The Feminine Struggle

'Twilight' vs. 'Hunger Games': 

Why Do So Many Grown-Ups Hate Bella?

If you have seen or read both Twilight and The Hunger Games, you probably have already realised the divergent characterisations of the female leads in these two film adaptations. Whilst in Twilight, Bella finds herself madly in love and becoming so dependent on her lover; Katniss, in The Hunger Games, becomes the object of love herself, and finds others who become increasingly dependent on her. 

However, we should not be too quick to make a moral judgement on which of these two stories is better, before we reflect on why people enjoy watching - or rather, fall in love with - these films in the first place. 

Maybe we can theorise that most - if not, all - people enjoy reading, watching or hearing about a story that they can relate to, that is, that they can identify with the lead character (hero or heroine).  It's no surprise then why a lot of blokes enjoy Fast and Furious, while a lot of chicks dig, well, Twilight or Hunger Games. Of course, this coarse generalisation must not be taken too far (blokes also watch Twilight and chicks do enjoy Fast and Furious).

So should we criticise Meyers for writing Twilight, a tale in which there is an almost absolute surrender of the ego to another superhuman being? And if so, should we then applaud Collins for writing Hunger Games where the ego itself is lifted to a superhuman level? 

I think both films are equally moral - or, you might even say, amoral. Although Bella's apparent weaknesses seem repugnant to many people, therein lies her greatest strength, that is her ability to make her own life choices. Yes, she's vulnerable to the charms of Edward, and also defenceless against the threats of her environment; but we must not forget that despite the superhuman quality of Edward, it is Bella who ultimately has the power to choose between him and Jacob, and even, between life and death (of Bella herself and her unborn child). 

The Hunger Games, we might first assume, is more moral because it empowers the lead female character - unlike Twilight. However, this would seem questionable once we scrutinise the realities of Katniss' life. Yes, she is independent, smart, skilful and very brave. Underneath her apparent bravery however, lies her greatest weakness and tragedy - that is,  her lack of choice. Throughout the film, Katniss is repeatedly forced to choose the lesser evil - from volunteering to join the Hunger Games to replace her sister; to her attempt to please the audience by faking love; and ultimately by having to kill other innocent children who are also trapped in the Hunger Games or otherwise getting herself killed by one of them.

In the end, it's not about who's better, Bella or Katniss. Depending on how you see their story: we can say that both are fated to succeed, or that they are both equally doomed to fail.

Of Happy Endings

A friend once told me that groups of moviegoers in India had once burned down cinemas across the country because they were greatly dissatisfied by an unhappy ending of a certain Hindi film. In that film, the hero died at the end - and perhaps more importantly, he did not come back alive. However shocking what the audience did might seem to us, we must at least understand how those people must have felt - as we often do - after watching films with crappy endings.

So what makes a good ending? Obviously it is when evil perish and the good triumph! And who doesn't get annoyed if it is unclear what happens at the end? (e.g Inception). And so we expect movies to have clear and happy endings.

Unfortunately, as what we might have already realised, this does't always happen in real life. For every news event, there's always another event that follows; and for every story we tell our friends about what happened to us, there's always something that has happened right after. And if we really scrutinise the real endings to our stories, we would realise that these can be both unclear and quite often bad, or depressing.

So in real life there are not always happy endings - or are there? If we look at the natural history of an organism, we can say that its life is nothing but an inevitable journey towards death. On the other hand, we can also say that its story does not end with its death, but continues with its posterity (i.e descendants). Seen in this light, we might say that even at the time of its death, this creature has indeed reached a happy ending.

I just saw The Grey, the survival film with Liam Neeson playing a wolf hunter getting stranded by a plane crash with a few other people in a harsh arctic environment - the hunter then became the hunted. Not unlike The Hunger Games, this survival action film has some philosophical significance to it. But unlike the first Hunger Game film, the audience could not really tell whether the hero, after the death of all the other 'survivors', would himself survive at the end (although clearly he would die not long after). The Grey ended abruptly, obscurely, and depressingly - no one survived. But I think that's the whole point: in the end, everyone dies!

* Maybe having recently finished reading a book written by Schopenhauer, that pessimist philosopher, has got something to do with the tone of this post. But cheer up, it's not the end yet. 

Noise and Music

What's the difference between baby cries and your favourite song? Both are just made up of sound waves - but why do we hate one and love the other?

I reflected on these thoughts when I was watching a live orchestra the other day. It was one of the best orchestral performance I've seen, probably because they played a number of familiar songs that I listen to everyday when I get to work. There were at least three Tchaikovsky's, thank you maestro!

Anyway, we all get high from listening to our favourite songs, don't we? But aren't these songs just noise essentially (except for John Cage's "4'33", of course!), especially to others who don't enjoy them as much as we do.

When a musician says, "Let's agree on this sound, shall we? And let's give this song a name." 

If the responder says, "Yes, I'll accept that." Then, it becomes music to both of them.

However, if the responder says, "No, I don't like that sound." Then, the musician's song becomes noise to the the responder.

When we get annoyed by a certain sound, we call it noise. In reality, noise is no different from music, but our subjective experience perceive one sound wave as noise, while another as music. We make the value judgement to categorise things we hear into noise or music for ourselves, and in turn, we are the ones who would experience these sounds as noise or music based on our own judgement!

"Of course there is a difference to our ears, between noise and music," you might say. But don't you see my point? It is that we are responsible for our own experience of listening. If we can change our subjective evaluation of a certain sound wave, we can turn it from noise into music - and vice versa!

So don't blame the radio for playing the songs you hate most. Turn it off. And accept that it wasn't the radio's or the singer's fault that we hate their song. Blame it on ourselves. 

...

Meanwhile, let's enjoy this beautiful piece of music that the orchestra played that night.