is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Pan's Labyrinth.
I found myself engaged in one of those spectacularly unproductive arguments recently, where I say I don�t like a movie and someone else thinks I�m wrong.
That sentence already works well as a joke and punchline so I won�t do any further explaining.
However, the conversation reminded me of various arguments I had about the film Pan�s Labyrinth back when it was out in the theaters. It wasn�t that I wanted everyone to love it (it is not universally loveable. I mean, nothing is universally loveable, but Pan�s Labyrinth probably qualifies as difficult to love). People who didn�t like it tended to dismiss it as a superficial and therefore flawed story about fascism. I disagreed.
Pan�s Labyrinth is a film about how frightening it is to be a child; it is also about how adults lose the ability to remember that, and so treat children as if they had nothing real to be frightened about; and it is also about how adults, even though they don�t remember how frightening it can be to be a child, carry those childhood fears into adulthood, and act on them unreflectively. A child�s world is full of enchantment, uncertainty, and the kind of fear that can go along with those two things. An adult tries to carve out a world of certainty, tends to do that by getting rid of belief that things or the world can be enchanted, and hopes that certainty will put an end to fear. Most of this is not thought about by any given adult. It is not experienced as a decision about how to live in the world.
One problem that results from this is that a child�s uncertainty is replaced by adult uncertainties against which there is no defense. Security and protection are things we seek out and do our best to offer to ourselves and to the children around us. That is what adults should do. But we will all be harmed in various ways in our lives, even as adults, and we will all die. That is a form of uncertainty we cannot escape. And we fear it. But very often we cannot admit it, or even think about it. That might matter when we make decisions that bear on these questions of safety and certainty.
Enchantment, were it still allowed to us, would be one way to deal with uncertainty, and the fear that attends it. You take what is uncertain, attach magical meanings to it, and possibly even form a redemptive system around it.
That�s pretty much the strategy of the young girl in Pan�s Labyrinth. It is reflected in the desperate and not always good choices made by the adults all around her in the film.
Fascism could be one way in which the adult need for certainty and security becomes solidified. That is really the only way in which Pan�s Labyrinth is a film about fascism.
Of course, resistance to fascism can also be a way in which the adult need for certainty and security becomes solidified. And both fascism and resistance to it could be a way of dreaming up enchantments, endowing human-made things or the larger world with magical powers, and forming a redemptive system around that. Those all seem to me to be potential arguments being made by the film. But let�s keep in mind that Pan�s Labyrinth is not a film about adults (even though it is a film for adults). It is about children, and the adults they may turn into, if they are kept safe enough to survive that long.
It is our job, as adults, to keep children safe. But consider this. No matter how successful we are at providing certainty and security for ourselves and others, some dangers we face can�t be avoided, and fascism (along with many other ways of trying to deny the inescapability of uncertainty, and the fear that comes along with it) only invents new dangers. Those dangers tend to be more cruel, perhaps because they are invented by frightened human beings.
Spoiler alert from this point forward.
Think about how an adult viewer of the film worries about the child in Pan�s Labyrinth. As you watch the film for the first time, you tend to worry about the wrong things. You worry that the Pan creature is going to harm the child; in particular you worry that the Pan creature is going to abuse the child, possibly sexually. Then you worry that she�ll be harmed in her pursuit of the imaginary world she creates to escape the cruelty and bad decisions of the adults around her. But here is the heartbreaking part that most of the people I�ve talked to seem to miss about the film: it is only the adults who really harm her, and one of them even kills her.
The role of the Pan creature is to test whether she is a hero�and she proves that she is, when she refuses to shed the blood of her baby brother for the sake of her imaginary world.
For the Pan creature, refusing to shed her brother�s blood is the right answer. He beckons her to shed the blood because he understands that the decision not to do it is as meaningful as the action of not doing it. Following a command (thou shalt not) is not the same as making your own decision about right and wrong, and even that is not the same as refusing to follow an unjust command. The viewer worries that the Pan creature is dangerous, when all along he is the only one trying to teach the child how to live a meaningful life.
Her mother marries a cruel but powerful man because she wants protection. She tells her daughter to put away the enchantments of fairy tales and grow up. Meanwhile her decisions are the main source of danger for her daughter. The stepfather is a cruel general still trying to live up to the expectations of his dead father. He is a danger to everyone he encounters, including himself. The kind housemaid wants to help her but is caught in a dangerous situation as an informer for the rebels. She thinks she is planning for a future, but most of her decisions focus only on the present moment.
Some of the adults in the film have made good choices. Many of them have not. All of them have had to compromise, as adults do. And many of them, it seems, have lost, along the road of compromise, a sense of which kinds of questions are still non-negotiable. The child who gets dismissed as silly, childish, a girl, and too wrapped up in imaginary worlds refuses to shed blood for the sake of an ideal she dearly wishes to achieve. Every adult in the film has been offered that choice. Very few make that decision.
Why? That is not clear. But let�s just admit that it can�t be the case that adults make compromised decisions because the world is too cruel and complicated and thus good choices are not open to adults.
The point of a labyrinth is not only that you might get lost. It�s also that you should attend to the course you are on, and the decisions you�ve made and will make. You�ll probably get lost at some point. Once you do, you can make things worse or better. Part of that will be determined by the decisions you make. Knowing how you got to where you are will help. Being good to those who are there with you will too. But mark this: there is nothing you can do to escape the risk of getting lost. So much of what passes for adult life struggles against that, as if conquering uncertainty were a recipe for happiness. But happiness is as much a product of uncertainty�consider the risks involved in aspiring to achieve something, in loving someone, in loving a world you can�t control�as it is of stability or safety. That is why it takes bravery to live a good life. We are all always in some sort of labyrinth.
***
Back when I first fell in love with Pan�s Labyrinth, I kept thinking I would write about it. I took lots of notes, had lots of thoughts, but never got around to doing it, even though my intent was to write about it in this way, the enjoyable blog-way, rather than in the more fraught and high-pressure academic/professional way. I think my not writing about it is related to what I�ve been discussing here today: all the things adults try very hard not to think about. I even wonder whether I am writing about it now because my father recently died, and so I am stuck living in a space where I just do have to think about some of those things that adults try very hard not to think about. It seems one never grows too old to fear being abandoned by those who have always taken care of you.
I�ve been trying to write about my dad lately. Maybe some of that will appear here soon. Maybe this is installment one.
If Pan�s Labyrinth resonated for me, it is not because I had a terrifying or sad childhood. I did not. It�s because the film made me remember, in a very elemental way, some things about what it is like to be a child that I had otherwise totally lost contact with. It can be terrifying to be a child even when you are lucky enough to be safe and well-loved. I think that is worth remembering for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is also true about being an adult.
4:21 p.m. - February 03, 2012
js - 2012-02-03 22:52:14
test.
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Xina - 2012-02-04 01:35:42
An nicely composed consideration and insightful application of Pans Lab. - a film I also loved but had never considered from this perspective.
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