| Yesterday, discusson of my post on Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine took an unexpected turn, with accusations that Klein was peddling some sort of conspiracy theory. It took me too long, really, to post a link along with some excerpts from an interview with Chip Berlet that explained just what conspiracy theories are, so that it would be clear that Klein wasn't doing anything of the sort.
But beyond the confusion about the nature of conspiracy theories, I saw something deeper at work--a distrust of the creative, artistic expression involved in the short film promoting Klein's book. This sort of distrust is quite widespread. It is, in part, a distrust of what cannot be rendered into cold hard factual arguments, at least the way that we define them. We can see it in the legions who dismiss George Lakoff without ever actually having read him. It is also, in part, a longstanding distrust between the political and the cultural left. And that made me think of a short article I wrote for my paper back in 2002. Because, you see, there are very important truths that can best--if not only--be told in the form of stories, which is to say, true lies. |
| "Moral Clarity" is all the rage of late. It's the reason we condemn the innocent to death-except in Texas, where mistakes are never made. It's the reason we put ordinary drug-users in prisons for "aiding and abetting" terrorism, except for presidential niece Noelle Bush. It's the reason we must invade and overthrow the governments of nations that ignore UN Resolutions, unless, of course, they're a trusted ally like Turkey or Israel, or... ourselves.
If all this "moral clarity" is making your head ache in confusion, there is a remedy as close as your television-Joss Wedon's wise and witty "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." It began as a movie whose initial premise was itself an example of "moral clarity"-turning the tables on the Reagan-era deluge of slasher movies whose not-so-subtle subtext was the punishment and obliteration of teenage female autonomy-especially in matters sexual. Buffy was cheerleader called to a higher purpose-to slash the slashers as the Chosen One.
But that's about where the "moral clarity" ends in the Buffyverse. In place of the Rocky/Rambo endless repetition route, Buffy takes each endpoint as a new beginning for a deeper, more complicated battle. The TV series began with two moral realms of struggle: that of cosmic good and evil, where battles are impossibly hard, but struggles are non-existent, and that of high school angst, where life itself is an endless struggle. (Monsters may dismember you, they may even end the world, but the end of the world can be easier to face than asking for your first date.)
That setup alone subverts the notion that cosmic moral clarity solves all problems. But as soon as the setup is done, it's done-and a good thing, too, since it's only a profound insight for those who haven't had it yet. In about five seconds it's "D'oh!" And so the two realms start leaking into each other, starting with Buffy's love for Angel, a vampire with a soul, seeking redemption for two centuries of murder and mayhem.
A lot has happened in the 120+ episodes since then. Most importantly, Buffy has survived, far longer than Slayers normally do. That's because she has friends, who-against the ancient rules-know her secret identity, and even battle alongside her. Not only have they brought her back from the dead (twice), they have given her a reason to live, something real, concrete, even mundane, which other Slayers have lacked. Elsewhere, the heroic realm saves the human. In the Buffyverse, salvation flows both ways.
Against this hierarchy of willed reciprocal care, all other hierarchies are evil-even those officially labeled "good"-while Buffy's egalitarian inner circle repeatedly expands to encompass sometimes members of the demon realm, outwardly blurring good and evil ever further, while inwardly clarifying and refining their essence.
Each season has had a dramatic arc involving a struggle with a master evil, played off against more complicated "human" dynamics. Each season's evil trumped that of the season before...until last season. Last season began with Buffy's second resurrection, after defeating a god the season before, and sacrificing herself, undefeated, to save her younger sister's life. Super-hero resurrections are notorious for artistic failure, as every comic/fantasy fan in nerdom knows. And so last season Buffy's "master evil" was a trio of knowing nerds (two of whom she'd saved before) whose mayhem mostly played second fiddle to her own almost bottomless doubts. Not evil, but the grief of Buffy's closest friend almost destroyed the world at season's end.
This season, all bets are off. The ultimate evil hinted at so far is utterly formless-and has briefly taken on the outward form of all ultimate evils before it, plus that of Buffy herself-while friendships (the show's moral core) are frazzled as never before. Wedon began by accepting rigid conventions, tweaking them only gradually, preserving the spirit of inexorable fate as the ultimate protagonist, while slowly dissolving all outward forms of certainty. No TV series ever has had such a conceptually abstract arc, but what makes it work is its concrete embodiment in moral questions large and small. And this is Buffy's secret: It is in ever-deepening, ever-evolving questions, not snapshot answers, that true moral clarity lies. "Moral clarity" must die, that moral clarity may live. |
