Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the cleverest plays every written. If you haven’t read it, it’s about two characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who pop into being without the slightest idea of who they are or what role if any they’re to play in life. Anyhow, it got me thinking. Well no, not when I first read it decades ago, but just today.
It got me thinking about all these action movies, like the John Wick series, in which dozens – sometimes tens of dozens – of the bad guy’s thugs get dispatched, usually with a bullet to the head, but always with maximum splatter. And it got me thinking. Who are these guys? Don’t they all have mothers? Don’t some of them have wives? Children? How much military training do they have for the role they’re playing in the plot? And what could incentivise them to put their lives on the line, which surely they must know they’re doing? What have they been doing for the boss for the weeks, months, perhaps years, before they’re called upon to swarm that remote cottage or high-rise apartment? What doubts did any one of them have before embarking on what we all know would be to no avail?
All movies require a suspension of disbelief. It’s part of what we’re to bring to the theatre. If we can’t, stay home. But apparently we’re also to suspend knowledge of how human beings are. Or perhaps that these ‘characters’ are anything more than automatons. Either way, this asking not to ask is an odd ask, don’t you think? And it’s precisely because I can’t not ask these questions that these movies don’t work for me.
Something similar, I suspect, is why movies like Star Wars don’t work for me either. Apparently the Emperor wants nothing more than to be the ruler of the galaxy. But why? What would he do with the galaxy that he wouldn’t do with just a serviceable part of it? What could he do with the galaxy that he couldn’t do with just a serviceable part of it? Think of all the things that make life worthwhile. Good food, good wine, a good lay, good company … But by all appearances the Emperor is an ascetic. Probably voluntarily celebrate. And one can’t attract good company without being good company oneself, which clearly he’s not. That’s why these ruler-of-the-universe stories don’t work for me. The power to acquire good food, good wine, a good lay, and good company I understand. But power for its own sake makes no sense to me. Which I guess is why I don’t understand …

Categories: Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: John Wick, Star Wars, Tom Stoppard