OF FICTION
One of the French New Wave pioneer, Jean Luc Godard one said, “If you want to make a documentary you should go to the fiction and you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.”
And the Canadian psychologist and writer, Jordan Peterson said, “Fiction is not the opposite of fact. Fiction is hyper-real. And the deeper the fiction, the deeper is the distillation, the more real it is.”
What is distillation? It is the embodiment of real ideas into, for example, the Joker in Batman, which is the distillation of everything pathological into one character. But what happened in the movie Batman is not real. It is not real in the sense that it is a videotaped representation of an actual sequence of event. It is real because it is a profound abstraction.
And what is abstraction? An example of abstraction in the context of literature is an author does not tell about every detail of a character’s life. He only takes the happenings that would capture the audience’s interest and contributes to the story. What triggers my curiosity is when he said that great literature including mythology and religious accounts are the deepest form of abstraction. And the trouble begins when abstractions and distillation has been taken as something real, and worse, missing the whole point of the story.
Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver (1976), said that to write a story, you must first understand the problem. Then, transform that problem into a metaphor. He transformed the problem of being broke, alone, disconnected from the world, into a guy surrounded by people, only to be separated by the windshield of his taxi. Similar to distillation.
Joanne Gardner, a Mythologist from the Joseph Campbell Foundation, said that we should take myths seriously, but not literally. It means paying attention to the metaphorical meaning it could be suggesting. Interestingly, she said the same thing about movies. Movies should be taken seriously, but not literally, paying attention to their metaphors and archetypes as well.
OF HISTORY
How about history? In the opening of the movie Braveheart, the voice said, “...history may say that I am a liar. But history has been written by those who hanged heroes.”
Dr. Azly Rahman, a doctorate in International Education Development from Columbia University, and six Masters Degrees in education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing says, “...no such thing is a historical facts. History is a perspective and narrative. Whoever owns history owns the destiny of a nation. We must understand that history is a mirror to our lives. We must confront history doesn’t matter whether it is hurtful or not”. And he further warn about the danger of falling into one single story.
The single story that questioning it is a cardinal sin and a taboo. A book written by Dr. Farish Noor entitled What Your Teacher Didn't Tell You, it reveals some different views of Malaysia especially the pre-colonial time. For example a different phase of Hang Tuah’s life including some of his world views and being an ambassador, amongst others. Dr. Prof. Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi was asked why the local education system includes a doctored version of history and he simply answered, some people will not ‘naik pangkat’ (promoted).
THE MADNESS OF CROWD
The mass have to be dumbified. The obvious act of indoctrination and brainwashing have created a group of people who are stuck in a loop of dogma, to an extent of sympathizing the guilty party. The Stockholm Syndrome. It is the danger of the illusion of being in the right side with numbers.
Irving L. Janis, a Yale psychologist, introduced Groupthink in his 1972 book Victims of Groupthink writes, “...a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people which the desire for harmony and conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decisions making outcomes. Cohesiveness or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may may produce amongst its members to agree at all cost…”
This also ties to Charles MacKay 1841’s The Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. Which includes a chapter on The Love of the Marvellous and the Disbelief of the True. While It is innate in humanity to think tribal for their own survival, being in numbers has also be the cause of most of human conflict.
As George Carlin himself has said about his love of individuals but hate when they start to group up, wearing hats and armbands and have a list of the people they hate. The level of intelligence goes lower as the condescending group goes bigger. And ultimately, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
The ultimate product of this agenda is what Ricky Gervais said the culmination of the ‘average’ society, which in the end votes to give power to the same group of people to govern the country. Thus so does every other things produced have to be made in the same average level. Compared to the original version of ancient Greek Democracy where they have the ‘Rule of the Intellect’ and only them can vote and decide. Now in Malaysia the vote of a scholar are at the same value with a ‘mat rempit’. Oh we are at the time when comedians are speaking the truth while the politicians are the real comedians.
It is perhaps it is through misreading and misinterpretation (of fiction or reality) that has led big groups of people of same religious faith to kill each other for 8000 years. But that is for another topic.