The vvitch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
"Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?"
It’s so easy for people to get bogged down with the specifics of it all. We are, after all, three dimensional beings living in what we believe is probably a three dimensional world.
Is that too much to take in at this time of day? Well okay then.
You and I are eating apples. I take a bite and say that I like red apples. You then tell me that these apples are green. Well now. How did this happen? How did one person expressing their preference for something turn into a cold, immobile conversation about the inert objects in front of us? Hell, I have no idea, but it happens all the time.
Instead of us getting anywhere we’ll get bogged down with the details. And then we’ll argue about those details. We’ll argue about how you see them and how I see them. As though there were any way for us to progress by doing this.
Recently there’s been all kinds of unpleasantness going on. A lot of intolerance. A lot of cruel words. Also recently I’ve come to the realization that this has happened before. All this unpleasantness. All these cruel words. You’ve even read these words before. Again, let’s not get bogged down in the specifics. Maybe the you in question wasn’t you at all. And so on and so forth. Anyway, back to the unpleasantness.
When this happened before, you and I (on opposing sides, for clarity) fulfilled the same roles we now play. I pointed at the thing and said ‘this is crazy’ and you pointed at me and said ‘you are crazy,’ and on and on and on. It’s always been like this.
Part of the problem might be language.
As we all know, language isn’t real. Just ask Lacan. He had many things to say (ironically) about how language was a construct. He’s not wrong either. Our language didn’t exist until we created it. We made it all up. And we think of language in a way that suggests that the word and the object are the same. But they’re not. The word is a symbol. It’s a linguistic image. A word standing in for a picture, or a feeling. A thing which is not an object and/or experience standing in for something which is (often) an object and/or experience. If I say the word ‘cup’ then we’re all going to start imagining different cups, not the same one. And if I say the word ‘hunger’ we all understand what I mean intellectually, but the word does not carry any of the physical experience of hunger itself.
Let’s return to that opening paragraph and extend it slightly with what we've learned so far.
It’s so easy for people to get bogged down with the specifics of it all. We are, after all, three dimensional beings living in what we believe is probably a three dimensional world using a non-dimensional form of semiotics to make sense of this probably three dimensional world.
Shall we go further?
Lacan believed that we were not making sense of our world through language, but actually creating our world with language. Tearing it down and rebuilding it, brick by brick. Every day we make sense of everything around us not via the things themselves, but via the symbols we have created which stand in for those things.
Does that sound far-fetched? Consider this:
There are points at which the symbols cease to be necessary. There are points at which life falls on you with full force. It breaks you from the routine of the day-to-day because this is the real, tearing its way through the construct we’ve created, the walls we’ve put up. These rare days cut you to the core, pull people together, or tear them apart. We call them tragedies, or disasters, or something like this. But what they are is the unstoppable force of the real tearing through the carnival tent we’ve erected around ourselves. It’s the nightmare stepping out from the wardrobe.
You’re eating a plate of food, and watching the announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize on television. You don’t understand the point of the Turner Prize. You understand the point of the food on the plate in front of you. It's solid, and understandable, and you like that. You’re eating a plate of meat and vegetables, even though you’re fairly sure you haven’t eaten meat for many years. You have your eyes fixed to the screen in front of you as your hands work like machines: forking, slicing, scooping, stabbing at the food, and then getting it into your mouth. You can’t remember what animal the meat on the plate came from. Sometimes it tastes like pork, sometimes like beef, sometimes lamb, and every now and then it tastes of chicken. You’re reminded, as everyone always is, that human flesh is supposed to taste like chicken. You let out a bark of a laugh at this thought. And then you go silent, not sure why you found that so funny in the first place. You take a sip of water. Recompose yourself. You feel like looking at the meat, but you keep your eyes off the plate. You’re not sure why, but it feels terribly important that you don’t look at the plate right now. Instead you continue eating. Your fork stabs at the meat and your knife saws, and sometimes it feels like the knife is tearing through leather, and at other times it passes through jelly. This inconsistency in the texture of the meat is starting to worry you. As is the sound of flies buzzing from somewhere. But the food in your mouth feels solid. And there appears to be no unpleasant taste. So you continue. And you pray that you are right.
It’s so easy for people to get bogged down with the specifics of it all. We are, after all, three dimensional beings living in what we believe is probably a three dimensional world.
Is that too much to take in at this time of day? Well okay then.
You and I are eating apples. I take a bite and say that I like red apples. You then tell me that these apples are green. Well now. How did this happen? How did one person expressing their preference for something turn into a cold, immobile conversation about the inert objects in front of us? Hell, I have no idea, but it happens all the time.
Instead of us getting anywhere we’ll get bogged down with the details. And then we’ll argue about those details. We’ll argue about how you see them and how I see them. As though there were any way for us to progress by doing this.
Recently there’s been all kinds of unpleasantness going on. A lot of intolerance. A lot of cruel words. Also recently I’ve come to the realization that this has happened before. All this unpleasantness. All these cruel words. You’ve even read these words before. Again, let’s not get bogged down in the specifics. Maybe the you in question wasn’t you at all. And so on and so forth. Anyway, back to the unpleasantness.
When this happened before, you and I (on opposing sides, for clarity) fulfilled the same roles we now play. I pointed at the thing and said ‘this is crazy’ and you pointed at me and said ‘you are crazy,’ and on and on and on. It’s always been like this.
Part of the problem might be language.
As we all know, language isn’t real. Just ask Lacan. He had many things to say (ironically) about how language was a construct. He’s not wrong either. Our language didn’t exist until we created it. We made it all up. And we think of language in a way that suggests that the word and the object are the same. But they’re not. The word is a symbol. It’s a linguistic image. A word standing in for a picture, or a feeling. A thing which is not an object and/or experience standing in for something which is (often) an object and/or experience. If I say the word ‘cup’ then we’re all going to start imagining different cups, not the same one. And if I say the word ‘hunger’ we all understand what I mean intellectually, but the word does not carry any of the physical experience of hunger itself.
Let’s return to that opening paragraph and extend it slightly with what we've learned so far.
It’s so easy for people to get bogged down with the specifics of it all. We are, after all, three dimensional beings living in what we believe is probably a three dimensional world using a non-dimensional form of semiotics to make sense of this probably three dimensional world.
Shall we go further?
Lacan believed that we were not making sense of our world through language, but actually creating our world with language. Tearing it down and rebuilding it, brick by brick. Every day we make sense of everything around us not via the things themselves, but via the symbols we have created which stand in for those things.
Does that sound far-fetched? Consider this:
There are points at which the symbols cease to be necessary. There are points at which life falls on you with full force. It breaks you from the routine of the day-to-day because this is the real, tearing its way through the construct we’ve created, the walls we’ve put up. These rare days cut you to the core, pull people together, or tear them apart. We call them tragedies, or disasters, or something like this. But what they are is the unstoppable force of the real tearing through the carnival tent we’ve erected around ourselves. It’s the nightmare stepping out from the wardrobe.
You’re eating a plate of food, and watching the announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize on television. You don’t understand the point of the Turner Prize. You understand the point of the food on the plate in front of you. It's solid, and understandable, and you like that. You’re eating a plate of meat and vegetables, even though you’re fairly sure you haven’t eaten meat for many years. You have your eyes fixed to the screen in front of you as your hands work like machines: forking, slicing, scooping, stabbing at the food, and then getting it into your mouth. You can’t remember what animal the meat on the plate came from. Sometimes it tastes like pork, sometimes like beef, sometimes lamb, and every now and then it tastes of chicken. You’re reminded, as everyone always is, that human flesh is supposed to taste like chicken. You let out a bark of a laugh at this thought. And then you go silent, not sure why you found that so funny in the first place. You take a sip of water. Recompose yourself. You feel like looking at the meat, but you keep your eyes off the plate. You’re not sure why, but it feels terribly important that you don’t look at the plate right now. Instead you continue eating. Your fork stabs at the meat and your knife saws, and sometimes it feels like the knife is tearing through leather, and at other times it passes through jelly. This inconsistency in the texture of the meat is starting to worry you. As is the sound of flies buzzing from somewhere. But the food in your mouth feels solid. And there appears to be no unpleasant taste. So you continue. And you pray that you are right.