Applying Predicate Calculus to Literature

Regular readers of my blog (and I hope I have some) will be aware that I have been, from the beginning, trying to set out a novel theory of literary criticism. The theory of narrative that I have been proposing is based on the idea that a story is a kind of rhetorical construction and that it argues in favour of two mutually-exclusive statements about the world at the same time, statements that I term the ‘thesis’ and the ‘antithesis’. It is the tension between the two opposing world-views that creates conflict. A story generally ends with the victory of the thesis over the antithesis – although some stories can finish ambiguously, leaving the issue open. I wrote about this in my first post, the ‘Preamble’ and I have put the theory into practice a couple of times since, for instance in the post about James Joyce’s “The Dead”.

In today’s post I am going to try something new, something that I think may be radical and wholly original and that I suspect may never have been attempted before – to apply the logic of Predicate Calculus to narrative. I need first to say something about Predicate Calculus. Predicate Calculus is a quasi-mathematical formalism, invented by Gottlob Frege and Charles Pierce in the late nineteenth century, which developed from and synthesises the older systems of propositional logic and syllogistic logic. The major advance made by Predicate Calculus is that it introduces the terms Universal Quantifier (represented by a symbol that I cannot put down because Blogspot does not include it as an option) and Existential Quantifier (ditto previous note): the first can be interpreted as signifying the clause “For all things in the world..."; the second can be interpreted as signifying "At least one thing in the world exists such that…” For example, the proposition “All swans are white” can be put into Predicate Calculus form as “Ax: xS C xW” which literally means  “For all things in the world, if it is a swan then it is white”. The proposition “Some swans are black” can be expressed “Ex: xS & ¬xW” which literally means “Something exists in the world that is a swan and is not white.”

[Note:  because blogspot does not know the symbols for logical operators, this is a slightly fudged description of Predicate Calculus. The Universal Quantifier is actually an upside-down A and the Existential Quantifier a backwards E. The if-then symbol should be a horseshoe facing the other way. If you want a less fudged explanation of Predicate Calculus, you can easily find one elsewhere on the Internet.]

Propositions always come in pairs. A universal proposition such as “All swans are white” must be false if the existential proposition “Some swans are black” is true, and vice versa. I believe that the thesis and the antithesis expressed by a story can be viewed as examples of such paired propositions. For example, the thesis of Star Wars is “Good always triumphs over evil” and the antithesis is “Sometimes evil can triumph over good.” Because the Empire is presented as vastly more powerful than Luke and the Rebels, Luke’s eventual victory is a strong argument in favour of the thesis. In the film Sleepless in Seattle, the thesis of the film is “Everyone is destined to be with his or her true love” and the antithesis of the films is “Sometimes the obstacles are too great”. In this film, the destined lovers are on opposite sides of America and yet they still get together– the fact that they successfully find each other is testament to the ‘truth’ of the thesis. In Macbeth, the thesis of the play is “Everyone pays for their crimes” and the antithesis is “Sometimes people get away with murder.” In Macbeth, the witches continually prophecy that Macbeth will escape divine retribution but, in the final analysis, the witches are unnatural whereas moral consequences are a part of the natural order of things. According to all natural laws, Macbeth must die. The witches’ riddling prophecies contain loopholes and it is through these loopholes that Providence reasserts itself.

The examples I have given above suggest that stories always argue in support of Universal Propositions rather than Existential Propositions. This is not the case. Sometimes the thesis a story asserts is actually an Existential Proposition. In Othello, the thesis is “Sometimes jealousy is unfounded”. The antithesis is “There is always genuine grounds for jealousy.” The fact that Othello, a good if easily gulled man, can so easily be taken in by Iago’s plotting is an argument in favour of the antithesis – but it is the thesis that is shown to be true. In Romeo and Juliet, the thesis is “Sometimes the obstacles to true love are too great” and the antithesis is “Everyone is destined to be with their true love” – it is the opposite of Sleepless in Seattle in this respect (and in fact the opposite of most other romantic comedies. One thinks of Something About Mary). The depth and total commitment of Romeo’s and Juliet’s love for each other is not enough to save them. This is perhaps the significant difference between comedies and tragedies. Comedies tend to espouse comforting Universal Propositions – they please because they reassure. Tragedies, by contrast, tend to embrace the exception rather than the accepted rule and this is why they disturb.

Regular readers may also have noticed that I generally tend to come back to the same literary examples in my writing. This is because it is convenient and I am lazy. Nevertheless, this form of literary analysis can be applied to all stories, all books, all films and possibly even most poetry. Recently I saw the Spielberg film Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks. I thought the film was great – perhaps partly because the Coen brothers had input into the script. This film is not immune to analysis of this sort. If one wants, one can interpret Bridge of Spies in terms of thesis and antithesis. In my view, the film is dedicated to the claim “Enemy spies should be treated as humanely as we would want the enemy to treat our own combatants.” The antithesis presented by the film is “Enemy spies are evil and should be imprisoned forever or executed.” The film treats the Communist foe ambiguously – sometimes it is represented as an Evil Empire, sometimes as a mirror image of the American-led Western alliance. I am unsure if the thesis is a Universal or Existential proposition, but I will say one thing about the film generally. It does not draw explicit parallels to Guantanomo Bay but one has to wonder if the compassion extended towards the Russian spy in the film is not something that should also be extended, in the present day, to the inhabitants of this brutal institution.

The theory of narrative I am proposing can be applied to almost all stories. Stories which resist interpretation in this way tend not to be good stories – they lack cohesion, they lack a central, defining idea. My theory is that the central idea of a story can be expressed as a logical proposition. A story is trying to persuade its audience that its thesis, its moral, is true. The fact that different stories can present contradictory morals evinces the fact that there is no genuine reality behind them, that truth is what we make it. This fact may be depressing but it is undeniable.

Why I hate "A Beautiful Mind"

Stories constitute a kind of rhetoric and one of their functions is to construct the reality in which we live. Schizophrenia defies explanation – but it is susceptible to the theories that we invent to try to explain it. If a schizophrenic comes to believe in the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother, for instance, he or she may decide to blame his or her mother; if he or she believes that the condition is caused by childhood trauma, say of a sexual nature, he or she may unwittingly invent a false memory of such trauma to makes sense of why he or she should suffer so. The Soul is malleable. Perhaps the best approach to Schizophrenia is to pragmatically devise the theory that gives the patient the greatest possible hope for recovery and a normal life, and the least possible stigma. Or perhaps the psychiatrists could actually try to establish the reasons why a person has become ‘ill’ in the first place by determining the environmental causes that provoked the first episode (such causes probably differ from person to person). This approach would be preferable to most current theories, theories that stick a terrible label on a person and which put him or her in a sealed box from which they can never escape.

I should say something first about the theory of schizophrenia that prevails today. This theory holds not that the condition is a reaction to environmental stresses but that it is a physical disease. As a result of bad genes or some such somatic agent, the psychotic’s brain overproduces dopamine; consequently the patient should ben given medication that suppresses dopamine levels. This is currently established medical wisdom. I think it’s bullshit but, then, what do I know?

Today’s post is on A Beautiful Mind, a film that is virtually unique in attempting to describe the schizophrenic experience from the inside. As such, the film takes on the significant task of elucidating the condition to a general public that knows little or nothing about it. This is a great responsibility. The protagonist, John Nash, based on a real person, is not an individual; he stands as an exemplar of all schizophrenics everywhere. Consequently, if the film propagates false ideas about the nature of madness, as I think it does, it deserves to be held to account. This is the purpose of this post. Before I begin though, I feel I should concede a small flaw in my preparation: the DVD I watched had a glitch in the middle so I have never seen the scene in which Nash is told he is schizophrenic. I have tried to rent other copies but, bizarrely, the glitch always occurs and always in the same place. I hope this gap in my knowledge won’t unduly affect this essay.

I know little about Nash apart from what I have gleaned or surmised from the film and from his Wikipedia page. I know enough, however, to be able to point out some major inaccuracies in the film. According to his Wikipedia page, Nash did not start experiencing paranoid delusions until 1958 or 1959 when he was about thirty years old; according to his own account he only began to hear voices in 1964, after six years of ‘treatment’ consisting of repeated hospitalizations, induced seizures and antipsychotics. The film, by contrast, presents Nash as interacting with his ‘imaginary friends’ as early as 1948 immediately after his acceptance into Princeton. The film also suggests that these delusional companions assumed corporeal form when in fact (and not until eighteen years later!) Nash only ever heard their voices.

Other inaccuracies in the film relate to the issue of Nash’s character. In 1952 Nash had an illegitimate child by a nurse Elenor Stier, a woman and child who don’t feature in the film at all; his relationship with his wife Alicia de Larde, moreover, was far rockier than presented in the film. He also reputedly had a couple of ‘homosexual experiences’ during his early adulthood but I am uncertain how relevant this is to his ’illness’. All of these troubling footnotes the film leaves entirely untouched. Generically, the film is tragedy-of-hubris tale and a saved-by-loved tale and the filmmakers obviously felt that including such details would spoil the picture. The facts should never get in the way of a good story.

I sincerely believe that the writers of A Beautiful Mind based their screenplay, not on the real Nash, but on a short psychiatric monograph on schizophrenia, an approach I despise because, quite honestly, I sincerely despise psychiatrists. Immediately after Nash is first institutionalized and is being given his first insulin injection, the psychiatrist tells his wife “You see the nightmare of schizophrenia is not knowing what’s true. Imagine if you had suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments that were most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be.” This statement misrepresents Nash because, as I pointed out earlier, Nash did not start experiencing psychotic symptoms until 1958, the previous year. More than this, though, it misrepresents the nature of schizophrenia itself. Paranoid delusions are rarely pleasant and, if a psychotic is fortunate enough to hear friendly voices rather than abusive ones, the fact of whether they are real or not is irrelevant.

In 1970 the real John Nash, with the consent of his doctors, discontinued his medication and gradually, over the course of several years, recovered. In the film, though, towards the end when the old Nash is being considered for the Nobel prize (around 1994) the film-Nash delivers the following short piece of dialogue to the person tasked with the job of assessing if he is fit to receive the award:  “I am [to be honest] crazy. I take the newer medications but I still see things that are not there… I simply choose not to acknowledge them.” This speech is all bullshit. The fact is that Nash didn’t take any kind of medication at all after 1970 and I would bet my life that, by the stage in his life that this scene depicts, he must have been completely free of psychotic symptoms and would never have described himself as ‘crazy’. The fact is that the real Nash believed that medication actually impeded the process of recovery. Apparently the film's director, Ron Howard, inserted this line about medication because he was worried that “the film would be criticized for suggesting that all schizophrenics can overcome their illness without medication”. In other words, the film was kowtowing to established psychiatric wisdom – whatever the hell that is.

According to established medical wisdom, schizophrenia is a physical illness that first manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood, that is chronic and from which one can never recover. According to this wisdom, the condition cannot be cured, only managed by ‘appropriate’ treatment. This is the agenda the film is trying to push. There is no questioning of the veracity of psychiatric discourse and the psychiatrist in the film gets off scot-free. The idea that inducing epileptic fits can alleviate psychosis is plainly profoundly stupid but the film effectively endorses it. (This form of treatment has, by the way, long since ceased.) Personally, I think psychiatrists are generally stupid, incompetent or just plain corrupt; most of them don’t have the foggiest idea what they are doing. Psychiatric discourse is a patch-work of sophisms but the public continues to invest trust in these people as though they are priests of an esoteric religion. As though one could draw a distinction between the diagnosis and the condition.

Obviously, I have strong views about schizophrenia. I have a theory about it – quite a good one I believe – that I worked out only today. I may write about it in a later post. Suffice it say that I believe in nurture, not nature, and I sincerely believe that schizophrenia is something from which a person can recover. So long as they receive humane treatment – as Nash plainly didn’t.

[Note, added 21 August 2016. This post is one of my popular post but it doesn't do John Nash's story  justice. About six month later I wrote a second post about Nash, "Why I Hate A Beautiful Mind Part 2". This second post elaborates further my understanding of Nash. This second post is also incomplete and is slightly tentative in its conclusions, especially towards the end, but if you have read this post about Nash I recommend you also read that other one.]

Narrative, Morality and Shakespeare

In past posts I have argued that literature should best be understood as a kind of rhetoric, that a literary text is an argument in favour of a particular proposition or set of propositions. In this instalment, I thought I would back up my views by going back to Shakespeare - but before I adduce some of Shakespeare’s plays in support of my theory, I thought I would say something about the world in which we live. This is necessary, I believe, because it is impossible to give a good account of fiction without also giving an account of reality.

Most of what we know about our social environment is based on hearsay. Theories of mind, of personality, of society, of science and of politics, we learn from textbooks, from TV, from conversations with others, from schooling, from novels and poetry and plays.  A person’s ethical system, in particular, is taught to him by the people around him. There is no way to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ – although some have tried (John Searle has made a good attempt, as has Ayn Rand). We cannot learn our moral principles from direct observation of the physical world because the real world, the natural world, is inherently amoral; rather we absorb the ethical lessons underlying the books we read and movies we watch. Stories do not principally provide us with information about the actual world; rather they teach us how we properly ought to think and behave in certain situations. One of the great myths, for instance, that virtually all fictions espouse, is that the good are rewarded and that the wicked are chastened. In Shakespeare’s stories, anyone who kills another is doomed to die himself during the duration of the play. One is forced to wonder, though, if this notion of a necessary, causal relationship between good deed and reward, between crime and punishment, is not a massive con foisted on the general public. Josef Stalin died at the age of seventy-five still leader of the Soviet Union; Mao Zedong was still Chairman of the People’s Republic of China at his death at the age of eighty-three. Did these monsters deserve their success? Atrocities during the Second World War and in Cambodia during the late ‘Seventies, for instance, offer ironclad evidence on the other hand that sometimes bad things happen to good people. Our faith in moral acts having appropriate, condign consequences for the agents concerned is based not on reality but on the fictions we embrace. And fiction is far removed from reality.

The tenet that moral acts (and all acts are moral) have their consequences in this life or the next plays a central role in all major religions. Christians and Muslims believe in a heaven and a hell; Buddhists and Hindus believe in karma. The common feature of these religious systems is that if a person does not receive his proper requital in this life, he or she should expect it in the one after. Mainstream religions do not claim that the consequences of a moral action inevitably occur in this life; that particular idea is left to the poets, playwrights and authors. In a way the world’s storytellers are participating in a global conspiracy, a conspiracy to convince the public that if you do right you will inevitably benefit and if you do wrong you will suffer. It is a kind of conspiracy because this proposition is arguably frequently untrue; it is a benevolent conspiracy because, arguably, the world is a better place for this maxim being believed. The notion that the good inevitably prosper and that the wicked inevitably pay for their crimes is a kind of necessary fiction. It is a fiction because it is often untrue; it is necessary because society needs its constituents to believe it true for society to continue to operate. It is not the only necessary fiction: other examples of necessary fictions include the idea of an eternal unchanging soul and the idea of True Love. These necessary fictions help us navigate through life and one of the principal functions of literature, perhaps the most important one, is to create and sustain these beneficial illusions.

This idea that moral actions rebound on their authors is not, of course, the only proposition that fiction can propose. According to Lajos Egri, the premise of Othello is “Jealousy destroys the thing it loves”. The whole play, he proposes, operates as an argument in favour of this premise. I would like to suggest that the thesis of the play is far simpler: “Jealousy can be unfounded” – Egri’s premise is in fact the antithesis. It is of the nature of tragedy that the antithesis reaches its catastrophe before the thesis can assert itself.

Hamlet is a more complicated play and harder to interpret. The central conflict of the story concerns Hamlet’s indecision, his reluctance to carry out the wishes of his father’s ghost and take bloody revenge on his stepfather. The occasions when Hamlet kills, when he stabs or poisons Polonius, Laertes and Claudius, he kills out of passion or by accident, rather than from premeditation. The exact reason Hamlet hesitates so long, finds it so difficult to avenge his father, continues to mystify but, perhaps, a part of it is that to follow his father’s demand is to bring about his own death. The paradox of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy is that private (rather than public) retribution is simultaneously morally justified and a mortal sin that must inevitably also erase the avenger. Hamlet is mad, not only in seeming but in actuality, and it is surely true that his madness is because his father has trapped him in a double-bind. I may perhaps have to do some research on Hamlet and write about it again…

Macbeth also concerns the spiritual consequences of murder. The great complex soliloquy that Macbeth delivers at the beginning of Act 1 scene 7 about his intention to kill Duncan fundamentally deals with issues of moral causality. I quote the first part of the soliloquy:

            If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well

            It were done quickly: if th’ assassination

            Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,

            With his surcease, success; that but this blow

            Might be the be-all and end- all… here,

            But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

            We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases

            We still have judgment here – that we but teach

            Bloody instructions, which being taught return

            To plague th’inventor: this even-handed justice

            Commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice

            To our own lips.

Macbeth begins with the hope that the murder might be free of consequences – aside from the obvious effect of granting him the crown. He goes on to briefly consider the notion of an afterlife but decides kingship in this life worth the risk of eternal damnation in the next – or perhaps decides to simply ignore its possibility. He goes on to consider the act’s worldly consequences, that he might teach others to do to him the same violence that he intends to do to Duncan.

In the next part of the soliloquy  he considers Duncan’s virtues, virtues that

            Will plead like angels, trumpet tongued, against

            The deep damnation of his taking-off;

            And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

            Striding the blast, or Heaven’s cherubin, horsed

            Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

            Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,           

That tears shall drown the wind.

The soliloquy, taken as a whole, conveys an almost religious feeling, an almost supernatural intimation, that great moral crimes have profound magical effects on the world. Macbeth is a towering figure because his ambition, his criminal desire for power, is almost completely balanced by a powerful, instinctive (perhaps even subconscious) and almost mystical sense of good and evil. The consequence of the murder that Macbeth does not consider in the soliloquy is that his own conscience may plunge him into hell while he is still alive. This is the maxim of the story, its message, that when a person commits a great crime, he damns himself to hell even before he dies. Of course, this is a falsehood or, as I have said, a necessary fiction, but it is a fiction that most of us non-sociopathic ordinary folk find reassuring…

This particular post is, by the way, not the best I have written. Sometimes one begins a post not particularly sure of what one wants to say. For those interested in my better attempts at interpretation, I recommend the interpretations I did of Donnie Darko or “The Dead” by Joyce. My next post should be on A Beautiful Mind.  I hope it will be a good one.

Beside The Lake

Once again, I thought I would upload a short story. This one is quite as well written as some of the others I have published but it hints at a insight about the nature of madness that is quite important. As I have said about the other stories I have published, if you want to apply my narrative theory to it, you are most welcome to try.

***
                     Beside the Lake

In retrospect, the realization that her husband Gordon had been replaced by an impostor had not occurred to Bethany all at once. It was a thought that had passed fleetingly through her mind a number of times in the past several months but which she no sooner entertained than immediately suppressed. Nevertheless, a multitude of small signs pointed to it - to some kind of physical usurpation. Gordon’s wry comments about local government politics over the newspaper in the morning, his habit of leaving dirty tea-cups perched on the railing of the deck, even the perfunctory way he called her “darling” before leaving for his job at the Coast Guard at eight AM– all of these gestures seemed contrived, factitious, as though he were an actor who had learned his part too well. The suspicion that her husband was her husband no longer had incubated a long time in her mind before hatching into a sure conviction.

            Bethany and Gordon had been married for ten years. They harboured no children. Early on after their wedding, they had both looked forward to the idea of raising a family but, after Bethany’s medical condition had been diagnosed two years into their marriage, they had mutually agreed that having children might be an unwise idea. Gordon worked long hours in a managerial position at the Coast Guard and often would not return home until after six at night. During the day, Bethany had her routine. In the morning, she would complete the Sudoku and then do the housework if any needed to be done. Often she would walk to the local Delicatessen to purchase genuine Italian pasta and fresh herbs. Bethany had no friends and did not particularly want any: her life revolved around her husband. For a time, she had occupied a casual position working one day a week for the local florist but, deciding that it made little difference to her life whether she worked or not and feeling no authentic connection at all to her workmates, she had quietly resigned. Gordon’s income was quite sufficient for both of them. All in all, Bethany felt not unsatisfied with her life. They lived in an affluent suburb and voted National every three years.

            In the evening, Bethany would cook dinner in the well-established expectation of her husband arriving home at six. She varied her menu considerably: sometimes Spanish, sometimes Greek, sometimes even Moroccan. Her preferences circumnavigated the Mediterranean. Planning and cooking the evening meal was the chief pleasure of her day. Gordon would let himself in the front door at six, hang his coat on the hook in the hall and sit down to the meal she had prepared. When he had finished, he would lean back, burp delicately and say, “Delicious, as always.” Ten years ago, after their wedding, they had honeymooned in Bali. It was a memory that Bethany cherished.

            It was not just the fact that Gordon’s mannerisms had taken on a counterfeit quality that persuaded Bethany that her husband had been replaced by an impostor. A multitude of more concrete signs strongly intimated that some kind of massive realignment had occurred. Gordon’s routine, his once dependably predictable daily habits, had altered. Often he had started staying later at work, sometimes not coming home until nine or ten. At weekends, he would occasionally receive a call and, giving some vaguely spurious sounding explanation of being needed at the office, would leave for hours; in the past, he was never called in during the weekend. One day, when she was laundering his second-best jacket, Bethany discovered a receipt in its pocket for an Indian restaurant in town. The restaurant was called Authentic Taste. Gordon had never mentioned going there to her and Bethany did not believe the real Gordon would ever dine at a place like that. Bethany knew for a fact that her husband hated Indian cuisine.

            One evening, Gordon returned from work and sat down as usual at the table. They ate dinner with the television on ­– Bethany was more or less indifferent to the news but Gordon liked to stay in touch with current affairs. When he had finished he pushed the plate towards the centre of the table and said, carefully, “Bethany, just so you know, I have a conference in Nelson in a couple of weeks’ time. I’ll be away for three days.”

            “Do you want me to come with you?” In the past, Bethany had always accompanied Gordon to such events.

            Gordon avoided her eyes. “Not this time. I don’t think you’d be particularly interested in a bunch of middle-aged men discussing weather warnings and channel markers. I think it’s best if I go by myself.”

            Bethany collected the plates, took them into the kitchen and started scrubbing them under running water from the tap. All of a sudden, an inexplicable stab of anger passed through her. She returned to the living room with scrubbing brush in hand.

            “Gordon – do you remember when we were in Bali, the boys who would run along the side of the road trying to sell us beads?” Bethany wasn’t sure why she felt this was the question she had to ask.

            Gordon shrugged uncomfortably, again avoiding her eyes. “Not particularly. You’ve always had a better memory than me.”

            That night, after they went to bed, Gordon made love to her. It was another change in his routine: in the past, he had only wanted sex a couple of times a week but now he seemed to want it every other night. He started by pawing at her upper thigh and the cleft between her legs before climbing on top of her. Bethany lay on her back, watching his left shoulder pistoning backward and forwards. After a couple of minutes, “Gordon’ grunted, rolled off her and was almost immediately asleep, snoring nasally.

Bethany lay on her back and stared into the blackness. Terrible thoughts raced through her head. For the first time, she decided to seriously contemplate the idea that an impostor had replaced her husband and that the man who was lying in bed with her was a stranger. The detail of his not remembering the boys in Bali was the final confirmation: the real Gordon would never forget something so important. They were trying to trap her or manipulate her in some fashion. The impostor looked almost exactly like Gordon – she wondered how They had managed it. Of course, doctors could perform miracles with cosmetic surgery these days. She tried to imagine where the real Gordon was. Perhaps, she thought, he was in an underground prison somewhere, perhaps somewhere in Guantanomo Bay, put there by the CIA, calling out her name, imploring her for help. What did They want of her? Did They want to use her as a breeding sow?  After all, the real Gordon had had a vasectomy but Bethany had no way of knowing if the impostor had also had a vasectomy.

Bethany lay awake staring into the blackness for a long time.

Over the next fortnight, Bethany kept her insight to herself, behaving around the fake Gordon exactly the same way she had behaved around the real one. It was easy, in any case, because the fake Gordon acted almost exactly the same way as her real husband had and so keeping up her side of the charade was simply a matter of adhering to habit. And anyway, there seemed no alternative. She was afraid of what consequences might descend upon her if she exposed him as a fake. Many years ago, back when Gordon had yet to find his feet and they were living a two-room flat in Takapuna, Bethany had become convinced that there were electronic bugs in the walls of the flat and that They were listening to everything she said and monitoring everything she did; this belief, that she was under surveillance, had never entirely gone away but nor was it something she to which she had paid much attention in recent years. After the night when she had finally decided to accept that her husband had been replaced by an impostor, the belief that she was under surveillance strongly returned. There were microphones hidden in the light fittings and camera equipment installed behind the bathroom mirror. Sometimes she could sense a kind of darkness gathering all around the edges of her peripheral vision, at the perimeter of everything she saw.

One day ‘Gordon’ said to her: ”Bethany, are you alright?”

“Of course I’m alright, ”Bethany replied, putting on a smile she didn’t feel.

In her gut, she felt a sudden twinge of anxiety. “Why do you ask?”

            “Just checking. You don’t want to see a doctor?”

            “It’s nothing,” said Bethany. “I think I’ve come down with a bit of a cold, that’s all.”

            That night as Bethany lay in bed she thought about what “Gordon” had said. She wondered if that was their plan, that they wanted her to receive compulsory treatment as They had eight years ago. For three months when she was twenty-two Bethany had endured the torment of being confined to a mental health ward. Was that their plan, to drive her mad? Bethany would rather die than go back to hospital. She wouldn’t permit it. That night Bethany started devising a plan of her own.

            The next morning, a Saturday, Bethany fried some crepes with blueberry compote and, when ‘Gordon’ emerged in pyjamas and dressing gown (the impostor also slept in late on a Saturday), placed the plate on the table in front of him as if nothing had changed overnight. For herself she had half a grapefruit and a cup of tea, as usual. ‘Gordon’ read the paper while eating, as Gordon always had, passing comments on ferry disasters in Indonesia and the state of the economy; Bethany feigned interest as she generally did. On the surface, it appeared almost like a typical Saturday in the Neumann household, but, in reality, it was all artifice. Even as Bethany was asking ‘Gordon’ if he had enjoyed his breakfast, a part of her was observing her performance from the outside and laughing with glee at the subtlety and slyness Bethany was displaying in pretending everything was normal, that she did not know that he was a fake. If the impostor could play a part, so could she.

            She decided to put the plan into effect. “Gordon,” she said, pretending that it was a spontaneous thought and not looking directly at him. “I have an idea. I wondered if we could go for a trip today. I thought maybe we could have a picnic. Beside the lake.” 

            “Gordon’ looked at her quizzically. “We haven’t done that for a while. What made you think of that?” He seemed uncomfortable.

            Bethany wondered for a moment if ‘Gordon’ had recognized the real Bethany concealed behind the façade and knew that she in turn had seen through his imposture. It was a risk, suggesting a change from their usual weekend rituals, but it was a calculated risk, a risk she needed to take.

            “It’s just an idea I had. It’s something we haven’t done for a while. The weather’s fine and I think we should make the most of it.” She smiled, trying her best to project sunshine and relaxed good humour.

            After a moment, ‘Gordon’ shrugged. “All right. If you’d like to, I have no objection.”

            The lake was on the way to Raglan; Gordon and Bethany had visited it a couple of times when they were courting but they had not been back for a number of years. Bethany packed a small hamper with bread, pickled olives, salami, and cheese. She made sure to include a glass bottle of grape juice. They set off, Gordon driving. On the way down they listened to the Concert Programme. Occasionally, Gordon would remark on the passing scenery and the towns they were driving through. Sometimes he talked about work and his colleagues. Bethany responded as though she were interested. It seemed to Bethany that she had divided into two through some process of binary fission: one Bethany the fake one pretending that she was off for a enjoyable picnic with her husband, the other removed from the situation, hovering a couple of metres above the roof of the car, like some kind of winged djinn, giggling at the consummate skill ‘Bethany’ was displaying with her feigned fidelity. There was an edge of hysteria to this giggling.

            When “Gordon’ wasn’t talking, they sat in silence. Occasionally during these periods, Bethany would steal sidelong glances at ‘Gordon’, allowing her true feelings towards him to rise to the surface of her mind. What she felt towards the impostor was something more like loathing than anything else: she hated his too-casual Saturday attire, she hated the way he brushed his hair forward to hide his receding hairline, she even hated the way he smelled. She asked herself again when precisely the doppelganger had replaced her husband and tried once more, as she had many times over the years, to decide who They were.

            Many years ago, Bethany had nearly joined a Pentecostal evangelical church. This was back when she was at University, before she met Gordon, when she had friends who were members of the congregation. The friends had encouraged her to go to a meeting held in the sitting room of a large mansion in West Auckland. Bethany had attended more out of curiosity than anything else. The room had been full of young people; the pastor had delivered a sermon expostulating to the sinners in the room that if they failed to heed the True Word they would burn in hell. A young man being brought forward, the pastor had clapped the heel of his hand to the young man’s forehead saying “Do you accept Christ into your heart?” and the young man had fallen back into the arms of those around him in the throes of what appeared to be an epileptic fit. At one point during the service, the people around her had started speaking in tongues. To Bethany, the whole thing stank of fraudulence. After that meeting she never returned. But she had often wondered in the years since if it was the Church who was behind the conspiracy against her. She knew for a fact that it had the resources to mount a campaign to try to ‘save’ her– she had learned that it exacted tithes on its followers – it probably had ties to the CIA - and so if anyone could afford to put surveillance equipment in her house it was the Church. Perhaps They would remain unsatisfied until They had recruited her? When she had attended that one meeting she remembered, she had put her name on a list.

            “Gordon’ had been silent for some time, lost in thoughts of his own. Suddenly he began to speak, ruminatively, as though talking to himself.

            “Life is funny, isn’t it? One day you’re eighteen, chasing skirts and getting drunk with your mates and the next you’re thirty-two with a mortgage and a job with no prospects of advancement. Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you. After a while, you reach a point where you feel a need to reassess your priorities. What do you want? Where do you want to go? Do you want to be stuck in the same old rut forever? It’s strange – I wish I could go back in time to speak to my old eighteen year old self and give him some advice about what to do and what not to do.”

            It was a strange speech and Bethany permitted herself a suspicious glance at her ‘husband’. What did he mean? And how did it relate to her? It was uncharacteristic and so perhaps a sign that the impostor was losing his grip.

            “Well,” she said at last. “Everyone has moments like that from time to time.”

            The ‘lake’ wasn’t really a lake at all. It was more a kind of basin at the base of a thirty-foot waterfall, surrounded by native bush on all sides. There were open grassy spaces not only around the pool at the base of the cataract but also at its head, and a couple of monitory signs advising against swimming in the pool. One of the reasons Bethany had suggested the lake was that she felt that it was unlikely for surveillance equipment to be hidden anywhere in such an environment. Additionally, no one else was likely to be present. No one could possibly interfere with her implementation of the Plan. She set up their picnic at the top of the falls, spreading out a blanket and laying the condiments out on it. ‘Gordon’ sat down with his legs outstretched. There was no way he could know that he had become a pawn in her game. Bethany perched cross-legged across from him.

            “You know,” said ‘Gordon’ suddenly. “I’ve been thinking about the boys in Bali. I do remember them after all.”

            For a moment, Bethany felt a moment of doubt. Perhaps he was the real Gordon after all?

            Gordon paused and then said, “There something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, Bethany.”

            “What is it?”

            “It’s difficult for me to know where to start.”

            “Shall we have a couple of glasses of grape juice first?”

            “Okay. I think it can wait a couple of minutes longer.”

            Bethany walked to the boot to collect the bottle of grape-juice. As she crossed to the car, she felt a pang of terrible triumph: the man pretending to be her husband had finally betrayed himself an impostor after all. The real Gordon never had anything significant or surprising to tell her. She picked up the bottle by the neck and walked back. Gordon sat staring away from her across the valley. Right before she struck ‘Gordon’ as hard as she could with the bottle across the back of his head, she heard a voice. It said “Do you accept Christ into your heart?”

            The impostor wobbled, put a hand to the back of his skull and then slumped on his back unconscious. The Plan had succeeded.

            After that the rest was simple. Bethany used a tarpaulin that she took from the boot of the car to wrap Gordon up, filled it with stones and tied it securely. Dragging the impostor to the head of the cataract was difficult but not impossible and, after a couple of minutes, Bethany had succeeded in pushing him over the edge. The impostor plummeted into the basin and immediately sank, Bethany sinking with him, down into inky black darkness, down into the nightmare. Down into a dense black space full of images of pagodas, beaches and boys who ran along the side of the road wanting to sell beads.

On Dreams

Dreaming, like the reason for people's appreciation of music, is one of the deeper mysteries of the human condition. We all dream, several times every night apparently, but it is usually only the dream we are having shortly before we wake that we remember and even then usually only for a few moments. We spend a huge segment of our lives wrapped up in often the most bizarre fantasies and yet this night-time carnival, this nocturnal phantasamagoria, is something which, for the most part, simply evanesces away before we even rise from bed. What purpose does it serve? Why dream?

The study of dreams is known as oneirology. I am no expert on it – although I have read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and feel I at least have a layman’s understanding of some of the theories about dreaming. I have myself extraordinarily vivid dreams with high frequency. Last night, for instance, I dreamed I was brainstorming ideas with other writers for a sitcom – a fairly uncomplicated and pleasant dream for a change. Usually I have nightmares, either something as simple as an acquaintance’s severed head known floating into my house through the door or extremely dense complex narratives involving zombies and vampires and earthquakes. I take an interest in other people’s dreams and have found that some kinds of dreams are fairly common. Being forced to resit a difficult high school exam is a dream many people have had, as is the dream of making a presentation naked to a crowded room. Dreams of flight are fairly common, a dream Freud interpreted as being about sex (no surprise there). Kurt Cobain apparently used to dream that someone was trying to break into his house and I met a chap recently who had a recurring dream that Tom Jones was stalking around his property trying to find a way in. The commonality of some dreams evinces the universality of human experience.

 A dream of my own… When I was living in Dunedin immediately after leaving school, some fifteen years ago, I dreamt that I was in some American ghetto neighbourhood. Sirens and the presence of fire-trucks indicated that some major disaster or catastrophe had unfolded. A fireman presented a saucer on which floated a fragment, only a fragment, of a face belonging to a close friend of mine. This fragment said, “Andrew- I can’t feel my legs!” The dream was so awful that I decided that I could only be having a nightmare. Remembering, in the dream, that dreamers don’t feel pain, I pinched myself. I felt no pain, knew I was dreaming and forced myself to wake up.

The modern voguish theory of dreaming is that it is the brain’s way of processing, selecting and sorting the day’s memories, transferring salient ones from short-term to long-term storage. I think this theory is bullshit. Although there is apparently some statistical evidence that most dreamers supposedly tend to dream about their experiences of the previous day, my own dreams are far too bizarre to fit this theory at all. Generally my dreams relate to my preoccupations, not to the previous day’s experiences. Freud’s theory of dreaming, by contrast, is that it is fundamentally concerned with wish-fulfilment. Dreams manifest desires that we cannot avow or acknowledge, even to ourselves, and so we conceal them behind metaphors and metonyms, employing compression and displacement to protect the conscious ego from the wild cravings of the subconscious id. I believe Freud is right in suggesting that dreams are coded communications to be deciphered but wrong in suggesting that they are all about repressed desire. Dreams also manifest anxieties and fears – perhaps nightmares sometimes have a cathartic function. We rehearse the worst in sleep so that, when we wake, we are prepared for it. If I dream that a loved one has died, is it reasonable to suppose that I truly secretly want that person dead? In fact, I believe Freud’s theory not only to be wrong but dangerous. If we interpret a nightmare as expressing a repressed desire, it may lead us to a faulty conclusion about who we are.

Another dream of my own… About seven years ago I dreamt that I was in a subterranean chamber. Flickering red firelight played hellishly across the walls. In the room with me sat George W. Bush (then still POTUS) and John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I was intimidated to be in the same room as them. Bush said to me, “We try to keep our club quite… exclusive.” As I said, being addressed by the American president was something I found quite intimidating, and I remember, in the dream, Key turning to Bush as if to say, “See? I’m not the only one intimidated.” I left the chamber and, in an antechamber, found myself in a circle with Nicholas Cage, Tim Robbins and a third, a slight shadowy figure that I couldn’t identify. They gave me a communion wafer which I put in my mouth – immediately I felt as though I had been stuck in the mouth by a lightning bolt. Tim Robbins said to me, “How do you like that acid?”

The ancient Greeks apparently believed that dreams were messages from the Gods or from dead relatives. Flaky hippies often espouse the idea that dreams are a form of astral travel. Perhaps dreams can foretell the future as well as refer to the past. For example, in the dream I just described, I believe that the shadowy figure was Jon Stewart, someone I didn’t and couldn’t identify at the time because I dreamt the dream before the Daily Show had even started screening in New Zealand, but someone who was to become extremely important to me later in life (for reasons too bizarre to explain in this blog.) I have had dreams that foreshadowed future events and other dreams that were almost revelatory. Dreams do not just tell us about ourselves; they tell us about the world we are living in. Perhaps, in sleep, we are plugged into the universal unconscious and, in sleep, we lose ourselves in the world-soul.

I wish I could offer a good theory of dreams.  I feel I have worked out a good theory of narrative and even a partial theory of music but a good theory of dreams eludes me. Perhaps there is no single theory that explains dreams – some dreams are explained best by Freudian psychoanlysis, others by modern neurocognitive approaches, others by more mystical interpretations. Perhaps the error we make is in looking for a single catchall explanation. Perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps… But it is both important and therapeutic to make the enquiry.

The Problem with Robert McKee

Today's post may be a little dry compared to others. One of my bugbears is with the theory of narrative promulgated byRobert McKee. In today's post, I am going to cut and paste an excerpt of an essay I wrote a couple of years ago when completing an MA in Creative Writing - it concerns McKee. It is double spaced because I don't know how to single-space it.

***
[...]

What is a story? The minimal theory of narrative devised by Todorov (1970) is that a story begins with a fictional world in equilibrium, that this equilibrium is disturbed, that the characters must act to restore it and that the story concludes with the establishing of a new equilibrium. It is useful to compare Todorov’s theory to Campbell’s notion of the Hero’s Journey (1949). Campbell argues that the hero begins the story in the familiar world, that he receives ‘the call to adventure’, engages in some sort of quest through a fabulous world, overcoming obstacles but eventually reaching his goal, and then returns to the normal world with the ‘boon’ that he has won. Campbell’s theory sharply contrasts with Todorov’s. In Todorov’s theory, a single world that is in equilibrium is disturbed and then returns to equilibrium while Campbell’s theory involves two worlds: a familiar one and a fantastic one, the narrative involving a passage by the Hero from one to the other and back. In Todorov’s theory the state of the world causes the action; in Campbell's it is a summons from the other world.

In Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997), the influential screenwriting teacher Robert McKee proposes a theory that seems to combine aspects of Todorov’s and Campbell’s. McKee argues that the unifying ingredient of a story is Desire:

For better or worse, an event [the inciting incident] throws a character’s life out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore balance, launching him on a Quest for his Object of Desire against forces of antagonism (inner, personal, extra-personal). He may or may not achieve it. This is story in a nutshell. (p.196-197)

McKee’s notion that the story begins with a disturbance of equilibrium that motivates the protagonists(s) to ‘restore balance”, is reminiscent of Toldorov. By describing this as a ‘Quest’, it is more similar to Campbell.

These theories are similar because they emphasize the idea that is story is held together by the goal-directed agency of its protagonists. Mckee’s theory seems particularly plausible. However, I believe that it is incorrect. We can see it is wrong by considering how many stories do not fit the formula. In Othello, for instance, the protagonist has no clear desire until towards the end (when he decides to kill Desdemona); it is Iago who possesses active desire, the desire to destroy Othello, and it is Iago who drives the story forward. In King Lear, Lear sets the story in motion by giving his kingdom away to two of his daughters but, for the rest of the play, he is simply responding to the actions of others. In Moby Dick, the story is driven by Ahab’s monomaniacal obsession but it is Ishmael who is the protagonist. In Benny and Joon the romance between Sam and Joon drives the story forward but it is Benny’s reactions to this romance that is the focus. In all these examples, the protagonist is reactive rather than active.

What drives a story forward is not the desire of the protagonist but the way he reacts to the situations in which he finds himself. The protagonist is not ‘the desiring agent’ but a surrogate for the audience; the question a story always asks its audience is, “What might I do if I was this character in the same situation?” If the protagonist of a story decides, for no reason, to rob a bank, we do not identify with him. If he is put in a situation where he has no choice except to rob a bank (because he is up to his eyeballs in debt, perhaps), then we identify with him. Even Star Wars (Lucas, 1977), the modern paradigm for a well-structured narrative, presents a protagonist who is reactive rather than active. Luke’s first desire is to find Obiwan Kinobe; later it is to rescue the princess; in the last act it is to help destroy the Death Star. Each time he changes his desire it is as a reaction to his circumstances. The intention of the film, to be sure, is to show that Good triumphs over Evil, but Luke does not begin the story with a burning desire to destroy the Death Star, nor formulate this desire as a response to the princess’s plea for help. He ends up the hero without ever seeking to become it. Luke’s desire changes and, I believe, this is what many of the best stories show. They dramatize how a character’s desires change as a reaction to different situations.

Generally speaking, then, the protagonist does not drive the plot forward but is rather caught up in it. Other examples that show this include A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984) and Friday the 13^th  (Cunningham, 1980). In horror films, the protagonist’s ‘desire’ (if we can call it that) is simply to stay alive; in no way, though, can this be compared to a Quest.  It is not necessary for a protagonist to have a constant desire. This is important to my film because its protagonist Jess has no well-defined desire; I worried about this when I was writing it. I now believe, however, that the convention that the story should begin with a character determining to achieve a goal and ending with him attaining it is more the exception than the rule.

***

This could be better written but the point is solid. McKee is wrong. Perhaps in a later post I will elaborate on the other idea of the protagonist of a story reacting to it rather than be an active driver. It is true of virtually all stories.

Iago's twisted love

All apologies for the long wait between blog postings. After the previous instalment written about David Foster Wallace, I fell victim to a serious bout of the blues. I can be a little sensitive sometimes. There are some matters that are difficult to talk about, and the suicide of my favourite author is one of them. Occasionally I have considered writing interpretations of some of the songs off Nirvana’s album In Utero or Faith No More’s album King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime, but I suspect that they may be equally depressing and that there are anyway mysteries best left unexplained. (If a reader does want me to provide an interpretation of “All Apologies”, they can ask in the form of a comment and I might acquiesce.)

Today I thought I would write about a poet that everyone knows – Shakespeare. In particular, I thought I would write about Othello. “What for?” you might ask. “Hasn’t everything that has ever could be said about this play already been said?” To be sure, most of us studied this play in school and most of us feel that we have a good understanding of what the play is about. It’s about jealousy: jealousy is Othello’s fatal flaw (as alcohol is Cassio’s fatal flaw) and it is this flaw that Iago takes advantage of when scheming to drive Othello into murdering his bride. In fact, there is a lot more to the play than this – many years ago I worked out a fairly involved interpretation of the play, incorporating studies of the way it contrasts Chistianity and Paganism, human and animal, but for the life of me I can’t remember it. This essay will not be particularly profound but it may offer an unusual new perspective on the play.

Certainly Othello is about jealousy. Love has two aspects, the spiritual and the carnal – when Othello is assured of Desdemona’s love he is living within the temple of Christ but when he succumbs to jealousy his imagination becomes infected with images of animals. Jealousy does not admit the possibility that the unfaithful lover might genuinely love another; jealousy concerns itself only with the sordidness of illicit sex. In his later plays, not only in Othello but in Hamlet and King Lear, Shakespeare often presents women’s sexuality unflatteringly and this led, for instance, Joyce to propose, in Ulysses, that Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway had slept with Shakespeare’s brother. Othello (and Troilus and Cressida) are, however, the two plays that most directly deal with the theme of sexual jealousy.

There is a mystery to Othello though. Why does Iago commit himself to Othello’s destruction, a catastrophe that overwhelms him as well? Coleridge uses the phrase “the motive hunting of a motiveless malignancy”. Early in the play Iago himself gives this as a reason

                                                [..] I hate the Moor;

                        And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt the sheets

                        He’s done my office. I know not if’t be true;

                        Yet I for mere suspicion of that kind,

                        Will do as if for surety.

Iago’s suspicions are obviously baseless, Othello is plainly not someone capable of having an illicit affair with Iago’s wifef Emilia, and it makes one wonder if Iago’s sordid imaginings of Othello sleeping with his wife have another foundation. Iago is undoubtedly paranoid. Perhaps (and this is where I am going to propose my bizarre theory) Iago is not jealous of Emilia but of Othello himself. Perhaps Iago hates Othello because he loves him.

This admittedly screwy interpretation of the play occurred to me when watching Kenneth Branagh’s film adaption of it. In Act 3 scene 3, Iago successfully replaces Desdemona as the most important person in Othello’s life, as co-conspirator in his plan to murder her; Othello calls Iago “my lieutenant” and Iago replies “I am yours forever”. At this point -in the film- they embrace. Iago’s expression (he is portrayed by Branagh himself) points to the fact that he genuinely means what he says and the implication is patent. His wish to destroy Othelllo springs out of a kind of twisted passion. As  Lajos Egri summarizes Othello: “Jealousy destroys the thing it loves.”

At the end of the play, Iago refuses to give any explanation of his actions, saying “Demand of me nothing: what you know, you know; From this time forth I will never speak a word.”

Some literary critics, as some literary critics do, have wondered if Shakespeare was homosexual. It was Oscar Wilde, perhaps unsurprisingly, who opined that some of the Sonnets were addressed to a man. Personally I think this theory is bullshit. Shakespeare wrote too convincingly about sexual jealousy of the heterosexual sort for him not to have experienced it himself. (This does not mean that he might not have made the villain in Othello a crypto-homosexual.) The passage that, to me, proves Shakespeare straight does not come from Othello though, or even from Romeo and Juliet. It is this passage from Troilus and Cressida when Troilus finds out that Cressida has slept around him with Diomed.

                        This she? No; this is Diomed’s Cressida.

                        If beauty have a soul, this is not she;

                        If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,

                        If sanctimony be the gods’ delight,

                        If there be rule in unity itself,

                        This is not she. O madness of discourse,

                        That cause sets up with and against itself!

                        Bifold authority! Where reason can revolt

                        Without perdition, and loss assume all reason

                        Without revolt. This is, and is not, Cressid!

                        Within my soul here doth conduce a fight

                        Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate

                        Divides more wider than the sky and earth;

                        And yet the spacious breadth of this divison

                        Admits no orifex for a point as subtle

                        As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.

                        Instance, O instance! strong as Plutos gates:

                        Cressid is mine, tied with bonds of heaven.

                        Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself:

                        The bonds of heaven are slipped, dissolved and loosed,

                        And with another knot, five-finger-tied,

                        The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,

                        The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics

                        Of her ‘ereaten faith are given to Diomed.

Troilus and Cressida is, like Othello, about jealousy – with this difference. Othello’s jealousy is baseless but Triolus’s jealousy is justified. In Elizabethan times, cuckolds were figures of ridicule and this difference between the two plays, that Triolus is a true cuckold but Othello is not, is the reason why Othello is a genuine tragedy but Troilus and Cressida is not,  is in fact a satire – and why commentators on Shakespeare have had difficulty categorizing it. This is something that Joyce does not suggest. If Shakespeare himself was cuckolded, perhaps it was something too painful for him to directly address? And perhaps the only way he could attempt to do so was through satire?

In my next posting, I will get back to the business of my literary theory. I don’t know yet what book or film I will analyse but, hopefully, my gloom will lift and I can start to write something more normal.