1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 68: The addiction
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is a PhD candidate at a Lower Manhattan institution called the University of New York. She studies philosophy, but in this movie the discipline arguably stands for all of the humanities and social sciences. The discipline doesn’t seem very rigorous. Professors and students recite quotations to each other and solemnly contemplate photos of atrocities (the massacre at My Lai, the Nazi death camps). They talk about evil and determinism and free will. These are important topics, but I failed to detect much cogency in the discussions.
And yet this is an “ideas” movie. The main idea is downright traditional. It comes from theology, and it’s voiced by a vampire (Annabella Sciorra).
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The vampire pulls Kathleen into a dark alley and gives her a choice. Tell me to go away, the vampire says. Tell me like you mean it.
Kathleen just says, Please.
The vampire bites her.
Has the vampire passed the craving on to Kathleen, or did Kathleen already have it? Arguably, what the vampire passes on is awareness of the craving, not the craving itself.
In the rest of the movie, Kathleen goes around biting people. She presents them with the same choice that she was presented with. When a person isn’t prepared to tell her to go away, she turns him or her into a vampire; she gives the person an education.
The person already has the craving, deep down.
One of her university classmates, as yet unbitten, reads philosophy while eating a hamburger. Kathleen is repulsed. The two activities shouldn’t be paired. The point of philosophizing is to enable one to resist one’s cravings. Philosophizing turns out to be a pitifully ineffective pursuit.
Kathleen becomes disenchanted with her studies.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Kathleen apprentices herself to a guru, an older vampire played by Christopher Walken (of course) who claims to have learned to “manage” his bloodlust.
Of course Christopher Walken would be the movie’s closest thing to Satan.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Everyone was guilty of what happened at My Lai, Kathleen initially argues (this is in an early scene, before she is bitten). The man who was punished for the atrocity was a scapegoat. Everyone should be forced to come to terms with the guilt.
She means that the guilt is collective – everyone contributed to some injustice that brought about the My Lai atrocity. After she is bitten, a more horrific truth is made evident to her: atrocities are committed because of an evil already in the perpetrator, an evil that lives in each person, that can only be curbed by death to the self, perhaps only by literal death. But death isn’t a choice for vampires, who are addicted, agonizingly, to sucking up life, to prolonging deathlessness.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I checked out a library book by two local philosophers: The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning. It’s a self-help book. Here is how philosophy can help you to live well.
It’s an easy book to read, but I’ve had it for weeks and now I’m out of renewals. I’m having trouble building up sufficient enthusiasm to get through it. Something about the book feels too pat.
Not having read much of it, I don’t want to criticize it; but after I saw The Addiction, I looked up terms like original sin, sin, and salvation in the index. Nada.
Odd, because I know that at least one of the co-authors is a Christian.
Here’s what I think Ferrara would say about this book.
Go ahead. Use philosophy. Question. Make a life-plan. Cultivate good dispositions in yourself.
You’ll still be addicted to sin.
The cravings will still rack you. You’ll still give in to them.
You still won’t be able to withstand the light. You’ll still flinch away from mirrors.
C.S. Lewis writes about an addict in The Great Divorce. The addict is powerless to rid himself of his addiction, which is like a fiendish companion that perches upon his shoulder. An angel offers to help the addict. Shall I kill it? he asks. The addict needs his addiction killed, not managed, not held in check by virtues methodically cultivated. And if the addiction is inseparable from the addict’s life, the addict needs to die. But that needn’t be the end. Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is a PhD candidate at a Lower Manhattan institution called the University of New York. She studies philosophy, but in this movie the discipline arguably stands for all of the humanities and social sciences. The discipline doesn’t seem very rigorous. Professors and students recite quotations to each other and solemnly contemplate photos of atrocities (the massacre at My Lai, the Nazi death camps). They talk about evil and determinism and free will. These are important topics, but I failed to detect much cogency in the discussions.
And yet this is an “ideas” movie. The main idea is downright traditional. It comes from theology, and it’s voiced by a vampire (Annabella Sciorra).
R.C. Sproul said we’re not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we are sinners. In more accessible terms, we’re not evil because of the evil we do, but we do evil because we are evil. Yeah. Now, what choices do such people have? It’s not like we have any options.I never thought I’d hear R.C. Sproul invoked in a vampire movie, but what do you know, the director is Abel Ferrara, who is old-school and eclectic; he grew up Catholic and, despite having converted to Buddhism, appears to still trouble himself over original sin and heaven and hell. He also has used heroin and known people who were destroyed by that drug. In this movie, sinfulness is likened to bloodlust, which is likened to a craving for heroin.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The vampire pulls Kathleen into a dark alley and gives her a choice. Tell me to go away, the vampire says. Tell me like you mean it.
Kathleen just says, Please.
The vampire bites her.
Has the vampire passed the craving on to Kathleen, or did Kathleen already have it? Arguably, what the vampire passes on is awareness of the craving, not the craving itself.
In the rest of the movie, Kathleen goes around biting people. She presents them with the same choice that she was presented with. When a person isn’t prepared to tell her to go away, she turns him or her into a vampire; she gives the person an education.
The person already has the craving, deep down.
One of her university classmates, as yet unbitten, reads philosophy while eating a hamburger. Kathleen is repulsed. The two activities shouldn’t be paired. The point of philosophizing is to enable one to resist one’s cravings. Philosophizing turns out to be a pitifully ineffective pursuit.
Kathleen becomes disenchanted with her studies.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Kathleen apprentices herself to a guru, an older vampire played by Christopher Walken (of course) who claims to have learned to “manage” his bloodlust.
You know how long I’ve been fasting? Forty years. The last time I shot up, I had a dozen and a half in one night. They fall like flies before the hunger, don’t they? You can never get enough, can you? But you learn to control it. You learn, like the Tibetans, to survive on a little.It’s hot air. Before long, the creep is belittling Kathleen and sucking out her blood, leaving her more despairing and famished than ever.
Of course Christopher Walken would be the movie’s closest thing to Satan.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Everyone was guilty of what happened at My Lai, Kathleen initially argues (this is in an early scene, before she is bitten). The man who was punished for the atrocity was a scapegoat. Everyone should be forced to come to terms with the guilt.
She means that the guilt is collective – everyone contributed to some injustice that brought about the My Lai atrocity. After she is bitten, a more horrific truth is made evident to her: atrocities are committed because of an evil already in the perpetrator, an evil that lives in each person, that can only be curbed by death to the self, perhaps only by literal death. But death isn’t a choice for vampires, who are addicted, agonizingly, to sucking up life, to prolonging deathlessness.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I checked out a library book by two local philosophers: The Good Life Method: Reasoning Through the Big Questions of Happiness, Faith, and Meaning. It’s a self-help book. Here is how philosophy can help you to live well.
It’s an easy book to read, but I’ve had it for weeks and now I’m out of renewals. I’m having trouble building up sufficient enthusiasm to get through it. Something about the book feels too pat.
Not having read much of it, I don’t want to criticize it; but after I saw The Addiction, I looked up terms like original sin, sin, and salvation in the index. Nada.
Odd, because I know that at least one of the co-authors is a Christian.
Here’s what I think Ferrara would say about this book.
Go ahead. Use philosophy. Question. Make a life-plan. Cultivate good dispositions in yourself.
You’ll still be addicted to sin.
The cravings will still rack you. You’ll still give in to them.
You still won’t be able to withstand the light. You’ll still flinch away from mirrors.
C.S. Lewis writes about an addict in The Great Divorce. The addict is powerless to rid himself of his addiction, which is like a fiendish companion that perches upon his shoulder. An angel offers to help the addict. Shall I kill it? he asks. The addict needs his addiction killed, not managed, not held in check by virtues methodically cultivated. And if the addiction is inseparable from the addict’s life, the addict needs to die. But that needn’t be the end. Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life.”
