A Story Out of Time and Place and the Escape Hatch of Fantasy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) — Retro Nostalgia
With the monumental success of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (dir. Chris Columbus; 2001), Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (dir. Peter Jackson; 2001), and their immediate sequels, Hollywood perhaps hoped to capitalize on the epic fantasy feel of Tolkien’s narrative and the young adult/children’s audience that so fervently devoured the Harry Potter books. Naturally, they turned to The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. If I’m honest, I’m quite a fan of the Narnia films even as I’m critical of their structure. There’s something deliciously joyous about portal fantasies wherein children are whisked away to save the world, hanging out with talking beavers and every fantasy creature under the sun. Narnia was wish fulfillment for me in so many ways. Adventure? Check. Epic scale? Check. Kids becoming greater than themselves? Check. It is a deeply hopeful series of films (and novels — though I suppose The Last Battle might be perceived as rather “doomsday-ish” today). Sometimes, one needs a little optimistic, no? The first of these films, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (dir. Andrew Adamson; 2005), is perhaps the strongest as a narrative, but it also has its problems. Granted, these are problems which make more sense in a certain perspective, even if they don’t quite work in film. The first of these problems is fairly easy to critique. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that Peter and the rest of the Pevensies somehow miraculously learn military tactics, swordfighting, horseback riding, bow shooting, and other combat-relevant skills in a matter of minutes. In the film, this is assumed to occur in a handful of days; the White Witch and her army, after all, are merely hours from the location of the Narnian army. Throughout the film, the sense of time is skewed, partly because, as we learn, Narnia runs on a different clock from our own (a year on Earth is decades on Narnia) and partly because time is not strictly relevant in this world. The first film doesn’t address this latter point all that well, to be honest, though you can sort of follow the logic after repeat viewings. Regardless, the longer the film runs, the more its sense of time deviates from the measured pace of the opening scenes, wherein the Pevensies survive a Nazi bombing of London, are sent off to the countryside by train, and spend a considerable amount of time trying to being normal kids whilst living in a country at war. The deeper into the fantasy world we go, the less time (and, by necessity, space) become relevant features for the narrative. Additionally, the film’s logic of time is intricately bound up in its treatment of space. That Aslan can run vast distances in mere hours at what is a remarkably quick pace for a very large lion (as indicated by the development of the battle between the Narnians and the White Witch’s army) suggests either that the film has no sense of time or that the world of Narnia is not nearly as big as we assumed. The latter seems the more accurate interpretation in the sense that our interpretation of space is necessarily an Earthen one, a problem which the Pevensies are or become, as with time, deeply disinterested. Once they become embedded in the conflict of Narnia, in fact, the temporal and spatial skewing is more pronounced, such that by the end of the film, neither is particularly stable. And this all hinges on the entire series’ underlying Christian allegory: if Aslan is literally God, then it follows that his access to and understanding of time and space in Narnia is not like ours at all, and thus anyone operating under his influence would not be bound by the restrictions of space and time either. Once the Pevensies meet Aslan and become part of his “world,” time and space lose their Earthen focus. They are meaningless distinctions. None of this quite excuses the film’s somewhat rushed epic narrative or the series’ propensity for deus ex machina antics. But understanding why the narrative is structured in such a manner that time and space just don’t make a lot of sense gives us, I think, a better understanding of the film’s narrative of child heroes. Unlike The Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia is absolutely embedded in a child’s fantasy, albeit a Christian-influenced one. That fantasy, like a bedtime story, never adheres to novel-length conceptions of time; such stories rush to the conclusion because they are not about the “grand narrative,” but about the immediate gratification of the child’s fantasy, whether via the characters within the story world or the actual children (or, in my case, adults who miss certain qualities of childhood). In fact, this may be the thing that makes me love these films so much. They are, in a sense, free from the constraints of serious storytelling, opting instead for metaphor, blatant allegory, and absolute heroic fantasy mediated through the child. I watch the films in this series and can’t help but become immersed in a world where heroes still exist and can be drug out of the depths of cowardice or made from the spark hiding beneath childhood insecurity. They’re so much about doing good because it is good, and being rewarded for that deed. Even as an atheist, I can appreciate this sensation, because however realistic one wishes to be, there will always need to be an escape hatch for life, even if it just comes in the form of a children’s fantasy movie. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is my escape hatch. —————————- This post was selected by voters on my Patreon page. To get your own voice heard, become a patron! $1 gets you voting rights.
Retro Nostalgia: Equilibrium (2002) and the Paradox of Emotion
If you blinked back in 2002, you might have missed this lesser known Christian Bale vehicle featuring stylish gun kata and deliberate and sometimes excessive homages to George Orwell’s 1984 (particularly the 1984 adaptation starring John Hurt). Indeed, one could describe Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium as Orwell on drugs. Here, Orwellian propaganda is apparent in the frequent appearance of Father (Sean Pertwee) “teaching” the masses about the dangers of “feeling” and the need to relinquish that human quality for a stable society. The gesture is reinforced from the start by a veritable lecture, rife with images of human violence, in which Father reminds us that the people of this future have barely survived World War Three, and that humanity cannot survive another such war. We must not feel if the world is to survive, it seems; and so we must voluntarily purge emotion by taking injections of Prozium. On one level, this is hardly an irrational prospect, it would seem. Once we realize how this system operates, however, it’s clear that we’re no longer dealing with a voluntary system where we all sacrifice for the preservation of the whole: this future is maintained by a brutal police force which kills “sense-offenders” and burns anything from humanity’s past — ironically, they are called Clerics. It is the Orwellian and Bradburian “gamble” and fascistic “justice” married together. That nobody notices the contradiction suggests that Prozium is more than a mere mood inhibitor — something the film doesn’t quite explore. As such, the overarching narrative is a deliberate façade: not only is the prospect of removing emotion via injection simply absurd, but it is also definitively false. As to be expected, those who control the system are not immune to emotional outburst. Dupont (Angus Macfadyen), the voice of Father, doesn’t bother hiding his emotions, frequently raising his voice and emoting in obvious fashion. That he turns out to be Father in the end — and a hypocrite who does not take Prozium himself — reinforces the emotive nature of Father, who at no point appears to be a totally non-feeling being; it likewise reinforces the underlying contradictions of the world. As Derrida might say: the true rogue State is the one which defines the rogue by rules that it does not follow itself. Other characters offer similar reinforcement, such as Cleric Brandt (Taye Diggs) who smirks, smiles, and nearly laughs on a number of occasions. Indeed, it’s a wonder he was not burned to ashes much sooner in the film given how often he emotes. Though these elements may be flaws on the part of the director, I think they also reveal a more sinister form of dystopian control at the heart of Equilibrium. As becomes apparent by the conclusion of the film, humanity cannot help but feel because it is necessarily a desiring “machine.” For John Preston (Christian Bale) to choose to cease his doses of Prozium, he must desire the activity. To father children, he must desire it. For this society to function, it must function on some level by the desire of those within it. Prozium is just the smoke screen through which an ideology of absurdist non-emotion can be reinforced. What makes the future of Equilibrium so troubling is not that humanity has been forced to give up part of what makes us “human,” but that humanity has been tricked into believing that this is possible and desirable, whether by force or by coercion. Additionally, the film’s apparent contradictions add to the sinister nature of the world as a whole. If Father is a “sense-offender” like everyone else, then what is on the surface a binary of non-feelers vs. sense-offenders proves to be a more complicated triangle in which the non-feelers (mythic though they technically are) are mere pawns in a brutal game of violent oppression. Equilibrium is a film about control of the human self, yes, but it is more accurately a film about controlling knowledge and expression. Ultimately, emotion is just the avenue through which the powers-that-be justify the right to control what is otherwise uncontrollable, and to do so in such a way that emotion is necessarily implicated in everyday action. This society isn’t a non-feeling society; it is a contemptuous society which purports to have given up its emotions while actively desiring the suppression of what many would argue is naturally human. Though a flawed film, Equilibrium should make us pause and consider how emotion can be mobilized as a mechanism of control. And it should make us wonder if that action is any less disconcerting or immoral than a purely open-faced fascistic enterprise. —————————- This post was selected by voters on my Patreon page. To get your own voice heard, become a patron! $1 gets you voting rights.
Retro Nostalgia: Silent Running (1972; dir. Douglas Trumbull) and the Heroism of Environmental Madness
Undoubtedly, the 1970s was one of the most important decades for environmental issues. At the start of the decade, the environmentalist movement had become so influential that the United States government felt compelled to amend the Clean Air Act (in 1970) and the Water Pollution Control Act (1972). This action expanded the scope of the law and gave the government greater enforcement capabilities. Not long after, the Environmental Protection Agency was born. It should come as no surprise, then, that David Trumbull’s Silent Running (1972) appeared in this era. Praised for its visual effects, Silent Running tells the story of Lowell, one of four crew members aboard the Valley Forge, a commercial spaceship carrying several massive biodomes which house some of the last remaining natural wildlife known to man. Earth, it turns out, is not so much barren as artificial; its people consume processed cubes of nutrients, and the Earth’s surface is devoid of forests or other natural environments. When the crew of the Valley Forge receive orders to detach the domes and destroy them, Lowell, the lone environmental idealist, murders his crewmates and conspires to flee with the remaining dome and a trio of clunky robots. Silent Running most certainly has a lot to say about environmentalism, but what I found most fascinating about the narrative were its attempts to grapple with the question of Lowell’s sanity. From the start of the film, Lowell is portrayed as the outsider — the one weirdo who eats naturally grown foods, who believes in the forestry project, and who finds life back on Earth utterly horrifying. In one of the most pivotal moments in the film, he rants at his crewmates after they tease him for eating a cantaloupe. In that speech, he reminds us that Earth is polluted and synthetic: its temperatures are controlled all across the globe, its food is drawn from processors, and its new generations are growing up without natural environments to appreciate. This moment strikes at the core of the film. For Lowell, life in the domes, as artificial as they are, represents a life that might be on Earth; he’s an idealist of the highest order because he exists in a reality where these domes are, ironically enough, the only natural environments left for humanity. That Lowell strikes out on his own near the middle of the film is not insignificant. For much of the film, Lowell’s outsider status is not just a simple difference of opinion — an environmentalist versus the contented. His outsider status is a division of humanity. His crewmates are the faces of a “new” humanity who have discarded an evolutionary relationship to the natural world in exchange for an intellectual relationship with product. Lowell is the “old” face, the humanity which appreciates the natural world, not just because of its splendor but because being human means being connected to the natural. When Lowell does kill his crewmates — one he kills with his bare hands; the other two he kills after detaching a dome with them inside and then destroying it — it is an act of madness, desperation, and separation. Lowell’s sanity should be drawn into question at this point, not just because he commits murder, but because by doing so, he is severing his ties to his own species. But is he actually mad, or is there something else at work here? From my own perspective, I do not view Lowell as having succumbed to madness. In fact, I think there’s something heroic in what he does to save the natural environment, even if his heroism has no connection to a human worldview — without human recognition, how can he be seen as an actual hero? Lowell doesn’t simply run away. He creates an elaborate plot to convince the other dome ships that the Valley Forge has malfunctioned, sending the ship careening into the rings of Saturn, which the corporation believes will destroy the ship. It’s unclear whether Lowell knows he will die beforehand; the ambiguity is later closed off by Lowell’s suicide (we’ll come to that in a minute). What is clear is that Lowell knows that nothing he can do with words will save the Valley Forge or its last remaining dome from American Airlines (the corporation which owns the dome ships — no joke). His crewmates never accept his rhetoric, and he knows that he has an even worse chance trying to convince a corporation to save the domes when there is no desire for their existence back home on Earth. Lowell has no choice. If he’s to save Earth’s natural world, he has to make the heroic sacrifice: sever his ties with humanity and flee. We’re asked to weigh this against the sacrifice of a few human lives. As you might have guessed, this doesn’t quite work. A search party eventually finds Lowell and the Valley Forge, and Lowell must once more make a decision: allow the dome to be captured and destroyed or do something extreme. His solution: leave one of the robots to tend to the forest, shoot the dome off into deep space, and then use the remaining nukes to destroy himself and the Valley Forge. This scene appears to be foregrounded by the ambiguity I mentioned earlier. Here, there is no ambiguity left: Lowell sacrifices himself to protect the dome. But his sacrifice also means relinquishing to the inner turmoil he has felt since the start of the movie: that he is no longer part of the human race. Lowell’s anti-humanity (or rejection of a new humanity, if you will) is also enhanced by the conclusion’s compelling duality: The human race as we know it is extinct. The salvation of the natural environment must come from the intervention of humanity and its machines. In the concluding shots, we’re shown images of Dewey (the name Lowell gives one of his robots) tending to the forest. These moments disentangle the paradox of the domes — a natural environment reborn
Retro Nostalgia: Aliens (1986) and Ripley’s Maternities (Some Rambly Thoughts)
(What follows are some random thoughts I had while re-watching James Cameron’s Aliens. I’d love to open up a nice discussion about the film, so feel free to leave a comment agreeing/disagreeing with or adding to my argument(s).) I’ve always loved the relationship between Ripley and Hicks. Obviously, it’s implied that there’s a significant romantic link between them, but the film makes light of it through jokes, in part so the very real problem — survival in the face of certain death — never falls prey to the romantic narrative underneath. And there’s also a sense — for me, anyway — that Ripley and Hicks don’t actually have to develop a romantic relationship for there to be something between them. A lot of people also read Aliens as a narrative about maternity. I’ve started to think about the narrative as a metaphor for unexpected parenthood (and child mortality), too. If you think about it, the first chunk of the film focuses on Ripley’s return to the world; one of the reveals is the death of her child, whose death she cannot prevent. While an inaccurate metaphor for infant mortality or some equally naturalistic death of one’s child, these sections of the film seem remarkably like a story about a parent dealing with the death of a child. In this interpretation, Burke takes the form of a father (I can’t think of a single mention of the biological father of Ripley’s daughter, so I assume one of the two is out of the picture — probably Ripley, which is unusual in the real world). Since Burke represents Ripley for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who seem to be the ones in control of everything, he also acts as a kind of father figure in the remotest sense. Her relationship with him, as such, is strained by his link to the Company and to her past (i.e., the death of her child, etc.). I also think there’s something profoundly disturbing to read into Burke’s actions near the end of the film, in which he tries to infect/impregnate Newt and Ripley with xenomorphs (a rape and child abuse metaphor?). The other maternity narrative is one we’ve all probably heard before: Ripley’s “adoption” of Newt. I think of Newt not necessarily as the adopted child in a traditional sense, but more as a discovery of a child you didn’t know you had. Ripley jumps into the role of mother figure quite naturally (she is technically a mother, after all), but she also seems to acknowledge the distance between them. These two elements suggest to me that Newt is supposed to take the place of an unexpected child. But I’ll admit that this idea is not as thought out as I would like. I won’t suggest that Aliens is a perfect film from a feminist perspective, but it’s hard to imagine it as anything else. Every aspect of the narrative involves questions about the place of women in worlds that for so long have been the domain of men. After all, in 1986, women didn’t serve in combat positions in the U.S. In Aliens, they do (even Ripley, though she sort of gets roped into it). Women are shown doing a lot of things our culture likes to tell them they can’t do. They can have children and work jobs “meant for men.” They can serve in the military, use weapons or heavy machinery, fly complicated aircraft, fight for themselves, and on and on and on. True, most of the women die in this movie, but so do most of the men. This is one of the reasons why I love this movie. It doesn’t pander to a masculine audience in the same way as other SF action movies. Ripley isn’t eye candy here. She doesn’t run around bending over so you can see her toned abs or the curves of her breasts or her toosh or whatever (not that she’s not physically attractive, mind, but most of the characters in this movie end up covered in filth and wounds; the whole Megan-Fox-bends-over-a-car-so-we-can-stare-and-her-tumtum wouldn’t make any sense in that context). If anything, what makes Ripley such an attractive character is the fact that she is a character. And, honestly, I think she’s probably the greatest female protagonist in all of science fiction. But maybe I’m stretching with that last statement… ——————————————————– Note: I may return to this film for the Retro Nostalgia feature. Keep an eye out for that.
Retro Nostalgia: Contact (1997) and Conflating Faith and Science and Its Hopeful Ethos
Anyone with a passing familiarity with Carl Sagan’s popularization of science will recall his profound optimism, both with humanity’s scientific endeavors and its almost desperate need to strive for “more.” I think it’s fair to say that he imagined science as humanity’s great thrust to greatness — to controlling itself and its environment. After all, he famously said that “[imagination] will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” And while he was not a religious man, he didn’t fear suggesting that science could provide a spiritual vision of the world: Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. Sagan’s optimism, understandably, bleeds through the narrative of the film adaptation of Contact (1997) (how could it not?). Ellie’s father, Ted (David Morse), for example, answers his young daughter’s (Jena Malone) question about life in the universe by cleverly playing the “it’s too damned big of a universe” card — he suggests that if there isn’t anyone else out there, then all that space is wasted. Adult Ellie (Jodie Foster) eventually relays these lines to preacher/religious popularist Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), who also repeats them to the world after Ellie’s return from her mission and the media firestorm of the perceived failure of the project (not to mention Ellie’s implication that faith in her story is necessary). What’s fascinating about the film (and, I suspect, the book, which I have not read) is its refusal to shy away from implying that this optimism will ultimately form the basis for a faith argument for science. In the end, it is that unison of religion and science which offers one of Sagan’s most optimistic visions: namely, that science and religion could ever unify in an increasingly hostile political environment. Palmer and Ellie are themselves stand-ins for these respective fields, suggesting that the romantic conclusion of their narrative must be deferred too, lest faith be rested from the audience on all counts. Sagan must have been quite hopeful for the future of science to have imagined a world where the greatest religious “threat” to science is an attractive religious guru who can see the writing on the wall. Hence why the last line in the above quote is so crucial: “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Contact is essentially Sagan’s spiritual mind at work, imagining all the possibilities of the science and spiritual realms coming together for the same united purpose: seeking some deeper truth about the universe — science on the natural questions; spirituality on the questions about understanding our place in a suddenly crowded universe. Sadly, if Contact had been written in the late 2000s, Sagan might have seemed naive. Perhaps that’s actually a good thing. When people called for more optimistic SF in 2009-2010 (resulting in Vries’ Shine Anthology), they must have had Contact on the mind, if not in actuality, then in spirit. Contact is a film that strives to find the positive in a world bloated with bureaucracy, religious terrorists, and fear (it is also a largely male world we are presented, with some exceptions). The government wants to control everything, the vain scientists want to use Ellie’s discovery to further their own careers, even at the expense of others, the people at large cower or clamber in supplication before things they do not yet understand, and, finally, the religious extremists, seeing this great moment as a threat to their authority, want to destroy the entire project, even if that means preventing humanity’s next great leap forward. Ellie’s almost desperate need to remain involved, to discover whatever is “on the other side,” to leap into the darkness and bring back answers, holds her up in this storm. She won’t participate in the politics or the glory of discovery; she only wants to discover, to know, to understand. Unlike the people around her, with the exception, perhaps, of Palmer and a handful of minor characters, Ellie has only one desire: to use this momentous occasion to understand humanity’s place in the universe. It’s her optimistic view of the world that I find so pleasant. She truly believes in the mission, not because it will bring her material wealth in the future, but because taking the leap of faith by building and using the machine will actually advance human knowledge. She is the idealized scientist (the film actually offers a foil to this idealized image; he dies — not insignificantly). But whereas Ellie’s journey to discover “the answers” proves successful, the world at large is left in the dark. The aliens, descended from a collective who occasionally reach out to new species as those species reach the next stage in their technological evolution, prevent anything but 17 minutes of static from being recorded during Ellie’s trip. In a final nerve wracking scene, Ellie must defend herself against a verbal onslaught by the government, almost as if in a mirror of McCarthyism. The irony? For a government so encumbered with religious thought, they cannot accept her meek request that everyone has to take what she says on faith (she doesn’t put things in those exact words, but that has to do with her apprehension over faith). It’s not made clear whether the government does take her seriously, or if they see this as an opportunity to attack her and the billionaire financial backer who made the project possible. Regardless, the fusion of science and faith in
Retro Nostalgia: Gattaca (1997) and Framing the Multivalent Ethical Dilemma
Before Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997) begins in earnest, we are compelled to think about its underlying ethical dilemma: is a meritocratic system based on (mostly pre-selected) genetic variables justified, even if that means denying some people equal access simply because their genes say there is something wrong with them? If you have seen the film, then you know how the story ends — the genetic “weakling” succeeds at doing the impossible, throwing into question the very notion that one’s genetics are an absolute determination of one’s potential. Thus, one possible side question is: without the aforementioned meritocratic system, would Vincent/Jerome have fought so hard to succeed? Questions like this are why films like Gattaca, The Truman Show, The Minority Report and, to a lesser extent, District 9, Logan’s Run, and Soylent Green (just to name a few) are such profound models of ethical problems put in action. Gattaca is one of the few films that does so directly, offering the following William Gaylin quote in first the few moments: “I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.” It is difficult to tell whether the film is a direct response to Gaylin’s belief, a partial acceptance of the principle, or a violent refutation. I am, however, partial to violence. Gaylin’s quote is put in place without context, almost as if to tell us that this is a future we very well might see — and soon — not because it is “happening now,” but because we will give in to Mother Nature’s demand. The natural progression for an intelligent, technology-oriented species such as ourselves is to tamper with what makes us “us.” In one sense, you might think of Gattaca as Andrew Niccol’s answer to that notion: yes, we might do it, but the ramifications will create an underclass marked (just like with race or gender) by factors beyond their control. The moral quagmire, however, makes race and gender look relatively tame.* Unlike most (if not all) arguments about race or gender, there is a logic behind Gattaca‘s worldview. There are no real, scientific differences between Caucasian, African, Asian, and so on — at least, not differences that matter in a meritocratic sense. But the opposite is true for Vincent/Jerome; he is, in fact, a genetic “weakling,” containing within him flaws that limit his lifespan and his cognitive/physical abilities. A world where such information is freely available, as it is in Gattaca, has two main options: it can discard all other subjective factors for selection, or it can shift to the only seemingly objective standard by which to judge people’s capabilities — genetics. It’s a purely logical system, when you get right down to it, and that, in a sense, is what makes Gattaca a more disturbing dystopia than more violent, direct incarnations. But underneath this is another important factor: choice. William Gaylin’s quote suggests that we’ll tamper because that’s what nature wants, implying that genetic augmentation and genetic meritocracies are natural progressions for human civilization. Yet doing so will mean punishing people for their parents’ behavior. Vincent/Jerome, as a “god child” (someone born with natural “chance”), is not a participant in his creation; thus, all the disadvantages his genetics offer are ones he could not change even if he wanted to. The dilemma, as such, is yet another question: if ability is mostly determined by one’s genetics, and many jobs require a great deal of natural ability, do we relegate entire segments of the population to menial labor in order to increase “productivity” despite the fact that many of those people had no hand in their own creation? And is doing so the best course of action for this society? Yes, it is (says Gattaca in my mind). And we’re not supposed to feel particularly good about that prospect, in part because most of us recognize the terrifyingly logical discrimination at the heart of the film. In the end, Gattaca wants us to reject this entire idea, to throw our chips in with Vincent/Jerome — after all, he does exceed his genetically-determined potential. But Vincent/Jerome is the exception that proves the rule. There is no way to know if his success will shatter the perceptions of his world, though it is possible to read the various events in the final moments of the film as leading to that conclusion. However, I tend to see the end as confirmation: Vincent’s/Jerome’s success isn’t public, and, therefore, whatever change he might represent for this genetic meritocracy can never be fulfilled. We will tamper with Mother Nature, yes, but we will also have to accept and adapt to its vulgar consequences. (Can you tell I’m a not terribly optimistic about genetic testing?) ——————————————————————- *When I say “tame,” I am referring to the concept’s logic, not to the historical treatment of groups based on race or gender. From a conceptual point of view, race and gender, for the most part, are illogical. We know this only because we live in a world where the vast majority of us agree that having different skin or gender does not mean that you are, by default, inferior to another group. The only way to maintain that belief in any pure sense is to intentionally maintain paradoxes in one’s mind — I think these paradoxes are what compels some to violence, since the psyche cannot keep contradictory ideas afloat if such ideas are connected to identity construction.