Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, epilogue

This is the epilogue to a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

I realize now that I did not explain at all why I picked the title for this series of posts on Jurassic World. It is of course meant to call to mind Edmund Burke’s classic critique of the French Revolution, which has the much more elaborate title Reflections on the Revolution in France, And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris.

Burke is sometimes caricatured as being an arch-conservative and stick-in-the-mud, but it is important to realize that in the context of his society, he was actually rather on the progressive wing. Burke was a supporter of the American freedom struggle, a champion of the rights of the Irish (he was of Irish descent himself), and vehemently opposed to the East India Company’s depredations in India. And yet, he was fundamentally opposed to the French Revolution, because he saw in it the release of forces deeper and more dangerous than those unleashed by any other revolution: rationalism, utterly convinced of its own correctness and of the total mistakenness of all other positions, willing to overthrow everything that came before it in the name of a new world order founded on pure reason unencumbered by primitive inherited idiocies.

What happens on Isla Nublar is a revolution in that sense: a full overturning of the existing order (a re-volvo) and the institution of a new system based on different principles.

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part three

This is the third of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

In the previous installations of this series, I first wrote about the hugely significant role clothing plays in understanding the transformations of individuals in Jurassic World. I then expanded on the idea of clothing to enclosures in general, which led naturally to relations of power and dominance, which were then contrasted with relations of trust and understanding (familial relations) and with relations of unification for survival (conjugal relations). It is now time to naturally move from conjugal relations to the theme of evolution, which of course underpins the entire Jurassic Park franchise.

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part two

This is the second of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

Last time, we took a very close look at some of the significant ways in which clothing works in Jurassic World. I will avoid diving into such detail this time around, as I have a vast range of topics to cover. (Need I say that this will be massively full of spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie?)

2. Enclosures

I’m thinking of enclosures fairly broadly here as any sort of covering that affords protection from the elements. In this sense, clothing is of course a kind of enclosure protecting human skin: the shedding of clothing is the discarding of a layer of insulation. But there are a number of other such enclosures in the film: the gyroball, for instance, literally encloses the two boys in a protective shell as they travel through the park—

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part one

This is the first of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

I haven’t blogged for a regrettably long time, so I figured I would mark my return to the scene by reflecting on a movie that hasn’t done too badly for itself this summer: Jurassic World. Given my obsession with dinosaurs (par for the course for anyone who saw Spielberg’s original miracle), this experience was particularly fun for me.

I suppose it needs no spoiler warning to say that Jurassic World is about (yet another) dinosaur going crazy on a theme-park island, with lots of humans dying gruesomely while the protagonists make it through with all body parts intact and with an increase in their wisdom. But what struck me even while watching the movie was that it very artfully sets up a number of structural polarities, only to dissolve some of them—but not all!—into an even more complex jumble. Postmodern neopaleontology? Bring it on!

What I will do now is look at a few motifs that are repeated throughout the film, creating striking parallels and generating resonances.

Kultur und Kampf

This BBC article by philosopher John Gray begins with an autosummary: “Culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony.” It then quotes the character Harry Lime from The Third Man:

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Provocative, but clearly false, as Gray himself admits. It wasn’t the violence of the Borgias that produced great art, but their patronage. (To what extent their patronage of the arts was a consequence of their murderous regime is harder to analyze.) There have been reigns of violence that have produced no art of great consequence—think of Mafia-dominated lands, or of the devastation of Khorasan by the Mongol armies. It’s clear that the link between great cultural products and violence is not as obvious as Lime (or Gray) claims.

But that’s not the most interesting part of this article—after all, Gray himself chooses to back off from Lime’s rhetoric after using it as a hook to draw people in. Rather, what is interesting is Gray’s conclusion: “Culture thrives on contestation and antagonism, not some dreary fantasy of social harmony.”

However, this “conclusion” is not warranted by Gray’s arguments. What looks like a careful argument is in fact a reinforcement of an old myth. Gray’s vision of culture as the cream bubbling atop a writhing, churning, chaotic conflict parallels the stereotypical picture of a lonely artist whose whole œuvre is a cri de cœur that pierces society’s carefully constructed façade. Both of these ideas are Romantic myths. And like all powerful myths they possess a kernel of truth and have deep roots extending into Greek culture: the Promethean myth of a man stealing primordial technology from the gods, and the notion of the agon, the contest in which two men struggled with each other, physically and mentally, for victory. The Greek conception of debate as agonistic and the Greek idea of (technological?) progress as something achieved by an act of violence have survived down to this day in myths such as the one Gray sketches out here. (I realized I’m treating the Greeks superficially here, and know that Greek culture was more complex than this.)

The reason I call this a myth is because Indic and Chinese civilizations (at least what little I know of the latter) take very different approaches to the question of whether culture emerges from conflict or harmony. Again, the point is not that culture can or cannot arise out of conflict—it is clear that it does sometimes, and it doesn’t on other occasions—but rather that “civilizations” have different attitudes towards the relationship between culture and conflict, and hold different myths dear to themselves that influence their perceptions of the world.

The Chinese case is rather interesting. The Hundred Schools of Thought flowered during the Warring States period when the political scene was a bloody mess, and it may in fact be possible to argue that at least some intellectual developments were in direct response to the chaos. Nevertheless, it is my limited understanding that Chinese philosophers have not normally followed a confrontational model of debate. Furthermore, the Tang and Song courts witnessed the flowering of Chinese art, literature, and philosophy (well, at least of the Neo-Confucian persuasion), and these were largely in response to sustained courtly patronage of these pursuits. But regardless of what the political scene was like, the story told is one of harmony, both within the individual and at the social level.

The Indic case also differs from the Western one. While Indic philosophy does parallel the Greek in largely following an agonistic model, the worldviews of the literati typically sought out harmony and resolution. The rasa theorists saw artistic appreciation as evoking stable emotional states in an appropriately receptive audience, and at least some theorists (Abhinavagupta? I’m rusty on this) thought that the different rasas were all underpinned by the śānta-rasa, a state of calm or repose. Again, I’m not claiming that the conflict model is invalid here, only that the ultimate emphasis of the Indic system is rather different. 

The same is also true of those works of Indic authors that may have had political messages that we may not be receptive to today (such as Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa), where too an ultimately harmonious relationship between ruler and universe, between text and context, is envisioned and enacted. To the extent that generalizations can be valid, it can be generally stated that Indic authors largely saw themselves as working in harmony with their tradition, and saw the purpose of their works not as critiques of their societies but rather as representations of it that would harmonize it with the vision of the ideal society that Indic intellectuals held. (At some point in the future, I shall try to stretch this point into a discussion of Bollywood.)

Ultimately, the point is not that Gray is right or wrong: it is that he remains within the bounds of a particular myth that is not universally accepted or acceptable. Other civilizations have looked at similar events and processes and drawn very different lessons from them, which have shaped their attitudes towards the world and their cultural products in very different ways. Vive la différence!

Human irrationality and the purpose of a liberal arts education

There's a very interesting post by Lane Wallace at the Atlantic, called "All Evidence to the Contrary".

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create "cognitive dissonance"--discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence--selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

So where does education come into the picture? Obvious enough:

A liberal education, [UCLA professor Mark] Kleiman says, "ought, above all, to be an education in non-attachment to one's current opinions. I would define a true intellectual as one who cares terribly about being right, and not at all about having been right." Easy to say, very hard to achieve. For all sorts of reasons. But it's worth thinking about. Even if it came at the cost of sacrificing or altering our most dearly-held opinions ... the truth might set us free.

Very, very interesting. Read the whole thing! (Yes, I have more work than I can get done, and I'm procrastinating.)