divinations: reflections on the (big) screen

Bodhi (Skt.): “Awake.” The path of bodhi is a means of awakening from confusion.

— Chogyam Trungpa, Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-Kindness

Like its predecessor, Blade Runner 2049 opens with a close-up image of an eye. But this time, the eye is closed and twitching, as if immersed in a dream. The camera lingers on this sign of submerged activity, until the eye opens — revealing a blue-green iris — as if the dreamer had finally awakened.

Cut to: a vast solar farm, also resembling an eye, adding another layer of meaning to this organ of sight. For both function as transformers of light, rather than mere passive receptors. So, just as the solar panel converts sunlight into electricity, the eye transforms light into signals that register differences in color, intensity, etc. But the eye also symbolizes functions higher than this, including what Buddhists would call insight (vipashyana) or awakening (bodhi).

In the original Blade Runner, the eye mirrored the dystopian landscape of a future Los Angeles, reflecting the exploding smokestacks that lit up the night. But the eye also served as a portal, used by the paranoid to identify those who would rebel, replicants intent on upsetting the balance of power. The reigning metaphor in both cases was blazing fire, signaling a crisis that needed to be contained and brought under control.

Thirty years later, in Blade Runner 2049, the fires have all but petered out, leaving behind a barren landscape where the world’s ecosystems have collapsed. The raging flames are now replaced by the ever present Sun, less the giver of life than that which takes it away, its smoldering presence an excess in desperate need of rebalancing. This compensatory power is provided by the eye — representing the power of the moon — part of the process that mahayanists call “planting the moon of bodhi in the heart.”

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See previous posts: The Blade Runner’s Dilemma
and The Blade Runner’s Daughter

The grizzled old man still found it painful to say her name.

It’s a sign of the magnitude of his loss, the gaping hole left by his love’s passing which he knew not know how to fill, his only company provided by the whispers of memory harkening back to a time long passed.

This, too, is a sign of the afterlife, of what happens when a soul leaves the world of the living and enters the world of the in-between. It’s often confusing, even terrifying. For a strange inversion takes place, where what was previously “inside” is projected outward, becoming the environment itself – as if one were turned inside-out like a glove – and one’s inner life was put on full display.

This inversion explains the statues “K” witnesses outside the Casino Hotel (titan-sized archetypes) and the holographic performances played out on an empty stage (the animating energies by which archetypes are brought to life). The fact that they’re crumbling points to how long Deckard’s been there – due to his commitment to “protecting” his daughter (by remaining a stranger) but also his enchantment with the soundtrack of his previous life – both overshadowing any desire to leave. In other words: he’s trapped.

That’s why the replicant “K” is so crucial, just like Roy Batty (the “crazy king”) was once before. For both function as messengers bearing gifts that point to how this impasse can be overcome. In both cases, it boils down to the possibility of self-transformation.

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See previous post:
The Blade Runner’s Dilemma

If we trace the shape of Blade Runner 2049 in reverse, the story it tells becomes quite clear. It is, in fact, the moral arc of the blade runner himself: the overwhelming Realm of Feeling is brought to the surface only after the Realm of Fantasy is allowed to come to an end.

After all, like most other human endeavors, although perhaps to a greater degree, fantasy is fueled by emotion — from ē– (“out”) and moveō (“move”) — a driving force that connects oneself to an other, whether it be a person, place or thing. As long as the fantasy endures, that force is bound to its preferred object and may remain so for an eternity. Only when the object of fantasy is released — only when the emotional connection severed — only then is that energy liberated. And when that happens, that energy is returned like a boomerang, but this time as feeling: in other words, while emotion is a motive force that seeks an object, feeling returns as something unleashed.

This represents the dilemma of “letting go” since there’s always this threat of a violent return: what was once invested elsewhere finds its way back in ways that can be overwhelming. And it’s precisely because of this difficulty that the original blade runner will require an assistant — the protagonist of this film — as this is something the old man cannot complete on his own.

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At the beginning of Blade Runner, the protagonist – the blade runner, himself – is called out of retirement. He’d already turned his back on a profession he no longer wanted, but his former captain asks for a favor: there’s a crisis which only his particular set of skills can resolve.

This is the film trope of “one last job,” where a criminal or assassin is pulled back — often reluctantly — into the morally suspect world of his previous life. In a certain way, this represents the workings of karma, where old scores need to be settled and made right before a new life can properly begin. It also points to a hidden cauldron of emotion that establishes the underlying tone of the film — the mix of anger, guilt, and frustration — that has fueled the protagonist’s desire to escape into a quieter and more ordinary life.

This is the inner world of Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, an “interiority” signaled by the image of an eye that opens both films.

In both the original and its sequel, armed protagonists seek to control a world gone wrong by “retiring” bioengineered replicants who rebel against the roles assigned to them. Yet, this is also the life the blade runner wanted to escape, the darkness (“noir”) signaling something that borders on the intolerable. We could just as well call it nigredo or the dark night of the soul, a measure of the vitality and meaning he’s lost. In this world, he finds himself surrounded by inscrutable symbols (the origami figures) and shadowy likenesses (“replicants”) like those found in fever dreams and nightmares.

This encapsulates the blade runner’s dilemma: no matter how efficient he may be in his killing — and despite his desire to escape his life of violence — the threat of rebel replicants remains. There will always be one last job that pulls him back. The first Blade Runner (1982) solved this dilemma by allowing its protagonist, Deckard, to fall in love. This is the path of fantasy — signaled by the unicorn at the film’s beginning and end — which allowed the blade runner to lower his gun and experience a life of feeling in its place. The sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017), inquires about the effectiveness of this solution, recognizing that fantasy has its limit, doomed to run its course and come to an end:

“It’s too bad she won’t live.
But then again, who does? “

However necessary the (first) blade runner’s fantasy may have been — providing a certain kind of education — years later, we are introduced to a blade runner still swallowed by darkness, still “retiring” replicants, still yearning for something more. Which is why a different solution to the blade runner’s dilemma is provided, shifting focus from the object of desire (a replicant woman) to what he might learn from her daughter (a girl).

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As any addict knows — this writer included — due to the pressure to pass as “normal,” the world splits into two. The addict lives a desolate half-existence, miserably marking time until the moment suppressed desires are allowed to unite with the ecstatic sublime … but just for a moment, before returning to “real” life again. In this way, two poles are created, with only one visible to the outside world while the addict shuttles back-and-forth between them, torn between a misery-filled existence and stolen moments of bliss.

As the addiction advances (“hitting bottom”), even this polarity will begin to break. But until then, most addicts will convince themselves that they’re able to manage this shuttling between worlds. This is how the split quietly becomes a chasm, segregating the “normal” from what is hidden … until the gap becomes unbearable, with no means of escape.

The film described here, directed by Steve McQueen, begins and ends with the protagonist’s captivation: held prisoner by the object of his gaze. (The knot tied around his neck points to the possibility that this might eventually kill him.) The site of this fascination is the subway which threads itself throughout the film, as if his commute symbolizes his life’s journey, tracing the shape of a circle that endlessly repeats, each revolution offering him the chance to make different decisions and to grow. This repetition — where the end returns to the beginning — is emblematic of what Buddhists call samsara, the cycle of life, death and rebirth, which is said to be the cause of all suffering (dukkha). The only “exit” is learning how to overcome the logic of its circularity, which offers an experience of the divine: this bliss, quite different from the bliss of the addict, is called nirvana (“blown out,” like a candle).

This is the process mapped-out in Brandon’s story.

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Matthias Grünewald, “Crucifixion”

Life and Its Meaning

The Crucifixion means many things to different people, but if we allow ourselves to delve beneath its surface meanings, we’re likely to meet a world closer to ourselves than we might have thought: not a distant event from another time, but an omnipresent reality that is our very own. For all spiritual art, whatever its form or origin, is designed to “speak” to us, using the language of the soul.

The cross—like all quaternities—represents the elements of which everything is made, the stars, planets, and galaxies, and the myriad forms of life that comprise Nature itself: the host of creatures, from the massive to the microscopic, that slither, float, crawl, gallop, swim and soar; vegetation from climates as disparate as Siberia and the Sahara, the lush canopies of throbbing rainforests and the silent sentinels of the ocean floor. All of this—all this multiplicity—is composed of the original four.

Hidden in the midst of four is the fifth, the point which is both the origin of creation and the place to which all will return (dissolution). It holds the secret of the manifest universe: the central point, often overlooked, of the four-armed cross. In terms of religious symbolism, these are the four rivers flowing from the Garden of Eden, as described in Genesis; the same pattern is found in the double vajra of Buddhism, which also symbolizes the origin of the world.

The crucifixion, then, represents  the state of being “fixed” upon this cross of four, bound to material creation. It also represents obliviousness to the fifth point which gave birth to it all, which explains the tortured look on the crucified’s face. The centerpoint, which should correspond to the heart, is empty: inaccessible to either head or heart. Having completely sunk into the world of creation, all contact with spiritual origins has been lost.

Continue reading ‘The Passion’

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