Month: July 2020

Analysis of ‘Parasite’

Parasite ( 기생충, or Gisaengchung) is a 2019 South Korean satirical film directed by Bong Joon-ho and written by him and Han Jin-won. It stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, and Lee Jung-eun. The Kims (played by Song, Jang, Choi, and Park) are a poor family who live in a semi-basement apartment (banjiha); they cheat their way into getting jobs working for a bourgeois family, the Parks (played by Lee, Cho, Jung Ji-so, and Jung Hyeon-jun), the Kim employees pretending they aren’t related but much more qualified than they really are.

This is the first South Korean film (and the first non-English language film) to win the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s a scathing critique of capitalism and class conflict, a critique more and more urgently needed in today’s world.

Here are some quotes, translated into English:

Ki-jung: [about Moon-gwang] She may look like a sheep, but inside, she’s a fox. Sometimes she acts like she owns the house.
Ki-woo: Right. Of all the people in that house, she’s lived there the longest. She was housekeeper to the architect Namgoong, but then she went on to work for this family. When the architect moved out, he introduced this woman to Park’s family, telling them, “This is a great housekeeper, you should hire her”.
Chung-sook: So she survived a change of ownership.
Ki-woo: She won’t give up such a good job easily.
Ki-jung: To extract a woman like that, we need to prepare well.
Ki-woo: Right, we need a plan. [cut to a scene with Ki-woo and Da-hye]
Da-hye: I want to eat peaches. I like peaches best.
Ki-woo: Why not ask for some?
Da-hye: No peaches at our house. It’s a forbidden fruit. [cut back to the Kims]
Ki-woo: [about Moon-gwang] So according to what Da-hye told me, she’s got a pretty serious allergy to peaches. You know that fuzz on the peach skin? If she’s anywhere near it, she gets a full body rash, has trouble breathing, asthma, a total meltdown! [Moon-gwang falls sick after Ki-woo puts peach fuzz on her]

Ki-taek: They are rich but still nice.
Chung-sook: They are nice because they are rich.

Ki-taek: Rich people are naive. No resentments. No creases on them.
Chung-sook: It all gets ironed out. Money is an iron. Those creases all get smoothed out by money.

“If I had all this I would be kinder.” –Chung-sook

“What are you, a family of charlatans?” –Moon-gwang

“Don’t fucking call me sis, you filthy bitch!” –Moon-gwang, to Chung-sook

[to his son] “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned. Look around you. Did you think these people made a plan to sleep in the sports hall with you? But here we are now, sleeping together on the floor. So, there’s no need for a plan. You can’t go wrong with no plans. We don’t need to make a plan for anything. It doesn’t matter what will happen next. Even if the country gets destroyed or sold out, nobody cares. Got it?” –Ki-taek

“Respect!” –Geun-se

“Dad, today I made a plan – a fundamental plan. I’m going to earn money, a lot of it. University, a career, marriage, those are all fine, but first I’ll earn money. When I have money, I’ll buy the house. On the day we move in, Mom and I will be in the yard. Because the sunshine is so nice there. All you’ll need to do is walk up the stairs. Take care until then. So long.” –Ki-woo, in a letter to Ki-taek (last lines)

The Kims’ smelly banjiha has a Wi-Fi connection so bad, they have to use their cellphones by the toilet. A drunk habitually pisses just outside their window, and Ki-taek, the father of the family, is annoyed by the “stink bugs,” one of which he flicks away with his finger. He welcomes the awful fumes of a pesticide spray from outside to get rid of the bugs.

Min-hyuk, a university student and friend of Ki-woo’s, gives the family a scholar’s rock as a gift to promise wealth for the Kims. He also tells Ki-woo about a job teaching English to Da-hye, a teenage girl in the rich Park family. Yeon-gyo, the lady of the Park house, is rather “simple” and so should be easily deceived that Ki-woo, as Min-hyuk’s replacement teacher, is more qualified than he really is.

After getting the job, he convinces Yeon-gyo to hire his sister, Ki-jung, as an art teacher and “therapist” for Yeon-gyo’s traumatized little boy, Da-song, pretending that Ki-woo’s sister, “Jessica,” is barely even an acquaintance.

Eventually, Ki-taek gets a job as the Parks’ driver, after Ki-jung has the Parks fire their previous driver, Yoon, based on a false accusation of having engaged in lewd behaviour in the car; and Chung-sook gets a job as the housekeeper, after an elaborate plan involving deceiving Yeon-gyo into believing the Parks’ original housekeeper, Moon-gwang (played by Lee Jung-eun), secretly has tuberculosis. All of the Kims, of course, pretend they aren’t related.

As such, the Kims are a kind of collective parasite on the bourgeois family, enjoying good salaries and eating nice food, all based on false pretences. Later, we learn that Moon-gwang was also a parasite, using her job to feed her husband, Oh Geun-se (played by Park Myung-hoon), who’s living in a basement bunker under the Parks’ beautiful house to hide from creditors.

Calling these poor, needy families parasites is ironic, given the capitalist context. We Marxists know that it is the capitalist who is the real parasite, draining the energy and life out of his workers to make profits. The workers put value into the commodities they produce, but the capitalist sucks out that value like a leech, stealing it in the form of surplus value, and getting rich off of workers’ blood, sweat, and tears. The capitalist’s exploitation of labour is the true parasitic behaviour, so when the Kims and Moon-gwang engage in parasitism, it can be seen as a matter of karmic retribution.

This film shows us the true, proletarian South Korea, not the country saturated in bourgeois values as seen in such popular South Korean TV shows as Crash Landing on You (which, incidentally, includes Jang Hye-jin and Park Myung-hoon among the supporting actors), with its attractive cast in beautiful clothes living in luxurious settings (the more austere North Korean scenes excepted).

The ironic labelling of poor South Koreans as parasites inspires me to see a few vague associations of the film’s plot with John Milton‘s Paradise Lost. I’m not saying Bong intended it; nor am I imagining there to be exact, point-for-point correspondences between the characters and chronology of the film and epic poem–far from it. Still, there are some connections interesting enough to explore.

The banjiha and underground bunker can be seen to represent hell, the hell of the working class. This makes the workers the devils, though I’m calling them “devils” with the utmost irony, for this story must be seen from the point of view of a ‘capitalist morality.’ The Park family represent Adam and Eve, who are easily beguiled by the serpentine “devils,” who trick them into employing all of them. The beautiful house is the Garden of Eden, a capitalist paradise designed by an architect, Mr. Namgoong (“God”), who has left to live in Paris.

As in Paradise Lost (Note how, fortuitously, Parasite is almost an anagram of ‘Paradise’!), the movie can be said to have begun in medias res, with our working-class ‘devils’ already plunged into the hell of the urban poor, having nothing but their labour to sell to survive.

Before this casting away (i.e., the pre-industrialized Korea of the early to mid-twentieth century), most Koreans had lived a simple peasant farmer life, living off the land, a kind of rural ‘heaven,’ even though they were ruled over and oppressed by landlords, the Japanese, and the bourgeois. To put it ever so mildly, this was far from an ideal life, but we’re comparing Koreans to the rebel angels here, and as Satan says in Paradise Lost, “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.” (Book I, line 263) Better that the Korean proletariat reign in a communist ‘hell’ (as understood in bourgeois propaganda) than serve in a capitalist ‘heaven’ (also as understood in bourgeois propaganda).

Looked at in this context, we can understand the Korean attempt to establish socialism, to improve Koreans’ lives by overthrowing the bourgeoisie, which was then thwarted in the Korean War and in the establishment of South Korea as a capitalist state. Such a thwarting can be compared to the war in heaven between Satan’s rebel angels, the devils resisting God’s tyranny, and God’s loyal angels.

North Korea may have succeeded in the creation of a socialist state, but we’re concerned here with the South Korean working class, who lost in their attempt to create a proletarian dictatorship because of the prevailing hegemony of US imperialism. Hence, the miserable lot of the Kims is comparable to that of fallen Satan and his demons. And just as Satan learns of the Garden of Eden, Adam, and Eve, so does Ki-woo learn of the Park family’s job opportunity…and just as Satan plans to sabotage paradise on Earth, so do the Kims plan to infiltrate the Parks’ Edenic home.

Most of the Kims’ tricking and beguiling is done to Yeon-gyo, the Eve of the family; and as we know, the serpent (Satan in disguise) tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. The difficult and tricky process of getting employment for all of the Kims reminds us of when Satan says, “long is the way/And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” (Book II, lines 432-433)

Religion is used to justify such authoritarian ways of doing things as feudalism and capitalism; accordingly, it is assumed that God in Paradise Lost is all-good–hence Milton’s claim to “justify the ways of God to men.” (Book I, line 26) So is it also assumed that capitalists’ successes are admirable achievements, a result of God’s grace, rather than the exploitation of the poor.

Still, Milton’s God shows hints of a more despotic rule. God says, “…man will…/easily transgress the sole command,/Sole pledge of his obedience: so will fall,/He and his faithless progeny: whose fault?/Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me/All he could have; I made him just and right,/Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” (Book III, lines 93, 94-99) What God says here about Adam and Eve can be equally applied to the rebel angels, who were also free to obey or disobey Him. Note His bitter comments about how man is “faithless” and an “ingrate.” Such an attitude is hardly in keeping with a loving, merciful God. He faults any who don’t do His bidding, never Himself.

Such an attitude can also be seen in the capitalist, who imagines that the proletariat are “free” to be employed in any job they like, or to quit any they don’t like. Such a simplistic judgement fails to address the reality workers face when they struggle to find work, competing with the reserve army of labour that’s trying to get the same jobs. Since workers don’t own the means of production, and can live only by selling their own labour, it’s absurd to describe them meaningfully as free.

We fall because, with the limitations we have in knowledge and moral strength, what else can we do? I discuss the weakness of the argument of Christian free will in this post (scroll down to about the middle). We wouldn’t fall, no matter how much free will we had to do wrong, if we had the moral strength and the wisdom to know that making the morally wrong choice would destroy us. Capitalists, just like Christian authoritarians, justify their power over us by claiming we have a freedom we lack.

Workers’ foul body odour is a recurring motif in Parasite. Mr. Park finds Mr. Kim’s smell difficult to endure, and Da-song notes how all the Kims have the same smell. Geun-se also has the odour. Related to the smell of the stink bugs, these ‘poor devils’ have the smell of hell. Now, even though the Kims do do their share of bad things, we viewers sympathize with the Kims (and with Moon-gwang and Geun-se); just as Satan, the hero of Paradise Lost, has at least some sympathy from Milton’s readers, even though he is evil.

Moon-gwang’s allergy to peaches makes them “forbidden fruit” in the Parks’ house. The Kims’ exploitation of her weakness, misrepresenting it as tuberculosis to the ever-gullible Yeon-gyo, causes Moon-gwang to be dismissed. Since she has been feeding her husband, Geun-se, in the bunker, and she has now been kicked out of the Parks’ Edenic house, Moon-gwang is, in this sense, a second Eve who has lost paradise. It’s interesting in this connection that Mr. Park, already missing her cooking, has a craving for some ribs [!].

The use of the “forbidden fruit,” leading to Moon-gwang’s dismissal, begins a chain of events ultimately leading to the Kims’ expulsion from the house, too. While the Parks are out camping, the Kims get drunk in the house, a sensual indulgence comparable to Adam and Eve eating of the Tree of Knowledge. (In this sense, the Kims can be seen as doubles of Adam and Eve, too; for after all, the naked lovers, as fellow rebels to God, can easily be seen as doubles of the devils.)

When Moon-gwang returns to the house in a desperate attempt to procure food for starving Geun-se, she tries to appeal to Chung-sook’s sense of compassion for and solidarity with the needy; but Chung-sook would rather identify with the Parks, and so she tries to call the police on Moon-gwang and Geun-se. In this sense, class-collaborating Chung-sook is a devil.

Of course, when Moon-gwang and Geun-se realize that the Kims are a family rather than the unrelated employees they’ve been pretending to be, she grows equally hostile to them. She records video of them on her cellphone, the sound having recorded Ki-woo calling Ki-taek ‘Dad,’ and she threatens to send the video to the Parks. Now the lack of working-class solidarity is a two-way street.

Moon-gwang and Geun-se compare the ‘send’ command on her cellphone to a nuclear warhead from North Korea. She tauntingly speaks in mock reverence of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, as if ready ‘to launch the warhead.’ This juxtaposition of no mutual solidarity among workers with feigned loyalty to the DPRK could be seen as a sardonic comment on infighting among leftists, including those who profess to be staunch Marxist-Leninists.

The Kims manage to get the phone away from Moon-gwang and Geun-se; the Kims also confine them in the bunker. Meanwhile, rain and flooding have caused the Parks to give up on their camping plans and come home. The Kims must clean up quickly and hide everyone except for Chung-sook.

With the Parks back home that night, little Da-song wants to play ‘Indian’ and camp in his American-made teepee on the lawn outside. This is an indication of how far the South Korean bourgeoisie has been enmeshed in American cultural imperialism: they copy the white man’s appropriation of other cultures.

As Mr. Park and Yeon-gyo wait on the living room sofa for Da-song to finish his camping game, they–not knowing that Ki-taek, Ki-woo, and Ki-jung are hiding under the coffee tables–engage in some sexual fondling. We can see a parallel here with a scene in Paradise Lost, when Adam and Eve have lustful sex after having eaten the forbidden fruit. (Book IX, lines 1034-1045)

Eventually, Ki-taek, Ki-woo, and Ki-jung sneak out of the house and walk home that night in the rain. When they discover that not only the rain but also the sewer water is flooding their banjiha (as well as every other banjiha in their neighbourhood), we see in this incident a parallel with the Great Flood as predicted in Book XI of Paradise Lost (lines 719-867).

The cause of the Great Flood, as scholars have pointed out (Mays, page 88), was the prohibited mixing of the divine and human worlds, as shown when the “sons of God” mated with the “daughters of men” (Genesis 6:1-4; note also in Milton, Book XI, lines 683-697, “those ill-mated marriages” [line 684]). Similarly, Ki-woo, one of the ‘fallen angels’ of the working class, has been fooling around with Da-hye, the daughter of the Park family, her parents being the ‘Adam and Eve’ of the movie.

As Mr. Park frequently says, he can’t stand it when employees “cross the line,” or move outside of the circumscribed realm of their class. This notion of “crossing the line” can be paralleled with the prohibition against mixing the divine and human worlds, where ‘divine’ represents the bourgeoisie, and ‘human’ represents the proletariat…or if you prefer, the capitalistically righteous sons of God (the Seth-like Parks) are mingling with the sinfully proletarian daughters of men (the Cain-like Kims).

My interpretation of the primeval history of Genesis (scroll down to Part X) is that the mixing of the divine and human worlds, understood as sinful, is a reflection of the wish of the priestly class, representing God, to separate themselves from the lay population; by keeping separate through self-sanctification, the priests could better assert their authority and power. The same goes for the capitalist class: if the proletariat “crosses the line,” the bourgeoisie’s power is threatened.

Mr. Park says that Mr. Kim’s body odour “crosses the line,” since the breathing in of that odour is, symbolically, an introjection of Mr. Kim’s life essence, as it were. It’s one thing for the bourgeoisie to have to interact with the proletariat; it’s another one altogether if these two classes, meant to be separate in essence from each other, are exchanging projections and introjections of each other’s energies, which feels tantamount to erasing the boundaries between classes, “crossing the line.”

Ki-taek’s resentment over his hated smell builds over the course of the movie. It starts with his dislike of the stink bugs at the beginning of the film, and with the letting in of the pesticide fumes. Then there’s Mr. Park’s distaste of the smell, along with Chung-sook’s comparing him to a cockroach (associated with stink bugs, and thus the smell) during the Kims’ drunken party, provoking Kim-taek’s grabbing her by the shirt and threatening to hit her. Later, as he’s driving Yeon-gyo in the back seat, he notices her putting her hand to her nose.

This smell of hell reminds him, over and over again, of his low origins; no matter how hard he and his family try to rise socially, they’ll always have that shameful, infernal stink.

Added to his resentment is the stress he feels over what he and the other Kims have done to Moon-gwang and Geun-se. In their drunkenness that night, the Kims have shown no solidarity with the husband and concussed wife trapped and tied up in the underground bunker; but the next day, there is some residual sense of sympathy, responsibility, and remorse over how they’ve treated Moon-gwang and Geun-se. Similarly, during that night of drunkenness, Ki-taek shows some sympathy for the original driver, Yoon, whose job he has stolen.

The next day, the Kims want to help Moon-gwang and Geun-se, but it’s too late: she’s died from her head injury, accidentally caused by Chung-sook’s having shoved her down the stairs to the bunker the night before; and Geun-se wants revenge. Ki-taek has tied Geun-se’s hands up, and so his only way to communicate with the outside world is by pushing a large button at eye-level on a wall using Morse Code. This means that Geun-se has to hit the button many times with his forehead, causing a bloody mark there.

Since he commits the first deliberate murder in the movie (after the attempted murder of Ki-woo by hitting the boy twice on the head with the scholar’s rock, Geun-se takes a kitchen knife and stabs Ki-jung outside at Yeon-gyo’s impromptu party), that bloody mark on his head can be associated with the mark of Cain, whose murder of Abel is mentioned in Book XI of Paradise Lost (lines 429-460)

So Geun-se can be seen as doubling as an underground devil and as Cain. To make the association clearer, recall Hamlet saying that Cain “did the first murder” (Act V, scene i), and recall also John 8:44, when Jesus said that the devil “was a murderer from the beginning.” Remember that human sinners are like devils on earth, since both sinner and devil are rebels against God.

Just before the violence, Mr. Park would have Ki-taek help him indulge in more disrespectful appropriation of Native American culture by having himself and his driver wear the feathered headdresses and brandish tomahawks, so Da-song can come out of his teepee and have some fun. Ki-taek’s mounting stress–not only from his worries over what’s happened in the bunker, but also from the culturally imperialist absurdity of playing “Indian” with his capitalist employers–is showing in the frown on his face.

But seeing his daughter stabbed, his wife fighting off Geun-se, and Da-hye carrying injured Ki-woo away, is pushing Ki-taek to the limit of endurance. Da-song, believing Geun-se to be a ghost from the underworld (and as I’ve argued above, that’s what he is symbolically), whom he’s seen, and been traumatized by, before, faints at the sight of the killer.

Mr. Park and Yeon-gyo are desperate to rush the boy to the hospital, and he demands Ki-taek’s help; but their driver is naturally far more preoccupied with the injuries done to his own family, still a secret kept from the Parks. He tosses the car keys over to Mr. Park, but must also help dying Ki-jung. Here we can see the conflict between capitalism and the family, which can only meaningfully coexist for the bourgeoisie.

As Karl Marx said in The Communist Manifesto, “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.” (II: Proletarians and Communists)

Chung-sook manages to stop Geun-se by stabbing him in the side with a skewer. Dying Geun-se looks up and sees Mr. Park, whom he regards as almost god-like for providing him, however unwittingly, with a home and food, and shouts, “Respect!” Ki-taek has earlier shown a similar, almost religious reverence to Park, saying, “Let’s offer a prayer of gratitude to the great Mr. Park.” Ki-taek has also spoken of the “bounteous Wi-Fi,” earlier in the film; thus do we see how the ‘poor devils’ are sinful idolaters of the bourgeoisie and the products that capitalists sell to us.

Mr. Park gives thanks to this class collaborationist ass-kissing in a predictably capitalist way: by putting his hand to his nose. Ooh, that smell! This latest affront to working-class dignity is too much for Ki-taek to bear, so he, in a wildly impulsive move, grabs Geun-se’s knife and stabs Mr. Park. Fittingly, we see a stink bug crawling on dying Geun-se’s body. Also fittingly, the headdress falls off Ki-taek’s head just before the stabbing, representing his rejection of capitalist cultural imperialism, and its abusive appropriation of the cultures of conquered peoples.

This killing of Mr. Park, the Adam of the story, recalls Genesis 3:19, God’s pronunciation of the death sentence on Adam, also found in Paradise Lost, Book X, lines 206-208. Here we see how the capitalist (Adam), too, is killed by capitalism (God); for its contradictions, as Marx prophesied in Volume 3 of Capital, would cause it to destroy itself, through the agent of the revolutionary proletariat.

Indeed, Ki-taek is finally demonstrating a little worker solidarity, acknowledging Park as his class enemy. Finally, violence against the bourgeoisie has been achieved…but it’s far from enough to help the proletariat. One must build socialism after the overthrow of the ruling class (as the DPRK did), and the Kims never achieve this. So, just as Satan boasts to the other devils of having succeeded in taking control of the world (Book X, lines 460-503), but then he and his demons are turned into limbless serpents (Book X, lines 504-577), so are the Kims thwarted in their hopes to use their jobs to take over the Parks’ house and improve their lives.

When Ki-woo wakes up in hospital and is told his Miranda rights by a police detective, he finds himself involuntarily laughing. The doctor there says people who have undergone brain surgery sometimes laugh like this. Ki-woo continues uncontrollably smiling and laughing when he sees a photo of now-dead Ki-jung, all while Chung-sook is weeping over the loss of her daughter.

This laughing during a mournful family moment reminds us of Arthur Fleck‘s pseudobulbar affect, which happens most notably when he’s upset. As I argued in that post, this laughing/weeping represents the dialectical relationship between sorrow and happiness. Recall Laozi‘s words: “Misery is what happiness rests upon./Happiness is what misery lurks beneath.” (Tao Te Ching 58)

The point is that suffering has grown so extreme for Ki-woo that he laughs rather than sobs; one goes past the ouroboros‘ bitten tail of weeping and over to the even greater sobbing of the serpent’s biting head, expressed in laughing. (See these posts to see how I use the ouroboros to symbolize the dialectical unity of opposites, the serpent’s head and tail representing extreme opposites on a circular continuum, the ouroboros’ coiled body, representing the middle points.)

Finally, once Ki-woo is better, he tries to find his missing father. The surviving Kims are the only people who know about the underground bunker, so he rightly suspects that Ki-taek is hiding down there. In a desperate attempt at communicating with the outside world, Ki-taek uses Geun-se’s method of tapping that button in Morse Code so someone outside might, by chance, see the flashing light and decode the message. This desperate communication is yet another example of alienation caused by capitalism: if only father and son could speak to each other face to face.

Fortunately, Ki-woo sees and decodes his father’s message. The boy’s plan is to make as much money as he can to buy the Parks’ old house one day and free his father from his underground prison, his hell. This hope of a rescue, far off into the future and difficult to have faith in, reminds us of the promise to Adam in Book XII of Paradise Lost (lines 386-465) of paradise regained at the end of time, salvation from Christ’s crucifixion.

Now, Adam will have to wait interminably in Sheol for the Divine Rescue, but he will eventually get it. Similarly, the surviving Park family can hope for a better life after the tragedy at the party, even after the death of Mr. Park…because they have the money for that hope. His money lives on after him.

Ki-taek, on the other hand, isn’t anywhere near as lucky. He must wait for Ki-woo, still stuck in the Kims’ old hell-hole of a banjiha, to scrounge up the money to regain the paradise of the Parks’ former home, a rather unlikely achievement, to put it mildly. For remember, in my scrambled allegory of Milton’s epic, the Parks are redeemable Adam and Eve, but the Kims are the devils, forever stuck in the hell of South Korean capitalism, the Seoul of Sheol.

Analysis of ‘RoboCop’

RoboCop is a 1987 science fiction action movie directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. It stars Peter Weller in the title role, as well as Nancy Allen, Miguel Ferrer, Kurtwood Smith, Dan O’Herlihy, and Ronny Cox.

It is considered one of the best films of 1987, and it spawned two sequels, several TV series (including two cartoons), video games, and a comic book, as well as a remake that got a comparatively lukewarm reception. There is much more to this film than just the usual ‘shoot-’em-up’ action film formula: there is much social commentary on the evils of capitalism, media manipulation, gentrification, and one’s sense of identity.

Here are some quotes:

“I’d buy that for a dollar!” –Bixby Snyder, repeated line from a TV show

Dougy: We rob the banks but we never get to keep the money.
Emil: Takes money to make money. We steal money to buy coke then sell the coke to make even more money. Capital investment, man.
Dougy: Yeah, but why bother making it when we can just steal it?
Emil: No better way to steal money than free enterprise.

“Good night, sweet prince.” –Joe Cox, to Murphy after the gang has shot him

Bob Morton: How does he eat?
Roosevelt: His digestive system is extremely simple. This processor dispenses a rudimentary paste that sustains his organic systems.
Johnson: [Roosevelt dispenses the paste into a cup and hands it to Johnson] Tastes like baby food.
Bob Morton: Knock yourself out.

“Your move, creep.” –RoboCop

Reporter: Robo, excuse me, Robo! Any special message for all the kids watching at home?
RoboCop: Stay out of trouble.

“Murphy, it’s you!” –Officer Lewis

Officer Lewis: I asked him his name. He didn’t know.
Bob Morton: Oh, great. Let me make it real clear to you. He doesn’t have a name. He’s got a program. He’s product. Is that clear?

“I dunno, I dunno, maybe I’m just not making myself clear. I don’t want to fuck with you, Sal, but I’ve got the connections, I’ve got the sales organization, I got the muscle to shove enough of this factory so far up your stupid wop ass, that you’ll shit snow for a year!” –Clarence

“What’s the matter, officer? I’ll tell you what’s the matter. It’s a little insurance policy called ‘Directive 4’, my contribution to your very psychological profile. Any attempt to arrest a senior officer of OCP results in shutdown. What did you think? That you were an ordinary police officer? You’re our product. And we can’t very well have our products turning against us, can we?” –Dick Jones, when ‘Directive 4’ interferes with RoboCop’s attempt to arrest him

“It’s a free society – except there ain’t nothin’ free, because there’s no guarantees, you know? You’re on your own. It’s the law of the jungle. Hoo-hoo.” –Keva Rosenberg, Unemployed Person

“Nukem. Get them before they get you. Another quality home game from Butler Brothers.” –Commercial Voice-Over

Dick Jones: That thing is still alive.
Clarence Boddicker: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Dick Jones: The police officer who arrested you, the one you spilled your guts to.
Clarence Boddicker: Hey, take a look at my face, Dick! He was trying to kill me!
Dick Jones: He’s a cyborg, you idiot! He recorded every word you said! His memories are admissable as evidence! You involved me! You’re gonna have to kill it.
Clarence Boddicker: Well, listen, chief…your company built the fucking thing! Now I gotta deal with it?! I don’t have time for this bullshit! [heads for the door]
Dick Jones: Suit yourself, Clarence. But Delta City begins construction in two months. That’s two million workers living in trailers. That means drugs. Gambling. Prostitution. [Boddicker stops, backtracks into the room] Virgin territory for the man who knows how to open up new markets. One man could control it all, Clarence.
Clarence Boddicker: Well, I guess we’re gonna be friends after all… Richard. [Jones tosses Boddicker RoboCop’s tracker.]
Dick Jones: Destroy it.
Clarence Boddicker: Gonna need some major firepower. You got access to military weaponry?
Dick Jones: We practically are the military.

“It’s back. Big is back, because bigger is better. 6000 SUX – an American tradition!” –Commercial Voiceover [caption on screen says “An American Tradition. 8.2 MPG”]

“You are illegally parked on private property. You have twenty seconds to move your vehicle.” –ED-209, seeing RoboCop drive up to the OCP entrance

[last lines] Old Man: [to RoboCop] Nice shootin’, son. What’s your name?
RoboCop: [stops and turns around; to Old Man] Murphy. [warmly smiles and walks out]

The sardonic take on the media is apparent right from the beginning, with TV newscasters played by none other than Mario Machado and Leeza Gibbons (she having been on such programs as Entertainment Tonight) discussing the shooting of Officer Frank Frederickson, the policeman Murphy (Weller) is replacing in the local Detroit police force. An example of media phoniness is seen when newscaster Casey Wong (Machado) roots for Frederickson to recover from his injuries.

The police are having such difficulties dealing with the rampant crime in Detroit–a problem exacerbated by the plans of megacorporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to privatize the force–that one angry cop suggests going on strike.

As I’ve argued in other posts, I see the mafia, as well as police–and most obviously, corporations like OCP–as representing differing facets of capitalism: the crime gang headed by Clarence Boddicker (Smith) symbolizes the “free market” version; and the cops are, apart from their role as capitalists’ bodyguards, representative of a more government-regulated version of capitalism. How the mafia, cops, and corporations intermingle is made blatantly clear in the movie.

In fact, when Murphy and Lewis (Allen) have chased Clarence’s gang into an abandoned steel mill (the gang’s hideout), we hear Emil (played by Paul McCrane) chatting with Dougy about “free enterprise,” in the form of stealing in order to finance their cocaine business. Capitalism in general is about stealing (the fruits of worker labour in the form of surplus value) in order to accumulate capital.

Capitalists don’t screw over only their workers, though. They also step on each other in the brutal, dog-eat-dog world of competition. As Marx said, “One capitalist always strikes down many others.” (Marx, page 929) We see examples of this striking down in the rivalry between Dick Jones (Cox) and Bob Morton (Ferrer) over who has made the superior mechanical cop.

Clarence’s gang doesn’t just kill Murphy: they mutilate his body in swarms of bullets. His hand is blown off by a shotgun, then his entire arm before Clarence finishes him off with a bullet in the head. Indeed, there’s quite a lot of mutilation in this film: consider Emil’s fate, his body deformed in a soaking in toxic waste before his body sprays into pieces after being hit by Clarence’s racing car.

Soon after, Leon (played by Ray Wise) is blown up from having been shot by Lewis with the Cobra Assault Cannon, a weapon Jones has supplied Clarence’s gang with to destroy RoboCop. Morton is also blown up by a grenade set off in his home by Clarence; and Jones’s body is riddled with bullets before he falls to his death at the end of the film. People don’t just die: bodies get destroyed.

This mutilation is symbolic of how capitalism alienates us not just from each other, but also from our own species-essence. This is precisely what Murphy’s transformation into a cyborg symbolizes. He, as a cop defending the capitalist class, is reduced to a machine. His quest for the remainder of the film is to reclaim his identity, something all tied up with this alienation from himself, as a cop who exists only as a product of a corporation.

Murphy’s transformation into a cyborg has been compared to the death and resurrection of Christ. His character in general has been so compared; Verhoeven himself has made this comparison, and one can’t so easily brush aside the interpretations of the movie-maker himself.

Still, I must respectfully disagree. Though RoboCop is the hero of the movie, there’s nothing particularly Christ-like, or even Christian, about him. He’s still a cop: (especially American) cops kill, but Jesus saves. A bullet shot clean through Murphy’s hand could have symbolized the stigmata; instead, his hand (and arm) are blown right off.

Even if one were to say RoboCop’s wading in ankle-deep water is symbolically like Christ’s walking on water, the comparison is superficial. RoboCop is wading in the water pointing his gun at Clarence, saying, “I’m not arresting you anymore,” implying he’s going to shoot and kill the mob boss in cold blood. Christ walked on water to help his frightened disciples on a boat in a storm at sea, to teach them about having faith. The meaning between the two moments couldn’t be farther apart.

We shouldn’t always take movie-makers’ interpretations of their films at face value. How they discuss meaning in their films can often have more to do with stimulating interest in the films and making money off them (speaking of capitalism) than in telling us their real intents. Saying RoboCop represents Christ can easily be seen as a marketing trick to get religiously-minded people to want to buy a ticket and see the film.

So instead of comparing Murphy’s metamorphosis into RoboCop with Christ’s resurrection (how does a mechanical body–not easily perishable–represent a “spiritual body“–utterly imperishable?), I would compare it to a rebirth, almost a reincarnation. Bob Morton is the father, and though he’s playing God in his creation of a part-human, part robot policeman, the ruthless capitalist is no Holy Father; Tyler (played by Sage Parker), the female head of the team of scientists who make RoboCop can be seen as his new mother–she even kisses her baby at a New Year’s Day party, her red lipstick supposedly meant to arouse Oedipal feelings in her ‘son.’

Psychologically, RoboCop can thus be seen as a baby…not the ‘babies’ I characterized Carrie and Hannah as, with their waif-like innocence, naïveté, and vulnerability, of course, but in the sense that, newborn, he has no more than fragments of memories of his former life. He has no sense of self, or a meaningful sense of his past; it’s as if he were born yesterday. He even eats baby food.

Morton, as RoboCop’s ‘father,’ wants total prosthesis (i.e., all mechanical limbs) for his new product, so he insists on amputating Murphy’s one good arm. This amputation is a symbolic castration, yet another symbolic example of the mutilation and disempowerment inherent in capitalism.

Along with this, Morton goes over RoboCop’s Prime Directives: serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. These directives represent the Name of the Father: symbolically castrated RoboCop is being introduced by his ‘father’ into the law and customs of society, though his ability to connect with others, and therefore to know himself, has been severely compromised.

How has this stifling of his sense of self and others happened? Consider the screen that has been fitted in front of his eyes. That screen is symbolically like a filter, blocking out the human connection felt between two faces–i.e., two pairs of naked eyes–looking at each other, empathically mirroring each other. It’s another symbolic manifestation of alienation.

His screen is similar to the TV screens people feel themselves glued to, addicted to, watching the news, commercials, or the TV show funnyman who’d “buy that for a dollar!” It’s similar to our experience today on social media, staring at phone screens instead of looking at each other, person to person, in real life.

In the film, we often see characters breaking the fourth wall and looking at us, who see them from RoboCop’s point of view, through that screen, which has an imperfect resolution like that of the TV screen showing Casey Wong and Jess Perkins (Gibbons), with people communicating insincerely and manipulatively.

Since I compare RoboCop to a psychological baby, I find it apt to compare the screen before his eyes to Wilfred Bion‘s concept of a beta screen. Normally, raw sensory data (beta elements, which tend to be agitating) that we receive from the outside world are taken in and processed in our minds (through alpha function) and turned into alpha elements (emotional experiences now made tolerable and usable as thoughts, dreams, etc.). Some beta elements remain intolerable and are never processed; they’re either projected onto other people, or they accumulate on the periphery of our minds in the form of a beta screen. Excessive accumulations of them can result in psychosis.

RoboCop–someone more machine than man, and who is relegated to the form of a mere product working for a mega-corporation (his ‘father,’ Morton, tells Lewis he has no name–he’s a product)–is no longer able to relate to people normally; so he cannot exchange emotional experiences with them in the form of processing beta elements and turning them into alpha elements, a processing that is the basis for growth in knowledge (Bion’s K) and learning from experience. (See here for a thorough explanation of Bion’s and other psychoanalytic concepts.)

These deficiencies of Murphy’s are far from absolute, though. Those fragments of memories still loom in his unconscious mind, for they have already been processed as alpha elements, and so they can be used in dreams. RoboCop has a dream about having been killed by Clarence’s gang; he wakes up, and he’s determined to find his killers. He’s no longer working under OCP’s orders, and this new willfulness of his makes his creators nervous.

Lewis stops RoboCop as he’s leaving the police station, for she knows who he originally was. She stands before him, looks him in the face–attempting genuine human contact and empathic mirroring–and wants to tell him his name is Murphy. With that screen–his symbolic beta screen–before his eyes, though, he can’t process the emotional experience properly. He can only drone, “How can I help you, Officer Lewis?” in the monotone voice of an automaton. He will, however, remember the name ‘Murphy,’ since his programming records everything, as if on tape, so he’ll eventually learn who he was.

Here’s a paradox about RoboCop: he has few human memories, just scattered fragments (he later tells Lewis that he can feel the memories of his wife and son, but he can’t remember them); any new experience, though, is literally videotaped through his programming, and is ‘remembered’ in minute detail.

When learning the names of all the members of Clarence’s gang, RoboCop finds Murphy’s file, is shocked to see the word “deceased” shown on it, and learns of his old home address. He finds the house, which is now up for sale, since his wife and son, understanding that he’s dead, have left. Fragments of memories of them flash in his mind as he looks about the house, in which a TV shows a real estate agent advertising the virtues of the house.

The pain of realizing what he has lost drives RoboCop to punch the TV screen. Screens divide people from each other; capitalism causes mutual alienation.

Meanwhile, Jones wants revenge on Morton for making him lose face with the success of RoboCop over the disastrous failure of ED-209. Morton’s murder reveals Jones’s business relationship with Clarence. This in turn symbolizes certain paradoxes about capitalism: one capitalist may strike down another, but that same capitalist may, at other times, also cooperate with a third capitalist if doing so is in his interests.

Right-wing libertarians like to fantasize that “free market” capitalism, devoid of government influence, is a purified version that will never result in corruption. This is nonsense, and is a grotesque oversimplification of the problem. Capitalism, in any form, cannot exist without at least some state intervention, and the corporatocracy (what libertarians label with the misnomer “corporatism“) that the “free market” is supposed to prevent is an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism.

In capitalism, the 99% don’t count: only the 1% do. This means not only don’t workers count, but small businesses don’t, either. As for the 1% of super successful businesses, we see in them the concentration and centralization of capital; the state doesn’t cause this to happen–the capitalists are doing it all themselves. The only role the state plays is in protecting the interests of the ruling class, and this relationship between the state and capital is what we see in RoboCop.

Corporations, the state, and the market are all intertwined; there’s no separating them from each other. We see this intertwining in OCP, the police department, and Clarence’s gang. Because Clarence has connections with Jones and OCP, he feels free to demand the cocaine he buys from Sal and his mafia business for a lower price. One capitalist strikes down another.

Upon arresting Clarence, RoboCop learns of his connections with Jones. But when he goes to arrest Jones, RoboCop learns of a new, fourth primary directive: he cannot arrest a senior officer of OCP. Here we see the main point of having police–they serve and protect the ruling class. Yes, they catch criminals, but it’s always been about protecting private property; this is a historic fact. This is why the criminal activity of, for example, Wall Street bankers is rarely if ever punished.

Jones tries to have RoboCop destroyed, first by an improved ED-209, then by his police force, and finally by Clarence and his gang. When Delta City is set up, a gentrification project pushing the poor out and getting the rich to buy up the homes, Jones motivates Clarence to kill RoboCop by proposing that the crime boss run the poor areas, making it possible for him “to open up new markets” in prostitution, drugs, gambling, etc. Here we see the mafia again as a metaphor for capitalists.

Lewis and a damaged RoboCop hide out in the abandoned steel mill. He removes his helmet and visor, revealing Murphy’s face again, and he can see through his own eyes. He then sees a reflection of his face. Since, as I’ve argued above, RoboCop is like a baby psychologically, his seeing himself is like Lacan‘s notion of the mirror stage, helping him establish a sense of self. Though the ego is ultimately an illusion, RoboCop didn’t even have a sense of that before. He is now becoming reacquainted with his humanity and identity.

Now, when Clarence’s gang comes to fight him, RoboCop isn’t going to arrest them because of a computer program: he wants to kill them in revenge for having destroyed his life. This is how he isn’t symbolic of Christ.

When he arrives at the OCP building, RoboCop must again face ED-209, who tells him he’s trespassing on private property; once again we see the real purpose of the police. Fortunately, Murphy is several cuts above mere protectors of private property, so he destroys ED with one of Clarence’s Cobra Assault Cannons.

When RoboCop presents an incriminating video-recording of Jones confessing to the killing of Morton, Jones puts a gun to the head of The Old Man (O’Herlihy) and attempts to take him as a hostage. When The Old Man fires Jones and elbows him in the gut to get free of him, that fourth directive no longer applies to Jones, so RoboCop is free to shoot him.

The contrast between ruthless Jones (the bad capitalist) and the “sweet Old Man” (the ‘good capitalist’) is a reflection of bourgeois liberal Hollywood’s attitude toward capitalism, and this point is my one bone of contention with the movie. In liberals’ opinion, capitalism just needs to be reformed, its excesses kept in check by the state. In my opinion, capitalism must be completely annihilated; there is no reconciling of the market with socialism. Weaning ourselves of the market may take time, eliminating it bit by bit, but it must be done away with, not just extensively regulated.

The difference between the liberal version of capitalism and the hard right-wing version is seen in how The Old Man wants to build Delta City ‘to give back’ to the people; whereas for Jones, Delta City is a gentrification project. That the ‘kinder, gentler capitalism’ of The Old Man is a sham is made clear when his response to malfunctioning ED-209 is to be upset essentially about the loss of millions of dollars, the brutal, bloody killing of Kinney having caused a minimal emotional reaction in him.

On the other hand, Morton’s “contingency” plan, RoboCop, brings a smile to The Old Man’s face, since it may save him that loss of fifty million dollars in interest payments. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned a CEO may be: the preoccupation with dollars and cents is inherent in the system, no matter how much ‘state planning’ is added to mitigate the deleterious effects of capitalism.

This is why, though RoboCop is several cuts above the average cop in terms of doing the right thing, as a protector of the interests of the ruling class, he is still far from being a Christ figure. Police who don’t protect the capitalist class would be more along the lines of the militsiya and the Voluntary People’s Druzhina, that is to say, armed militias, as well as an army of the people. No, these Soviet police were no saints, but they were much better than the kind that keep taking the life and breath out of people because of the colour of their skin.

Oh, and incidentally, a hypothetical Canadian communist RoboCop would not be Jesus, but Murphy.

My Body Horror Short Story, ‘Blue,’ Published in the July Issue of the Terror Tract E-zine

I originally published ‘Blue’ here on my blog, but now that it’s appearing in the July issue of the Terror Tract e-zine (check the table of contents to see “Blue” listed there), I’ve returned my story as published here to ‘draft’ status.

My story is about a blue, gelatinous substance from outer space landing on a tree in a park not too far away from the home of the protagonist, who gets a splattering of the blue on his skin. Over time, the blue takes over more and more of his body.

Apart from my short story, the July e-zine also has stories from such writers as Jack Rollins and John Barackman, as well as Jim Merwin, Jay Seate, Alfred Gremsly, Isaac Cooper, Kelly Evans, Ryan Woods, Becky Narron, Terry Miller, Matt Scott, and Anthony D Redden. There’s also an interview with Stefan Lear.

Please go out and get a copy of the e-zine. If you like horror fiction, you’ll love Terror Tract! 🙂

Rewriting Your Life Story

Because of the trauma we suffer as victims of narcissistic and emotional abuse, we tend to ruminate about our past long after the period of abuse is over. The past can dominate our lives, through such things as intrusive thoughts, so much that it’s as if the painful period was our life in its entirety.

How can we break free from the past? There are many methods that can help, such as meditation, putting our trauma into words, using self-hypnosis to treat the past as something no longer relevant to our present lives, or using auto-hypnosis to imagine a new, idealized family to replace, in our minds, the abusive family we grew up with.

Another method, suggested by Michele Lee Nieves in this video, is to rewrite one’s life story. Instead of rehashing the same old pain from before, now that we’re out of the abusive relationship, we imagine a new, positive end to our life story to give us a sense of hope and purpose in our new lives.

Photo by Lum3n on Pexels.com

To give an example, I’ll rewrite my own life story here and now. I’m going to parallel it with many points in the legendary life of the Buddha: this is not meant to imply that I’m in any way even remotely comparable to him in the saintly or enlightened sense (I’m quite the opposite, actually, and I don’t mean that in the dialectical sense!), but rather that both life narratives chart a course from the realization of suffering to a striving to end that suffering. I find such correspondences to be inspiring in my quest to be healed. Let’s begin:

I was born into a petite bourgeois, middle-class family who fancied themselves very capable. My parents imagined themselves to be the ultimate authorities of their world, like a king and queen.

My mother, as I’ve explained many times in a number of posts, was a habitual liar, gaslighting, triangulating, and doing smear campaigns against me and my cousins to the rest of the family. My elder siblings, her flying monkeys, helped her bully and emotionally abuse me. Because of her many needless fabrications, I can see her as the very personification of illusion, the māyā, or powerful, illusory magic, as it were, that addles the mind, deceives us, and thus causes suffering.

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It was as though she’d died shortly after I was born, for I afterwards felt little affection from her, just the illusion of maternal care masking an agenda to keep me in her control. I was a sensitive child, and the rest of the family had little patience for me. My father wanted me to get a high-paying job in something like business: I had no interest whatsoever in such things.

When I was a young man, I finally ventured out into the world and learned what it was really like, as opposed to the world my family had hoped to keep me inside, with superficially pleasant things to keep me distracted from the truth. A number of things I saw outside made me understand the illusions of home.

I realized that my mother, the personification of all those illusions, was getting old. Her ideas about me were old and outmoded, having no more usefulness in my life. In fact, they’d never been useful.

I realized that she, as that personification of māyā, was a sick woman. Sick with breast cancer, but more importantly, sick with some form of pathological narcissism.

Finally, she died, not only physically, but also as any kind of guide in my life. In fact, she’d never been a real guide. As I said above, it was as if she’d died only about a week after my birth.

A fourth realization came after her death, though: I learned of people who overcame their trauma, and who were able to live their lives in peace, in spite of their previous suffering. I thus decided that I wanted to achieve the same peace.

Photo by Oluremi Adebayo on Pexels.com

Naturally, there was resistance from the family, but I insisted on having my way. I renounced them as the toxic environment that they were and are. Even the inheritance money my mother left for me–a lot of money!— I gave up, insisting that the lawyers give my fourth in thirds to my older brothers and sister.

I gave the money up–an act most people would consider foolish, of course–because I felt it would be hypocritical of me to feel such animosity towards my mother on the one hand, and yet say, “Oh, but gimme-gimme the money!” on the other. I had to be consistent with my principles: if I was to renounce the family, I had to renounce everything, even sacrificing the good parts.

Also, giving up the money was my way of telling the family that my motives are far from always self-centred, an attribute they used to justify their bullying and demeaning of me. If all there was to me was selfishness, why wouldn’t I just take the money? I had a perfect legal right to it, and I could still say that Mom’s giving it to me came nowhere close to compensating for all the injuries she’d done to me. Still, I gave it up…because contrary to what the family believes about me, not everything in me is about getting more and more for myself.

Finally, I gave up the money because I didn’t want to feel in any way obligated to have anything to do with them anymore. I didn’t want to be beholden to them at all.

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My next move was to learn everything I could about the root causes of the abuse I’d suffered (narcissistic mothers), and about how to heal myself. I learned a lot of useful things, but I also turned a few bad corners (e.g. spending a lot of money on an online course that gave me only minimal help; also, sharing many of my blog posts on these topics on Facebook pages with unappreciative members…a.k.a. haters). I’ve found myself more inclined to find the answers I need on my own.

I’ve also found meditation helpful, though temptations distract me. I’ve been assailed by doubts about whether I correctly interpreted the meaning of what happened to me as a child; this is known as second-guessing. The guilt-tripping and shaming that that toxic family subjected me to, as well as all of their gaslighting, was the basis of my second-guessing. Overall, however, I’ve managed not to cave into these doubts.

Other temptations have not been so easy to resist. Feelings of anger towards my former abusers, sometimes in the form of intrusive thoughts, distracts me from focusing on what I call the Three Unities (those of Space, Time, and Action) that give me soothing peace if I concentrate hard enough. Other times, it’s lustful desires that break my concentration. Usually, though, it’s simply itchiness. In the long run, I manage to overcome these distractions.

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Now, outside of the healing power of meditation, I nonetheless struggle with my emotional pain, and it causes me to manifest self-destructiveness in the forms of sleeplessness, poor nutrition, and a generally unhealthy, irritable mood. Add to all of this my C-PTSD tendency to catastrophize any problem, and I can pull myself down very low.

Thankfully, I have the love of my wife, who–despite how difficult she finds it to be patient with a man as irritable as I am–makes sure I get a reasonable amount of fruit in my diet, among other healthy foods. She is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Since her having helped me through my worst emotional period, just following my mother’s death and my estrangement from the family, I have shown more resolve in practicing meditation and in formulating a philosophy to help me heal. When it comes to the roots of narcissistic abuse, I’ve come to understand certain basic truths:

  1. While the experience of a kind of, so to speak, psychic mutilation is common and universal, some have it far worse than others.
  2. This psychic mutilation is a lack that gives rise to desire, which in turn causes more suffering; and those whose psychic mutilation is more severe (as among those with NPD or other Cluster B personality disorders), causing in them even greater desire, those people in turn cause ever more suffering.
  3. This suffering and psychic mutilation can be healed.
  4. It can be healed through the following: having the right understanding of the above three truths; making a firm decision to heal; speaking with kind, rather than violent, words (to oneself as well as to others); acting with kindness and selflessness to others; writing, with the most vividly descriptive of words, about all of one’s pain; making an effort to resist the old, painful habits, while striving also to revive and sustain new and healthy habits; always being mindful and remembering to strive for the goal of healing; and meditating with the most focused of concentration.
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In the process of moving towards this goal of healing, we must remember to strive with diligence, but also with moderation. We mustn’t expect too much of ourselves too soon, and we mustn’t beat ourselves over the head with shame when we inevitably fail from time to time. At the same time, we mustn’t be lazy or complacent, lest we backslide into our previous, mutilated emotional state.

One thing to remember is that the ego is an illusion, the narcissistic looking at oneself in the mirror or pond reflection, a defence against psychic mutilation. This fake ego, taken to extremes, leads to pathological narcissistic states. We aren’t permanent entities unto ourselves; there is just the infinite ocean of the universe, and we are all just drops of water in it.

As difficult as this all will be to understand and achieve, we can take refuge in the notion of our universal potential to be at one with the peaceful, oceanic state of what I call the Unity of Space, what Hindus call that identity of Atman with Brahman. We can also take refuge in all the teachings we have learned from, these written here above and those from outside sources. Finally, we can take refuge in the community and empathy of fellow sufferers, fellow victims of narcissistic and emotional abuse (whether online or in one’s immediate physical vicinity); and we can take refuge in the internalized parental system as discussed here.

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In life, I will continue to face difficult people, and will face challenges; there is no escape from problems, but if I face those difficulties with the philosophical ideas laid out here, I should be able to cope reasonably well. Happiness doesn’t consist in an absence of problems; it consists in the ability to deal with them.

Along with problems, though, life will sometimes give us blessings. We should always be grateful for every good thing that comes our way, and never take blessings for granted. Besides, gratitude, felt regularly, increases happiness.

I have a lot to be grateful for, especially during the past twenty-four years. Instead of being the absurdly wrong things the family claimed I would be (My mother wondered in her lies if I, an ‘autistic‘ child of about nine or ten, would ever even make a good garbageman; my bully-brother F. growled that I’d be “a loser for the rest of my life” back when I was a teen), instead of me being any of that nonsense, I have become a successful English teacher, one who not only teaches the language, but also aspects of Western culture, as well as political concepts.

I have a wonderful wife whom I love dearly, one who also suffers my ill temper with far more patience than I deserve. Now, if I can fully heal from my early traumas, she’ll see how much of a good man I can be. My wish for her to see the very best version of myself should be plentiful a motive in me to strive hard for that healing. This success would give a much-needed, and much-deserved, happy ending to so sadly-begun a life.

************

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As you can see, Dear Reader, I started my narrative with the sad, inauspicious beginnings associated with the family’s narcissistic abuse. Then I moved into a gradual transformation of the bad beginnings, through my reflections on all that was wrong, into a growing sense of knowledge of myself and the world surrounding me. I ended on a happy, encouraging note, one that would inspire me to continue down the good path.

When you rewrite your life story, my suggestion is to write in a similarly transformative narrative arc. Good luck with it! 🙂

Another Poem by Clelia Albano

My Facebook friend, poet Clelia Albano, whose other work I have written about, has recently written a poem inspired by the work of poet Stefan Markovski, whose work, Promised Land, can be found here (and which has also been raved about by Albano in the comments).

Here is the text (again, I’m putting it in italics to distinguish it from my own writing):

Inspired by Stefan Markovski

And the poet descends down
into the chthonic realm
to meet his
Eurydice – inspiration –
and as he finds the words by extracting them
from the magmatic earth
surrounded by shadows,
like a miner he breathes dust.
Chewed and kneaded with
his divine saliva,
Orpheus brings them back to light
after he had madly turned his
head back for looking at the source
of what he creates, and he
embeds them in his chant and caresses them
with his fingers as he would caress
his beloved whose lament “heu”
feeds his blood.

And now, for my analysis.

In her tribute to Markovski, she compares his search for poetic inspiration to Orpheus in his search to rescue his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld. Albano is imagining Orpheus’ lover to be his Muse, just as Markovski is, in turn, Albano’s male Muse.

The search for poetic inspiration is a painful one: it doesn’t just come to the writer as a fluke. The writer must work hard at his or her craft, and in the process of doing this work, then the ideas come. The Muse helps those who help themselves.

Apart from the pain Orpheus feels in his desperate yearning to get his Eurydice back–understood here as symbolic of the poet’s painful search to retrieve inspiration–we see in Albano’s poem a comparison of the poet to a miner: “he finds the words by extracting them/from the magmatic earth/surrounded by shadows,/like a miner he breathes dust.”

One “descends down/into the chthonic realm.” On first glance, the word down seems superfluous, but when one considers the additional meaning for down, that is, ‘sad,’ we can see its use as justified. Also, “chthonic” adds to the dark sense of dread of being in the Underworld (“magmatic earth/surrounded by shadows”), since searching for inspiration can be a kind of Hell for a poet.

There is a vivid sense of the unpleasantness of the endeavour to find inspiration in how Albano says “like a miner he breathes dust./Chewed and kneaded with his divine saliva.” The use of the word dust, by the way, is also noted in her review of Markovski’s book of poems (link above). In it, she says, “his poems are populated by angels, wings, the Moon and the Sun, rain, wind, dust, ashes, powder, war and peace.” (My emphasis) So we see here how she was inspired by his writing to the point of using his imagery in her own poem, using it to express the discomfort of extracting that very inspiration. (I love, by the way, the melodious assonance in “divine saliva.”)

The poet “brings…back to light” his (or her) sources of inspiration, though in his madness he looks back at his Muse, Eurydice, dooming her to return to Hell. The pain in never getting that coveted inspiration back is the cross the poet must always bear.

He caresses those pieces of inspiration as an expression of the love he feels for them. That caressing is meant to soothe the pain of his doomed love, whose heu “feeds his blood.” This Latin expression of lament is an allusion to Book IV of Virgil‘s Georgics (line 498), in which Eurydice tells Orpheus of how his mad looking back at her has doomed her, and their love.

I’m sure all writers out there (me included, of course) can relate to Albano’s painful search for the right words to express one’s inner feelings. The excess of pain that Markovski has felt in producing his fine poetry is something she has noted and appreciated…and fortunately for us, her readers, been inspired by.

Bombs

The war machine

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b
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d
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on the cities of the innocent.
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Moms’ eyes

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w
n

their despairing, reddened cheeks.
*****************************************************

Sons’ and daughters’ bodies

f
a
l
l

d
o
w
n

d
e
a
d

to the stony ground.
*****************************************************

Civilizations’ pillars

b
r
e
a
k

a
n
d

c
r
u
m
b
l
e
,

leaving pebbles on the earth.
**************************************************

Proud, towering trees

t
o
p
p
l
e

o
v
e
r
,

l
y
i
n
g

in beds of smokey black.
****************************************************

When will the fighter jets

b
e

b
r
o
u
g
h
t

d
o
w
n
,

leaving the earth to grow in peace?
*******************************************************

Analysis of ‘True Romance’

True Romance is a 1993 romantic crime thriller written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. It stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, and has an ensemble cast with Dennis Hopper, Michael Rapaport, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Saul Rubinek, James Gandolfini, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Bronson Pinchot, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Though the film got positive reviews for its dialogue and characters, it did poorly at the box office. Still, its positive critical reception helped it gain a cult following, and now it’s considered one of Scott’s best films, as well as one of the best American films of the 1990s.

Here are some quotes:

“I had to come all the way from the highways and byways of Tallahassee, Florida to Motor City, Detroit to find my true love. If you gave me a million years to ponder, I would never have guessed that true romance and Detroit would ever go together. And to this day, the events that followed all seem like a distant dream. But the dream was real and was to change our lives forever. I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. And he’d say, ‘That’s the way it goes, but don’t forget, it goes the other way too.’ That’s the way romance is. Usually, that’s the way it goes. But every once in awhile, it goes the other way too.” –Alabama, voiceover

“In Jailhouse Rock he was everything rockabilly’s about. I mean, he is rockabilly. Mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he couldn’t give a fuck about nothing except rockin’ and rollin’, living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse.” –Clarence, on Elvis

“I always said, if I had to fuck a guy… I mean had to, if my life depended on it… I’d fuck Elvis.” –Clarence

“Please shut up! I’m trying to come clean, okay? I’ve been a call-girl for exactly four days and you’re my third customer. I want you to know that I’m not damaged goods. I’m not what they call Florida white trash. I’m a good person and when it comes to relationships, I’m one-hundred percent, I’m one hundred percent… monogamous.” –Alabama

“I eat the pussy, I eat the butt, I eat every motherfuckin’ thang.” –Big Don

Drexl Spivey: No thanks? What does that mean? Means you ate before you came down here? All full. Is that it? Naw, I don’t think so. I think you’re too scared to be eatin’. Now, see we’re sittin’ down here, ready to negotiate, and you’ve already given up your shit. I’m still a mystery to you. But I know exactly where your white ass is comin’ from. See, if I asked you if you wanted some dinner and you grabbed an egg roll and started to chow down, I’d say to myself, “This motherfucker’s carryin’ on like he ain’t got a care in the world. Who knows? Maybe he don’t. Maybe this fool’s such a bad motherfucker, he don’t got to worry about nothin’, he just sit down, eat my Chinese, watch my TV.” See? You ain’t even sat down yet. On that TV there, since you been in the room, is a woman with her breasteses hangin’ out, and you ain’t even bothered to look. You just been clockin’ me. Now, I know I’m pretty, but I ain’t as pretty as a couple of titties.
Clarence Worley: I’m not eatin’ ’cause I’m not hungry. I’m not sittin’ ’cause I’m not stayin’. I’m not lookin’ at the movie ’cause I saw it seven years ago. It’s “The Mack” with Max Julien, Carol Speed, and Richard Pryor. I’m not scared of you. I just don’t like you. In that envelope is some payoff money. Alabama’s moving on to some greener pastures. We’re not negotiatin’. I don’t like to barter. I don’t like to dicker. I never have fun in Tijuana. That price is non-negotiable. What’s in that envelope is for my peace of mind. My peace of mind is worth that much. Not one penny more, not one penny more.

Clifford: You know, I read a lot. Especially about things in, uh, about history. I find that shit fascinating. Here’s a fact, I don’t know whether you know or not, Sicilians … were spawned by niggers.
Coccotti: Come again? [laughs]
Clifford: It’s a fact. You see, Sicilians have black blood pumpin’ through their hearts. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you see, the Moors conquered Sicily. And the Moors are niggers.
Coccotti: Yes…
Clifford: So you see, way back then, uh, Sicilians were like, uh, wops from Northern Italy. Ah, they all had blonde hair and blue eyes, but, uh, well, then the Moors moved in there, and uh, well, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin’ with Sicilian women, huh? That they changed the whole bloodline forever. That’s why blonde hair and blue eyes became black hair and dark skin. You know, it’s absolutely amazing to me to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, that, uh, that Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. Now this…[Coccotti laughs]
Clifford: No, I’m, no, I’m quoting… history. It’s written. It’s a fact, it’s written.
Coccotti: [laughing] I love this guy. This guy.
Clifford: Your ancestors are niggers. Uh-huh. Hey. Yeah. And, and your great-great-great-great grandmother fucked a nigger, ho, ho, yeah, and she had a half-nigger kid… now, if that’s a fact, tell me, am I lying? ‘Cause you, you’re part eggplant. [All laughing]

“Do I look like a beautiful blond with big tits and an ass that tastes like French vanilla ice-cream?” –Clarence, to Elliot Blitzer

“Now the first time you kill somebody, that’s the hardest. I don’t give a shit if you’re fuckin’ Wyatt Earp or Jack the Ripper. Remember that guy in Texas? The guy up in that fuckin’ tower that killed all them people? I’ll bet you green money that first little black dot he took a bead on, that was the bitch of the bunch. First one is tough, no fuckin’ foolin’. The second one… the second one ain’t no fuckin’ Mardi Gras either, but it’s better than the first one ’cause you still feel the same thing, y’know… except it’s more diluted, y’know it’s… it’s better. I threw up on the first one, you believe that? Then the third one… the third one is easy, you level right off. It’s no problem. Now… shit… now I do it just to watch their fuckin’ expression change.” –Virgil, to Alabama after beating her

“If there’s one thing this last week has taught me, it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.” –Clarence

Cody Nicholson: [to Elliot] You just made it big time.
Nicky Dimes: You’re no longer an extra…
Cody Nicholson: …or a bit player…
Nicky Dimes: …or a supporting actor…
Cody Nicholson: …you’re a fucking star. You are a fucking star. And you are going to be playing your one-man show for the next two fucking years for a captive audience. And listen to this, you get out in a few years and meet some old lady, get married, and you’ll be so understanding to your wife’s needs because you’ll know what it feels like to be a woman.
Nicky Dimes: Of course, you’ll only want to fuck her in the ass because that pussy wont be tight enough anymore.
Cody Nicholson: Good one detective, right you fucking faggot?

While the title of the film is rather bland (inspired by the titles of such romance comics as True Stories of Romance), it nonetheless introduces a crucial theme running throughout the story: the dialectical tension between reality and fantasy, and how the latter is an attempt to escape from the former, but one which ultimately fails. I’m using the word romance here to mean more than just “love stories,” or “fiction about idealized or sentimental love,” but “a feeling or quality of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.” It’s an escape from the world of the true.

During the credits, we see visuals of a freezing cold winter in Detroit, with a group of homeless black men huddling around a fire. This is the kind of harsh reality one wishes one could escape from, for example, running away to sunny Los Angeles; but even in a warm, pleasant California environment, harsh reality inevitably follows.

That’s the way it goes, but don’t forget, it goes the other way, too.

Clarence Worley (Slater) begins the movie by chatting (with a woman in a bar he hopes to take to the movies for his birthday) about his idol, Elvis. In fact, Elvis is such a hero to him that he sometimes has conversations in his head with the King as his, as it were, imaginary friend and mentor (played by Kilmer). Clarence speaks of Elvis in Jailhouse Rock as “rockin’ and rollin’, living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse.”

(Actually, Elvis’s character, Vince Everett, doesn’t die at the end of Jailhouse Rock. What’s more, anyone who knows about the real Elvis knows that he, overweight, did anything but die leaving a good-looking corpse. He was on the toilet, then fell off and lay on the floor in his own vomit. The King fell off the throne and died, but I digress…)

We see in these representations of Elvis the stark contrast between what’s true and what’s romance. (Speaking of romance, Clarence even has suppressed homosexual feelings about Elvis.) Capitalism sells us all kinds of commodities–in the forms of rock stars, movies, prostitutes, comic books, drugs, etc.–as a way to escape into a world of fantasy…but reality always catches up to us in the end.

The girl Clarence asks out to the movies isn’t interested in seeing a triple feature of Sonny Chiba martial arts movies, so he goes alone; but Alabama (Arquette), a beautiful call girl whom Clarence’s boss has hired so he can get laid on his birthday, comes to the theatre and sits with him. ‘Romance’ has returned.

With her, Clarence spends what he feels is the best time he’s ever had with a woman. She is giving him his fantasy: not just in bed, but also in (often) pretending to have the same interests that he has (liking The Partridge Family is part of the act, and I doubt that she’s anywhere near as interested in the first Spider Man comic as he is, either.)

His romance (i.e., of the perfect, beautiful girl), however, is a true nightmare for her. Even though (or especially because) she likes him, she feels the shame of being forced into prostitution by Drexl Spivey (Oldman). She is a human commodity being sold for Drexl’s profit; small wonder she insists on being called a “call girl” instead of a “whore.”

The enjoyment Clarence has had with her has grown into a full-blown urge to rescue her from her life of exploitation. We go back from the true harshness of the capitalist exploitation of women to the romance of saving her from that life; she even says that his killing of Drexl is “so romantic.”

In “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men,” Freud describes how a man may fall in love with, and thus wish to rescue, a prostitute; the very idea that other men have had her adds to his excitement because in his unconscious he is reminded of his Oedipal feelings for his mother, who he must accept is in a sexual relationship with his father. Clarence’s haunting wish to kill Drexl–even though he can easily just forget about the pimp, since Alabama is safe in Clarence’s home–can be seen as an unconscious transference from Clarence’s father to the pimp.

This transference would make Drexl into a mental representation, for Clarence, of the ‘bad father.’ Clarence obsesses in a fury about killing the pimp. When he confronts Drexl–who upon learning that Alabama is now Clarence’s wife, says this makes the two men “practically related”–Clarence is infuriated all the more. His killing of Drexl (part of the transferred Oedipal fantasy), which upsets his real, estranged father, Clifford (Hopper), causes more psychological conflict for Clarence; but when his father understands just what an awful man Drexl was, and he can accept his son’s killing of him, Clifford can now be fully the ‘good father.’ Clarence’s mentor, ‘Elvis,’ incidentally can be seen as a transferred mental representation of the ‘good father,’ one of the many romantic illusions in Clarence’s mind.

Drexl himself lives in a world of romantic illusions. A ‘wigger,’ he claims that his mother was Apache (Tarantino, pages 51, 65). Big Don (Jackson) and Floyd, two men who are actually black, and whom Drexl will kill and steal a suitcase of cocaine from, chat with Drexl, debating over whether or not it’s manly to perform cunnilingus. Floyd refuses to accept the modern truth that if a man wants to get oral, he should be willing to give oral, too. An extended version of the scene was filmed; the lines can be found on pages 7-11 of Tarantino’s original screenplay.

Drexl imitates blacks, yet he bosses them around (i.e., Marty), and he kills them (Floyd and Big Don). This is like when such musicians as Elvis (arguably) and Led Zeppelin steal the music of black bluesmen and make millions off of it. The white person who appropriates the cultures of people of colour; the man who expects women to service him without him needing to reciprocate–these people are in a fantasy world of romance. They need to be brought back into the world of the true.

Clarence, after killing Drexl, accidentally takes the suitcase of cocaine instead of one with Alabama’s clothes. With this valuable commodity, the two young lovers hope to prosper through a get-rich-quick scheme of selling it cheap to any Hollywood producers that Clarence’s friend, aspiring actor Dick Ritchie (Rapaport) might know.

Having commodities as exchange values in order to get rich is what capitalism is all about. The high that cocaine gives you, the temporary feeling of great confidence, is a romantic escape from the depressing truth of the world, a manic defence–against sadness–that’s in its own way as desirable as the pleasure gained from worshipping movie and rock stars, escaping into the fantasy world of comic books and Hollywood movies, and enjoying prostitutes. Capitalism sells fantasy, and denies us the truth. In True Romance, the suitcase of cocaine, as a coveted commodity, is the film’s MacGuffin.

The reality of capitalism, however, in its legal and illegal forms, is competition over who gets to have and sell the commodities. Hence, Drexl’s demand to “bring [Alabama’s] dumb ass back” to him and into his control. Hence also, the Italian-American mafia’s demand to get their stolen narcotics back.

As I’ve argued in a number of blog posts, the mafia as criminal businesses can easily symbolize capitalism and its exploitation of people. As with any Tarantino script, there is a preoccupation, on at least some level, with racism, which to a great extent is one of the many things capitalists use to divide the working class.

Apart from Tarantino’s fetishization of the word “nigger,” True Romance exploits a number of racial and ethnic stereotypes. The mafia is Italian-American, the blacks whom Drexl kills and steals cocaine from are ‘players‘ who objectify women, Asians are either into martial arts (Chiba) or are violently bloody Hong Kong mafia (i.e., the scene of a movie shown on TV with Chow Yun-fat and another man shooting each other), and the movie producer, Lee Donowitz (Rubinek), who buys the cocaine, is Jewish. [In Tarantino’s screenplay, Italian mafioso Lenny (played by Victor Argo) asks fellow mafioso Marvin, “What’s the Jew-boy’s name?” to which Marvin replies, “Donowitz, he said.” (Tarantino, page 118.) Indeed, Scott’s movie toned down a lot of Tarantino’s use of racial slurs.] Stereotypes are false beliefs about people, often used to flatter oneself at the expense of the stereotyped, and thus are an escape from what’s true.

Speaking of racism, Clarence’s father, Clifford, uses the Sicilian ethnic pride of the Italian-American mafia to get them to kill him quickly; this way, he won’t live to tell their boss, Vincent Coccotti (Walken) where Clarence and Alabama have gone with the cocaine. Saying that “Sicilians were spawned by niggers” is meant to enrage Coccotti into shooting Clifford in the head instead of slowly torturing him into betraying his son. (Actually, though, the notion that the Moors were sub-Saharan black Africans [an idea influenced by such things as modern productions of Othello?], rather than swarthy North African Berbers, is more romance than “history” from Clifford.)

Clarence contacts Dick by payphone, quoting the Big Bopper‘s “Hello, baby!” This is yet another example of Clarence’s preoccupation with popular culture as an escape from the real world. In his hope to sell the cocaine and make a ton of money, we see a contrast with the Big Bopper saying “I ain’t got no money, honey!” This is an ironic contrast between the romance of getting rich quickly and the truth of being poor, as spoken by a rock star, of all people.

Dick’s dreams of being “a successful actor” are similarly a romantic fantasy, especially given how awful his TJ Hooker audition is. Dick’s roommate, stoner Floyd (Pitt) smokes bowls to escape the truth of his wasted life. In fact, Floyd likes to imagine that he can beat up Virgil the mafia man (Gandolfini), so far detached is he from reality. Virgil, in turn, has a male chauvinism that blinds him to the truth that Alabama’s fight reaction, to the trauma of a beating, is strong enough to kill him.

In Tarantino’s original script, after having killed Virgil, Alabama is reciting a version of St. Francis’s prayer while hitting dead Virgil’s head with his phallic shotgun (Tarantino, page 91). The prayer seems self-indulgent at first, but it is another example of the theme of contrast between idealized fantasy (e.g., unconditional Christian love) vs. reality (the need to kill a killer).

Shotgun-wielding Alabama in this scene is the strong phallic woman, the phallus in turn being a symbol of power, the lack of which gives rise to desire. In the capitalist world of haves and have-nots, there is plenty of lack to be desired, and the romantic fantasy world of pleasure generated by the commodities of drugs, prostitutes, and pop culture (Hollywood movies, Animal Crackers, burgers, etc.) is an attempt to fill that lack.

Sissy Elliot Blitzer (Pinchot), who can’t even go on a roller coaster without throwing up, and who is bullied by Donowitz, tries to escape his pathetic life by enjoying some of the cocaine while driving fast with a girl named Kandi. The truth of the world soon comes to ruin his romance in the form of a policeman stopping him for speeding…then seeing cocaine all over his face.

Two cops modelled after Starsky and Hutch (Tarantino, page 95), respectively Officers Cody Nicholson (Sizemore) and Nicky Dimes (Penn), put the pressure on arrested Elliot, who breaks down and tells them about the drug deal between Clarence and Donowitz.

As I argued in my analysis of Reservoir Dogs, cops represent the extent to which the state intervenes in capitalism. As such, there’s a hazy distinction between them and the mafia as far as personifications of capitalism are concerned. They’re as inclined to murder and abuse others as any mafioso would. All that matters is getting ahead…realizing the American Dream…

Nicholson’s and Dimes’s interest in busting Donowitz et al for the drug deal isn’t in stopping ‘the bad guys’: it’s in furthering their careers. Ruining the lives of Alabama and Clarence (the latter being someone Nicholson twice admits to liking because he’s “wild” and “crazy”) makes no difference to these cops: they just want the collar, that is, credit for the bust.

When Clarence, Alabama, Dick, and Elliot are in the hotel elevator, and Clarence points his gun at Elliot’s face, sissy Elliot wishes someone would take him away from this true, cruel world, would come to his rescue and take him to a safe, ideal world of romance, then “everything would be all right.” Instead, it’s Clarence’s threats that are not true.

When they all go into Donowitz’s hotel room, they meet Monty and Boris, the movie producer’s bodyguards, both armed with Uzis. Combine this fact with Donowitz’s involvement in drug dealing, and we see how the Hollywood business empire is a mafia unto itself (consider all the allegations of sexual misconduct, including pedophilia, against celebrities, to see my point). Liberal Hollywood is as capitalist and exploitative as any other modern business or institution.

Again, instead of facing this dark reality, Clarence would rather focus on talking about Vietnam war movies: Coming Home in a Bodybag, produced by Donowitz, is one of Clarence’s favourites. He tells Donowitz that he knows Vietnam veterans who have endorsed the film; Donowitz says “veterans of that bullshit war” praising his movie “makes the whole thing worthwhile.”

Here we have the typical Hollywood bourgeois liberal, paying lip service to acknowledging the horrors of capitalist imperialism while making millions from the war movies he produces. As Donowitz says to Clarence earlier, during the conversation on his car phone: “I am on this earth to make good movies. Nothing more, and nothing…well, maybe less.”

Clarence convinces Donowitz to buy the cocaine, and the bust finally happens. The Italian-American mafia, after having learned where the hotel is from stoner Floyd (who, having just smoked a bowl, must be having the paranoia high of the century from seeing all those guns pointed at him!), kick in the door to the hotel room, and now three groups of trigger-happy men–cops, Donowitz’s bodyguards, and the mafia–are in a Mexican standoff.

In sharp contrast to this true tension, Clarence is in the bathroom taking a piss and having another imaginary conversation with ‘Elvis,’ that is, he’s experiencing another of his romantic escapes from reality. When he comes out, though, reality will hit him in the head…or rather, scrape against it.

Officer Dimes demonstrates something we all know too well: cops are just as inclined to murder as anyone else; he deliberately shoots and kills Boris in revenge for killing Nicholson. Dimes also shoots at Clarence, making Alabama shoot the cop in revenge.

When the shooting is over, the only survivors are Dick, Alabama, and Clarence…though in Tarantino’s original script, the bullet that grazes Clarence‘s eyes kills him, too (Tarantino, page 128). Before dying, he says he can’t see because of the blood in his eyes: this is how Mr. Brown, played by Tarantino, dies in Reservoir Dogs; for when he wrote the script for True Romance, he identified with Clarence (page x). Scott liked Clarence too much to let him die, though, so he arranged for a happy, romantic ending instead.

Now, Tarantino’s unhappy ending focuses on the true, rather than the romance, which is why I agree with him that his ending is better. Our fantasies are always interrupted by harsh reality, in how, for example, capitalism sells us fantasies to make us think we’re escaping a reality we cannot escape.

In the original ending, Alabama, despairing over Clarence’s death, leaves the hotel with Donowitz’s money and drives away in Clarence’s car (pages 132-133). She stops at one point, breaks down and cries, then puts his pistol in her mouth (page 133); but she decides instead to live after reading the napkin on which is written, “You’re so cool.” Then she gets out of the car, takes the briefcase of money, and walks away from the car forever (page 134).

Reality is harsh, but not hopeless.

Quentin Tarantino, True Romance, London, Faber and Faber, 1996

Bellies

The bellies
of the fat cats
are as swollen as
their pride. They
need to die…t.

The stomachs
of us First World
citizens, yes, ours,
are similarly
bloated. We
suck our guts
in, but still it
shows. Obesity

is
not
a
pro-
blem
in
the
glo-
bal
sou-
th.

The
pou-
ched
bell-
ies
of
the
poor
are
emp-
ty
sacks
of
air.

They
must
be
fed.
Deaf
are
we
to
the
cries
of
the
hun-
gry.

We waste
food that
they could
eat. Our diet,
so tied to their
dying, must be
tightened.

Only
then
can
all
the
poor
be
freed
of the
tight
grip of
empire’s
might.

Their full
bellies means
the end of our
emptiness.