Intolerance Le Fantastique

Or

Tinkerbell is Dead

(But Living Large in Fiji)

KAF/03

In the movie The Truman Show, Truman, who lives in an artificially constructed town which is actually the set for a real-time television show about his life, strives to get to Fiji. Fiji, you see, is where the writers of the show explained a woman who tried to tell Truman the truth moved away to, a place forever out of his reach - for his world has been constructed to keep him both ignorant of what actually lays beyond it, and afraid to truly attempt to leave it. But Truman knows there is something special about the woman; just a crush on her perhaps, especially considering he is already "married" to a woman he doesn't know is an actress. Or perhaps because he senses there are answers to questions that nag him in Fiji - a growing sense of unreality about his world.

But Fiji becomes his mantra - "I'm going to Fiji" is his determined growl, a true article of faith against everything around him that insists with increasing viciousness that he should concern himself with his real life at home, instead of chasing a fantasy on the other side of the world.

The Truman Show might be intended as a metaphor for how the increasingly artificial American culture insulates people from the real world while in fact convincing them that they have a pretty good grip on things and there is nothing more that they could (or should) want for. And it also gets into the question, in a more subtle way, of "what is real?" Not exactly the newest question on the block.

The final scene of the film, in which Truman stands at the edge of the massive "set" that his his world, faced with a door marked simply EXIT, and stares into a black hallway is classic. Behind him, the voice of the Producer, effectively the God of Truman's reality (and a man with something of a God complex in truth), implores him to stay - because the truth Out There is no more real than in the fake town. And in the fake world, Truman knows his needs will be met.

And then Truman says something.

"You never had a camera inside my head."

And then with a bow and flourish, he steps through the EXIT and is gone.

In the same America that The Truman Show satirizes as being wrapped up in a manufactured reality, a great many people are preoccupied with what is real. Or it seems at times what is not real. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony - old Klingon proverb.

There is a vibe going around, or perhaps a mimetic virus of a sort, that truly persecutes the fantasy-prone person. This comes ironically even as, for example, the psychological establishment begins to loosen its overly tight necktie after decades of dour myopic reductionism about human behavior - and has actually dared to state that far from there being anything wrong with the person given to fantastical interaction with reality, it can be a great boon.

But still, it continues. Labeled disassociative delusionals, "hippies", New Age Wankers, or social rejects, a rather large swath of people are routinely railed against and mocked. (Especially on the Internet, but that will be touched on later.) Despite living in a country that is so heavily influenced by a monotheistic religion that is based on the idea of a man who walked the Earth leaving supernatural miracles in his wake, and rose from the dead after his execution. And of course, from that, the very concept of faith in the unperceivable, the unknowable, the unprovable - things touching on the very heart of the fantastic and otherworldly.

It is perhaps funny in a way, from this culture, that people who busy themselves with fantastic things are sneered at; they fit into convenient labels and categories - the Sci Fi Geek, the Developmentally Retarded AD&D Fan, the ditzy New-Age Fantasy Addict. Or the Furry Fan, and yes, the Therianthrope, or the Otherkin person. Even the Neo-Pagan doesn't escape; for all that bookshelves are filled with literature Wicca, modern Druidism, and the like. It is still too fringe, too far out of the typical mainstream sphere - that contradictory world where mothers dress their daughters up as witches on halloween, but at any real mention of "witchcraft" panic with thoughts of strange cults and satanic (because merely Evil is not enough) rituals.

Rice Boys are relatively safe however. The Fast and the Furious seems to have made them look cool enough. And Americans have a soft spot for cars.

A side note:

We will look the other way on the score of people with these interests and tendencies who are highly successful in careers and have an upper-middle class or higher income. Having a large paycheck proves that you are a good Capitalist and further, that you Know What You're Doing, so your various personal insanities and perversions can be ignored. Peter Jackson is, of course, not pathetic for being an absolute Tolkien fanatic - he is getting paid a great deal for it. And it would be quite amusing if Stephen King was to come out the closet as a reincarnated Lich, thus explaining his expertise in the macabre - and accompanied by a suspicious lack of derision. Except from fundamentalist Christians; but they hate him anyway.

This is something else which seems particularly American - a sort of economic social Darwinism, where when all else fails, you can rely on income level and social class (as defined by career) to determine whether or not a person is worth listening to, or is deserving of mockery.

As an excellent practical example: It remains a continuing source of amusement to myself that in the great flame wars and wanton slander of The Internet, it has become a mythology that a dirty secret I don't want anyone to know, is that I am a janitor in real life. This is held up as one reason why I don't really know anything, and why my opinions don't matter; also the reason why I sometimes say American education and college has a tendency to produce clever idiots and people entirely stripped of a basic sense of imagination and honest emotions - I'm just jealous after all, that I don't have a college education to make me smart. Aside from this being a fascinating study in a severe lack of true critical thinking about information found on the Internet -- I've never been a janitor and there is zero factual evidence to make that hypothesis -- it makes one wonder if people feel so threatened by opinions that they have to resort to impersonating Draco Malfoy and poo-poo on the lower classes to feel they have "won".

One caveat though: just don't lose your job. For then it will be obvious proof that your aberrations prevent you from material success, and you'll be fair game just like the rest of your fellows who haven't been as lucky with regards to bank account.

But back on topic, it's all very ironic because there's nothing more unreal than human civilization. Unreal of course, in the way that those who persecute things for being unreal define reality.

Economics and a free-market economy are not written in the stars. They're not explained or defined by the behavior of quarks. The ruminations of philosophers, the fevered reveling of the most furiously religious, and the detached, glum cynicism of the hip nihilist are artifacts of human creation. The trees and the mountains, the stars and the interstellar dust, have no opinion on these things, and only as much influence over them as men choose to give them.

So much of what humanity thinks of as its daily reality is real only because it is agreed-upon to be real. Even putting aside religious convictions about the existence of an objective and almighty god -- who's declarations and rules are in themselves, the arbitrary decree of His will and opinions, and not even it would seem, a part of the fundamental workings of the universe He created. Should He in fact exist, of course.

How ridiculous then, is it to castigate a person for treating as real for them something that is a fiction for the rest of the world? Perhaps it is an indication of how little different points of view are truly tolerated in our society that these instances of ridicule even occur. Many complain that today, we are over-tolerant of all opinions, afraid to say that anything is truly "incorrect". That people are "silenced" by extreme pressure to conform to a kind of "touchy-feely" dogma of bland cultural acceptance. But this largely seems like a form of hogwash. We're tolerant, it might be put forth, only of that which at some level still reinforces our own beliefs - the mainstream Atheist tolerates the Christian because Christianity is a part of the game, the agreed-upon playing field, and after all, without the other side, how would you define yourself?

Ah, but the real nature of the beast is revealed with something truly outrageous (so to speak) is brought on the table. Then we see how "tolerance" can quickly dissolve, and knee-jerk reactions of outright rejection appear. How amazing is our ability to instantly construct a framework in which to utterly lambaste the alien intruder - ad hominem seems all but genetic, an instinctive flailing out, an automatic counter-attack. Mimetic judo. The tales we spin to ourselves at this moment are stunning. This crucial point where regardless of what we can see and observe, every negatory possibility our imagination can summon forth -- and make no mistake, our imagination can be a vile, hateful, spiteful, monstrous thing -- is totally real for us, as real as the moon in the night sky and the tides it pulls on.

This happens in a flash it seems like. And we don't doubt it; a moment later we may scramble for facts to back it up, to justify it, with sometimes semi-plausible and sometimes utterly ridiculous results. Once in a while, we may randomly even have something actually correct, at least inasmuch as our moment of absolute denial synchronizes with something that actually exists outside of our own delusions. When this happens, we only seek to redouble our efforts, now twice as sure of ourselves.

Even with homophobia still rampant in places Americans might have learned their lesson, one would think, with homosexuality. The very phrase "out of the closet" originated from the tendency of homosexuals to utterly shock and confound family, friends, and co-workers with the news that they were gay or lesbian while they had appeared "so normal".

The fact that so many homosexual persons did in fact put their pants on in the morning like everyone else, led the same day in, day out lives as everyone else, talked about the same things at the water cooler as everyone else, came as a massive jolt of cognitive dissonance for so many. And perhaps it indicated how strong the latent image of what the homosexual "must be like" was - in order for so many to be stunned so easily.

It's little different with other kinds of people today.

The Internet is especially a great focus for our worst qualities as well as for our best. For every doctor who has stayed up late at night in an online hospice to talk cancer patients around the world through their darkest hour, there is a person who, safe from a real-time punch in the face, has stayed up late at night to construct and perpetuate outrageous and disgusting tales about people they have never and likely will never meet. And no shortage of others chiming in to snort and giggle along.

And people pretentious enough to stay up late at night writing essays about it. [Editor's note: it's 4:13am right now.]

It happens online more simply because with no real-world feedback, it is so much easier to imagine a ridiculous caricature of the person you are slagging to hell. Crafting an ad hominem tale about how Jack the Furry Fan is a child-molester born of a crack-addict mother, and weighs 700lbs is somewhat easier when you aren't standing face to face with Jack. Where you can see that Jack is a 170lb svelte and natural athlete - or even if he is chubby, might in fact have the build (and muscles) of the average WWF star. Along with the ham fists to smash your face in for insulting his mother.

Something related to this, and that must be addressed, is that being an ice-cold person who puts forth a veneer of social invulnerabilitycan have great attraction. A lot of people seem to operate under the thinking that anything which could potentially provide a vulnerability, a window of opportunity for mockery or derision from their peers should be shunned - they build up emotional and social armor composed only of the most heavy plates, and anything that provides a possible route of attack on themselves is considered to be bad, worthless, or even dysfunctional.

A telling tale comes from an Internet forum for video and computer games: in a discussion thread started by a keen and cunning person about "Are there games you're embarrassed to admit you play?" Many people chimed in to admit, behind a veil of online anonymity that they never let their friends and/or immediate real-life peer group know that they had any interest in certain genres of games. A principle category cited were role-playing games and games with overtly fantasy-world themes (such as Super Mario Brothers-esque cutesy action titles). One person said that he only let his friends see sports games at his home and hid his copies of other kinds of games - and that his friends often mocked people who played anything other than sports games, especially fantasy-world RPGs. While this might seem a tad extreme, especially with something as relatively innocuous as video games, it makes a good example of the mentality - there really are people who think this way, even if often in slightly less stringent terms.

Which brings up the point that people really do, it seems, tend to behave in a sheepish manner - basing their standards and opinions off whatever is (in their particular cultural niche) seen as the General Public Consensus.

(Though it maybe isn't so surprising that sports, in the above example, could be held by many as one of the few acceptable interests - America is, after all, rather obsessed with sports -- but only ones that are not visibly gay of course -- and elevates sport activities to a pseudo-religion.)

The Truman Show comes to mind again, in the end.

In the end, Truman left his world not because the human civilization out there was any less manufactured. A telling line of dialog came when he asked the Producer if any of it had been real - "You were," was the answer. In the end, the only thing that is truly real is each of us, ourselves, and what we decide is real for us. We do have the choice. Which is why Truman left: to choose, instead of having it chosen for him.

The fantasy-prone person, what in the old days used to be called "the starry-eyed dreamer", is the Truman of the Western world. The worlds they choose live in are no more real than the world of the Wall Street power-broker - it's just that those making the rules have decreed that the story of the day is Wall Street, not Middle Earth. It is the particular chauvinism of the West however to not see it as such.

And yet, in the middle of all this, perhaps even in a perverse way because of it, the pursuer of the fantastique preservers. Humans are stubborn, stubborn creatures - even when they are elves or dragons.

And what about Tinkerbell?

Well, that one can be left for the reader to ponder on their own.

Drakenfluegel / Dragon Thought