rambling and repetitious notes on unbreakable by night shylaman.

[aliked...@hotmail.com]

1. night shalaman is a beguiling and expert manipulator in the
hitchcock/spielbergian tradition; he's also into big ideas and
spirituality. his three films--sixth sense, unbreakable, and
signs--make up a trilogy about love and loss. he's an authentic
auteur.
first, let's list his weaknesses, mainly in his catering to mainstream
expectations. he works within genre conventions, adheres to formulas,
and often opts for visceral impact over logic. the viewer can have a
field day finding all sorts of ridiculousness in his films, especially
Signs, which gave us extraterrestials smart enough to navigate thru
the galaxies but not smart enough to possess weapons other than poison
gas wristwatches. but perhaps, the proper way to appreciate shalaman
requires that we tune into his moods and ambiance, just as characters
in Signs try tuning into alien signals. in this sense, his films are
musical than narrative; harmony counts more than lyrics. his movies
all have an oft-kilter dreaminess of opiate fantasy, of genre
conventions being disassembled and reassembled before our eyes, in the
process transcending their narrow conventions and arriving at hidden
psychological truths. the same could be said of spielberg's
AI--movie of rather dubious logic--, which is all the more powerful
for its oceandepth dreaminess; it defies the strictures of both
science and sci-fi, gaining the tragic beauty of the final
dreams--beautiful yet pathetic fantasies--of matchselling girl of hans
christian anderson story. we usually distinguish between hollywood
films from artfilms. we expect genre films to be faithful, if not to
life, at least to the demands of genre. conventionally, filmmakers
mold fiction into semblance of narratives in a logically defined
universe. even supernatural horror films or sci-fi follow the ground
rules of their respective genres. artfilms of bunuel, bergman, and
fellini, among others, attempted the opposite, trespassing into and
exploring the murky subconscious or surreal terrain.
what we see in a director like the spielberg of AI, mr. night, and
some others is the convergence of genre and art cinemas. these
directors do not simply distill fantastical narratives into solid
genre products. they keep some of surreal aspects of their fantasies
intact. instead of giving us finished products, their movies partly
remains adrift in dreamstate. in contrast, someone like hitchcock or
welles usually tied up the loose strings at the end, restoring sense
or order in the universe(if not in the personal psyche). for example,
we find THE real truth in vertigo and everything comes together, every
piece neatly falling into place, except scottie's permanently
screwed-up mind. the films of the new auteurs stick closer to
subjective reality. in their version of vertigo the barrier between
objective and subjective reality(and between personal vision and genre
demands) might remain porous and unstable; in mulholland drive, we
see diane selwyn the failed actress and her alter ego in a surreal
wonderland.
a film like unbreakable has to be understood not so much as a thriller
but as mr. night's(in a diane selwynish role) dreamy rumination on the
thriller and how it serves to express his thoughts on life, social
reality, and popular culture. as a conventional narrative, it's full
of holes; as dreamscape--equivalent to selwyn's fantasy
narrative--it's one of the boldest films of the last decade.
we may even argue that the illogic in mr. night's films render them
all the more powerful because illogic colors the world with turmoil
and uncertainty--as reality may have appeared to the protagonist of
memento--, as though beneath the crust of earth lies giant dormant
cockroach, that beyond the wall of conventional physical and
psychological reality there is the unknown that cannot be spelled out
simply as good or evil or whatever, which most genre movies opt for.
it's for this reason that when we finally arrive at the end of a
shyalaman film, our concept of the world undergoes a radical shift.
in your average mystery thriller, the revelation of truth finally puts
everything in place. in night's films, the ending changes the nature
of everything we have seen and FELT, as though we are confronted with
a mystery yet profounder; the light at the end of the tunnel is
engulfed in yet deeper darkness. it has the effect of not only pulling
the rug out from under us but removing our comfort blanket. night
lulls us into warm dreamstate more or less governed by genre
expectations, which grows a bit more logical as it progresss, only to
shatter to pieces and leave us shaken. his films make us experience
something like the last burst of visual energy before death, a reality
both more muted and colorful than ordinary reality, the final station
before we take the final step plunging us into the abyss.

2. not knowing the details of night's bio, i've no idea how much his
films reflect personal loss or tragedy, or whether they are
essentially effective schlock. but, the common themes and the deep
sense of loss in all three films would indicate night's understanding
of pathos partly arose from life experience; or, he harbors an
obsessive fetish for moodiness.
sixth sense concerns a psychologist trying to regain the love and
trust of his apparently cold-shouldered wife, but it turns out her
coldness is really sadness over his death, warmth and mourning; he
turns out to be a ghost in denial of his physical and/or metaphysical
condition. Signs, least satisfying of the three, is about a reverend
who'd lost his faith in god and man following the horrific death of
his wife but then regains a measure of faith upon realizing there is a
design governing the universe, that the world is not just a series of
absurd accidents, but where good things--and bad things--happen for a
reason, that god doesn't play dice. the implication of its message is
that everything about us is part of a grand tragedy and a grand
miracle, often both--heartfelt meanings dissolving into nonsense,
absurdities accumulating into significance. gibson's brother moped
his failed baseball career, but as a result happened to be at the
right place at the right time to beat the shit out of gangsta ET.
aliens attacked earth and mankind seemed doomed, but the struggle
restored gibson's love for his family and faith in god, just as WWII
and Sep 11 changed the outlook of many of people. signs peddles a
sunny brand of predestination, tinged with design theory.
and, unbreakable, night's greatest film by far, is about a man afraid
of his seemingly superhuman powers. all three films express pangs of
vulnerability and doubt, a yearning for personal peace sheltered from
indifferent public space. in the sixth sense, the man shuffles for
the key that might open the locked heart of his wife(for whom, it's
sadder for she knows he is dead and unaware of otherworldly presence;
uncertainty frustrates with illusion but certainty destroys with
truth. shylaman suggests we are all like ghosts, or must believe in
the ghostly nature of the world, because we all, inevitably, lose
things and people dearest to us. to accept this as cold fact is to die
oneself, to die with the dead. only by believing in the lingering if
not everlasting spirits around us do our lives attain meaning). in
unbreakable, the main character wants to be normal. in signs, the
ex-priest wants to quietly live out the rest of his morose existence.
all three are sucked into a larger crisis, forced out of their
doldrums into a world of disturbed clarity opening into greater
mystery.

3. unbreakable is a provocative film raising many questions about how
we think and how we live, what we expect of ourselves and others. it's
also offers some of the most farreaching queries into american
socio-political reality. consider the racial dynamic, which is
interesting for it perversely reverses the widely held image of
maleness among blacks and whites, with the former, largely due to
their success in sports and gutsy musicality, considered the more
masculin than the white man, who had for so long dominated the
iconography of the male hero. in unbreakable, it's a black man who's
physically helpless, the reverse of our current racial represenation,
and it's the white man who's the super strong guy. in a way, comic
books--as well as movies--are the last bastion of white maleness.
there are, of course, non-physical--indeed, the far more
effective--means of gaining power, but we reserve our sense of awe for
a great athlete than a potbellied, cigar chomping dealmaker in the
background, no matter how powerful he may be. unbreakable reflects
this racial anxiety and tension, where a role reversal takes place,
where the black man is gimpy while the white man is powerful.
stranger yet, the movie almost implies that the physically
disadvantaged black character identifies with the white man because he
shares the white man's sense of impotence and weakness. his search
for the unbreakable superhero has the ring of a bygone period when
white people were desperately sought a miraculous white hope(some will
say marciano was such a champ but he fought mostly over-the-hill
blacks and retired before facing genuine greats like floyd patterson
and sonny liston). from the very beginning, the movie feels weird
because we have a black character who is so weak that he was afraid to
play outside as a child. instead, he spent his childhood days reading
comic books, the activity of mostly fat, pimply, asthmatic white kids.
he can't be a basketball dunking brotha like the rest of his kind.
though a member of a minority with a history of having been oppressed,
he identifies with white folk in the comic books. as a formula,
samuel jackson's character conforms with the white ideal of the
helpless negro readymade to milk our sympathy. liberalism fixated on
blacks out of a condescending and patroning goodwill, that negroes
were hepless uncle-toms who needed to be saved from bullnecked white
thugs. when blacks began to rise up and burn down cities, old-style
liberals like lyndon johnson never understood. and robert kennedy
journeyed to the poorest regions of mississippi not because most black
people in america had it THAT bad, but because he--and his liberal
allies--needed a pure image of noble, oppressed, hepless, and
god-fearing negroes that simplifed and confirmed one's political
commitment. this was all the more necessary because the rise of the
black panthers and the likes of stokely carmichael undermined the
image of the hepless negro aksing for the white man's heping hand. of
course, this idealized image of the negro was represented thru pop
cultural items like different strokes with gary coleman, the toygro of
baxter, and to an extent, michael jackson. to white folks, these are
blacks who always remain small, child-like, nonthreatening, and
cuddly, though in jackson's case, it might have gone too far.

unbreakable is unsettling because there's a seething layer of rage
beneath the friendly demeanor of its black character. he's like
sidney poitier with the repressed soul of louis farrakhan, whose
apparent goodness had been the product of fate than conscious choice.
and, of course, in the real world, what we consider good is largely a
matter of circumstance than moral choice. iraqi shiites may have
struck us as noble suffering victims of saddam hussein--an image
peddled by retarded Three Kings--but now we can't help thinking
hussein didn't kill enough of those damned thuggish barbarians.
but, there is a geuninely moving and tragic element in the character
of samuel l. jackson because he seeks not only vengeance upon the
world but a vindication that there is goodness beyond the power of
evil. as perverse and evil as his deeds are, he was not so much
serving satan as seeking god. in psychology, it's been observed that
some kids commit certain deeds to get caught and be punished, in order
to get some attention, for proof that that the parent does care, even
if expressed thru spanking.
this is all perversely strange because what willis the white character
does is akin to what black men had done in the deep south, where they
suppressed their true manly power because the white man would get all
threatened and find some excuse to lynch the black buck who be looking
at a white woman or, more to the point, because the white woman might
start looking at him. and, when black physicality was allowed to
manifest itself, it happened gradually: packaged as
whitefolks-friendly, godfearing and on the side of good, and so
lovably negroish. after the jack johnson fiasco, whites and blacks
were careful to have jackie robinsons and joe louises, nice negroes
despite their physical prowess. and it even survives today in movies
like the green mile where a mountain sized negro be so childlike, even
afraid of a little mouse. white folks eat this shit up. this kind of
liberalism embraces the little negro such as gary coleman or the big
negro with BIG heart though not necessarily big brain because a smart
and sassy bro, instead of befriending lame whitey and singing folk
songs together, be thinking what is this lameass peter, paul, and mary
shit? then muhammad ali came along and acted the badass nigga, and
now mainstream has made peace or has surrendered to the wild crazy ass
nigga who dont feel like he's gotta play by the white man's rules or
be honkeyfriendly. indeed, as white boys and girls have themselves
accepted and embraced black superiority in sports and music--two areas
that matter most in american popular culture--it's more lucrative for
the black man to act the nigga than the negro, though clever guys like
denzel washington know how to straddle between the two.
anyway, why does willis the white man feel the urge to hide or bury
his superpowerness? we need to consider the following matters.

4. alongside the racial dynamic is the buried sexual dynamic. in the
movie, willis plays a security guard. in the popular perception, we
associate the security guard with defending order from thugs and
boors, represented, in reality if not in fiction, mainly by black
criminality or thuggishness. the odd thing about modern sports is the
players on the field are essentially black thugs having made it to
fame and fortune. on the outside are the black thugs who haven't made
it and get their jollies by burning down the city if their team wins.
a white guy standing between these two realities creates a mood of
unease and tension(granted these two realities aren't shown IN the
movie, but everything in a movie signifies some aspect of social
reality; the very fact of its concealment or absence also signfies
that reality, just as a movie about the 60s without the vietnam war or
youth rebellion says much about the anxiety of the period, that
certain reality was too disturbing to be confronted). exiled from the
glory of the sports field, willis represents white man as hired hand
barely making a living. his kind no longer represents the alpha male
but still guards against lowerclass criminality, like your average
cop. his role as security guard is symbolic of lower middle class
anxiety; in socio-economic class terms, he zealously guards what
little he has from the unwashed masses. it's the classic proto-fascist
anxiety.
the movie almost suggests that the tension between willis and his wife
partly derives from an unspoken and unspeakable anxiety on the part of
willis that he, as a white man, isn't manly enough, that under a
different circumstance she might have chosen a negro instead. in one
of the opening scenes, we see willis talking to a cute sports agent, a
white female. this is significant because we associate most sports
agents--traditionally anyway--as male, mostly white. that a white
woman is actively seeking out prospective athletes indicates that
white women, having been liberated from the clutch of white male
patriarchy, are going after superior males as defined by sports
culture dominated by negroes. she says she's scheduled to see some
star college athlete who can run really fast. later, the guy turns out
to be white but i know, you know, we all know what he would be in
reality--a negro. willis, then in marital discord, tries to pick her
up but she's not interested because to her, he's just a mediocre
balding white male. as the train starts to tremble, about to crash and
kill everyone but willis, it's as though suppressed white male rage is
boiling over due to marginalization caused by changing sexual dynamic.
and, one could almost read the movie as a white male fantasy, where
having been exiled from the primary domain of maleness--sports--white
man must reclaim his sense of power thru fantasy such as comic books,
WWF, and the movies.
later, when willis accepts and practices his superhuman power and
saves a family from an intruder(the intruder is white but could be
read as a diguised figure that incites the deepest fear in white
america: black man entering the white man's domain where the white man
is physically helpless to protect himself and his family, with the
resultant humiliation, rape, and even murder. as j. hoberman said of
'cape fear', white fear of black criminality has often been coded in
the form of the deranged white character--accordingly, mitchum
represents the black threat on whitey, just as hudson in 'all that
heaven allows' was supposedly a presleyization of fascination with
black manhood) . so, it is after willis saves the family from the
intruder that he goes home and with male confidence and virility take
his slumbering wife into his arms, carries her upstairs, and makes
love to her. white manhood has been restored. and notice how the
movie seems to be locked in some strange historical period. like
sixth sense and signs, we have no clear indication of what decade it
is. while it may well be today, psycho-culturally and in terms of
mood it could be an earlier era; it feels like Now adrift in Eternity,
as though the present itself is a ghost lost in time; or memory as
apparition dissolving our sense of Now, as though a cultural mindset
is stunted, mummified, enclased behind museum glass.

5. there's another implication of willis's role as a security
guard--as a troubled guardian of an america of changing
socio-political realities. in one scene, willis mistakenly suspects a
darkskinned person--played by shalaman himself--and pats him down. the
situation challenges both willis the white man and shalaman the
darkie. we have open borders and demographic issues are among the
hottest--though suppressed--topics facing western society. if the
current rate continues, white folks are gonna be overrun by darkies.
but, we believe in a free society, and sometimes it's hard to draw a
clear line between suspecting someone because of his skin color or for
a valid reason. think of racial profiling which is practical and
effective, but also insulting, especially to honest and law-abiding
darkies. think of arab americans, most of them good people. but,
terrorists in the US are more likely to be an arab; and so it's hard
balancing the ideal of abolute equality and effectively capturing
terrorists before they contaminate NY with a dirty bomb. and, so it's
not easy for willis the white security guard to do his duty because
sometimes he himself doesn't know if he's being subconsciously
discriminatory, and even when not, whether the darkie feels harassed
for his skin color. for example, it's often hard for white security
guards to approach a black suspect in a department store because the
black man will he's suspected only because he's black(this reminds me
of a story of my sister told me when she worked at lords and taylors.
some black employee was caught trying to steal some item but said that
because he's black and gay, they can't do anything about it. in other
words, fire or call the cops on his ass and he'll sue for racial and
homophobic discrimination). but, we also sense tension from the other
side, that of the darkie. asian-indians, for example, try hard to fit
into mainstream society and shalaman has succeeded quite well. he even
looks and sounds like a hindu spike lee. he probably grew up watching
white-dominated hollywood movies, reading comic books where 99% of
heroes were white, listening to mostly white-dominated rock music,
white dominated tv, etc. so while he's a darkie, he identifies with
people most visible in american society and pop culture, the whitey.
shalaman seems to be saying that, as much as we darkies resent white
people's unease at accepting us as equals--even if on a subconscious
level--, we darkies feel that we must consume and be consumed by white
american culture; we want to fit in but we are not always welcome and
even when we are welcome, we gotta ask ourself why we have to
subordinate our identities to others? why should we be sidekick apu
on simpsons or mocked on david letterman that lowlife piece of
hypocritical liberal scumshit? strangely, this brings the dynamic full
circle because the white man, seeing darkies take over sports,
probably feel the same way. why should we 'oppressed' whiteys spend
time and money in the glorification of the other race? what do i get
from idolizing black thugs who've taken over sports with their
trashiness? how do we all fit in together in this multi-ethnic
mosaic? why must i eat overpriced sushi?

6. unbreakable also challenges the american representation of good
and evil, noble and treacherous, beautiful and ugly. but, instead of
waving the accusatory finger, shylaman plays it like a one man game of
chess; it's psychological rather than political, elliptical than
polemical. in one scene, jackson explains the dynamic of comic book
moral schema to a prospective buyer of comic memorabilia. jackson says
the classic comic hero is handsome, chiseled, and wellshaven-looking.
the bad guy is hairy, exotically proportioned, and ugly. though not
stated in racial terms, it means the comic book hero is generally the
aryan ideal whereas the bad guys looks racially the Other. jackson
embodies the Other for two reasons. on the one hand, he's black. he's
the ugly negro vs the pleasant looking white man. but, he's also a
gimp, the sickly freakish Other as opposed to wholesome health. that
he's a black man who's gimpy makes it all the more unbearable. i mean
how would you like to be black and lose to a white boy in basketball?
how would it be if you're a black guy and can't even PLAY basketball?
that's some nastyass shit, bro. it's like a jewish guy being
outsmarted by a polack. it's humiliating. so jackson is doubly
screwed. his black brethren may also have suffered from the white
domination of public image representing good vs bad, but if they met
some honkey in a back alley they'd get the satisfaction of whupping
the white boy's ass. but, jackson is not only a black man but a black
man who can get whupped by everyone, even little orphan annie. it's no
wonder he goes craaazy.
beyond morality and race, comic books certainly say much about our
subconscious urges. they garb our hangups, obsessions, and neurosis in
accepted genre forms. they serve as psycho-drama of purging urges
deemed sinful or evil by social norms. if you've ever seen the cult
hentai series 'legend of overfiend' the sexually probing tentacles are
clearly representions of the twisted psycho-sexuality of the average
frustrated japanese male(the 'rape of nanking' mentality is alive and
well among them), conveying both lust and shame. similarly, comic
books lay out our psychology in a reassuring manichean formula, where
thru the villains we act out our aggressive and hateful urges and thru
the ultimately victorious hero, feel reassured that goodness has been
restored in the cosmos, and more importantly, within us. of course,
comic books vary. some appeal to the thrill of defeating what we might
consider the alien presence, the outsider, the Other. we may not
identify with such villains, yet other comic books are designed to
help us confront the Inner, the dark side of our nature by giving it
form thru personification, a familiar mental practice since caveman
times.

6. unbreakable offers a new twist on black rage. we sense the
apocalytpic culmination of the smoldering dementia of the black man
after having being told by euro-centric history and culture thru the
ages that he's the beastly animal, the crazy savage, and mental
defect; a dementia which internalized white hatred into self-hatred
and turned it into an artform of survival and vengeance, scheming to
wreak havoc and destruction against the world that marginalized and
crippled the black man, cunningly playing the gentle negro to make
whitey drop his guard so as to suckerpunch whitey and ultimately say
to his white face that honkey ass aint worth shit. and, it's a useful
summary of black/white relations in america. blacks, labeled as
hopeless savage 'niggers' went out of their way, under the leadership
of people like booker t. washington and martin luther king to tell
white folks that they are nice wonderful cuddly 'negroes', thereby
encouraging and creating the nice, warm, progressive white man willing
to shoulder the burden of creating a great society, where everyone
would live in peace. but just when LBJ was trying to help the negroes,
they turned into Blacks and told the white man that they be wanting to
burn down cities and beat up honkeys; that underneath the veneer of
the negro gently tugging at liberal white guilt seethed the badass
hipsterish nigga ready to whup the white boy's butt.

7. a crucial character in the movie is bruce willis's son,
underscoring the hold of formative psychology throughout one's life.
the kid's fantasy obsession regarding his father's physical prowess
and invincibility parallels jackson's obsessive search for the
superhero, the savior. we could even interpret the entire movie as a
fantasy unfolding inside jackson's head. in an early scene, we see the
black kid looking at the comic book upside down. then we see a white
kid--willis's son--staring at the tv upside down, which osmotically
links the black kid with the white kid. so perhaps, the entire movie
is a mindgame of black boy wanting to be normal like a white kid,
healthy and part of the mainstream. and, the white kid's obsessive
desire to establish his father's superhumanness is a psycho-dramatic
projection of the black boy's need to believe in a messiah-like
character, a friend and hero impervious to limitations of the
vulnerable body; in simple terms, fantasy of a gimpy black boy
rotting away in a clinic reading comic books and lost in alterantive
reality which gives him both a sense of relevance and hope in relation
to a world which seems unstable and turning upside down, and not only
in the changing macro-social dynamic but within the entrapped confines
of micro-biographies.
and, perhaps, jackson's search for the superman represents some
timeless and universal need in man to find god, no matter what the
cost.
we all start out as kids looking up to our parents as big and
powerful. we want to hold onto this sense of security. when we
discover that the world is dangerous and there's no security blanket
guaranting safety and goodness, we become confronted with the linus
complex(of the peanuts comics), which can develop into a neurosis in
overly sensitive kids afraid of the world or lacking in confidence to
face challenges.
perhaps, the appeal of jesus could be understood as such terms, the
need to test the father's invincibility. jesus, the man, wants to test
the infallibility of his father, God; therefore, he let's man--which
includes everyone plus half of himself--to torment and try to
extinguish God the father, his other half. and, according to
christians at least, jesus--at least the half that was man and
entertained doubts--and the rest of mankind discovered god--the other
half of jesus and his father in heaven--is bulletproof like superman.
man beat up god, whupped and nailed him to the cross but god came back
and showed his disciples he's as badder than ever and his pierced
hands don't hurt none.

think of the case of judas who sold christ; some scholars say judas
was only helping jesus test the godly side of himself, facilitating
the events that led to the crucifixion. and, of course jews waiting
for the messiah is another case
of man's neverending search for the superhuman good. and, first
christians were jews who got tired of waiting forever, tagged along
some guy named jesus billing himself as the son of god and got killed,
and believed no matter how badly jesus was whupped and hung up, he
remained unbreakable, and triumphed over evil. christianity is about
mankind as bad guys searching for a good guy we can't beat.
christians say we all killed jesus, meaning it's in our very nature
thru our entire history to commit evil and be nasty and kill. so in
christianity, and reflected in unbreakable, is the need for villainy
to smoke out and estabish the presence of the ultra-good; proving
goodness by doing bad. we must create martyrs to find the
indestructable good until evil itself becomes a martyr in process of
discovery. so judas got his deathwish.

8. movie also makes us face the dangerous, ideological underpinning
of popular culture. unbreakable is far more effective and thoughtful
than a gazillion academic journals by fatassed milkfaced feminists and
post-marxist grumps. comic books, wagner's operas, folktales, movies,
and etc, of course, have hold over us beyond the fun-n-gameshiness.
think of how much closed nations change simply by introduction of
american culture. think of how our culture has been fundamentally
altered by black influence in music and sports, mafia movies and
pizza, international cinema. we are all pizza munching ass wiggling
mafia niggaz to an extent, at least in the landscape of
fantasychology. also, unbreakable's comicbook metaphor helps us
realize that even serious matters--politics, religion, teaching of
history--also have comicbookish qualities, either out of glibness and
cynicism or purposes of propaganda or pushing an agenda, or
simplification and laziness(think of 'do the right thing', a agitprop
comic book for the likes of taubin). think of how feminism has
degenerated into thelma and louise, how vietnam war became rambo, and
how even the most famous movie on the complex phenomenon of vietnam
war--apocalypse now--was written by some guy with an essentially GI
Joe concept of manhood, tinged with west coast surfer zen--which too
has become a yoda-ish cartoon in our spiritual culture known as new
age. and platoon had GOOD sergeant and BAD sergeant. and nation of
islam is a comicbookish perversion of islam, arguing that a evil
scientist named yakob grafted white man from black man; elijah
muhammad would have made a decent comic book artist. and, of course,
islam itself is a comicbook rendition of the judeo-christian
tradition. though i don't much respect comic book as an artform(or
as anything), they serve as useful metaphor of how people interpret
and view the world; think of osama bin laden and his islacomic
politics ; think of neo-cons who thought hussein was a baddie without
whom iraqis would side with us like the minions under wicked witch of
the east after she melted. while comic books have little merit as
art, imagination, or anything else, comicbookishness permeates much of
our culture and politics, and serves as a model for human thought and
action.

9. at the end of the movie, jackson declares himself 'mr. glass'. by
doing what he done, he has carved out a niche for himself. jackson,
perceived throughout as a lonely loser, has won notoriety and a sense
of importance. for whatever reason and in whatever form, he has become
an alberichian player. even the good and triumphant man--willis--is
HIS discovery and creation. yet, there is a deeply moving and tragic
quality because the baddie jackson didn't want to create a
supervillian--a partner in crime--but to finally put his search for
god to rest. it's as though lucifer searched for and finally found
proof of god's superiority, and though it means lucifer's ass is
toast, well, at least something in the world is for sure. yet, there
is no clear resolve for anyone since jackson's defeat--he ends up in a
looneybin--is really a kind of victory since he himself spilled the
beans. he savors the joy of telling the strong superhero that brawn
aint shit against brain. it also serves as a metaphor for all the
people with real power in hollywood; movie stars have glamour and
influence, but the guys with the longlasting power and real clout are
the mr. glasses in the background. jackson is, in this sense, a
scout, coach, and producer. he scouts for the white hope he
subconsciously sympathizes with since he himself is disadvantaged in
life like white man is disadvantaged in the sporting field. but,
unlike the hollywood suits and don king and such ilk, jackson is
really searching for something beyond his own advantage. there are
layers to what he's seeking, a layer of good topped by layer of bad
topped by layer of good topped by layer of bad and so on. it's some
weird shit.

10. jackson's blackness makes the title of 'mr. glass' unsettling,
intimating a cold clarity under the coarse clay. it's interesting to
compare mr glass with dr. strangelove, the evasively egoistic gimpish
genius seeking revenge and destruction but also a kind of perverse
prophet and messiah. there is the psychology of the master villain
with an hidden agenda to prove there is god by playing the devil's
advocate, or to confirm that the satan is the real god. dr.
strangelove, though seemingly on the side of democracy, science, and
good ole USA, is really--even if subconsciously--undermining the
stability of the world, yojimboishly pushing it to the brink of
destruction, and when the doomsday arrives, feels vindicated and
exclaims that his fuhrer was indeed god and had been right about the
shittiness of mankind(kubrick was a misanthrope and once even joked to
a collaborator--raphael whoozits or whoozits raphael--that hitler was
right about everything, not meaning that hitler was right in what he
done but in understanding that humanity is apeish and doomed to war
and destruction). in other words, though hitler is dead, his spirit
lives within and directs all facets of mankind, machinekind, and has
guided us all--whether rightist or leftist--towards apocalyptic
gotterdammerung. nazism, as a revolutionary rightist movement, in some
strange way transcended all ideologies, moving both foward and back,
being left and right, religious and scientific, rational and
irrational, godly and apeish. in both dr. strangelove and
unbreakable, the gimpish genius goes to whatever length, even
sacrificing himself, even by accepting evil and abandoning good, to
see truth--whatever it be beyond ordinary human
understanding--revealed, his theory vindicated. they are both mystic
scientists, visionaries using the world as a laboratory. and, though
they are sick, they fascinate us cuz we want more than fantasy or
faith; we want proofs, hard facts. we want to believe in cosmic order.
our spiritual need and objective demands always coexist but never in
harmony.

11. through mythification jackson reverses his disadvantage. he has
accepted his gimpiness and heplessness, but he has craved for a sense
of purpose and belonging; everyone has this need. jackson warps and
inflates his disadvantage into a bolt of lightning godweapon . if we
can't be useful in a good--not to mention, great--way, then perhaps we
could become memorable in a bad way. or, perhaps being 'unfairly'
disadvantaged, the afflicted person emotionally needs to feel
compensated far beyond the expectations of normal men. the unsettling
aspect of jackson's auto-mythification is the impression that his soul
has both transcended and remains permanently bound to the body. he
leaps away from his physical disadvantage but he needed the
disadvantage to begin with to have taken the leap.

12. in one scene, a prospective buyer comes to jackson's comic
book/art collectible gallery and is rebuffed when jackson learns the
buyer doesn't take comic books seriously and just wanted something for
his son. we associate comic books with stunted development, something
for kids; perhaps, jackson, stunted in life by his disadvantage,
identifies with the child-like quality of comic books, but also
refuses to see it only as childhood entertertainment but something of
moral, spiritual, and cultural significance. but, there's another
aspect to jackson's hostility. it's as though he NEEDS to take comic
books seriously. for jackson, it's not enough that a father give his
kid a comic book or illustration for amusement or as a collectible.
jackson--especially as he was fatherless--subconsciously craves for a
father figure who can BE the comicbook hero. for a healthy child in a
healthy family, content and without worries, comic book is a
diversion. for a fatherless gimpy black child, the father figure
became all important, a figure ideally strong and masterful, bestowing
a sense of permanent security for the child. so jackson rebuffs a
father who wants to give comics to his kid as a toy and seeks a father
who can be the comic book hero to his kid. jackson is not so troubled
by the man's lack of appreciation in the comic book art but but in his
own need to maintain the centrality of comic book in his own life,
because for jackson it's not just art but his dream, myth, philosophy,
history, autobiography, and religious prophecy.

13. unbreakable suggests a condition and manner by which we become
attached to something, finding meaning far beyond what may actually be
there, not merely deriving pleasure but feeling saved, restored, or
transformed by it, inflating our banal hangups, frustrations, and rage
into altars and temples. think of legions of trekkies. this theme of
cultish dependence is nothing new. but, unbreakable doesn't sweeten
this psychological reality. the final revelation shocks, chills our
bones, and makes us feel strangely violated, as though something has
been rammed up our arse. it's this ability to patiently and
painstakingly build to an apparent climax only to deftly--in a manner
both subtle, instant, and outrageous--reconfigure all our assumptions
that makes mr. night great, or at least almost great. when a movie
like Identity reveals its surprise ending, the effect of the final
electro-jolt quickly dissipates because it's just a convention, a
narrative trick, and more importantly because we never believed in any
of the characters to begin with. but, night makes us care about his
characters, feel what they are feeling, almost identify with them as
though we're under their skin, dreaming their dreams, feeling their
frustrations, and, so when night turns this intimate identification
inside out we feel the world has shifted, where the most familiar has
become unfamiliar--like the perceptual distortions of 'ballad of a
thin man' and 'it's all over now, baba booey'.
with your typical last-minute shock effect in some shit movie,
everything is clarified or simply reversed. but, because night
involves us with his characters at a deep emotional level, the effect
of the final twist sends off deep and wide seismic reverberations. it
affects us beyond what we we know and feel as our conscious or even
subconscious states. it doesn't merely reveal that a good guy is a
bad guy or vice versa, but that there are dense layers of good and
bad, living and dead, and at deeper levels our categories lose their
meanings. this is the familiar terrain of physics, but we like matters
of human affairs clearly dileneated in fiction. even otherworldly or
bizarre elements are usually manifest in forms or concepts readily
recognizable to the human mind; for example, we have scary monsters,
gods and goddesses, magical powers, or conventional representations of
dream states, hallucinations, or simple madness.
shylaman's films really touch on this mystery, connecting the mundane
with the deepest otherworldiness. is he a religious director in an
industry of mostly young hipsterish cynics or progressive
materialists? we have to be careful with the word religion.
shylaman, rather than being religious in the conventional sense of the
word, has a spiritualist inclination that might be called
meta-religious. he's interested in the sense of unease, mystery, and
serenity at the heart of man that is the source of our religious--and
scientific--quest. he's like a physicist relying more on intuition
and meditation than scientific tools; a meta-physicist. and, unlike
physicists, he's interested in how the deep mysteries affect our
emotions, perceptions, and personal lives. scientists work with
objective data, and religious folks rely on faith, but shylaman
understands the urge behind science is the emotional urge to seek and
know--spiritual impulse--and that all emotions are, far from being
self-contained, part of the larger phenomenon of permanent process of
transformation beyond the human, beyond life and beyond matter.
the ending of sixth sense where willis discovers he's dead is
sublimely great because our feelings aren't clear and seem to be
condensing and dissolving at the same time. in that scene willis
discovers he'd been in a limbo between life and death. finally, he
realizes the truth and it's both liberating yet gloomy because perhaps
that moment is really the end for him. is there an afterlife and will
he then go to heaven? or will he just dissolve into nothingness and
darkness? he didn't know why his wife neglected him and had carried
on in morose frustration, but is it better to know the truth and
dissolve into eternal darkness? is an instance of truth bringing
permanent extinction better than yrs of delusion that sustain some
kind of compromised existence? it's a catharthis without catharthis,
release without freedom, realization without attainment, gaining by
losing, regaining one's footing by having the rug pulled off your feet
or losing one's footing by being set up straight. it even makes us
wonder, is it an happy ending for the kid? he can help ghosts trapped
in a limbo but upon release, will they fade away forever into the
darkness or to be reformulated back into stuff that will fill other
souls and go through the same cycle over and over? it's like
unchaining someone upon which he freefalls and goes splat or just
keeps falling and falling. or saving a fish from a polluted water by
leaving it out in the open air. is it good or bad? i dunno, but the
meaning far exceeds its narrative purpose. in some ways, it's deeper
than the entire stargate sequence in 2001 or any bergman film. in
2001, the extraterrestials slipped something into bowman's coffee. in
bergman, we know it's mainly about personal psychological torment.
shylaman capturs that unsustainable moment between now and forever,
that moment when a crystalline snowflake lands on your hand and melts
into nothingness. only the final moments of gunbuster and AI
accomplish something comparable. there have been many movies dealing
with other layers of reality such as those of bunuel or lynch.
however, bunuel's surrealism exists within the context of surrealist
notions of psychology and/or purposes of satire. and lynch's movies,
as strange as they are, are concretely about the murky chemical
boundary between bodily tissues/fluids and neurons firing off into
what we call subconsciousness and consciousness. in other words, the
world is still contained in the artist's concept of the universe. at
the other end, the really whacky unrealistic movies take it for
granted that laws of the normal world doesn't apply; it's fantasy.
it's shylaman's great accomplishment that he found a way to find a
hole in the wall, even if only a speck, that gives us a glimpse--no
matter how fleeting--between the real and the unreal, and by unreal i
don't just mean a SENSE of the unreal but the unreal as unreal, beyond
whether we care or not, know or not, sense it or not. it's like
quantum psycho-mechanics, as though shylaman played around with the
usual lab equipments and stumbled onto a phenomenon never observed
before, something so unstable that it has to be cushioned and
insulated with layers and layers of familiar material for it to be
preserved, which is why the great revelation in his movie is cocooned
in mostly conventionality. it's like the formula for removing skunk
stink. someone came up with a solution but wasn't able to market it
because it's unstable(you can make your own formula from stuff you
can buy in a drugstore so if you cat gets sprayed, that's what you
should do instead of washing it in tomato juice which is just alot of
baloney anyway. i'll bet the information is online). or authentic
mozzarella cheese which is made from buffalo milk and is highly
unstable and can't be exported like other italian stuff like dry pasta
and salami. what we have in the states is mozzarella cheese made from
cow milk, far from the real stuff. so we experience a shylaman movie
like peeling off layers of artichoke. we think it's mostly the same
old leafy scales and we think we've seen it all before, but then we
get to the heart and though it's teenie weenie, it was well worth it.

14. watching a shylaman ending is like a strange feeling we get when
contradictory emotions are harmonized though not reconciliated, when
we feel an ethereal sensation weighing heavy as a brick in the gut. we
venture thru the hurricane of uncertainty into the calm at the center,
the core of which, however, is unstable radioactive matter. a moment
of crystallized eternity.
there is no word to describe this effect. it's eerie, bizarre,
tragic, pessimistic, fatalistic, poetic, intimate, cosmic, liberating,
serene, violent, heartfelt, ruthless, moral, nihilistic, hollywood,
and art film all at once. it's shylaman as the sublime shaman.
certain director's names have entered into the vocabulary to describe
certain styles or approaches. think of spielbergian or hitcockian.
think of bergmanesque. i believe shylaman's greatest moments can only
be decribed as shylamanesque.
shylaman has a strange godlike power to gather together clouds which
at first seems innocuous, turn them into dark forbidding castles, and
then out of the blue produce a lightning bolt that zaps us real good.
we watch his movies and think much of them is recycled or familiar,
but the final chemistry that produces the electricity is something
entirely his own. it's like you give one guy all the ingredients to
make wine and it's good and familiar but it doesn't have much zing.
another wine maker mixes the same ingredients and follows the general
formula and you drink it and you think this is familiar but then
suddenly you taste something out of the blue, something both
summarizing what wine is all about plus something you'd never tasted
before, and you think this is something really special. 99% of the
ingredients and methods were the same, but that 1% factor remains a
mystery, like how does KFC come up with that original recipe?

15. in signs, there is mystery beyond the mystery beyond the mystery.
the first mystery is why was the reverend was punished by having his
wife taken away? the second mystery is are the signs in the cornfields
good or bad, godsent or something other? and, at the end, there
remains the simple mystery, and gibson learns to stop worrying and
love the mystery.
in unbreakable, behind goodness lives evil, and behind evil a
pitiful frailty. our disgust, sympathy, outrage, sadness, hope, and
despair are all engaged simultaneously, and in the process the walls
between the emotional and moral categories are weakened, and we feel a
strange chemistry, something beyond mere concepts of duality,
complexity, or multi-facetedness of human character. it's
shylamanesque.
maybe it's his hinduish background that shylaman's films exist on
many levels of human consciousness and reality, from the imaginary to
the mundane to the subconscious to the mystery beyond. instead of
being slammed with the final truth or lulled into escapist dreamstate,
we are pierced with a sense of limbo between everything and its
opposite--reality and unreality, male and female, black and white,
adult and child, good and bad--with no final resolution or
confrontation, nor even a solid or aloof middle ground, as though
nothing has a monopoly on truth or reality, that everything is a
transient phenomenon in the cycle of the universe. if nothing has a
clear purpose or significance, then your insignificance is no worse
than that of anything else in this world, which means you are as
significant as the next insignificant thing, a truth which should be
of signifcance to all of us.

16. willis's initial reluctance to acknowledge his superhuman powers
represents the fear of burden of responsibility. every man wants his
little niche in life, where the only stakes involved is security and
welfare of himself and family. greater power entails greater
responsibility--at least to a good man but who wants the burden? if i
were superman, i wouldn't want the world to expect me fly around and
save folks around the world. jesus didn't like it when lepers swarmed
him either. we are told that as a college student willis was a great
athlete who removed himself from athletic career after a car accident
that nearly killed his girlfriend, who became his wife. it's as
though he made a pact with himself, that for sparing his wife that he
would forgo fame and glory, that he'd stay true to her. he seems not
to have been entirely happy with this decision. at the start of the
movie, they are on the verge of divorce, tempted by infidelities. he's
a man trapped between the humdrum of small life and the fear of great
responsibilities. but, there is also the fear of where it may all
lead. what if you discover your powers to be not only beyond that of
the ordinary human but even that of extraordinary man, and then even
that of supderduper man and then beyond that of gods? are then you
then one with god or god hisself? jesus found out he was god and look
what happened to him.
the reluctance to confront his powers also represents the fear of
one's limitations. striving for the extraordinary reveals our
limitations and lays bare our mortality. it's so much easier to say,
yeah, i coulda made that dish, i coulda wooed that woman, i could ran
the 100 m faster than carl lewis, i coulda whupped hulk hogan, i could
have won the marathon. most people don't want their powers tested and
exposed as an emperor with no clothes.

17. just as the character in sixth sense hovered between life and
death, and the gibson character between disbelief and faith, willis
character in unbreakable is stuck in the zone between dullness of
normality and the overwhelming implications of power. it's almost as
though he's afraid to have what he suspects confirmed, much like the
alternative jesus in last temptation of christ wants to be a normal
man, a husband and father, and not be reminded of his special
obligation to all of mankind. besides, if there is great goodness,
there must be its opposite, great evil; and there is only one way to
prove great goodness, which is against great evil, just as
leaders--washington, lincoln, churchill, FDR, etc--forged and earned
their reputation for greatness against horrible injustices amidst war
and destruction. there may be an eisenhower or patton in any
generation but we'll never know unless there is war to test him.
in the movie, willis's discovery and acceptance of his great good
power is, then, unstandably exposed as a counterforce against a deep,
sick evil, an evil that is also tragic and moving for it coddles a
deathwish to be outed and defeated. mr. glass is the diabolical
merlin to herald the rise of the great white knight arthur.

18. why did willis abandon his sports dreams? why does he choose not
to acknowledge his powers? in a flashback scene, we see him get into
an accident with his girlfriend back in college. he thought they were
both goners, but it turns he survived without a scratch. did he then
make a pact with god that he would give up all ambitions if she could
be spared? though not made explicit in the movie, it could well be so.
or, being shocked by what violence can do, did he forgo sports which
is a spectacle of violence, like a returned knight from the crusades
might have chosen to enter a monastery? there's a kind of parallel
between willis's reluctance and defoe's sense of doubt in last
temptation. both temporarily forgo their destiny and hide away in the
security of domesticity. so, he takes on a humdrum job as a security
guard, far below the potential of his physical skills.
yet, being a security guard has implications of wider responsibility.
willis has the x-ray power to look into the evil lurking within any
person he comes in physical contact with. ignorance is bliss, meaning
we know that the world is evil but we don't know who's evil and who's
not, when and where evil will strike, and we don't have the means to
beat the crap out of evil. however, what if one had such knowledge
and such power? can he crawl back into his domestic life? every
knowledge and power necessarily attaches itself with the burden of
doing good, which explains why all those smarmy ivy league types
condiser it their divine obligation to lead the rest of us stupid
sods. so, it isn't long before willis realizes he can't just be a
security guard at a sports arena but must be one in the world at
large, to save families just like his own.

but this is a great burden, especially for someone already married,
with a kid, and probably mortgage to pay. it's one thing for bachelor
peter parker, clark kent, bruce wayne, and others to be superhero, but
how do you balance being father/hubby with guardian of mankind? so,
he had accepted his role as domestic man, that is before jackson came
along.
yet, he had been growing weary and restless as expected of anyone
suppressing his real potential, like if john ford had devoted his life
to making 16 mm educational films. there are moments in life when
people experience trauma so great that they decide then to
fundamentally change their lives and outlooks. sometimes, this sort of
thing is orchestrated in the form of the million man march or 'i'll be
a good christian white male' rally. for willis, this conversion
experience was completely private, unknown even to his wife. when his
girlfriend who shoulda been dead was alive he devoted his life to her,
yet this was something he couldn't communicate, and therefore his
deepest love for her was never fully consumated because though they
have mated sexually his reason for choosing her couldn't be shared
because he would come across as kooky and probably would have felt
foolish telling her at any rate. he loves her but can't tell her why
he especially loves her. the very element that attaches him to her
most strongly must remain stuck inside his gut like turkey stuffing.
it's like that situation in 'end of the affair' where julianne moore
can't tell ralph fiennes why she had to suddenly decide to be a good
woman instead of a skankyass ho'. she thought he died in the air raid
but he didn't and she associated this 'miracle' with her prayer to god
that she wouldn't be whoring around extramaritally anymore. yet, as
in all such cases, the fire of commitment grows dim over time. willis
may have tried to keep the torch lit, to forever remember the
miraculous moment, but it had faded by the time the story starts. on
some subconscious level, he may even be feeling a certain resentment
against her for making him choose life of the humdumdrum. the most
ironic thing about willis's acceptance and triumph as a superhero is
it restores the sense of magic he felt on the day his girlfriend
survived the car crash. in the car crash, there was nothing he could
do and it was all up to god. but, he finally saves a family brutalized
by a thug who had killed the man of the house. willis feels
masterful, powerful, consequential. he goes home and carries his
slumbering wife in his arms and walks up the stairs like a romantic
hero who has the power to steal a person's life back from the clutches
of death. but, then of course, tragironically, we find out jackson,
his mentor, is the ultimate bad guy who is actually not so bad because
he committed great evil to prove the masterfulness of the good.

19. though we are told that the jackson character was locked up in a
mental ward afterwards, he does triumph in one sense. he, the broken
boned man, breaks the unbreakable man in two ways. firstly, jackson
broke willis out of his humdrum existence. more importantly, willis's
confidence in the world is shattered. it's not that evil is more
powerful than good but that both are, like hindu gods

shiva--destruction--and vishnu--preservation--, the product of the
same ultimate source. this is an idea foreign to christian moral
cosmology where there is god the good of life and creation and satan
the bad of death and destruction. in hinduism, shiva the ruthless
destroyer is just as important and valuable as vishnu the preserver of
life and order; there really is no concept of evil as spiritual or
theological or moral absolute. jackson the quasi-hindu demands some
credit and appreciation from willis, but willis is too white wonder
bread christianish. willis feels drained by the revelation, as though
the spirit within his unbroken body has been crushed. he's like bird
with unbreakable quills but defeathered nonetheless. and perhaps,
nothing is more wounding than the destruction of one's soul, something
that can't be put together like fractured bones or sewn like torn
flesh.

20. unbreakable is unusual and odd for and in the manner of broadening
the superhero formula within the context of the art film, and that
probably accounts for its failure at the box office. usually, we tend
to think of superheroes as confident and ecstatic with power, and
hiding it under normal disguise to get by on a daily basis. peter
parker loved his spider power. superman too. batman loves the glamour
of being batman, what with his fancy gadgetry and batmobile. but, the
character of unbreakable is deeply irked by his power. and ultimately,
just when he accepts his calling he's told how much his realization of
this power is owed to the villain, that unlike the usual superhero, he
and the villain are two sides of the same coin, that evil is his twin
brother. after the car accident, he walked away with his loved one
but surrendered his great potential. at the end, he walks away with
power but without the innocence.

unbreakable breaks the rules for what constitutes artfilm and
entertainment and gets away with it. the idea of making a genuine art
movie with superhero comic book material seems absurd but shalayman
has done it. still, the movie is still more a rumination, a
meditative mindplay, where we see the elements of the genre constantly
dissolving and being reformulated than a straightforward narrative.
indeed, the movie is more the fantasy of an obsessed man whose life
has revolved around comic books than a comic book movie. in that
sense, it is a bona fide art movie, totally and completely, like
mulholland drive. both films understand that our public and personal
imagination have been colonized popular culture and attempt to regain
some measure of truth buried under the simplistic myths.

21. there is something in the white imagination of the nonblack in the
popular culture that relegates the black man to background by
elevating the black man's moral authority. it's kinda like japanese
practice of getting rid of an executive by promoting him to a position
where he has little to do except look out the window and hopefully
realize his ass is no longer wanted in the firm. one obvious example
is for the black man to die for the white man. like in terminator 2,
where the self-sacrificing negro dies so white man can go on and
appreciate his negroish goodness. and there is rocky IV, where creed
dies and stallone takes the spotlight(rocky iv is hilarious for
serving up two white american male fantasies in one: white man
destroys a black man and then american destroys a russian, who'd
always dominated in the olympics).
another example of relegating the black man to the background was to
give the black character a higher position. this way hollywood can say
'lookie, we have black guy playing judge, police chief, mayor, or some
such'. however, as most movies are about dashing young people,
they--not their superiors-- hog the attention; the black police chief
may give orders to tom cruise or some other white guy but the white
guy wins the attention of the adoring female audiences. another way
is to make the negro take the high road and be dr. kingish. in
'everybody's all-american' a promising black football player gives it
all up and becomes a civil rights leader so that dennis quaid the
white man can be a successful running back. that a movie of the 80s
would be nostalgically selling this fantasy says illustrates how old
habits die hard. while all these representation of black folks
ostensibly ennobles them, they also make them secondary because most
fictional narratives dwell not on the saint, the elder, or official
but the man at the center of action(this is no longer a reality in
hollywood since the likes of snipes, washington, will smith, and etc
are as big players, if not bigger, than brad pitt, tom cruise, and
affleck). the really devastating thing about unbreakable is it feeds
us this cultural convention of the sidekick negro and it tastes very
familiar. yet, the familiar pablum had been spiked with cyanide and
our expectations keel over. jackson, who'd been reasonably
uncle-remusy turns into stokely carmichael. yes, he'd played second
fiddle, yes he let the white man take the glory, but don't forget
honkey, that i's hates your white ass and in my own special way i had
it whupped. like jesse jackson who used to spit into white people's
food when he worked as a waiter, samuel jackson put some nasty voodoo
shit into the stew he served to willis. uncle ben's rice aint so
nice.
i once remember reading about a slave rebellion in the deep south.
after it was put down, the white massah asked one of his most loyal,
faithful, and kindly slaves why he participated in the rebellion and
the bro blurted out that not a single day went by when he didn't wanna
kill massah and his whole family. the gentle coon schtick was all
just a ruse. samuel jackson's character can be read allegorically as
embodying the crippled state of the black existence in white america.
that thru slavery and poverty, the black man was born broken in spirit
and socially crippled, that the only way blacks could make any gain
was by serving, flattering, and rolling over for whitey, even carrying
the white man's burden of guilt by being martyrs like uncle tom and
martin luther king so that white liberals could say 'oh, look at that
poor negro, and look at my beautiful compassionte self'.
so, shylaman's movie is a powerful, deadly, and definitive
examination--both surgical and spiritual--of the dark and disturbed
american psyche. it can still be taken at a conventional hollywood
level, but its ending forces us confront the artifice and falsity of
this fantasy still embraced by both liberals and conservatives alike.

22. we also wonder about shylaman's psyche. on the one hand, he's a
solid mainstream director, serving mainly white fantasies for white
audiences. but, there's another level to his art. it's as though he's
whispering to the white man that at some level he wants to see the
white man's ass hurt.
in signs, the reverend's wife had died in the most gruesome way. his
other two movies also derive their force by driving a wedge between
male and female, subconsciously undermining the white male/female
union.
in sixth sense, a white man was killed and a white woman widowed. in
signs, white woman is killed and white man widowed. in unbreakable,
white man and white woman both nearly killed in an auto accident and
brought together only by black guy who then reveals his subliminated
hatred for honkey. could shylaman's movies be the product of
internalization of eurocentric cultural imperialism? though white man
is on the decline, it's as though shylaman feels a sense of duty to
uphold white man as image of masterfulness; like mr. glass's agenda
for the willis character, shylaman remains in the background while
romanticizing and glamourizing the white man. though shylaman has made
it in america, he knows that the hindu male is not considered worthy
of heroism, romance, and excitement which are reserved mainly for
whites and--more recently--blacks. consider the popular image of hindu
male. apu on simpsons and funny talking cabbie on david letterman show
which liberals love to mock for their funny accents; indeed, hindus
are the new amos and andy. so shylaman feels lack of confidence as
a hindu MALE and is more comfortable with serving up the image of
masterful white man. yet, there is an element of resentment also. just
as he builds up the white male hero, he brings him down. it's a
love/hate sort of thing. on the one hand, shylaman seems to share the
black man's anger at the white man for the latter's possible 'racism',
best expressed in the scene where willis checks shylaman in a cameo
role for weapons of mass destruction. but, on the other hand,
shylaman almost seems worried that this image of the white man is
finally deteriorating and falling to the wayside. is it a sign of
progress and diversity? or, does it open a new door for chaos, the
rise of unfettered and trashy savagery you see from many NBA and NFL
players and gangsta rap? john wayne and dirty harry may have been
reactionary heroes but they also stood for values of restraint, moral
virtue, and dignity. what will they be replaced by? gangsta rappers
and trashtalking thugs? the traditional white hero stood tall but he
also stood for community, upholding the values of larger society. even
in the godfather, the corleones, while bumping off other mafia hoodmen
and rascally jews, stand for family and values. among blacks, denzel
washington still fills in these kind of roles; he plays the black
white man. but, the real source and model for ultimate male figure in
today's america is the gangsta thug. the music, the lingo, the
values(or lack thereof)all derive mainly from the thug image because
people ultimately worship power and these niggas be the baddest
toughest mothafuc*as there be. so shylaman's movies are almost
elegiac in regard to the white man, who seems to fade away or seems to
be in some kind of limbo between power and powerlessness, relevance
and irrelevance, significance and insignificance. and shylaman seems
torn between satisfaction and sadness in his
construction/deconstruction/restoration/destruction of the white man.
white man be far from an ideal massuh but who gonna replace him? idi
amin? mugabe? hindus know that sad story.

23. shylaman's politics is most interesting for playing with
hollywood conventions of right and wrong, good and bad. for example,
in sixth sense, a woman faithfully mourns the death of her husband in
an era when we think women should be free of man, especially white
man, the ultimate evil patriarch. near the end, we learn that a girl
was slowly poisoned by her mother instead of her evil patriarchal
father, a violation of political correct formula of villainy which
would dictate that the white MAN be the killer of the kibbler. in
unbreakable, a kindly negro turns into a deadly nigga. we are lulled
to believe in the hoary cliche of the noble black man and then given
the slip; it's only a violation of our expections in terms of plot but
cultural perceptions--a black man being so evil and shit? in signs,
a white priest loses his wife to the drunkenness of a darkie, shylaman
himself. later, he's restored to god and family values after assault
by aliens. white man protects his home and hearth from outsiders and a
measure of faith in god is restored. it would be presumptious to
label shylaman a conservative but he looks beyond the fashionable
liberal or pc labels, toying with their rigid conventions according to
political fashions. and he does it subtly enough that his movies won't
appear politically dated in yrs to come(unlike just about every film
by john sayles or spike lee or singleton which are already lameass
artifacts). in fact, few if anyone even commented on shylaman's deft
and unsettling violations of conventions. it proves if you creates
characters, situations, or suspenseful effectively enough, people care
more about the story than its contextual meaning.

24. what shylaman says isn't original but how he says it is lethally
effective, hitting the bull's eye where acting, mood, style, and
pacing all converge in one intense moment of sublime power; a moment
both extremely violent and intensely calm, as though we've witnessed
the collision of ghostly vehicles.
the bulk of any shylaman's movie is familiar hollywood material, and
some may dismiss shylaman as just another conventional--albeit
talented--hollywood director. but, shylaman's greatness is about
achieving the great moment. yet, for there to be this great moment, it
has to be cocooned in conventionality which lulls us familiar
expectations. and, it's not so much revelation of detail or fact but
the manner in which the truth is revealed. i knew prior to watching
sixth sense that willis was a ghost and expected the familiar
resolution. yet, it was a singular moment, one of the great moments in
cinema, because revelation mattered less than the emotions shylaman
conveyed, as though some deep pool within us was stirred by some
mysterious force. it was as stunning as the extended rain scene in
tarkovsky's stalker. but, it still begs the question; are shylaman's
movies great because of the great moment? i'm almost inclined to say
yes because much of the surrounding conventionality is integral for
creating the great moment, and more importantly, the great moment
reconfigures and reshapes the conventionality into heightened meaning
and significance. it's like the motif of water glasses in signs.
throughout the movie, they just seem like so much visual clutter. yet,
we realize their significance at the end, and upon second viewing of
the movie(which i haven't attempted), everything emanates with greater
meaning. the implication is we should never take anything for granted
in our world. just as the stalker in the tarkovsky film sees beyond
what most people can see, shylaman plays the stalker, taking us thru
familiar terrain and finally leading us into a room where everything
we'd seen before takes on a new color.

25. shylaman uses the motif of water in unbreakable as willis's
achilles heel. partly, shylaman is playing the postmodernist game. of
course, all superhero must have a weakness, a special vulnerability.
willis, though powerful and unbreakable, is helpless against water,
kinda like jeff bridges wasn't supposed to eat strawberries in
fearless, a similar though more artsy though lesser work.
in one scene, willis falls into a swimming pool and would have drowned
if not for people who pull him out of the water. was shylaman
alluding to superman movie where reeves was fitted with a kryptonite
blingbling and was helpless in lex luthor's jacuzzi before whoozits
came along and saved him? both willis and superman are saved by
regular people, suggesting that no matter how powerful they may be,
the superhero is one with people whereas the villian is alienated from
the people and alone with power. but, this begs the question: to what
extent is goodness a matter of inner nobility or social viability?
superheroes tend to be handsome and goodlooking dudes--except for the
hulk--that we feel attracted to, and it's also to their advantage to
win our affection. villains tend to be ugly, crippled, disgusting.
think of joker, penguin, the green goblin, scorpion, and other such
ilk. the larger question is even if the villains wanted to be good,
would we accept them as viable heroes or would we still reject them?
are they to be frustrated and fated to be evil(did the beatles have to
be 'good' and the stones 'bad'?)? this psychological dynamic is
probably true to some extent in the real world. if all you want is a
mundane, humdrum life, then it doesn't matter. but, if you seek fame,
fortune, or notoriety and can't attain it in a good way, there is only
the bad way--satanic rock, gangsta rap, mafia hoods, kkk, the likes of
mike tyson the ugly mothafucka, or lee harvey oswald, white collar
criminals. these human shit want power or glory beyond that of
ordinary man but unable to get it through respect, gain it thru terror
or intimidation or deceit. in fact, such lowlife types seem more
appealing to many of us because unlike good power, bad power is
restrained by nothing and can be totally badass. also, it's easier
than being an honest working stiff, like thugs in goodfellas preferred
being predators than 9 to 5ers.
there is no ironclad formula but evil is, to an extent, the product of
one's place in society in relation to others. it's not the determining
factor but a precondition. for the despised and marginalized, being
good means being resigning oneself to fate of inferiority; goodness
cannot be cashed in for success and acceptance. the smoldering rage
seeks compensation beyond the ordinary, fueled by a sense of
vengeance. comic book to jackson was like a religious text, the
bible, a blueprint for understanding the world and his place in it.
his example is a meditation on the religious longing in the heart of
every man, how that can longing can be perverted, or perhaps that all
religions are essentially sublime perversions in and of themselves.
but, the ultimate perversion is we cannot totally liberate ourselves
from this perversion. those who reject god or religion find god and
religion in art, politics, culture, ideology where blind faith and
sanctified principles are just as rampant as in religion. so, for some
john lennon was the messiah, as for some karl marx was santa claus, as
for some martin luther king is the noblest creature that ever walked
the earth despite the truth about king the man as opposed to king the
myth. but we prefer myths. we'd rather remember lennon as the utopian
philosopher of 'imagine' than a spoiled rich brat who spent most of
the 70s slouching around with worthless yoko.

to use a scientific analogy, unbreakable's universe goes from simple
to complex sciences and then beyond. he begins with the warmth of
sociology and biology, then ventures into more strange world of
chemisty, and then peers into the abstract abyss of modern physics. we
start at the human level, familiar with the social and spiritual
trappings. but, there seems to be cracks and at a deeper level, the
familiar began to gain a sense of unfamiliar, as though the world is
operating under forces beyond the limits of our common sense or
newtonian logic. there's something akin to david lynch in all this
except lynch is much more brazen and obvious in his depiction of
sublevels of consciousness. in a lynch movie, we know we're firmly in
the surreal zone. because shylaman's movies seem initially rooted in
mundane reality, the swelling oddity gain greater potency. shylaman's
slips it into us without us knowing. we find out only when it's been
digested into our bloodstreams. there is something of pharmocology
about his films. we think we've ingested something innocuous but
imperceptively the world hallucinates into something else in our
minds. it happens so slowly that we accept it as plausible. but then
shylaman gives us the jolt that reminds us how far indeed we've
slipped from reality, that we are indeed on another level of being
altogether, another layer of perception and understanding.
willis, with his unbreakable and healthy body, is biology and
newtonian physics. jackson, with his power of intellect and
abstraction, is chemistry and quantum physics. in a way, mr. glass too
is unbreakable because his mind is fluid like water. he's like mr.
glass of water. water can turn to solid and break into ice but it
also melts into liquid and can turn into gas. mr. glass has ice-like
qualities in having brittle bones. but, he also seems to have endless
power to regenerate and find security, like a fetus inside the
liquidfilled womb. but, in his destructive deeds with explosives, he's
also like gas. and like vapor, he vanished from the scenes of the
crime.
so it's logical that the bane of willis is water, an element that
cannot be broken. willis and mr. glass are like an octopus and a
crab. crab has the hard shell but the octopus doesn't have to break
the shell but only find an opening and inject its saliva which breaks
down the flesh inside and then suck it out as liquid. this is what mr
glass does to willis. willis hardshell of a body remains intact and
unbreakable but his liquid soul inside has been sucked out by mr.
glass's beak. his inside is dissolved like alka seltzer in a glass of
water.

26. the interesting about shylaman's films is the themes and elements
interplay with one another. in unbreakable, water is an hostile
element, bad for its hero. in signs, water is the savior that finally
defeats the aliens. thru the motif of the liquid--water or blood in
sixth sense--shylaman seems to suggest the world is neither governed
by good nor evil but that both forces are merely solidified outgrowths
of the eternal wellspring of the cosmos. in unbreakable, it takes on
a sinister cast, in signs it's signifies life and purity, and in sixth
sense, the blood we see draining from willis is both revelation and
annihilation.