Less Beauty // More Brains
Many of the recent Carrion related posts have had something to do with Anthony Reiner; specifically those character related issues to do with his moral and psychological weakness. In these posts I tried to understand the things that are not only hurting Reiner, his psychological weakness, but are also hurting the people around him, his moral weakness. In the end I realised that Reiner’s moral weakness is his persecution of the drug user; a characteristic implicitly informed by his psychological weakness, an authoritarian personality. What I haven’t addressed so far is Reiner’s need. His need, to paraphrase John Truby, is what he must fulfil within himself in order to have a better life. But I’m having difficulty reconciling Reiner’s need with Adam’s; understanding how their individual needs interact. The story focus of Carrion is Adam. The events of the plot transform him from a self-righteous policeman into what I can only describe as a caring insurgent. I realise that reads like an oxymoron but essentially that’s what he becomes. By the close of the plot he truly cares about Christine. For the first time in their relationship he puts her needs first, even though what she asks from him devastates. From this personal crisis comes his new moral action; he picks up a gun to fight prohibition. The story ends only after he has taken this action, finally making the moral argument against security and for freedom. But what does all this mean when we start to consider Reiner and his need? What must he fulfil within himself in order to have a better life? And how does he argue for security? I think the answer to this question can be found in his authoritarian personality. In “Reiner and the totalitarian mindset” (1) I noted Alfonso Montuori’s characterisation of the totalitarian mindset as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism. Basically we live in complex times full of uncertainty. We feel threatened. And when we’re backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to black-and-white solutions. When I translate this back into Reiner it indicates a course of action that goes something like this. Adam’s refusal to kill Christine at the end of the first act turns Reiner’s reality upside down. Until this point he considered Adam a protege and so perceives his refusal to kill Christine as nothing short of a treasonous betrayal. He finds the chaos of Adam’s refusal intolerable. He has a psychological need to restore order, return Adam to the fold. Unable to do this he has a moral need to destroy him. His attempts to enforce prohibition are his attempts to make the moral argument against freedom and for security. The punch, counter-punch of antagonist and protagonist play out as Adam and Reiner fight over the kind of world they will live in. In the end Reiner’s argument for security is crushed by Adam’s argument for freedom. If this were Reiner’s story instead of Adam’s, the argument for security would crush the argument for freedom. One final thing. At some point in the not too distant future I will have to turn all of this conjecture into a screenplay but until I’m clear about each character that seems like a folly. Expect more conjecture.
Today’s Carrion contemplation has me pondering the question; how does Adam change? In a previous post I noted that Adam shares the totalitarian mindset of prohibition; he acts in self-righteous manner towards Christine. In another I laid out a new inciting event that forces him into direct conflict with Reiner; he refuses to kill Christine at his initiation ceremony. But this event doesn’t suddenly change him, he’s still the prohibitionist policeman, it simply forces him to take the first step towards something else. The stepping stones of his eventual transformation are the subsequent conflicts of the story. Adam and Reiner go at it as each tries to win the goal, they fight over the kind of world will they live in; will it be a world of security or one of freedom? But their punch counter-punch confrontation is essentially a repetition of the same position played out with increasing intensity. Nothing wrong with that? But it doesn’t explain how Adam learns the right way to live in the world. It doesn’t explain how a foreclosed identity such as his, formed around the prohibitionist cause, is transformed into an identity personal to him, an identity willing to choose freedom. (1) That insight comes, I think, from the conflicts he has with other characters. Each character/conflict forces him to deal with things in a different way. Think of it like this. If Reiner is the motor of Adam’s change, the other characters steer him. Each character deals with the problem of the story in a different way. For example Michiko, the disgraced doctor, is compassionate towards Christine. Sexton, the radical drug dealer, refuses to submit to prohibition. Each encounter forces Adam to learn something new, understand himself and the world differently. So at the end, when he battles prohibition, he knows how he wants to live in the world and what he must do. He knows how to show Christine true compassion, even if that compassion means helping her to kill herself. He knows how to deal with Reiner, even if that means throwing him to the insects. And he knows how to deal with prohibition, even if that means picking up a gun a fighting it. One final thought. Something I think I learned while writing this. We don’t change. Other people change us.
Finishing my last post brought with it something of a revelation about Carrion, an insight that means I’ll be throwing out the first act; at least those scenes involving Adam and Reiner. The ideas for the change bubbled up after a lot of research about Reiner’s totalitarian mindset. I’ve been concerned since the outset of this draft with the action that puts Adam in conflict with Reiner. The idea that I’ve been working with to date has his relationship with Christine provide the substance of the conflict that pits the two men against each other. But I’ve never really been happy with how that scenario plays out. The inciting event simply wasn’t strong enough. It doesn’t explain Adam’s decision to put his self-righteous attitudes to one side and save Christine. Neither does it explain the vitriol Reiner has for Adam. What I’ve really been looking for is something that serves two functions. First it has to force Adam to land definitively on Christine’s side. Second it has to make an absolute enemy of Reiner. I think I’ve found the solution in the hierarchical structure of the totalitarian regime. Reiner is member of the regimes inner circle. He puts his standing on the line when he sponsors Adam’s induction. The price of Adam’s admission is Christine. In a proving ceremony reminiscent of a scene from Eyes Wide Shut Adam has to kill Christine. When he refuses, he not only puts himself on the wrong side of the regime, he also makes a mortal enemy of Reiner. Adam is cast out, throw into a cell with Christine and John, condemn to suffer the fate of all junkies in the coming genocide. This changed scenario brings with it an inciting event that kick-starts the story. It allies him with Christine but still allows her to be an opponent. It gives Reiner a character specific reason to hate Adam. It also mirrors the final battle, resonating against Adam’s choice to help Christine commit suicide. Hope that all makes sense. This really is me thinking out loud.
