Fiction Under The Knife

Intro

In the past few months, every so often, I’ve been reminding myself that the art I consume isn’t real. It’s so odd to think right? At my age, why would a person need to remember something so natural, so obvious? I’m not a freak. I know that Solid Snake and the Addams Family aren’t real people. They never have been and they never will be. I’ve never had trouble grasping this concept before, but recently when I’m trying to enjoy a sitcom or lose myself in a book, I’ll remember this fact, and something in my core dies. Maybe the problem is Oppenheimer.

When I watched the movie a few weeks ago, I was engulfed totally by the flames of its excellence. No one had yet done justice to how masterful and dense the film was. Even knowing parts of the history, the drama and scale of it gripped my heart like few films ever had. My copy of American Prometheus has been sitting in my drawer like a cinder block on my chest, demanding that I pick it up and do anything with it, but I wanted to see the film first. Both are mammoth pieces of art, but I knew the movie would take less time, and offer a good basis of knowledge.

Oppenheimer blurs the line between biography and drama. Such a man, and such a life, and to think that it all really happened. The story of J Robert Oppenheimer was so rich with depth and artistic value, yet it was all a matter of hubris and causality. It’s something I still can’t entirely wrap my head around, how reality can become cinema and literature. How much artistry can be assigned to this story, yet none of it is born of imagination. So when I encounter something like Blade Runner or Chungking Express, it is the inverse. Pieces of it carry so much truth, but the entirety of it is false. The people you see on the screen are actors, and will never, in any form of reality, exist.

So what is art then? What do we do with it? When we acknowledge the truth, what good are the lies? When you bleed it dry of the magic what are we left with? Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Here it is folks. Fiction has been laid to bed and put under the knife. The guts of art lay bare to us. Let’s dig in, and see if we can get caught red-handed with something worthwhile.

Identity

Primarily, art acts as a spotlight. It casts a beam on the truths of reality, the things that can only be learned in bottled settings. Think of every book, movie, album, show, and game as a terrarium, in which a little lesson grows and branches off into other small insights. Sorry to push education first, but if you value what you consume, you’re coming out the other side a different person. The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty teaches us not to be a slave to routine, Frankenstein teaches us that unchecked hubris can lead to ruin, and Scott Pilgrim vs The World teaches us that dating a highschooler in your 20s is wrong.

Even if the people we see on the screen are just actors, through their words and actions we can learn more about ourselves. Projection helps us better understand our morals and changes how we live our lives moving forward, because gaining an outside perspective on your personality is the msot beneficial thing you can do for it. While Batman is a power fantasy for most, some truly desire the attributes he carries. The care for his city, the dedication to physical perfection, and the stoicism are all desirable traits for people, and if we delve into why that is, then we begin to understand more about ourselves and what we value in life.

Likewise, Spider-Man, in all his many iterations, is as relatable as they come. A nerdy neighborhood kid who’s gifted superpowers, and uses his intelligence to do the right thing. A boy who has loved and lost, and continues to love and lose. Who works himself to the bone to have it all, and through everything, never stops trying to be funny. We see ourselves in Spider-Man, and in his resilience we find strength. Bruce and Peter find themselves reinvented so often because they are two sides of the same coin, one gritty, the other light-hearted, and both stand out as perfect within their niches.

I’ve found myself connecting a lot to Miles Morales from the Spiderverse films. Watching the first movie at multiple junctions in my life, I identified with his reluctance to take on the responsibility of his powers, and his eventual leap of faith into the unknown. When watching ATSV, I loved the drama of the narrative and found myself afraid for Miles in a unique way. It dawned on me as I started this essay that the fear I had for him was really for myself. I saw ATSV during the summer before my first year of college. Miles was so comfortable in his identity as a hero, only to be told that he was never meant to be Spider-Man. Deep down, I saw this and began to question whether I should be a writer and an artist. But we stick it to Miguel, and we triumph. Despite what anyone tells us, we know who we are, and that is enough.

This is the whole point. Art is eye-opening and transformative. All artwork, at its core, is either a blank slate or a mirror. We either imprint ourselves onto the situation at different levels of consciousness or see our nature put under scrutiny and reflected at us. From this, we must make choices about the content of our character, or admit truths that would not otherwise make themselves known. Through this process we can afirm our identity, and become better people.

Comfort

Second, art provides us with comfort. Life is all about harmony and duality. Light and dark work in tandem, winter and summer are both vital extremes, and stress must be capped by relief. Across human history, the premiere way to comfort a person has been to tell them a story. In our youth, stories break up the day and offer a change from tedium. Saturday morning cartoons, bedtime stories, and even the act of creating art helped calm us as kids.

Now, as adults, that comfort is valued tenfold. We all have that perfect unwinding fantasy. Candles lit, thermostat set, and a gratuitous amount of blankets and pillows. The cherry on top is a good movie, a thick book, or a massive game. When the real world has beaten us to the bone, we dip into pocket worlds to win back peace. As much as art is meant to send messages about reality, it’s also meant to help us escape it. Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, reality sucks. People die, no one can fly, and the forces of good meet defeat on a million fronts every day. But on the other side, we can’t lose. Neo beats Smith, Tron beats the MCP, and the Ghostbusters save New York time after time.

This is why I love Kero Kero Bonito so much. Their sound is childish, as a way to satirize adulthood and celebrate the past. Their third album Time N Place is nostalgia-sonified. When I listen to it, I feel spring air in my lungs, and blades of grass in my hands. I’m six again, alone in my room holding action figures, and nothing in this world can hurt me. Art is magic. It helps us summon feelings, and offers itself as the vessel for our pain. When we surrender ourselves to art, joy can manifest itself in beautiful ways. The story on display may not be real, but it gives our hearts something to latch onto and inspires real emotions. Every time you play a song while vacuuming, or fall asleep in front of the TV, the art sits back and lets out a satisfied breath. It is proud to have done its job.

Community

Finally, art brings people together. Put a movie on in a room full of people, and see if it won’t draw eyes. It only takes one book to strike up a conversation, and the mention of a band to get people yapping. Art is like velcro, and we’re all little pieces of dust and lint, getting stuck on the same path of fabric. In our new static home, we share our love for the body of work that bonded us and learn to love each other through it.

There are a dozen stories I could share of this exact phenomenon. One time someone I know recited a Mitski lyric, and I started running through the song in my head before exclaiming “I Don’t Smoke!” It was our first interaction, and now she’s like a sister to me. I’ve met some of the best people I know in the four walls of a library. My first dates were in movie theaters, and suffering through performance art is my favorite way to bond with people.

We’re given so many reasons to hate in this world, but art acts as the great uniter. Without it, the act of forming connections would be a true struggle. At least, I know my nerdy ass would have a hard time. I know some people who can’t see the value in the written word or a good film, and sometimes I feel bad for them. They think everyone who throws a book across the room or spaces out when a good song comes on is a weirdo. But when we start acting like little freaks, we’re actually doing something spectacular. We’re loving something. We’ve found a reason to exist in this world and we hope that they do the same. So if I play my music too loud, it’s because I’m full of passion, and if I start yapping about the book I’m reading, just don’t say anything and it’ll end sooner.

Outro

In the end, despite the degree of reality involved, making and experiencing art is the most human thing we can do. To take emotions and hold them within a disc or a book is the closest we can get to sorcery, and I honestly don’t know who I would be without it. It’s something I’ve given thought to, what this world would have for me if I couldn’t create. If literature wasn’t so kind, I would try screenwriting. If that didn’t work, I’d invest more time into music. If it all fell apart I’d learn how to work a camera. But if I were forced to do something that involved no creativity, no emotion, no ideas of form and expression, you might as well tell me to kill myself. I love art. It is my soul, my breath, and my life. Even if Juno never got pregnant, or Superman never flew. Even if Shinji never got in the robot, or Montag never burned, art will always be there to change me, comfort me, and help me love the people around me.