Identity and Freedom

There are several modern axioms that sound lovely and praiseworthy, but have death hiding beneath their shiny skin.

An easy one would be “Follow your heart”

Another might be “What’s true for me…”

And perhaps one more subtle and more dangerous, “I have the to right to…”

But there is a particular set of phrases—a miniature lexicon of what matters to the modern (particularly western) individual—that fall into this category that are especially deceptive. They all revolve around identity.

For instance: “This is just who I am.”

Or: “Just let me be me.”

“I can’t change who I am. Deal with it.”

The contexts in which the above phrases are used are, by nature, defensive. We use such phrases when we feel that our very sense of self is being attacked. It makes sense that we would respond with that seemingly freeing statement, “this is just who I am” when we feel that something about the core of who we are is being maligned or belittled. It’s our identity.

To state the obvious, identity is fundamental. It is essentially the atomic structure off of which our whole functioning self is built. It dictates our “properties”; our behaviors, our capacities, our reactions.

It is no small wonder, then, that we are obsessed with defining our own identities these days. Personality tests. Political affiliations. Social groups. Apparently it is very gratifying to constantly tell ourselves and constantly be told who we are, whether it has to do with our taste in food, our modes of expression, or our emotional processes. We seem to thrive on constant identity analysis and affirmation.

Almost as if that very thing that is supposedly “ours” without question, is very much in question.

Why is that so?

There are, I think, several ways of approaching that question and I’m not going to deal deeply with all of them. Some of the explanations will seem obvious at once: people feel lost and disconnected. Families are increasingly patchwork affairs. Tribes are not a traditional feature of western society, except in a metaphorical sense. Nations alternately disappoint and globalize.

Suddenly these sundry and formerly peripheral social identities begin not only to have an outsized importance, but to lay all claims on us. The claims of family—loyalty, partiality—the claims of tribe and nation—sigil, service, self-declaration. One fights tooth and nail in defense of the symbols and rituals associated with that identity. We progress from identity patriotism to identity jingoism. One takes pride in the ‘local dialect’ of their particular identity, to the point of imposing it on others. Then we have reached identity imperialism, as it were.

There is no surety in this. There is no rest. There is no home. All these identities—whether wisely or unwisely cherished, whether our job, our nationality, our political affiliation, our philosophical bent, our activist or special interest group—they are not strong enough or good enough. Influential as it may sometimes be, my skin color is not ultimate. My desires and affections are not sacrosanct.

There is no bedrock here. In such things, we are fighting for an island paradise which, as it turns out, is only a sandbar. We will find ourselves trapped on it and, with it, we will be submerged. Perhaps we felt that we were willing to die for it, but in reality we may well die from it. And not the holy kind of death.

I am reminded of a scene in the book Perelandra where the antagonist, Weston, becomes possessed. The identity he thought he was claiming, claimed him, until he himself was swallowed down (not up), used by that diabolical entity as a mere tool, his intellect and body cast aside like a horse ridden ruthlessly into the ground by a rider who cares for nothing and for no one.

These piecemeal social identities at which we throw ourselves, far from making us whole, rive us down to far less than the sum of our parts.

The Sandbar

Any foundation but God—be it race, nation, activism, sexuality, political party, profession—will eventually crumble. They are only sand, and they wash away. We’ve been told this by Jesus Himself.

Of course it is easy to see that this is true when the thing in which we have placed our identity is false, or wrong, or shallow, or destructive. But this applies even to those things which seem inherently good.

One day a mother wakes up and her children no longer need her or, in a tragic case, do not want her. Who is she now? What happened to all those years of sacrifice?

One day a noble social movement has no place for you anymore. Where, then, did you place your soul?

One day you are no longer making the kind art that matters like you used to. Do you still matter?

These things may be good—even very good—but they too may fall away, and it is vital that there be something left when they do.

If we set our hearts on these non-God identities, even the best and truest of them will begin to turn, and inch by inch, they will force us to give up God in order that they may maintain primacy and relevance, or in order for us to feel satiated by them (even for a moment), or in order for us to remain part of the “group” that we held dear unto the point of worship. This is how we know we have not found our real identity in God; our social identity has eaten us up, corroded our morals, blurred our vision. Ultimately even truth will be thrown overboard so as to save a ship that is nevertheless going to sink.

Back to the Beginning

Again we come down to those ancient, perplexing words: "Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it."

The more we live in perpetual fear of losing our social (or professional or political or philosophical) identities, the less abundance of life we have. We live in incessant reactiveness against any actual or theoretical slight upon that identity, guarding it with increasing viciousness, and decreasing rationality.

Paradoxically, in relinquishing our whole self--absolutely every last drop of our identity--to God, we are given it back enriched and reconciled. That which we cling to, we will lose, along with everything else; that which we give to God we will receive back "pressed down, shaken together, and running over." It may not look like what we wanted, or what we thought, and there is certainly a dying in it--a crossing of the cold, dark river of submission--but it will be the truth. And it will be whole. And nothing anyone says or does, not even the laws of the land, can take it away.

All those threads of our identity that are really true will be sanctified so that they do not--cannot--take precedence over God. All that which was false, confusion, sin, and wound...these will be washed away. Indeed, your identity once submitted will be salted. The true savor will be awakened.

It amazes me how long and far we'll go to defend and preserve our brokenness under the guise of "this is who I am." Just like sometimes the distinctive way someone walks is due to a muscle strain, an ache, or an injury, sometimes that which we think is our identity is just the way we've learned to walk to compensate for a grievous wound. To take pride in it and plant our flag in it is a deadly folly.

I am reminded of a scene in the recent film Moana. Admittedly, I wasn't really impressed with that movie the first time I watched it. I thought it was merely 'okay.' I was in and out of the room taking care of my newborn son when we saw it and, as it turns out, I missed a crucial scene. It was the scene where the people of the past are voyaging across the sea, singing "we know who we are."

Now this is a Disney rendering of a people's real history, but in this particular version the reason the people 'forgot' who they were was because they feared losing what they had. They clung to their island (identity) thereby losing themselves, day by day, abandoning a very great calling in the process.

Later those words "we know who we are" come back in a different form. Moana sees the raging, burning, angry monster Te Ka; the fiery monster is defending her territory with a violent ferocity. She is defending it...and it's not even there anymore. The rage and defensiveness has kept the truth of her identity far, far away. It isn't until Moana sings the words "This is not who you are. You know who you are," that the rage begins to ebb. The echo of truth. A real identity, not this one of violent fire and hardening shell.

And in order for Te Ka to get her true identity back, she has first to let the fire go out. She has to yield. To die.

A hard and terrifying thing. But then...

The hard shell breaks open. There is new life, and life abundant, overflowing to everything around it.

Now I am not saying that the above scene is a unassailable metaphor for what I am trying to communicate, but there is in there—as in all good stories—a rich taste of truth.

Freedom

We cannot be salt and light if we hoard ourselves, nurturing those sundry, shallow ‘identities’ about which the world so obsesses. We categorize and define ourselves to death, scribbling incessantly in our internal margins about introversion or extroversion, privilege or marginalization, activism or patriotism or any other ism you can think of so that we can “have” ourselves the way we want ourselves, so that we can scream that others acknowledge our definitions of ourselves. And it will be the worst pyrrhic victory imaginable for, “the one principle of hell is—‘I am my own’” (George MacDonald)

So the questions becomes: which is really freedom?

“Well that’s just who I am. This is me. Get over it. ‘I am my own.’”

or is it “I don’t have to be ‘me’ anymore. I am bound by none of this. I am free to give it ALL to Him.”

It is the person who is not afraid to lose anything who can walk sure and confident, who is without fear; we cannot lose what we have already freely given. We can dive, headfirst, into the refiner’s fire, into the salting.

How generous, then, and how humble we will be able to be with ourselves. How wholly unconcerned.

Firefly and the Human Condition

When I fall for a TV show, movie, artist or novelist…I fall hard. I become a loud, pushy advocate. Ask any of my loved ones upon whom I have foisted all my favorites (Community! Gregory Alan Isakov! Brick!)…forced all but at gun-point. Minimal complaints so far, if I do say so myself.

Well once upon a time someone did this for me. They told me to watch some random movie called “Serenity” with them at the theater (Sci-fi? I was skeptical. Aliens aren’t my thing). This excellent movie was born of a short-lived TV show called Firefly, which concerns us here today. The show and the film both have a lot to say about the human condition, and so do I, so it naturally follows that we took to one another.

Truthfully I could use an awful lot of space detailing all the things I love about Firefly but I will try to be very conservative in both my summary and advocacy, because the themes are the thing here (Nevertheless you should watch firefly):

Notice the clothing implies psuedo-Western, but there transportation is space-ship, not stage-coach.

Firefly is a great genre masala—western, sci-fi (but no aliens!), action, drama, comedy, caper—and its basic premise is as follows: humanity spread out onto other planets which are made to be like Earth-that-was (as Earth is then called). A war arose between the Independent planets and “The Alliance” the former of which, as the name suggests, wanted to remain independent settlements, and the latter of which wished to unite all the planets in a progressive and regulated society. The Alliance won, and has become the central government of all inhabited planets—both their high-tech cities:

And their countrified back-waters:

Two of the protagonists of the story fought for the Independents during the war and have moved on from their loss to do smuggling and thieving work on the fringes of ‘the system’.

Zoe and Mal

The difference and tension between the outer planets (quite analogous to rural populations)—with the distant control/neglect they experience from the government—and the inner planets (rather like urbanites) and their appreciation for the government’s facilities and efficiency is pervasive throughout the show.

The excellence of the premise is that, although it shows “The Alliance” through the eyes of those that do not love it, it never claims that The Alliance is evil. It is real modern society in fiction: it provides roads, oversight, security (in the central areas at least), education and medicine. It is not precisely dystopian in nature in that it does not oppress groups, it does not ban art or literature. It has a high degree of physical authority, but it is not a police state. In fact, it is made rather clear that the Alliance truly does do many good things for the people. It is as though the UN were actually effective—moreover helpful—and set in space! It is based upon the most idealistic and humanitarian notions that mankind could bring to bear. The Alliance is, in most of the ways we tend to gauge political purpose and efficacy, a good government with good intentions.

But one of the themes of the show is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that human nature is not easy to keep in check; indeed our attempts to constrain or modify the worst elements of human nature may backfire. This is because the constraints are external, and the modifications superficial. And perhaps the most dangerous dystopia is one that believes utopia can be finagled…one that either refuses to acknowledge mankind’s fallen nature, or genuinely believes that by his own hands man can fix himself.

(I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone, so I will be as vague as I can…but be warned, details of show and movie are to be found here):

The Alliance does what many peoples and cultures have tried to do throughout the ages: to “weed out aggression in the population.” They want to make human nature better. They do it very benignly…as best they can, with no intent whatsoever to cause harm. If the image that pops into your head is that of a cop restraining an assailant and carting him off to jail, that is one legitimate way of weeding out aggression. So are anger management classes. Prisons, court systems, reform…these are all in that category.

So, too, is chemical behavioral modification. Likewise eugenics. Also, abortion. And massacre…and genocide.

If it seems like I’ve made a leap too far, I’m sad to say that I haven’t. We—society—like to believe that we can make ourselves better through sheer force of will: adopting this practice, excising that one. One would not say “survival of the fittest” any more, for social Darwinism has become scandalous for good reason…but this nevertheless remains the underlying principle in how societies, governments, laws, medical care and schools are built up. Or cultivated, rather. It seems like such an innocent aim until you realize that the holocaust in WWII—cold, systematized genocide of European Jewry—was derived in large part by a belief that Germany was eliminating that which was dangerous or unhealthy to it. In the minds that conjured the “final solution”, the Germans were “weeding” and “cultivating”, full stop.

Scholar Zygmut Bauman wrote chillingly and convincingly on the subject, showing good evidence that the distance between our desire to reform (which can, remember, be done benignly OR oppressively) and our willingness to do harm is not as far as we like to think. (I reference him here, because it is his eerie garden metaphor that I have just used.)

How does this relate to Firefly/Serenity? In the end of the tale about the Alliance’s attempts to improve human nature, the Alliance—via its great scientists, and its bright young social engineers—ended up causing a certain large percentage of the population to become overly complacent, and another small percent to become overly aggressive, exposing extreme reactions in human nature to these human attempts to modify it.

I must be clear. The complacency was such that, in the end, all those who reacted in that manner died of it. The aggression was such that it became violent madness. Blind suicidal pacifism on one hand and blind homicidal rage on the other. The pendulum swings. In this case a catalyst made it happen, but society does it all the time. We are pendulum swingers. Extremists. Reactionaries. Of our own devices, our reforms are normally just returns from whence we came and back again.

In Pilgrim’s Regress, as C.S. Lewis explores the spiritual and intellectual experiences that either waylaid or led to his conversion to Christianity, he discusses “Northern” and “Southern” ways of behaving—equal and opposite evils. He means by these directional terms metaphors for opposing tendencies of human nature…a thing which will automatically go awry to one of them unless anchored in God.

“Nature, outraged by one extreme, avenges herself by flying to the other”

-C.S. Lewis

We—people, art, literature, pop culture—are always trying to say “something” about the human condition. But in the majority of films and books, even the most poignant illustrations of life and death are merely a sober recitation of either that snide phrase; “life sucks and then you die” or that indulgent one “do what you feel while you can.” The former of these would be Lewis’ “Northern” fall from Grace, and the latter would be dubbed the “Southern” one.

Clearly neither of these are sufficient, but if there were no God, I think there would be no other conclusions to reach. I have several parts the cold-blooded rationalist in me and God is the only thing that renews me and keeps me from turning into what—in any story worth its salt—would be an outright antagonist. My very own nature gives me myriad reasons to be skeptical about human nature broadly speaking, and plenty of the things I’ve seen could make me one of those “life sucks and then you die” types.

This is part of why I like it best when the arts portray human nature as it is: broken and in need of repair; awry and in need of calibration; fallen and in need of salvation. The latter description may seem explicitly religious, but one can portray fallenness without asserting salvation (as is done all the time in popular culture), but at least this—in my opinion—is half the battle and far better than the other alternatives of either white-washing our nature or yielding to its worst vagaries.

That is why the story told in Firefly and Serenity strikes me so. It readily acknowledges that human nature is pretty well awry, but that us trying to doctor ourselves without the real surgeon present, presiding, and acting, is going to get us killed or worse. And human nature tends to toss back and forth, not quite understanding where on earth the solution is.

(Above) Captain Malcom Reynolds: “They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make…people…better, but I don’t hold to that.”

These wounds are much too deep to staunch through our own means. We often end up doing ourselves damage because our efforts are entirely unanchored. But we don’t give up and stop helping, caring, working, fighting, protecting, building…because when anchored in the Lord, it’s a whole different story. That’s the center passage, the plumb-line and it’s anything but some mere compromise or happy medium. It’s the Way, the Truth and the Life. In Lewis’ allegorical metaphor, everything “North” of it is frigid, barren rock, and everything “South” of it is fetid, seething swamp.

Thus it’s the only real, solid ground at all.

Our Dystopia

There appears to be a fear and curiosity surrounding the idea of things we (mankind) make getting out of hand. There are numerous ways in which this curiosity manifests itself in film and literature and, it being a hearty and prevalent topic, I’ve begun to wonder why it resonates.

It starts with Pygmalion and progresses to Frankenstein; exploring the idea of falling into obsession with the work of our own hands until we lose touch with reality, or finding what we have made to be a danger to others or even to ourselves. Did we tamper with forces we cannot control? Is everything we make doomed to go awry? There is a simultaneous fascination and dread with something created by our very own selves becoming independent of us and our intent.

The trickiness of the situation isn’t revolutionary; many have commented on it. Technologies of advancement and convenience develop right alongside technologies of destruction and manipulation and we don’t always have control of how what we make will be used or developed. It’s good, it’s bad or it’s ugly, and everyone has something different to say about it:

I have an almost religious zeal…not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up.

-Dan Millman (self-help guru)

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

-Frank Lloyd Wright (Architect)

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

-John F. Kennedy (President)

Men have become the tools of their tools.

-Henry David Thoreau (Poet)

A small sampling, and it is Thoreau’s take which so often fascinates us in literature and film: what happens when the brain-child of man—be it a piece of technology, or a form of government—turns on its maker?

There are two main versions of this: The A.I. tale (Robots and machines on the rise!) and the Dystopian tale (We thought it was for the best! But the perfect government turned out to be even worse than what we had before!)

I could make a very long list of examples, but instead I will make short ones which highlight the central themes which seem to so strike us. The main ones for A.I. start with the Terminator, in which man-made machines battle humans for control of the world. That which we made to do our bidding now seeks to destroy us and take our place.

In i, robot, a similar thing happens, but with a twist; the robots are not out to destroy humans…they are trying to protect us by efficiently eradicating our flaws. We have wars and violence, and in order to fully protect us (as their protocols dictate) they must choose how to cultivate us “for our own good” which may include killing some of us and removing from us our freedom.

Finally the most obvious one, which surpasses all the prior stages: the machines we have made no longer battle mankind. They have long since won, and now control humans, mind and body. They make use of us as we once made use of them. The story has become a  modern classic: The Matrix.

The list goes on, well into children’s films: the too-clever robot in “The Incredibles” and the atrophied bodies (due to over-reliance on technology) of the humans in the brilliant robot-centered cartoon “WALL-E.”

Dystopian tales are a slightly different beast, but they ask the same questions: what happens when our best plans eat us alive?

In the Hunger Games books (a young adult series), the government demands children from each district as tribute to take part in a battle to the death for the simultaneous sake of entertainment and retention of control. It’s Battle Royale, Gladiators and Reality TV all rolled into one. As the story progresses, the theme arises that the cure (revolution!) for the ill (oppressive government) quickly becomes a disease in and of itself (i.e. the French Revolution).

(the hunger games heroine in the film version)

Dystopians are popular now, so the young adult literary list in particular could go for miles. In the film Equilibrium, art and affection are considered inciters of violence and instability, so they are suppressed.

In Fahrenheit 451, literature is deemed the chief danger to society, and books are to be burned.

In the book Divergent, society is formed—and deeply divided—around each individual’s belief regarding how to prevent war. Five factions separate five belief systems regarding what society most needs—courage, peacefulness, selflessness, knowledge and honesty—and from the divisions grow mutations of every virtue. Courage becomes violent recklessness. Peacefulness becomes withdrawal/inaction. Selflessness becomes suppressive stoicism. Knowledge becomes pride and power-hunger. Honesty becomes cruelty and moral ambivalence.

In V for Vendetta, a crisis ushered in an extreme government (blatantly reminding the viewer of Hitler’s rise in Germany due to financial crisis) and the government controls the arts, objectives and morals of the people. Moreover it is the extreme example of one classic definition of ‘the state’: monopoly on violence.

(the vigilante and his protege)

On and on the list goes: governments that control the arts, conventions, technology, marriage or religion. The point here—which seems peripheral to these stories but ought not to be—is that these governments were not formed by one all-mighty Lex Luther-style bad guy. Most of the governments in these stories were formed by either the will or at least the consent of the people. The people in these books and films demanded safety, security or stability in some fashion, and the government responded accordingly. But then, like all these other man-made aspirations towards man-made ideas of perfection, they went badly, badly awry. Why we all assume the ‘awry’ part to be inevitable is another discussion entirely. Why we are so interested in the concept of our own creations turning on us is the crux of the thing.

Why?

Because we are the made things that have run off and tried to make ourselves like unto our maker. We are the created servants hell-bent on usurping the creator’s place. We’re the ones set in a position to rule, who rule so ruthlessly, and so very far outside of the original intent.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is us. Except, unlike robots or governments, we are actually lit up with the divine spark (should we choose to live in the light of that fire) and that means the comparison to bureaucracies and machinery stops pretty well short of the full effect. We do not love tyrannical governments or violent robots. We do not vie for their salvation. We want them dead and destroyed…by machine guns and grenades if at all possible. We want them toppled, dissembled and unable to recover.

God seeks our recovery from misguided usurpation and self-dictatorship. He wants to fling us the rope, pull us up and mend us. He gives us the very strength we use to either fight him or seek him. So this is the crucial difference between our approach regarding when the things we make go awry (pull the plug?) and when we go awry:

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is a fact which, quite honestly, I can scarcely begin to grasp, and from which springs restoration. Since I'm pretty troublesome and often awry of God's best and have trouble balancing judgement and mercy this is befuddling to me. But it's so. We are not glitchy products but rather, He tells us, a labor of love.

True Grit and Winter's Bone

Not-quite a movie review:

I have certain issues with the trends in movies. On one hand, it’s nice that girls get to be part of the action these days, and aren’t always mere damsels in distress or MacGuffins* for the heroes. But on the other hand, I don’t always agree with or like the way this phenomenon is executed. Most of the time the women are no less objectified than they were when they were just dames to be rescued. Moreover, they are given unrealistic abilities that border on super-powers (or just literal super-powers) that make their heroism ring a little false. This is done for men and for women, but for some reason people think that when women are made unrealistically invincible it is 'empowering.' And I'm just not convinced that's accurate.

(*MacGuffin is a term used to describe an item that by its existence, or it’s having been stolen or activated, drives the plot-line. In poorly constructed stories it is usually a completely interchangeable item and you could absolutely get away with calling it “That thing” throughout the entire movie/book. “We must rescue the thing!” or “If we do not retrieve the thing, the world will end!”)

A Small Rant

So you have this recent rash of movies wherein a sexy lady—or a small girl, because that’s popular too—becomes the center of all the punching, kicking and bullet rain. On one hand, Bruce Willis’ John McClane (of Die Hard) is almost as unlikely a beast as one of Angelina Jolie’s slinky, cherry-lipped fighter-chicks. But there is a part of me that gets much more irritated when one of her lanky arms lands as hard a hit as one of Willis’ muscly ones. Ladies and gentleman, just because they added in a wince-inducing sound for the landing of the punch, does not mean that it would really land that way. In fact, I have this vague feeling that she would break her wrist.

Now, I’m aware that these types of movies do not purport to be realistic. I get that. So if Willis’ John McClane can escape a high-rise roof explosion by tying a fire-hose around his waist, to then shoot through a 35^th story window, and make it in JUST IN TIME…why should I criticize the unlikelihood of tooth-pick sized girls throwing knock-out punches then striking a pretty pose?

Well, I’ll admit, one’s a fantasy same as the other. The latter is just THAT MUCH MORE unrealistic, while purporting to be just as likely, and I guess it begins to broach my limits for suspension of disbelief. Or perhaps it’s because, while I do not have experience with explosion-fire-hose-roof-rappelling-glass-shooting escapades, I do have experience with martial arts matches with guys. I’ve done Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MCMAP (Marine Corps Marital Arts Program) with men—guys my size and guys bigger than me—and I’m telling you THE MOVIES LIE even more than they thought you did. I have an affinity for punching things, mind you. I’ve punched my knuckles bloody on a 75 ILB bag, and that’s half (or less than half) the weight of an average guy—and much softer. And it wasn’t hitting me back or anything.

So I know I can carry a guy who weighs more than me (to a point). But not as fast as he can. Not that that isn’t frustrating. But things can be frustrating and true at the same time. I am not that stellar a fighter, by the way, so I have not beaten a guy bigger than me in a straight match. Or even in a crooked match, frankly. I have, however, beaten girls bigger than me on occasion, and (once) a guy my size.

Just trying to put it into perspective here. I like a little more realism in my action movies than that. Just a leetle more. Besides you’re gonna have to do more than give her some pretty trickle of blood down her cheek to make me believe that she got beat up.

On to the real subject of the day, Movies That Got It Right:

Not so very long ago I watched two films—True Grit and Winter’s Bone—in rather close succession and I was impressed with both for the same reasons, despite each film having a very different tone, because they have similar elements, themes and strengths. The main similarity is that they have realistic, admirable female leads. Action films with female leads tend to make me roll my eyes. These did no such thing. I don’t want to review the movies so much as I want to comment on the viability of the characters they present as role models. Brief summaries for each ought to do (no spoilers).

True Grit: A remake of an old John Wayne Western in which a young girl, Mattie, sets out to avenge her father’s murder. She hires a hard, old wastrel of a Marshall to help her accomplish the task, claiming she needs someone with “True Grit.” They reluctantly team up with a Texas Ranger who is searching for the same criminal and though both the Ranger and the Marshall try to get rid of Mattie, she is the one with true grit, and she accompanies them. Given the era (late 1800’s, I think) this would have been quite bold and surprising.

Winter’s Bone: Set in modern day. The protagonist, Ree, lives in a poor rural area in the Ozarks and takes care of her two younger siblings due to her father’s absence and her mother’s incapacity. Drugs in general and meth in particular constitute a huge issue in the area—nearly everyone participates in one or more of the following: the manufacture, sale, distribution or use of meth. This includes Ree’s Dad, who is due to show up for a court date, but who has disappeared. Unless he is found, Ree’s family’s house will be handed over due to it being part of her father’s bail bond. The film follows her as she tries to either find her Dad alive, or prove that he is dead, so as to save her family’s home.

Two Sides of the Same Coin:

True Grit has comedic moments here and there and a milder take on a rather serious subject matter. Winter’s Bone is the more harsh—the darker—of the two films. Yet both take their young protagonists very seriously, and treat their individual circumstances with an even hand.

Additonally both films:

1. Are realistic in how they approach certain things, such as disparity in strength, social codes and local culture.

2. Deftly handle linguistic nuances: the rural idioms of the Ozarks in Winter’s Bone, and the westernness and almost jarring absence of contractions in True Grit.

3. Showcase a deep, driving love of family. Either to avenge the dead, or protect the living.

4. Have Protagonists that practically any young women could look at and say “I hope to God that I would be as strong and determined as she in such a circumstance.”

5. Have more or less incapacitated mothers, and fathers that are no longer in the picture (even though they drive the picture).

6. Male “mentors” who are less than moral, and less than worthy, but remain important to the protagonists.

7. Showcase both necessary flouting and manipulative/pragmatic utilization of local rule-of-law.

8. Pay attention to practical details of daily life and survival under harsh circumstances.

                                                                                     

Keeping up Appearances:

Regarding the gorgeous, well-dressed fighter-girl-type…you have NOTHING on the ladies depicted in these films.

These young women, though both quite beautiful in their own right, are kept somewhat plain for the roles they play. Steinfeld in True Grit has her hair in thick braided pig-tails—no foolishly flowing hair here—and she spends essentially the entire movie dwarfed inside a thick winter coat. Granted, she is quite a young actress still, so trying to make her sexy would have probably just been awkward. However people have tried it on 11-14 year olds in movies before. Anyhow, Lawrence of Winter’s Bone is also dressed in thick warming layers throughout the entire movie and though her hair is left down, it comes off as though it’s because she cannot be bothered to mess with it: more important things are happening than her hair. It even looks a little stringy and untended here and there.

Mattie:

And Ree:

Why am I emphasizing their respective appearances? I’m pointing it out because blessedly little fuss about it is made by comparison to movies like The Matrix, where the girl is tough and all—but she’s constantly in tight-fitted clothing in case people get bored of watching her be tough. (Don't get me wrong. I like that movie--the first one, that is--and I like that character.)

In True Grit and Winter's Bone, these girls are characters, not objects, and that is the essential reason I’m calling attention to their lack of glamour. Now, you shouldn’t have to dress a girl down to show her strength of spirit, but in the case of these films, I think it served well because it perfectly fit the scenarios in which they found themselves. And I suspect that to be the case for such circumstances broadly speaking. I hesitate to post pictures from boot camp or deployment to prove my point, but I found one that will suit:

See those gams? Yup that's me. Bling in the boots, helicopter-grease-stains on the cammies and eva’thing. Doing gritty work normally doesn't  permit you to wear fancy stuff.

Now, I read an article by an on-line e-zine writer, who guiltily noted that he wasn’t sure he was being any less sexist by cheering the onslaught of super-powered, tough chicks in movies and video games. Because they were all gorgeous, coifed, sexy, leather-clad tough chicks, so there was no loss of the original purpose (back in the day of damsels-in-distress): to look “hot.” (I’m generally not a fan of the use of that word. It implies a complete disassociation of person from body and is, therefore, not a compliment unless that person knows you really well and their regard for you as a person is long-since established. It is not a compliment in passing or new acquaintance. I have a tendency to chastise my little brothers should they be so foolish as to use that word about a girl they barely know in my presence. The youngest thought me silly.  I think he rolled his eyes. He's good with the ladies, so this is as yet unresolved.)

Regarding Violence:

Perhaps this is a silly reason to get irritated, but nevertheless I do get irritated when someone in the movies gets beat up and it doesn’t seem to really affect them at all—or it doesn’t really mar their appearance in a realistic way. It seems silly to me that they should continue to look fine, just with some delicate drops of blood on their face. What about bruising and swelling? Well Winter’s Bone remedies that nonsense by making its protagonists injuries painfully realistic.

(This is much the milder of the photos)

In True Grit, when Mattie first shoots a gun, it knocks her back, as it very likely would. These young women are taking on daunting tasks, but not blithely. It’s not easy, and it doesn’t always work out as planned. Mattie knows when to fight, when to yell for help, when to sit back and wait for the right moment...and when to shoot.

The Best Role Models are Those That Can Exist in Real Life:

The reason I’m making all this fuss over these films and over their depiction of young women is because it stands in contrast to a lot of the other stuff out there. Much like many irritating aspects of post-modern feminism, films and novels often try to portray strong women by falsifying them, their circumstances or their capabilities.

I believe that a New York cop could be a good shot and could throw a good punch, but I doubt he could jump onto and then off of a moving fighter jet (Die Hard 4: greatest, silliest scene). I believe that a young woman can take a brutal beating and recover, refusing to give up on protecting her family and their home, but if you make her knock out a guy with her pinky she becomes just as silly that fighter-jet scene. And if over-the-top action-thriller is what you’re going for, that’s fine.

But if you’re trying to show a strong person facing hardship—someone to respect and admire—and you have the gall to call them a role model for young women—it’s best to show them at a real-life level of strength.

So I point to these two films as examples of strength of character, untainted by fantasy, wish-fulfillment or Computer Generated Images. The virtues and gritty determination shown by these characters is not out of reach. It's not something to day-dream about, but something to truly have.