soul – JonMarc Grodi

Sep 24

Characters

By JonMarc Grodi | Philosophy and Culture | No Comments

While there are a number of facets that make a good movie, such as its plot, setting, visuals, etc, I return always in my musings to how much of an impact good/bad characters can have.

I have seen many movies with at least decent story, great visuals, great pacing (etc, etc), but have very forgettable characters – I have come out of these experiences entertained but not moved.
On the other hand, I watch old black and white movies with decidedly poor visual quality, poor sound, again decent story, but very strong and well developed characters – in this case I am not just entertained but impressed and delighted.

The most clear example that brings out my point is “rewatchability”. Think about the movies or tv shows that you can watch over and over again.

I went through a (short) phase in my teen years where I was somewhat possessed by the idea of having an impressive movie collection. I quickly began to realize not only that A) it was expensive B) in the great scheme of things it was a terrifically worthless pursuit, but that C) most movies I would buy, I would have no interest in watching again after the first run through. At the time I was mostly into NEW, loud, graphic, sci-fi and action movies. Whatever. : )
Thinking about this “phase” later on, I wondered about the movies I had been buying – why were they so dull after the first viewing? There were other older movies/tv-shows (ones I hadn’t considered buying) that I had watched a hundred times with my parents and could easily watch another hundred times someday with my own kids! I’m talking “The Quiet Man”, “The Scarlet and the Black”, ” The Dirty Dozen”, and others.

After some years of batting these questions around about “re-watch-ability” it occurred to me that the common thread of most “re-watchable” movies is that they all seemed to rely on strong characters, whether or not they had graphics and sound to back them up.

The more I have thought about this the more I have been convinced that “characters” can be one of the strongest or weakest aspects of a movie. A strong, well-developed, unforgettable caste of characters can carry even the dullest graphics or sounds (well, to a point I suppose).

Why might this be? I postulate that this has something to do with the nature of “personhood”.

There is a definite finitude to most of the aspects of a film or show. From the props to the special effects. You see/hear the props and special effects and then …. what? That’s all there is to them. One glance, and you have for the most part exhausted what they have to offer.

Some might argue that aspects such as music and storyline might have much more to them, and I would agree. Well written music can be listened to many times and a well written story can continue to entertain and even take on new meaning upon further passes.

However, what of characters? By far, on a scale of finitude/infinitude, persons are the deepest wells.

Persons really are inexhaustible. You could spend a lifetime getting to know someone and still have barely tapped their mystery. This is easily forgotten nowadays with relationships as shallow and brittle as they are. But those who have toughed it out, stuck with a friend or spouse even through hard times and against modern sensibilities, can still tell you that people really are little points of infinity scattered about a finite world.

This of course points to forgotten common sense about people around us. How easy it is take people for granted, even though they are the real brushes with infinity that we have every day. Isn’t it crazy how easy this is to forget? We work and struggle and save and learn and rush around and busy ourselves with life… to what ends? They certainly cannot be very noble ends if we aren’t stopping to be fascinated by the people around us – to enjoy them and to love them and to recall, again, how much more important and infinite people really are than anything else in our lives!

With this peculiar inexhaustibility of human persons in mind, perhaps we have our answer to why certain movies or tv-shows are “re-watchable”. A movie that is full of graphics and sound but with shallow, underdeveloped, unrealistic characters, is easily exhausted! Once we’ve seen it or heard it, we’ve pretty much seen and heard it all.

But what of movie that have strong characters, almost regardless of the graphics and sound? Will you ever be able to watch “The Quiet Man” enough times to exhaust Sean Thornton (or his actor, John Wayne?). Or Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”? How much more memorable was the old Star Wars trilogy compared to the new, even though the new had twice the graphics/sound/explosions/lasers/and the like? Could it have been the unforgettable cast of the original trilogy and the (on the whole) forgettable cast of the new? Lord of the Rings, Bella, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc etc etc.

Instead of boring you with my list of movie and tv favorites, I’ll leave you to come up with your own (and share if you’d like!). But as you do so, think about the ones that are rewatchable and let me know if you agree with my proposition. I think you’ll begin to notice a pattern between the very great rewatchable classics and that tv show that grips you every time ( I am a “Law and Order” junkie). The characters are striking, rich, and as in real life, infinite and inexhaustible.

From one infinite soul to another, be blessed.

JonMarc Grodi

Sep 05

Feelings vs Action #1

By JonMarc Grodi | Why Aren't We Saints? | No Comments

The relationship between feeling and action is interesting in how consistently it is confused today. And not simply confused, but completely flip flopped at almost every turn.

Feelings are seen as the cause of action. When I feel “good”, I am able to be kind. When I am in a “bad mood”, then rudeness and unkindness cannot be helped.

While this is certainly consistant with modern worldviews in which human beings really are just complex machines with the mere illusion of free will, it is a grave error in understanding feelings and action.

Take love, in the modern mind, as an example of the collosal but consistant misplacement of the involvement of feelings and action.

Love is consistantly seen as a feeling that leads to good actions. When two people “fall in love” they do loving things like buy gifts, make sacrifices, and get married. However, they really can’t be expected to keep “doing” these things when the fall out of love, can they?

Like the old song “I’ve lost that loving feeling”, the “feeling” of love is sought for with good intentions. The good feeling is sought so that through the feeling, the good actions might be made possible. When the good feelings are absent, we mourn our inability to do good, and continue to seek the return of good feelings.

In my own relationships, my own marriage, how often do I find myself thinking “ I wish I could get out of this bad mood so that I could just be kind/work hard/speak up/ etc,” you can fill in the blank.

And so with this relationship between feelings and actions in mind, we often feel trapped. We certainly want to do good, to excell, to work hard, to grow, to be kind, to make sacrifices, but we lack the feeling. Without feeling hard-working, how can we expect to work hard? Without feeling sacrificial, how am I to make sacrifices? Without feeling kind, warm, and loving, how am I to act kind, warm, and loving? And so we seek the feeling in hopes that we may unlock the ability to act.

However, to again take love as the example, where do feeling and action really fit in to love? At its core, love is primarily the action. Regardless of how readily it is identified and associated with loving feelings, at its core, love is the action. Love is the action of willing the good of the other. Through one’s own will, the good of the other is strove for.

Oftentimes, willing is indeed accompanied by good feelings, but at its core is the action. The act of love is also much more important for our consideration because it is the part we can control. We can’t cause ourselves to “feel” a certain way. Feelings and emotions are not a muscle that we can flex. Our will, however, is.

We can take this further though. It is not simply the case that feelings have been focused on and actions ignored. As I said before, the two have been flip-flopped and their relationship reversed.

We see feelings and emotions as the cause or catalyst of our actions. Not only is this not true ( we are the cause of our actions) but it is actually the opposite.

What we discover is that when we actively begin to love, the feelings of love are cultivated. Conversely, often when we are feeling selfish or unkind, it is because at some level of our being we are acting selfish or unkind.

Our hearts are like horses (bear with me). Plato once used the metaphor of a chariot to illustrate the soul, and in the metaphor the feeling/emotive/passionate parts of the soul were represented by the horses, while the will was represented by the charioteer.

Horses and hearts are both fickle – the look around, they wander, they stop to eat the dandelions. Sometimes they are looking in the same direction you are, and then it seems that getting there is very easy. But it becomes very hard when I want to get from point A to point B, when there is so much delicious grass at point A.

I do not want to belabor the horse metaphor, but I may be forced to because of how well it works out.

The horse, like the heart, needs to be trained. When the horse is distracted and untrained, its very hard for the rider to get anywhere quickly. However, when the horse is trained and the two begin to work together in unison, what is the result? There is something truly glorious, even epic and poetic about the harmony between a rider and his horse – they work together, the ride in unison, the ride as one unit, the fly with the wind.

When the heart is distracted and untrained, the will has to push hard to perform acts of love and sacrifice. However, when the will pushes through anyway, what happens? The heart begins to follow. Real passion only comes through work. It comes out in the things we have strove for, fought for, disciplined ourselves for, sacrificed for.

All this has been a little rambling, I know. But seriously though, how often do we find ourselves trapped in the modern reversal of feeling and action? How often do we feel trapped by our emotions? Our emotions of sadness, depression, grumpiness, anxiety, and the list goes on. These have become greater and greater problems for citizens of the modern world because they are told, however subtly, that emotion precedes action. One can’t love, if one doesn’t feel “in love”. With this in mind, bad emotions become an imaginary cage that people are convinced is inescapable.

But if one always waits to “feel right” before “acting right”, it will be as a rider who lets the horse lead him. Sure, he may go the right way some of the time – but much of the time he won’t get anywhere at all.

For a few weeks my daily personal challenge has been to reflect on “action” every time I am “feeling bad”. What I have discovered is that whenever I am feeling grumpy, it is usually because I have been acting lazy, selfish, and inward. The days it is hardest to focus on work, are the days where in my mind I have been procrastinating, stalling, or otherwise slacking off.

And of course, there are certainly times when bad emotions seem to pop out of nowhere, if I muster the will to act rightly in spite of these emotions, do you know what happens? Horse and rider become one, once again.

Ok, now I’m really done. Thanks for reading,

In Christ,