Fiction, Reality, and Nihilism

by Jasper Gilley

Here is a video of the Star Wars throne room scene without music. Please watch it:

The first time you watch this video, it’s hilarious. The second time, kind of hilarious, but not as much so. The third time, it gets a little disquieting.

With music, the scene is triumphant and fun and mildly funny and you can kind of forgive the extreme cheesiness. Once the novelty of there being no music in the above video wears off, the scene is about ten times cheesier than it otherwise would be, but it’s also morally and emotionally ambiguous. We don’t know if Han and Luke and Chewie are the good guys or the bad guys; whether they’re getting a reward from the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire.

In other words, the scene would be a lot more like real life. Because for almost all real-life political award ceremonies, nobody cares. Can you name the most recent recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor? Even if you do care (or perhaps because you care), someone is bound to see it in precisely the opposite manner. Which award is “good” and which award is “bad”: the Congressional Medal of Honor or the Order of Lenin? For most of the 20th century, the population of the world would have been very close to evenly split on this question (the population of the world that cared, at least.) An awareness of this reality is, by some definitions, the definition of nihilism.

I think the role of film scores gets at the heart of the difference between real life and entertainment, be that entertainment film, literature, or even (sung) music. In entertainment, there is an emotional non-ambiguity from which the consumer derives enjoyment. Specifically, I would argue that the consumer derives enjoyment from the process of observing a universe which has an unmistakable emotional direction and pretending that their life does too.

Consider the genre of romantic comedies. At their core, such films inevitably possess a very blatant emotional non-ambiguity: two likable characters fall in love and live happily ever after. Everyone sees themselves as likable and thus identifies with the characters, pretending that they are a character and that their life is equally non-ambiguous. Ultimately, the comedy aspect of romantic comedy is just orange juice to help the vodka go down – that is, it is designed to distract moviegoers from just how non-ambiguous the film is (and possibly also to help make it socially acceptable for men to see the film.)

Romantic comedies are an extreme example. But most everything else that one might term entertainment ultimately relies upon emotional non-ambiguity. The non-ambiguity of action movies: person blows up bad guys, is hero. Watcher identifies with hero and feels heroic. Love songs (especially country love songs) employ the exact same mechanism as romantic comedies, usually sans comedy. Party songs (such as Taio Cruz’s Dynamite, for example) are designed to give their listeners a little taste of non-ambiguous party whenever they are listened to. Many books are emotionally non-ambiguous, as anyone who has read teen fiction will know. Even bad paintings do something similar. Consider the following painting by Thomas Kinkade:

Could it be any more emotionally non-ambiguous? (I sincerely apologize for exposing you to such bad art, by the way. I can’t look at this painting for too long without wanting to vomit.) Even Thomas Kinkade’s slogan (“the Painter of Light™”) screams non-ambiguity. On an unrelated note, how bad could your taste in art possibly be if you think buying a painting from a painter who has a slogan is a good idea? On another unrelated note, here is a chart I made which sorts artists by quality and abstraction:

However, not every work of fiction fits nicely into this mold, especially when you start considering high-quality fiction. Romeo and Juliet, for instance, certainly has a lot more going on in it than a simple tale of emotional non-ambiguity. But anyone who has seen it performed will certainly attest that it is emotionally non-ambiguous, albeit in a much more subtle way than The Hunger Games. Likewise, The Matrix employs the standard action movie emotional non-ambiguity (as discussed above), but builds on that core with what I believe to be a first-rate consideration of the relationship between humans and machines, so that I believe it to be the defining film of its era (that of the computational-technology revolution.) Not everyone who saw The Matrix picked up on such subtleties, obviously, but the majority certainly picked up on its emotional non-ambiguity, leading to its box office success.

By no means should this blog post be read as a dismissal of the value of emotionally non-ambiguous entertainment. If The Matrix were not pleasurable to watch, there would have been little audience to ponder its thoughtful message, let alone finance its $63 million budget. Indeed, I believe this to be the formula upon which all great art (be it film, music, or literature) is built. Emotionally non-ambiguous content provides the audience; creative individuals provide the artistic quality. This is why I believe that the contemporary music that will be remembered by posterity will not be that which is written with the intention of preservation for posterity. Much contemporary “classical” music, for instance, is not obviously pleasurable to listen to. (Footnote: I use quotes around the term classical in this sentence because I consider classical music to be by definition that which is good enough to be remembered by posterity.) Most EDM, however, is. The pleasurable base (and the audience and thus financing it provides) can be built upon by creative individuals to create meaningful (but still emotionally non-ambiguous) music. Indeed, genuinely great music inextricably intertwines the two.

Hamilton epitomizes this phenomenon. It is undeniably founded in the blatantly emotionally non-ambiguous tradition of Broadway musicals. But it uses this foundation to create something fantastic, not to mention incredibly popular (along the way, it also does a much better job of telling history than most history-books do.) This is also probably why the genre of opera has served and continues to serve as an important catalyst for new musical developments: the emotional non-ambiguity is largely taken care of by the story, allowing composers great freedom in how they choose to present the story. I make no distinction, by the way, between Hamilton and opera. Listen to The Barber of Seville and Hamilton and tell me without prejudice that the former has any greater emotional depth than the latter. (For those hung up on the fact that Hamilton is partially rapped, consider the fact that much of The Barber of Seville consists of proto-rap-like recitativo, spoken words set to music which help to advance the plot.)

Unfortunately, unlike fiction, real life is emotionally unambiguous rarely, if ever. As argued at the beginning of this post, even in those exceptional circumstances when somebody believes there is a villain or hero, there is inevitably somebody else who believes the opposite. And no real-life relationship is anything close to as perfect as those depicted in romantic comedies. That reality is fundamentally emotionally ambiguous, I think, is the fundamental insight of nihilism – no more, no less. Oddly enough, to a society as saturated in emotional non-ambiguity as contemporary human society is, the fundamental emotional ambiguity of real life begins to seem exceptional. How might this saturation affect us psychologically? As far as I know, not much thinking has been done on the subject.