I loved reading this and I'm really looking forward to more. However, I can't help but question why you are writing this now instead of waiting until the MCU's Multiverse Saga is over (or at least until you see the third Spider-Verse installment).
Thanks so much, Christopher! The simple answer is that I’m writing this piece now because I think these questions are worth pondering as the story unfolds and we think about what may or may not happen and how much we are invested in it at this point in the story. But there’s no law against writing a second piece when all is said and done! It can be interesting to see how our thinking may change or how the storytellers may or may not respond to our concerns by the end.
I'm glad someone is covering this in depth. I've been thinking about the topic for a while, though I have a significantly less sanguine view of the concept. My issues with it may be more concerns of degree--it's one thing with the crew of the Enterprise go to one alternate universe which through contrast confronts them with moral questions about the nature of the world and of themselves. It's another when there are so many possible universes that the writer de facto rejects "base reality," undermines choice, and disguises lack of structure with spectacle. Is death even real if another "me" is out there?
It seems that Tolkien's theory of fantasy worlds as a method of re-enchantment is relevant here. If a story doesn't drive us to true escapism (in his definition, flight from reality), but rather to richer engagement with creation, it's a good and true thing. I found Top Gun: Maverick an interesting foil for EEAAO for this reason. “Top Gun: Maverick” is also a world of repetition and cycles, failed authorities and anxiety about fatalism, but it is more like “Groundhog Day” — purgatorial time loops instead of infinite possibilities. Notably, it's also a world where death is real, but able to be defeated.
Thanks, Hannah! Welcome to Substack! In passing, I enjoyed your piece on Chinatown. I was particularly interested in your discussion on Chinatown being a “post-Christian myth” as opposed to an “anti-myth” (“anti-myth” being the term I chose to describe Dune in my review of Dune: Part Two).
“Is death even real if another ‘me’ is out there?” is the kind of question I hope to tackle toward the end of this series. I’m asking what I think are even more fundamental questions in the next couple of installments.
I think it can be argued that EEAAO succeeds as Tolkienesque “reenchantment,” or “cleaning our windows” as Tolkien also said. I think Derrickson’s use of the multiverse in Doctor Strange does the same. I am deeply critical of the implementation in the MCU, and with the Spider-Verse, of course, the jury is out!
Very interesting thought on Top Gun: Maverick! Of course the prologue is so extreme that it raises questions about whether death is real in this world—or perhaps, as one revisionist theory proposed, whether we can imagine Maverick dying in the opening act, and the rest of the film as an actual purgatory-dream or something of the sort.
I'm glad you picked up on the "post-Christian" term because I used it very intentionally. I think Chinatown is post-Christian in the same sense that LOTR is. It's retelling Pagan myth, but with an additional level of revelation that can't be "un-known." But where Tolkien is Christianizing the Pagan story, Chinatown is Paganizing the Christian story. Still, the film depends for its effect on Christian assumptions. The Pagan myths didn't have that disappointment. Zeus was just the way the world was. In the final words of the Green Knight in the Paganized David Lowery version: "What else were you expecting?"
Dune seems more didactically anti-myth, if that makes sense. It has the feeling of "debunking" something, instead of trying to explain why human nature is the way it is using metaphysical means. Of course, in some sense it does mythically "explain" history, but with materialistic, centuries-long conspiracies like the Bene Gesserit which are so whimsical and nakedly allegorical (women and men separated into constituencies of sheer power-hunger) that it's hard to take it seriously.
To return to the topic of this piece, EEAAO does push back against nihilism, but its encouragement is so fragile ("nothing matters" would not have helped me as a depressed teenager) and compromised (the crudely hedonistic manner of "being kind" which Evelyn uses to win) that I can't give it that much credit.
Top Gun, on the other hand, responds to mortality with a genuinely joyful positive vision. The response to suffering should be reactive (kindness, hedonism), but positive (risk-taking, heroism). I actually do buy the Sonny Bunch theory that it's a purgatorial story--even if that wasn't intentional, and even though I don't think it's "literally" purgatory like Groundhog's Day, the philosophy of the underlying tale dovetails so naturally with this manner of moral thought that it can easily be read that way. Top Gun sees life as a moral, linear progression toward heaven. The threat is spiritual death, not physical, though physical is always a possibility.
I loved reading this and I'm really looking forward to more. However, I can't help but question why you are writing this now instead of waiting until the MCU's Multiverse Saga is over (or at least until you see the third Spider-Verse installment).
Thanks so much, Christopher! The simple answer is that I’m writing this piece now because I think these questions are worth pondering as the story unfolds and we think about what may or may not happen and how much we are invested in it at this point in the story. But there’s no law against writing a second piece when all is said and done! It can be interesting to see how our thinking may change or how the storytellers may or may not respond to our concerns by the end.
I'm glad someone is covering this in depth. I've been thinking about the topic for a while, though I have a significantly less sanguine view of the concept. My issues with it may be more concerns of degree--it's one thing with the crew of the Enterprise go to one alternate universe which through contrast confronts them with moral questions about the nature of the world and of themselves. It's another when there are so many possible universes that the writer de facto rejects "base reality," undermines choice, and disguises lack of structure with spectacle. Is death even real if another "me" is out there?
It seems that Tolkien's theory of fantasy worlds as a method of re-enchantment is relevant here. If a story doesn't drive us to true escapism (in his definition, flight from reality), but rather to richer engagement with creation, it's a good and true thing. I found Top Gun: Maverick an interesting foil for EEAAO for this reason. “Top Gun: Maverick” is also a world of repetition and cycles, failed authorities and anxiety about fatalism, but it is more like “Groundhog Day” — purgatorial time loops instead of infinite possibilities. Notably, it's also a world where death is real, but able to be defeated.
Thanks, Hannah! Welcome to Substack! In passing, I enjoyed your piece on Chinatown. I was particularly interested in your discussion on Chinatown being a “post-Christian myth” as opposed to an “anti-myth” (“anti-myth” being the term I chose to describe Dune in my review of Dune: Part Two).
“Is death even real if another ‘me’ is out there?” is the kind of question I hope to tackle toward the end of this series. I’m asking what I think are even more fundamental questions in the next couple of installments.
I think it can be argued that EEAAO succeeds as Tolkienesque “reenchantment,” or “cleaning our windows” as Tolkien also said. I think Derrickson’s use of the multiverse in Doctor Strange does the same. I am deeply critical of the implementation in the MCU, and with the Spider-Verse, of course, the jury is out!
Very interesting thought on Top Gun: Maverick! Of course the prologue is so extreme that it raises questions about whether death is real in this world—or perhaps, as one revisionist theory proposed, whether we can imagine Maverick dying in the opening act, and the rest of the film as an actual purgatory-dream or something of the sort.
I'm glad you picked up on the "post-Christian" term because I used it very intentionally. I think Chinatown is post-Christian in the same sense that LOTR is. It's retelling Pagan myth, but with an additional level of revelation that can't be "un-known." But where Tolkien is Christianizing the Pagan story, Chinatown is Paganizing the Christian story. Still, the film depends for its effect on Christian assumptions. The Pagan myths didn't have that disappointment. Zeus was just the way the world was. In the final words of the Green Knight in the Paganized David Lowery version: "What else were you expecting?"
Dune seems more didactically anti-myth, if that makes sense. It has the feeling of "debunking" something, instead of trying to explain why human nature is the way it is using metaphysical means. Of course, in some sense it does mythically "explain" history, but with materialistic, centuries-long conspiracies like the Bene Gesserit which are so whimsical and nakedly allegorical (women and men separated into constituencies of sheer power-hunger) that it's hard to take it seriously.
To return to the topic of this piece, EEAAO does push back against nihilism, but its encouragement is so fragile ("nothing matters" would not have helped me as a depressed teenager) and compromised (the crudely hedonistic manner of "being kind" which Evelyn uses to win) that I can't give it that much credit.
Top Gun, on the other hand, responds to mortality with a genuinely joyful positive vision. The response to suffering should be reactive (kindness, hedonism), but positive (risk-taking, heroism). I actually do buy the Sonny Bunch theory that it's a purgatorial story--even if that wasn't intentional, and even though I don't think it's "literally" purgatory like Groundhog's Day, the philosophy of the underlying tale dovetails so naturally with this manner of moral thought that it can easily be read that way. Top Gun sees life as a moral, linear progression toward heaven. The threat is spiritual death, not physical, though physical is always a possibility.
I wrote a bit about this at the time: https://angelusnews.com/arts-culture/hollywood-movies-anxiety-2022-films/