From "Beyond Postmodernism: Toward an Aesthetic of Trust" by Ihab Hassan from Beyond
Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture:
Truth is a single phoneme, but it carries the curse of miscellany, of sundry semantemes. There is traditional truth: what myth and tradition hold to have been always so. There is revealed truth: what a divine, sacred, or supernatural authority declares as true. There is the truth of power: what a tyrant proclaims, believe it or die. There is the truth of political or social or personal expediency: it would be good for the party, or the community, of for my own interest, to assume such to be the case. There is truth as correspondence: in naive science and empiricism. There is the more sophisticated truth of scientific falsification: a theory is held true until disproven. There is truth as coherence: in the arts, especially music, in mathematics and logical systems. There is the truth of a poetic intuition: for instance, Yeats's quip that we "can refute Hegel but not the Saint or Song of Sixpence". There is subjective truth: what you intensely feel or experience or desire become incontrovertibly so. There are probably other kinds of imbricated truths, and they all revert to some underlying axiom or belief (204).Thesis: The world of The Hunger Games seems to lack certain distinguishing qualities of humanity.
How does Cato kill without an ounce or shred of guilt? Now, he is probably a psychopath (I don't know for certain since I haven't read the books), but even Katniss kills Marvel without hesitation as he throws the ever-fateful spear at Rue. Panem is a radically utilitarian world; using resource scarcity as justification, the government creates a lottery for each District to offer two tributes each year. Save for Katniss, Peeta, and a handful others, it appears that the politicians and bureaucrats of Panem have lost moral clarity. For the radical utilitarianism they espouse, comes at a complete abandonment of Kant's categorical imperative.
The categorical imperative can loosely be defined as, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." In other words, you should always act in a way that—if everyone else acted the same way—the world would be a better place.
Without moral clarity, untruth and distrust pervade. Cato and his gang kill indiscriminately; he even kills those of his own party.Why does the viewer feel a constant sense of tension between reality and propaganda, between truth and falsehood, and between empathic trust and blind solipsism while watching The Hunger Games for the first time? I thought about this for a while since watching the movie on Friday night at the Rave... and I came to somewhat of an incomplete conclusion while reading Ihab Hassan's "Toward an Aesthetic of Trust":
Truth, I have said, rests on trust, personal, social, cognitive trust. But what is trust? Roundly, I answer: more than consensus, trust depends of self-abnegation, self-emptying, something akin to kenosis. It requires dispassion, empathy, attention to others and to the created world, to something not in ourselves. But, ultimately, it demands self-dispossession. That is why truth and trust remain spiritual qualities — not simply psychological, not merely political, but above all, spiritual values (206).He continues:
We, in our literary professions, must turn to truth, truth spoken not only to power but, more anguished, truth spoken to ourselves. This cannot be sectarian, self-serving truth, which appeals only to partisan and subverts trust.
Trust, I have claimed, is a spiritual value, inward with self-dispossession, and in its postmodern form, familiar with the void (211).
Truth relies on a trust of certain underlying axioms or beliefs; since each individual will have different suppositions or beliefs, these axioms are spiritual in nature: read: existential.
I said the world of the Hunger Games lacked humanity. In some sense, it also lacks spirituality, trust, and, arguably, truth. I talked to Willis Zhang about this; we were being lighthearted, but we both agreed that the world of The Hunger Games lacked Jesus. Now if you're not a Christian you might not agree with this or why some people might find this important. The simplest answer is that religion—in the sense of religious institutions, obligations, and rituals—is not important or even necessary. Yet, take away God (or Jesus) from the picture and you have a world devoid of spiritual value.
Should I explain this further? If we've lost a concept of universal truth, then we gravitate toward cynicism, irony, and pastiche—a kind of schizophrenic uncertainty pervades our lives. We become slaves to our nihilism. We become consumers bent on satisfying our instant gratifications and pleasures instead of moral beings in search of truth. David Foster Wallace wrote:
We've all exercised the freedom to be "lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms," but we've all, hopefully, been part of or participated in meaningful experiences that has nothing to do with material things. As the politicians and bureaucrats of the Hunger Games Capitol dine and entertain themselves to the point of excess, could we as viewers think of ways we privilege consumption over humanity?
This is where I am going with "The Hunger Games lacked Jesus": that spirituality in our postmodern world is of paramount importance! Spirituality is important because without it, we become utilitarian robots entertained by human bloodsport. We become unimaginably alone in our own thinking and ideology that we ignore the people around us. Jesus, of course, was the opposite of this.
(Aside: So Penn students partying for Fling! While you're chugging that six-pack of Nattie and or pounding Jack Daniels/screwdrivers/rum and cokes, take a second to consider your Van Pelt counterpart studying furious for his/her finals. Of course, no need to consider: it's not like we're enjoying being in the library any more than you do. But if you're partying simply out of peer pressure and would rather do something more constructive, then listen to your gut and say peace out to that frat party. And really, who enjoys a sweaty, slippery, and smelly room with ear-splitting music over a slower and more relaxed atmosphere in the company of a few? If you like frat parties and crowded Tiesto concerts, I won't judge. All I'm asking is that you respect my peace and quiet; is it really necessary that everyone within 200 meters of your room be subject to your musical tastes at over 100 decibels? As for me, I'll have fun this Fling—spending time with friends on my own terms. And I'll be getting my work done as well, because my work is interesting to me. And I like parties too—mutual acceptance? Empathy. Love. Compassion. All the good stuff.
What should we take away from the dystopian world of The Hunger Games? In other words, how should we act so that we prevent such a world from coming to existence? What sort of attitude should we adopt in our everyday lives? I quote from Ihab Hassan again:
I said the world of the Hunger Games lacked humanity. In some sense, it also lacks spirituality, trust, and, arguably, truth. I talked to Willis Zhang about this; we were being lighthearted, but we both agreed that the world of The Hunger Games lacked Jesus. Now if you're not a Christian you might not agree with this or why some people might find this important. The simplest answer is that religion—in the sense of religious institutions, obligations, and rituals—is not important or even necessary. Yet, take away God (or Jesus) from the picture and you have a world devoid of spiritual value.
Should I explain this further? If we've lost a concept of universal truth, then we gravitate toward cynicism, irony, and pastiche—a kind of schizophrenic uncertainty pervades our lives. We become slaves to our nihilism. We become consumers bent on satisfying our instant gratifications and pleasures instead of moral beings in search of truth. David Foster Wallace wrote:
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. (Kenyon Commencement Speech, 2005).
This is where I am going with "The Hunger Games lacked Jesus": that spirituality in our postmodern world is of paramount importance! Spirituality is important because without it, we become utilitarian robots entertained by human bloodsport. We become unimaginably alone in our own thinking and ideology that we ignore the people around us. Jesus, of course, was the opposite of this.
(Aside: So Penn students partying for Fling! While you're chugging that six-pack of Nattie and or pounding Jack Daniels/screwdrivers/rum and cokes, take a second to consider your Van Pelt counterpart studying furious for his/her finals. Of course, no need to consider: it's not like we're enjoying being in the library any more than you do. But if you're partying simply out of peer pressure and would rather do something more constructive, then listen to your gut and say peace out to that frat party. And really, who enjoys a sweaty, slippery, and smelly room with ear-splitting music over a slower and more relaxed atmosphere in the company of a few? If you like frat parties and crowded Tiesto concerts, I won't judge. All I'm asking is that you respect my peace and quiet; is it really necessary that everyone within 200 meters of your room be subject to your musical tastes at over 100 decibels? As for me, I'll have fun this Fling—spending time with friends on my own terms. And I'll be getting my work done as well, because my work is interesting to me. And I like parties too—mutual acceptance? Empathy. Love. Compassion. All the good stuff.
What should we take away from the dystopian world of The Hunger Games? In other words, how should we act so that we prevent such a world from coming to existence? What sort of attitude should we adopt in our everyday lives? I quote from Ihab Hassan again:
I envisaged a postmodern, spiritual attitude compatible with emergent technologies; with geopolitical realities (population, pollution, the growing obsolescence of the nation state); with the needs of the wretched of the earth; with the interests of feminists and minorities and multicultural societies; with an ecological, planetary humanism; and perhaps even with millennial hopes. I could so envisage the prospects of a postmodern spiritual attitude, without occult bombinations or New Age platitudes, because spirit pervades a variety of secular experiences, from dreams, creative intuitions in art or science, and a sense of the sublime, to extraordinary, visionary states, including the gift of seeing the eternal in the temporal, an apprehension of primal relations in the universe (209).Panem could be our future (albeit it is fairly unlikely). But we should make sure it won't be.
No comments:
Post a Comment