon teas, the kind teachers. She could only appreciate it for what it was now that she was older.
And I thought; is sentimentalism such a bad thing? Or is it just another way of telling ourselves we don't need what we can't have? We're poor, so we decide that there are more important things in life than being rich, and we comfort ourselves with the idea that rich people are unhappy (so much so that some rich people buy into it). We tell an infinite number of stories to reconcile ourselves to some depressing fact. We die, so we develop an afterlife that promises to be even better. Or we talk about the value of living life to the fullest. We warn ourselves that the worst part of committing a crime is the effect it has on your soul, or your conscience.
Woody Allen explores this idea in Crimes And Misdemeanors (and in a less refined way in Match Point). What if there is no inner moral code? What if the only thing keeping us from committing dreaful acts is the fear of getting caught? And what happens if we realise this is true?
The basic storyline is this: Martin Landau is at a party. He strikes up a conversation with a documentary filmmaker, played by Woody Allen. He tells him the story of a man who is having an affair (with Anjelica Huston, no less). The mistress becomes obssessed, convinced that they need to be together and that he needs to tell his wife of the affair and leave her. He can't do it. Instead, he decides that the best thing to do is to have her taken care of. He hires his dodgy brother to do it.
He is racked with guilt. He sees his other brother, Sam Waterston, going blind. He has committed a sin and is receiving no punishment, while his priest is being punished, seemingly for his commitment to God. He considers turning himself in, his life is in ruins, everything is wrong and then suddenly, he just gets over it. He stops feeling guilty. He realises that he isn't going to get caught. And he's fine.
He asks Woody Allen's character what he thinks that means. Allen responds that it is Man's worst nightmare realised. If we have no moral compass, no conscience, in effect no soul, then it is the ultimate proof that God doesn't exist.
These questions and the texts that adress them always come back to religion. This is an ultimately horrific idea – that there is no innate need to be moral. I think it is, too, but no text ever really just lets this idea wash over people. Even a text like The Picture of Dorian Gray (oh, how I love it!) eventually surmises that we cannot rid ourselves of the consequences of our misdeeds.
The question at the heart of the novel is this: what would we do if we could see the corruption of our soul? Would we use it as an ever present guide, ensuring our soul stayed in perfect condition? Or would we let it bear the burden of our sins, and merely watch it's degradation with fascination? If our soul is separate from us, do we ever really have to deal with the consequences of our choices in life?
Wilde decides in this instance to say no, we can never free ourselves from these consequences. What Dorian thought would free him from his inhibitions and his restraint becomes his prison. He lives with the constant fear that someone will discover his terrible secret. He begins to live a double life. He murders a man to hide it. And in the end it makes him paranoid. And it kills him (well, he essentially kills himself by killing the picture which has become his soul).
Wilde's idea, that the consequences of our actions become manifest in our physical features, was merely a dramatic expression of widely-held thought. There are a lot of other things going on in this book (our immersion in art, the double-standards of society of the time, etc), but this is what fascinates me at the moment – no text that explores the idea of what it means to be moral, and the ways in which human beings use myth and art to console themselves to their situation, ever really wants to say 'No, there's no innate need to be moral. There are no consequences. You really are wrong about things.'
I guess one film and book that does actually leave this idea with you is No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy (film directed by the Coen brothers). The end of that film suggests that this is merely the way it is. Sometimes, people don't get what they deserve. There will always be things that are horrifying. There are things, and people, in this world that defy understanding or belief. Why does that shock us so much when we see it in art?
Which brings me to my point. I had an idea for a story that does this. The myth that the poor are richer for having friends and family and for understanding that money isn't important. Rich people put too much emphasis on money and as a result, lose all the things that should matter. In the end, all they have is their money and this makes them profoundly unhappy.
People sometimes forget that in a capitalist society (sorry guys, but that's what we're living in. In the West, anyway), money can sometimes mean freedom. But anyway. Maybe I just want to rip off Crimes and Misdemeanors and make it even more depressing. But is that a bad thing?
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