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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: CA
Posts: 3,503
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Oh man, I just gotta tell you guys about the other day when I was watching The Never-Ending Story and I realized that it presents the narrative in its full suchness--it's really a very disturbing film but it's also really heart-warming and wonderful... Strangely enough The Never-Ending Story was probably the first novel I ever read way back in first grade and it's been too long since I read it to accurately compare the novel to the movie, but boy that movie sure is one super-abstract mindfuck.
For those of you that haven't seen it, super spoiler alert. The basic premise is that there's this book, called The Never-Ending Story, which, when you read it, you get pulled into the story. So how does the movie start? Well, a bunch of characters in The Never-Ending Story have randomly met at some random spot. Why? Who knows. What do these beings do? Not a clue. But the narrative must unfold. What pushes a narrative along? Why, a threat. So, here's the premise: all the beings in The Never-Ending Story are being threatened by a force that's slowly unraveling their world. What is it? The nothingness. The nothingness--that's it... death, decay, suffering, these introduce meaning, purpose, the possibility of a hero, the tension necessary for a narrative to evolve.
We're introduced to the main character--a shy, somewhat effeminate young boy who steals The Never-Ending Story (the book in the movie) from the wizened old man, keeper of tomes and forbidden knowledge, the archetypal "old teacher." Having stolen the source of knowledge, the young boy is slowly pulled into the story he reads, he slowly realizes that he stands in a position of ultimate importance relative to the story.
The story is very simply structured. On the periphery are the beings mentioned earlier, whose existence is threatened by the rapidly encroaching nothingness. At the center are the princess and the hero. The story has adapted itself to the reader--both the princess and the hero are children. The hero represents the young reader's higher self--brave, passionate, strong... He is charged by the people of Fantasia to rescue them from the nothingness. Thus he sets out to see the wise old crone. Unfortunately, the old woman does not have the knowledge he seeks--compare to the Buddha's archetypal search for truth, moving from teacher to teacher, none of whom possess what he seeks.
The old woman does, however, direct the young hero to the Southern Oracle. Entering the Southern Oracle, his purity is tested. Now, what distinguishes the pure from the impure, the hero from the impostor? It is a purely structural definition--the impostor seeks something (glory, fame, pleasure, satisfaction) whereas the hero seeks to defeat nothingness. The Oracle informs our young hero that the only way to save the kingdom of Fantasia from nothingness is through the help of a human child (our young reader), but that this child exists outside the bounds of Fantasia, and cannot be reached. All the human child has to do is give a new name to the princess.
This plunges our young hero into despair. He returns to the young princess, defeated, to tell her that their hopes rest with an inaccessible human child. However, the princess informs him that though this human child (the transcendental awareness) is completely inaccessible, he is in fact in this room right now, listening to everything they are saying. Our young reader is now thoroughly tripping out, since the book has started referring directly to him. What does his charge to give the princess a new name mean? It is his task, as the reader, to impart substance onto the narrative, to charge it with pathos, to give it weight with his own hopes, fears, and desires.
At first he struggles with this. He refuses to recognize his own importance (who am I? I'm nothing... the paradox that the essence of ego is insecurity), he resists being entangled in the narrative (it isn't real!), he insists that he doesn't know what to do, even though he does. It's very simple, after all. Finally, epically, cathartically, he capitulates and screams the young princess's new name. Given his delay, all that's left of Fantasia (all that hasn't been destroyed by the nothingness) is the princess and a single grain of sand. However, he's given a magic amulet, which will make all his wishes come true. So now he fills Fantasia with his fantasies--all the beings consumed by the nothingness return and joyfully wave to him as he flies through the air on a dragon, deliriously happy at being saved and able to enjoy life once again.
So there it is. Fantasia is sustained by the transcendental awareness, which projects its desires onto it. These desires are sustained by the threat of nothingness--the phenomena are not necessarily valuable in themselves, but when they are threatened, when they have disappeared, a drive appears to preserve them, to restore them. And the beings themselves, having overcome the threat of annihilation, momentarily embrace being simply for being, forgetting the boredom that drew the nothingness in the first place.
The movie also touches on the nature of evil. Where you place the climax of the narrative depends on how you relate to the narrative, but arguably there are two obvious points. The first is the very end, when the reader is granted absolute freedom to plunge into Fantasia. The second is the confrontation of good and evil. This confrontation takes place between the young hero and a big, scary wolf-creature named Gmork. Immediately preceding this confrontation, the hero stumbles into a hall of portraits which capture the various moments of the narrative. The hero is confused by this, and doesn't know what to make of it--until he notices a painting that hasn't happened yet, of his battle with Gmork. For the reader, however, this is the moment when the narrative confesses itself to us, confesses its circularity, its essential emptiness... confesses in fact its tendency to confess. Anyhow, this moment of suggested eternity and fractal recursion immediately gives way to the violent conflict between good and evil--between the hero and the villain, the servant of nothingness.
Now, what makes the villain evil? Why does the villain serve nothingness? Gmork, to me, spoke of the snake in the garden, the eternal antagonist... again this appearance has a clear structural significance. Without a representative, the nothingness is just that--nothing. It is impossible to fear. It is boring. But nothingness cannot actually be represented, just as death cannot be represented. It sends messengers--disease, pain, sorrow... but the messengers lie. The messengers say something, while death says nothing. Gmork explains that the nothingness which approaches is the death of the imagination--and people without imagination are easy to control. This is why Gmork aids the nothingness, because Gmork seeks power. Gmork and our hero are both essentially delusional--Gmork is delusional for serving something which cannot be served, for imagining that he can have power over that which will no longer exist. Our hero is delusional for struggling against nothingness, because it is nothing. It cannot be fought. Only Gmork can be fought, and our hero does manage to defeat Gmork.
And so The Never-Ending Story reduces every narrative to a self-perpetuating abstract blueprint--threat of nothingness generates the need for a hero and the incentive for a villain. For the narrative to evolve, there has to be a transcendental awareness which charges the struggle with pathos. When the threat has disappeared, the characters feel justified in celebrating being simply for being, and the reader can vicariously participate in their celebration.
If you managed to read all that, congratulations! I am the old man I spoke of earlier, and you are the young reader being initiated into forbidden knowledge. Maybe you can see why I wrote all this in a thread asking "Are you religious?" Maybe your head is swimming with judgments about what I have written, maybe you don't think it really applies to your life or life in generality, as that which is. Maybe you think narratives are just a small part of life, something that we humans do, and that thinking of life as the narrative as such is misguided. Currently, I am a character in your narrative, and to save me from the nothingness you are charging me with pathos, with your hopes, fears, and desires. For this, I thank you. Whether you realize it or not, it is an act of love, it is heroic.
Religions have such hold on us because they approach life on this level, as narrative, and propound truths on this level. Hence, it is in this context that I will try to convey some of my ideas and confusions about religion. This is what I believe to be the essence of the Buddha's teaching: recognizing that the narrative is empty of substance (that is, that we project substance onto the narrative) and that nothingness is just that--nothingness, and therefore should not be feared, we discover the path to our own center, the center from which we impart substance, and learn to impart bliss and love on every moment, regardless of its narrative context, and thus shatter the need for the illusion of nothingness. Doing this does not destroy the narrative per se, from an outsider perspective the cycle continues just as it did before--the Buddha ages and dies. However, from the Buddha's perspective the narrative is no longer meaningful, because it is no longer guiding his projections. It is an empty cup into which s/he is overflowing. This point is what I understand nirvana to mean, and it is what I strive for, which is why I consider myself in some sense a Buddhist.
This, for me, begs the question: is Christ a Buddha? Because, as traditionally understood, Christ represents to a greater degree the hero of the story--caught up in the narrative, struggling to overcome the Devil. In this case, it would appear that Buddha is in fact "higher" than Christ--liberated from the narrative altogether, rather than entangled in it. However, as I have suggested, the duality of entanglement/liberation is false, and I believe there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Christ was also such a liberated being. I think it is a matter of misinterpretation, of placing emphasis on the wrong features--Christ's crucifixion, his struggle with the Devil, his performance of miracles, when the most important feature of the story is actually Christ himself, the message that "the Kingdom of Heaven lies within."
Hence, I would like to suggest this meta-narrative. A religion emerges from the words of an enlightened being, which have a certain transformative power. The paradox is that a religion is powerful because it can shatter the confusion which convinces us that we are powerless with regard to the narrative, but that it inevitably ends up strengthening the narrative, because it becomes the most viable target for our most desperate projections--whether they be love and devotion or hate and disparagement. Hence, Christ comes to shatter the edifice which has grown around Judaism (the sabbath was made for man, not the other way around) just as Gautama comes to shatter the edifice which has grown around Hinduism (rather than higher self, no-self).
Gautama Buddha was once asked to perform miracles to prove this or that. He replied, "I am the miracle."
That's all, folks!
Last edited by cardboard adolescent; 10-26-2010 at 02:55 AM.
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