[A note, first: I took a hiatus for the month of May from watching films. In the mean time, I thought about art and music and literature. This essay is one of several that I wrote on those subjects. I hope you enjoy, despite its change in subject matter.]
Nietzsche speaks, in The Birth of Tragedy, of a moment of such piercing clarity, a moment that is so brimming with understanding that it is as if the viewer is able to see two things simultaneously: the work at hand, and the almost blinding truth behind the work. He calls this the "double look." As we viewers who have experienced the double look can attest to, it is as if you are watching a film on a screen, and all of a sudden you can see through the screen into reality, into truth and you stare it dead in the eyes. The only thing keeping it from killing you is the screen itself.
There is a painting by George Frederic Watts called The Minotaur (above) that almost perfectly exemplifies this pseudo-visual phenomenon. It shows the mythic creature sitting on a balcony, looking longingly to the sea. But the first thing we notice, the screen if you will, is that he is a Minotaur. We notice his brutality and his ability to kill us without a second thought. That is his modus operandi, and our fearful reaction is all too expected. However, as we gaze deeper, as we look closer, we notice the lines of anxiety in his face, the melancholic look in his eyes. We see his human characteristics. And it makes us think of his purpose, or moreover, his dreams. From that look in his eyes, we can tell that he has them, that he hates the labyrinth, and is waiting for someone to free him, to give him a chance. The stories inform us that the Minotaur was half bull, half man, and we have always seen that distinction as purely physical. We have sometimes even see the man half as his cunning nature. But what if the thing that separates us from all other animals is not our ability to reason, but our ability to emote? What if the most human thing we can do is feel something real? That, I think, is what Watts was driving at, trying to get us to understand.
Jorge Luis Borges, the godfather of South American Literature and one of the greatest short story writers of all time, wrote a piece entitled The House of Asterion. It told the story of a man trapped in a place with an infinite number of doors and an infinite number of paths, so intricate that he would never find a way out by himself. So he waited and waited for someone to fulfill the prophecy and free him from his prison (he was, after all the heir the the titular royal house). When people come to visit him, he recognizes the fear in their eyes, and it infuriates him. They shouldnt fear him, they should help him. So he kills them out of frustration. But one day his hero comes and our prisoner can tell that he is the liberator from the look in his eyes. The story ends with Theseus exiting the Labyrinth saying "It was strage, he didn't even put up a fight." This captures that ineffable sense of longing that our Minotaur feels as he stares over the Mediterranean. He is waiting to be freed from his prison, tired of his limited diet of virgins and prisoners. He realizes that he is stuck in an endless loop, a never-ending cycle that leads only to his perpetuated ennui. He is like all of us who are discontent with our lives. We are all the Minotaur: half beast, half man. But if we forget the man, if we forget the emotion, the feeling, in short, everything that is good about life, we have lost the struggle, and succumb to the beast. And then we are only remembered for our brutality.
