Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

 

I am not interested in the rabbit hole of decoding all the symbols in the last movie by Kubrick. Rather, I'm going to side with the most obvious and straightforward interpretation of this movie: It is a dream. The movie is very closely adapted from a short novel by the Austrian Jewish author Arthur Schnitzler, who was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and associated with Stefan Zweig. He even titled the novel "Dream Story" (Traumnovelle, 1926). Let's not outright dismiss the author's clue right in our faces, OK? 

That the doctor is stirred by sexual jealousy due to his wife's confession of her fantasy over a stranger is not in dispute. Even when there are verbal warnings threatening his life, his mental images we see are always of his wife having sex with the stranger. He is enraged by her confession and tormented by jealousy, and goes out all night in search of some sort of "revenge" on her "infidelity."

It is not important to determine, specifically, whether each scene in his journey is either real or a dream. Freud has written that storytelling is a form of daydreaming, and fantasies are an integral part of our daily waking life. There is no such thing as an objective reality. The human reality is experienced through each person's own mind, which is distorted by our desires and biases, fears and shames, most of which subconscious.

If we explore the specific scenes in the doctor's dream, it becomes clear that they are a deeper examination of the nature of jealousy. What exactly is causing his rage? What is he frantically pursuing? His wife is obviously not planning to divorce him (even less likely in the 1920s Vienna) or have sex with another man for real, and he knows it. She has said nothing about being unsatisfied by her husband. In fact, her fantasy about the naval officer has nothing to do with her husband. Her fantasy is deliberately devoid of any implication of reality and is strictly an expression of her sexual desires, ie, a daydream, a collection of neurological activities caused by physiological/biochemical reactions in the body. It's something that everyone experiences from time to time, which cannot be regulated by any social forces and influences. I'm sure the doctor also fantasizes about sex all the time --- doesn't matter with whom. 

Just as the wife's daydream has nothing to do with him, the husband's reaction has very little to do with her either. Rather, it is a trigger that releases a bunch of feelings inside himself. What is generally tossed under the label jealousy is more complicated than cliches. In this case, it is less about possessing his wife, body and mind, and more about his fear of his own inadequacy and undesirability. This fear is externalized in his dream, in which he becomes the object of the desire of his dead patient's daughter, he is ogled by the costume shop owner's teenage daughter, and later a prostitute at the masquerade orgy heroically sacrifices herself to save his life. These elements are very typical wish fulfilment. He is in urgent need of being proven desirable to counter the threat of inadequacy, and these women in his dream serve such a function. 

What's curious is the frustration in his dream. Throughout the night, he watches other people have sex all around him, but he never gets any himself. He is either thwarted by circumstance or thrown out. When he propositions a (different) prostitute's friend in the morning, I could easily predict that he would be rejected yet again, but the excuse ("she is HIV positive!") still made me laugh out loud. 

His sense of impotence lies not only in sexual frustration but also social frustration. He is constantly reminded that a doctor is a service provider, ie, servant, to his wealthy clients. He is not Jewish (curiously, Sydney Pollack is, and so is Kubrick), which removes an important element of the original story, but the class gap is illustrated throughout the movie. It's unclear whether it was intentional, but the author obviously linked social status and sexual status, which is extremely interesting and, perhaps, beyond the realm of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the concept of jealousy is not only associated with possession (of one's spouse or partner) but also with the feeling of envy, which is rooted in social and economical stratification. Sex is never only about sex. As social animals, people often confuse social status and sexual attractiveness. 

In the first love-making scene, the wife looks into the mirror while being caressed by the husband. This suggests that, while love and sex involve two (or more) people, each person is stuck in his or her own world. Our desires and anxieties and fantasies are all about ourselves anyway, even under the illusion of converging minds. 

Nicole Kidman gives a complex and accomplished performance in the movie. Unfortunately, the story is not about her or her point of view. It is sad that a story merely acknowledging women's sexual fantasies and desires in a morality-free way is still pretty unusual 70 years after the original publication (maybe not so much in Europe?). When Kubrick made the movie, I suppose, it was impossible to resist the temptation of casting the real-life, high-profile, and physically beautiful couple with questionable sexual tension as the on-screen husband and wife. The downside is that Tom Cruise is not entirely capable of conveying the sense of impotence and self-doubt required by the character. His performance nearly turned the movie into a thriller, occasionally on the verge of bursting into the running lawyer in The Firm. 

The Black Dahlia

James Ellroy published the first entry of his LA Quartet in 1987, before he turned 40. Viewed purely as a murder mystery, it has a lot of plot but is not well plotted. Bucky Bleichert's reason for concealing the truth of the case (to cover up his initial misconduct with a witness) is very weak to begin with and further weakened by the ending, in which he is kicked out of LAPD anyway. The final few chapters feel super rushed in not only revelations but also characterization and motivation. Many discoveries are built upon coincidences and tenuous deduction. The last bit of revelation about Lee Blanchard's murder is particularly weak, using the silly "eaves-dropping outside the window" tactic that a serious mystery writer would be too embarrassed to adopt. 

While plotting is not a strong point, the novel thrives on Ellroy's way with words as well as the undertone of sexual perversion that is less about the crime itself but about the characters and, by extension, the author. Therein lies the real fascination: a muck of sliminess and self-loathing that pervades the world of LAPD and Hollywood. Ellroy has openly talked so much about his Oedipal problem over his mother, who was unfortunately murdered when he was 10, that I almost wonder whether it is (perhaps unconsciously) a cover for a different source of guilt and shame. In other words, cop to the lesser shame (having sexual feelings toward one's parents) to avoid something even "worse." Sure, the Oedipal subtext is explicitly displayed in Bucky's love triangle with his partner Blanchard and both men's lover Kay Lake: The younger man comes into the established relationship of the older couple and treats them as symbolic parents. He lusts after the mother figure (Kay), who is sexually unsatisfied by the father figure (Lee). Eventually he replaces his father to become his mother's lover, while his father dies in Mexico. The author shows an unusual restraint (repression?) by avoiding the archetypal patricidal imagery, thus maintaining a questionably affectionate father-son relationship. I am not imposing Freudian theory on Ellroy; this is textbook stuff writing itself. 

God knows I too relish in stories of police corruption and the approach of a total lack of morality, and the first half of the novel is well done in this respect, but the author does not delve too deep and only half-hints at the perverse masculinity as the root cause through the Vogel father and son pair. Bucky's endless descent into the psychosexual darkness in the second half seems half-baked as characters lose their internal logic and consistency, ultimately leading to an unsatisfactory conclusion. The only thing of note in the ending is its expression of his hatred of the mother figure, coexisting with the fantasy of male salvation through mother's life-giving. Such is the problem with women, isn't it? This leads me to wonder whether his worse-than-Oedipus-complex shame is in some ways associated with either his father or a symbolic father-son conflict. Or perhaps the panic is homoerotic, considering all the homosexual references peppered throughout the novel, which in turn is also related to the culture of masculinity. All the sexual desires in this novel are problematic -- I don't mean in terms of moral judgment but rather in its reluctance. I suppose the secret relationships within the Sprague family were considered shocking in 1987, even though they hardly exceed the noir crime novels of the 1940s. Yet they seem underdeveloped and rushed, as if the author just wants to get it over with.

It does not seem like Ellroy has ever undergone psychoanalysis, which is a shame (no pun intended). 

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Adding a note about the real-life Black Dahlia case. 

I used to believe that humans are inherently violent and people killing other people is a more-or-less constant phenomenon. As I grow older and learn more about society, my view is slightly modified. I still think humans are inherent violently and there will always be some people who would kill other people, but context also matters. Depending on social conditions, killings can either spike or decline, and the types of killing also fluctuate. Of course, this is nothing but conjecture on my part, since I am too lazy to read up on sociology studies and textbooks on this subject. 

Regardless and nevertheless, I often think about the difference and connection between sanctioned killing (eg, war, executions) and unsanctioned (eg, illegal) killing throughout human history. There are a couple of notable points to me about this case: 1) It occurred in 1947, soon after WWII, which the American public was very much aware of and involved in. The likelihood is high that the killer had killed before in a sanctioned context. 2) The murderer obviously sought attention through his contact with newpapers, which very much fit the pattern of many later serial killers. 

Kiru/Destiny's Son (斩) (1962)

 

I became interested in the enormously prolific author Renzaburo Shibata (柴田錬三郎) through the Nemuri Kyoshiro (眠狂四郎) series, which was made into movies and TV series several times, the most famous of which was the 12-movie series released in the 1960s, starring Raizo Ichikawa (市川雷藏). In 1962, Kenji Misumi (三隅研次), who directed loads of chanbara movies (剑戟片), including a couple of Nemuri Kyoshiro entries, helmed this gem and proved that he was much more than a chanbara-churning machine. 

As a fan of Japanese chanbara movies of the 60s and 70s, I have seen well over a hundred of them over the past few years. Never, however, have I seen a movie that is closer to the spirit of the Nemuri Kyoshiro novels --- and the style of Shibata --- than this 71-minute gem of a movie. 

While jidaigeki movies with swordfights come in buckets, what I particularly like about those from this period, right before television sucked most money and talent out of the movie industry, is the real or realistic period scenery and gorgeous art designs in even the pulpiest products. The contrast between the beauty of pre-industrial Japanese society and the bloodthirsty death scenes is at the heart of this aesthetics, which celebrates the co-existence of life and death. Nowhere have I seen this life-and-death aesthetics better expressed in Renzaburo Shibata's novels; and nowhere is Shibata's theme more prefectly realized in this movie. 

While everyone acknowledges the extreme (and deliberately constructed) beauty of the cinematography --- indeed, each frame is perfectly composed, some criticize the episodic structure of the plot and nihilistic mood. Indeed, these are features not bugs. The Nemuri Kyoshiro novels (although I have read only the first series) are built on a series of independent but interconnected short stories. Characters may burst into a chapter and gets killed off or disappear forever within a few pages; or they may leave and return some chapters later. Like Camus' Sisiphus, Kyoshiro is both immersed in and detached from the absurdity of life and the inevitability of death. Presented as episodes of love and death, Shibata heightens drama and mood with few sentences, permeating each chapter with katana-sharp tension. Therefore, the short format is necessary to maintain this tension, while Shibata has an endless bag of plots to personify his view of life, which is essentially "short and meaningless." 

The movie's plot gently subverts genre tropes, such as honor and revenge. While the hero remains undefeated in all the swordfights, he is defeated again and again by petty villains and powerful conspirators, finally swept away in the tide of times. In the novels, Shibata frequently resorts to the term "nihilism" to describe the hero's state of mind, but only this movie is fully able to interpret it on screen, particularly in the hero's father, who spends his final years as a monk by his wife's tomb, and the woman who rushes into death as naked as the day she was born. Perhaps, as the generation that lived through WWII and Japan's defeat, Shibata and Misumi have a shared understanding of nihilism that we can only taste in their works. 

Of particular note is the fight choreography (宫内昌平) and filming style. Chanbara movies had not reached the camp level of bloodshed of the 1970s, but one of the duel scenes foreshadows the later outlandish violence. An earlier brawl, on the other hand, is the earliest one-shot fight scene I have ever seen in this genre. These exquisit fights echo the overall extremely Japanese visual style throughout the movie and elevates it to the height of the beautiful annihilation. 

Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence (4)

Empathy from AI is apparently the next big thing. Last week I heard about a study in which blinded readers judged AI to be more compassionate than human doctors in responses to medical questions. A closer look at the study methodology, however, does not seem to condemn human doctors as many news writers did in reporting the study. The researchers compared ChatGPT's responses with human doctors' responses on Reddit. Perhaps it is true that humans writing anonymously on an online forum in response to questions from patients who they don't know personally are not as friendly or compassionate as algorithms with built-in polite phrases. It does not evaluate the degree of empathy between a doctor sitting face to face with a patient, who may have been visiting him or her for years. 

Nevertheless, one of the advantages of AI is obvious: Its performance in displaying empathy and cordiality is highly consistent and unwavering, unlike humans who have vastly differences in background, bias, temperament, education, and more. Even the same person can have good days and bad days. I played around with the free Microsoft and Google chat bots a bit, sometimes faking irritation and frustration and sometimes attacking them with "angry" expressions. The chatbots, obviously, have no emotional reactions to my attacks and maintain thoroughly neutral and patient responses, peppered with psychologically informed empathic phrases like "I can see why you might feel this way." Since there is no feeling behind the screen, it is not possible to hurt their feelings. 

Human medical professionals can never be as unfailingly unflappable as machines, that is for sure. But the study revealed another insight: Recipients of the medical responses were satisfied with AI-generated empathy. Perhaps the reason is that humans are ultimately self-centered individuals. What matters the most is how "I" am being taken care of, especially in the health care context, when I am very likely ill, anxious, suffering, or vulnerable. My capacity to recognize and forgive the doctor's emotional limitations may be next to nil. A robotic doctor who will not yell at me or judge me for my shortcomings or lose his patience seems pretty compassionate. 

This leads me to a further question. Is there a fundamental difference between real human empathy and a machine-generated "empathy"? The latter could be described as the recipient's own projection of empathy, or an imagined empathy. As long as the recipient feels being empathized with, it is in a sense real, regardless of what the machine actually gives him (ie, programmed sentences). The former, however, involves two (or more) people; it is a psychological phenomenon that bounces between two (or more) people, and both of them feel something. 

Considering how much projection humans do everywhere every day all the time, machine's empathy is hardly a brand new thing. How many people feel their hearts flutter by looking at a celebrity on TV or a singer on stage? How many people believe the "dear leader" knows them and will "fix their lives without knowing who the heck they are? Our natural tendency of projection and transference has led us to invent machines that provide scripted, automatic "empathy," removed of all unpredictability, to quench our thirst and sooth our mind. Can we even tell the difference? 

The Sopranos (1): A Mechanistic Explanation of the Ending

 

Twenty-five years after its premier, I finally came to The Sopranos and binged all 6 seasons in a couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll rewatch it at some point. It is a rich and complex piece of art with profound observations and commentary on the American society and culture. Maybe I'll write more about its themes and throughlines, but right now I only want to examine the ending.

Tons of people have dissected and analyzed and interpreted the ending, in which the screen is cut to black just when Meadow comes through the door of the diner and Tony looks up. Is he killed by an assassin in that moment and the blackout is the abrupt end of his point of view? Is this just an arbitrary artistic device for the audience and signifies nothing? Does Tony live happily ever after with his family? (No.) A very cursory look online gives me an impression that the majority opinion is that Tony is killed there, but a sizable minority believes otherwise (such as TV critic David Bianculli). There are other interpretations, such as the one based on Schrodinger's Cat by the highly detailed site Sopranos Autopsy. Your guess is as good as mine, but below is mine. I cannot guarantee that mine is a unique view, but I am not going to do a thorough literature search to make sure that no one has said the same thing before.

I thought about it from David Chase's point of view. The series were initially not planned for 86 episodes long (with Season 6 split into 2 parts) but were renewed again and again by HBO due to its critical acclaim and popularity, until Chase decided to end it. So we can be certain that Chase definitely had thought about how to end the series for at least a year. This was not a rushed ending due to a last-minute cancelation like Deadwood. Imagine, for a moment, that you were Chase and knew that this was your magnum opus. How would you approach the ending?  

All threads in the entire Season 6 foreshadow basically 3 possible outcomes: 

1) Tony is assassinated by the Brooklyn rival gang. This would be a natural conclusion of the story arc of the season and parallel the demise of Phil Leotardo, Silvio, and Bobby. This outcome is also the most heavily implied in the diner scene and perhaps the most "logical" in terms of story-telling and logically inevitable in the universe of The Sopranos. This road has been illustrated again and again through the dozens of deaths throughout the series. No suspense there.

2) Tony is indicted by the FBI and probably convicted and jailed for the rest of his life. As the lawyer Mink tells Tony, Carlo has flipped and there is an 80-90% chance of an arrest. This outcome has been hanging over Tony for the entirety of the series. The plot devices that had got Tony out of trouble was becoming a bit too contrived. What's left of Tony's life will be more or less the same as the fate of Johnny Sacrimoni or cousin Tony B. 

3) Nothing happens to Tony. He continues to rule his mafia family and evade the feds for a few more years, and then enter retirement with his offshore money. He will most likely repeat Uncle Junior's final years. The best case scenario is a fairly peaceful end, which, in the indifferent universe of David Chase, would be in a place like Green Grove or the posh prison psych ward at best. His dominance may last another 5 or 10 years, tops. Then what? We see the "then what" in Uncle Junior's blank, unrecognizing eyes. Or perhaps his golden years would be more like Mother Livia's, full of bitterness, hatred, and despair for his children. 

All 3 likely scenarios of Tony's future have been described in other characters throughout the series. If Chase was to give us the whole thing, he would be just repeating himself yet again. There is already quite a bit of repetition in the series -- Tony B., Vito, and Christopher (among others) all had multiple opportunities to escape their gangster fates, but they chose to stay in their track to a violent death. Feuds and assassinations happen again and again. Best case scenario? Little Carmine who detaches himself from the family business and goes into the porn business. Worse case scenario? Being beaten to death with baseball bats. One of the criticisms of the series is indeed a sense of repetition, a sense of "been there, done that." The characters are stuck in the same destructive choices over and over, killing others and being killed, or ending up in jail. But that's intentional and a part of the series' theme: People rarely escape their destiny, even young ones like Meadow, Anthony Jr, and the Jasons. 

Which of the 3 outcomes occurs to Tony Soprano is not that important; they are merely variations on the theme of hell. What's important is that he is not able to quit and become a healthier and more ethical person. The path to salvation, presented as a possibility when he walked into Dr. Melfi's office in the first episode, becomes increasingly narrow in season after season, until it is permanently shut off, like Dr. Melfi's door in the penultimate episode. The moral death of Tony Soprano is basically written in block letters for the entire Season 6 and sealed long before the screen goes black. 

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One question remains: Does the ending have to be undefined? Why not choose one of the 3 scenarios anyway? If nothing else, the undefined ending is more artistic and provocative. The reactions since its airing on June 10, 2007, prove that Chase made the right choice. Why shoot one definitive ending when you can have all 3 live on in people's imagination?

Beyond the artistic value, I can see a case against explicitly presenting any of the 3 outcomes explicitly. Do we really want to see Tony being killed, jailed, or dying from the cruelty of old age? The certainty adds nothing. Showing him killed may seem like the hand of God (Chase) doling out punishment on Tony Soprano. Putting him in jail may turn The Sopranos into another episode of Law and Order. Watching him grow old and decrepit is just too boring. More important, Chase and the writers have demonstrated throughout the series a tendency to avoid the appearance of straightforward judgment or revenge, as nothing is worse than leaving the audience with a false sense of TV justice to sooth their anxious heart. Instead, they much prefer to use ironic twists that achieve the same effect. For example, the escalating conflicts between Tony Soprano and Richie Aprile lead us to believe Richie will be whacked before the end of Season 2 by TV conventions. It eventually does happen, but not in the way we expect. This is a trick that the series use over and over and eventually got a little old. Such plots rarely conclude at the end point of their "natural" progression, but they don't veer off too far either (it's not like Richie, Ralphie, or Christopher had a chance to survive in the Sopranos world).

If none of the 3 potential endings feel satisfactory, the natural conclusion is not to use any. In some ways this impossibility stems from the series being a little too long, exhausting all possibilities on other characters than Tony. Of course, a couple of non sequitur outcomes theoretically exist, such as Tony retiring (escaping) immediately to the Bahamas or turning witness for the feds, but they do not fit into the logic of this world. 

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In a media interview in 2021, David Chase admitted that he had intended for Tony to be killed, albeit in a different setting. However, it is hard to imagine how he would have designed the post-death scenes to wrap up the series. A funeral showing shattered family members and young gangsters jostling for the Don's throne? The New Jersey crew being taken over by the Brooklyn management? Title cards outlining each major character's fate in the next decade? ("Carmela moved in with Meadow who is a junior lawyer in some small firm in rural NJ. Anthony Jr. was killed in Iraq.") Ducks flying off in the sky? I have to suspect that all of these scenarios had gone through Chase's mind and been discarded. 

That Tony was to die sooner or later without a taste of relief from his anxiety and depression is never in doubt. He may or may not die at Holten's diner, but his days are numbered, just like all of us. The difference from Tony is that we, like the man in the Indian folk tale who is licking honey while dangling from a tree and surrounded by beasts, can still have moments of joy and love, if we so choose, before the screen cuts to black.  

圣德太子：池端俊策的借古喻今

 

池端大叔的中世纪三部曲中的第一部，“圣德太子”（2001），剧情尤其缓慢，下集看到一半的地方我还在想 where is this going？然而，在最后一场戏中，圣德太子对（剧中的，非历史的）死敌苏我马子说，“我们害死了伊真。” 以及“为了赎罪，只要我活着一天，大和国就不能再打仗。” 这时再迟钝的观众也应该看得出作者的暗示和寓意——然而，根据我的经验，只有更迟钝没有最迟钝，所以也难说。

日本历史剧一般很少提及外国对本国历史进程的影响，除了黑船事件，而是习惯在几个争权的大佬之间打转。然而这三部曲中有极大篇幅强调从隋唐经由朝鲜半岛（尤其是是百济与新罗两国）传入的佛教和政治理念对于倭国/大和国的重要影响与变革的诱因，这本来就是相当罕见的写法。

“圣德太子”把虚构人物，新罗移民伊真，作为男主角的 BFF （剧本特意强调不是男主的跟班 sidekick）来刻画绝非偶然，明显是借古人之口表达作者自己的立场和寓意：入侵占领朝鲜半岛是日本历史上反复出现的目标，朝鲜人民是反复的受害者。朝鲜给日本带来了这些外来文化，得到的回报是贪婪的抢劫，侵略，殖民。例如丰臣秀吉发动的朝鲜战争，19世纪末的甲午战争，以及对朝鲜半岛的长期殖民。动机在剧中也通过苏我马子之口直说了：在内部权力斗争中胜利的贵族们需要得到赏赐与土地，然而本国的土地都赏完了怎么办？只好去朝鲜半岛抢分给群臣。苏我马子比谁都仰慕朝鲜文化，还精通百济语，侵略是一种实用主义的必要而非歧视或仇恨。所以，“好人”圣德太子与“恶人”苏我马子并非不共戴天黑白相反，而是一体两面，代表日本历史中的精神分裂，有时是追求“以和为贵”，有时则发动嗜血战争。绪形拳饰演的苏我马子从头到尾都暗示着微妙复杂的内心纠结，而把太子演得伟光正的本木雅宏在最后一幕崩溃地接受了自己的 complicity. 两个人物融合在一起承担共同的罪恶。

当然历史剧从来都不（完全）是忠实地重现历史，不论如何强调考据真实性，剧本总是人写的，真要完全还原历史观众也不爱看。但是，池端俊策把借古喻今提升到了新高度，也或者是莎士比亚历史剧的旧高度，反正就是以自己的意图为优先，以历史为背景——只不过他对于历史的态度比莎士比亚稍微更严肃一点，而自己的意图稍微更隐秘一点，倒也不多，一点点而已。历史上的圣德太子固然写下了“以和为贵”的宪法第一条，但朝廷多次想要出兵入侵新罗也是事实，只不过限于客观条件而未能成功。这些都是次要的，是素材，服务于作者的反战主题。

本剧也保持了池端剧本里一贯的特点，常有看似随意而含义深长的台词，值得细品：例如圣德太子两次说，阳光普照大地，平等地洒在每个生物之上；例如苏我马子说，最近总是想吃肉，怎么吃也不觉得饱足，甚至越吃越饿。在两部续集中也常有这种奥妙的细节。

传说中的圣德太子戴着佛一样的光环，一不小心就会写成假人。剧中保留了一些异能细节，通过有点神神叨叨的手法表现出来，但其作用并非神化主角，而是在跟苏我马子的对比中探讨佛与正义的理论 vs 现实。圣德太子面临着所有道德原则在现实中碰上的墙壁：如果佛教的原则是非杀，你头戴着佛像去杀了物部守屋（政敌）怎么算？作者把理论纯洁性的讨论推向不可避免的困境（对比迪士尼那种为了保存主角的道德纯洁性而把剧情扭成麻花的写法），并通过苏我马子的实用主义表达出来：如果佛不能马上救我/他自己，佛不就是没有法力的吗？没有法力的佛为什么要信他呢？不能给我带来利益的佛，为什么要信他呢？如果我的欲望跟佛理相悖，那就暂时把佛像收起来，等到一致的时候再拿出来不就好了？当圣德太子把刀指向他痛恨的苏我马子，杀人的冲动涌上心头的时候，作者也没有回避文艺作品中被回避一万次的质问：如果好人杀了坏人，他们之间的差别在哪里？（这不是 moral relativism，而是说这个问题值得细看与追问，而不是按照标签站队。）历史题材的文艺作品习惯于马后炮地把胜利者编派为正义者，从而制造出正义必胜的“历史规律”，偶尔会有池端这样的偏要刨根问底。

池端俊策作为还记得战争/战后的一代知识分子中为数不多的存留者，也许是最后一个反战主义的倔老头了，孤独地游离于对战争并无感性认识的 cynical 的新新人类之外，继续写着不再时髦的反战主题历史剧。但理想主义不等于脱离现实的空想：如果把三部曲里每一部拿出来单独看，全都遵循大众文艺作品的规则：男主角/好人/反战者/革新派最终战胜了死敌/坏人/好战者/反动派，正义与和平获得了胜利。然而把三部连起来看，拼出来的是一张悲观的图画。圣德太子活着时维持了和平与改革的盛世，但他死后朝廷又陷入激烈的斗争，留下的子嗣也遭到灭门。每一部的主角谁不是想要改革现状创造更美好的世界？然而同样的故事在历史中反复重演，还可以一代一代地写下去没完没了。对内也好对外也罢，战争与苦难谁也消灭不了，哪怕你是佛祖下凡也没用。

A Claustrophobic Succession

 

Approximately half way through binging the series of Succession (2018-2023), I got so bored and annoyed that I went to watch the Chinese historical soap opera series 后宫甄嬛传 ("Empresses in the Palace" [2011], viewable for free on YT with English CC). It was only after binging all 76 (!) episodes of 甄嬛传 that I could come back and finish Succession in a hurry. 

In many ways, Succession is very similar to 甄嬛传. Both are soap operas about multiple characters sniping and backstabbing each other to gain power within a toxic and confined space (the Roy family business or the Qing royal harem), groveling for the favor of that one absolute monarch (Papa le roi or the emperor nicknamed the big orange cat). Both are political and family dramas, suggesting a parallel between the world within and outside of the home. Both have at least the intention to expose the corrosive effect of power --- not only the absolute power at the top but also inside the many layers of hierarchy. Both series have dense dialogs that carry subtext and subtle messages. 

Alas, in terms of quality, Succession is vastly inferior to 甄嬛传, despite its "prestige TV" status and HBO pedigree. While neither series is intended to be realistic, 甄嬛传 at least strives for believable psychological profiles for its characters and their relationships over a period of several years. Succession, on the other hand, tries and fails, even if critics endlessly try to excuse the gaping plot holes by proclaiming it as a "character study."

As a story about ultra-rich people fighting over control of a multinational corporation, based obviously on News Corp and Disney, the corporate plot feels like nothing more than some busy handwaving that bets on the ignorance of the average TV viewer. It is true that I have zero idea what board meetings look like, but the depiction in Succession looks more like lazy fantasies than a stab at comedy or satire, much less comedy based on research. Many plot twists throughout the series hinge on the question of money, but the deeper we get into the series, the less the money talk makes sense. For example, the early episodes of Season 4 spend an inordinate amount of time over the upstart tech/media company GoJo's offering price to acquire Waystar/Royco (imagine a deal for Facebook to acquire, say, Fox News), and GoJo's boss Mattson gave an offer the shareholders could not refuse. It is obvious, at this point, that Kendall and Roman did not have enough company shares between them to stop this deal. Then the offer price is never discussed ever again, and somehow, for no clear reason, the company board went into a tie in the climactic vote in the finale. There is some vague mention of GoJo's financial problems and suggestion that the offer price is no longer so favorable, but it is never fully explained what the offer is and why some board members want to sell but others don't. 

That the series have always tightly focused on the motives of the 4 members of the Roy nuclear family (Connor and Tom are often just lurking without any real impact) can be considered by design, at least in the first 1.5 seasons. Later, however, this design becomes an excuse to blatantly use side characters as plot devices at will, ie, a sign of no more than lazy writing. For example, there is very little to foreshadow Tom's betrayal of Shiv at the end of Season 3, and zero reason for Stewy and Sandy to vote no on the GoJo deal. In comparison, 甄嬛传 juggles at least a dozen key characters, all with their own motivations and alliances consistently throughout the series (although some are killed off at various times). Most important, these characters continue to pursue their own interests rather than serve to trigger just another cheap twist. 

I consider the sporadic and unreliable money talk to be a major flaw of this show centered around rich people. Don't tell me rich people do not incessantly think and talk about money just because they have billions to throw around. It is particularly jarring that the much-praised episodes after the death of the patriarch are entirely devoid of any talk of the will and inheritance. The plot is all about control of the company, but no mention of a will? A tycoon like Logan Roy would have a will that is probably as thick as the Bible, executed by half of a law firm. All that crying and sobbing and grief after Logan's death feels particularly phony to me. Only Roman admits, much later, that he had thought about this moment (but still no mention of money). Surely, Logan had the largest amount of company shares, but there is no mention whatsoever about how they are distributed among his children and relatives. It is laughable that there is not even one line of dialog from anyone talking, much less complain, about who got more than who in Logan's will. In fact, the entire seven post-death episodes ring false. You want to show children's resentment of parents' uneven distribution of affection and attention? You want to expose the bloody war of sibling rivalry? Nothing is more raw and focal than the room where the will is read. To completely avoid the issue of Logan's will is an in-your-face omission. 

Both Succession and 甄嬛传 thrive on the large number of plot twists and reversals, conflicts and betrayals. In 甄嬛传, the twists follow dramatic conventions: setup over at least a few episodes followed by a payoff and perhaps a few repercussions. The effect is a complex web weaved in arcs that cover 10 to 20 episodes. Succession belongs to a modern breed of dramatic TV series that throw out many twists quickly to mask a transparent lack of patience, plotting, and characters' internal logic. Before Tom decided to betray Siobhan to Logan in Season 3, there was very little setup for it, as Siobhan's treatment of Tom was in fact hardly as bad as Season 2, when she was ready to send him to jail as the family scapegoat. So why would Tom take revenge at this particular time? A case can be made to explain it, but the writers choose not to. Another glaring example is the utility of Uncle Ewan, who would pop up occasionally to scold Logan's soullessness but never even a feeble attempt to use his power (supposedly a substantial share of company stocks) to influence the GoJo deal or ATN's politics, even after Logan's death.

Even in the first two seasons, the writers display a casual disregard for long-term plot arcs. Stewy and Sandy's plan to take over Waystar is concluded in the laziest possible way: Sandy's stroke terminates everyone else's ambitions. Really? Don't they already have the majority shares? Shareholder meetings and board votes are hyped up again and again, only to fizzle in again and again. If these supposedly critical events can be so easily postponed by Logan at a wave, then why are they hyped up as each season's climax? For example, the three children try to vanquish their father by snatching the Pierce network from Logan's clutch in early Season 4. Their success also leaves them with the consequence of having to pay ten billion dollars to the Pierce family, which forces them to support the GoJo acquisition, but then the need for that ten billion dollars just goes "puff", never to be mentioned again, and Kendall and Roman go right back to opposing the GoJo deal, just because Kendall desperately wants to keep ATN, which is something he showed no interest in the first season. 

The series lost all credibility with me long before Season 4, but the particular hastiness of Season 4 serves as a perfect example of why the entire series is pure fantasy. Fantasies are not inherently bad, but it would be nice if there is some indication that the writers are fully aware that they are writing fantasy, with no effort to conduct any research into the real corporate world. What's worse, the lack of realistic details render the satire of the elite class toothless. I don't mind a lack of sympathetic characters or someone to root for, but if there is clearly no context suggesting a larger world outside of the frame of the screen and no interest in the psychology and motivation of characters not named Roy, the story becomes claustrophobic. Worse, it implies a dehumanization of people outside of the central few. To my mind, Jesse Armstrong has a lot more genuine love and awe for absolute monarchy (ie, "the father figure") than the writers of 甄嬛传, making Succession less of an attack on the system and more like whining that papa does not love him. To quote Logan's assessment of his children, the writers of Succession are also "not serious people." 

If I have to watch a series with an endless stream of plot twists and amnesiac characters that form and break and reform and rebreak alliances every few episodes, I would much prefer Shonda Rhyme's Scandal. At least it doesn't pretend to be prestige TV.