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Polarizations and Conflicts
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Literary Criticism Take Home Test

Polarizations and Conflicts

By: Ilayda Williamson

For: Mr. Murray

ENG4UE-02

October 28, 2008

The fastest, the strongest, the richest, the rarest. The human society is one obsessed with the ultimate best. Humans strive to perfect their bodies and careers to ‘come out on top’ - and then compile lists of records of the furthest they could push. It is not surprising then that human society has an infatuation with mythical superhuman figures - be they gods, spirits or comic book super heroes. They represent an extreme - the perfection in some area.

The movie Unbreakable, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, reflects this obsession with comic book super heroes in particular. More than this, it looks into the cause and effect of conflicts because of polarization of human ability, and how being at polar opposites affects a relationship with society. The movie features two characters - one who sustains injuries from a simple fall, and one, as the title suggests, who cannot sustain injuries in almost any situation. Because the movie is an insight on human conflict, the literary criticism mimesis and scapegoating can easily be applied to de-construct this movie. Acquisitive mimesis, the traditional theory of mimesis in art, and scapegoating can all be isolated and examined in the film Unbreakable.

Mimesis has many definitions, all pertaining to different fields of knowledge. The definition Plato and Aristotle devised in Ancient Greece is that it is an imitation of life in art. It is the opposite of diegesis, which is the perfect retelling of what actually occurred. To clarify, diegesis is to mimesis as history is to art, as a newspaper article is to a poem. Both have their uses, although some people are wary of life represented mimetically in art. What they do not realize is that reality may be ‘shown’ just as accurately as it is told. The artful additions do not take away from the truth, merely draw a thin veil over it which one may still see through. This has been seen through history in cave-drawings, pottery and sculpture, for example.

This applies directly to the movie as Elijah believes something along the lines that the components of comic books - the heroes, villains, and conflicts - are in fact real. Elijah explains as so: “I believe that comics, just at their core now… have a truth. They are depicting what someone, somewhere felt or experienced. Then of course that core got chewed up in the commercial machine and gets jazzed up, made titillating - cartooned for the sale rack” (Shyamalan). This correlates to Plato and Aristotle’s theory because what Elijah is saying is that what one sees in a comic is real life, but it is altered. Perhaps instead of a half-man half-spider hero swooping in to save a day, it was actually an agile young man running in. But one can still see the core of what happened - the problem, the rescue, etc. In effect, it is ’showing’ reality through story-telling and images, rather than telling it through a list of facts. This, explained once and once again, is the purpose of mimesis in art.

Acquisitive mimesis is, fundamentally, the want to acquire something that someone else has. It occurs when there is a discrepancy of power, real or imagined, between one individual and another individual or group. This discrepancy of power can manifest itself as a need to acquire ‘things’ that the more successful individual or group has - cars, houses, significant others, gadgets. This need can be felt by both parties involved, or the more affluent party may be completely unaware of this yearning. The latter is the case of Unbreakable. Both Elijah and David feel acquisitive mimesis towards the general population for the normal person’s purpose. Elijah and David are both outcasts. They lack purpose because of the reason that makes them different. In the case of Elijah, it is because of his biology - he has a condition which makes being a normal person extremely difficult. He cannot function normally in society, and he cannot have a true purpose other than to keep himself from death. David on the other hand can utilize his purpose but feels he cannot. He should use his talents to protect others and bring ‘justice’ but this would, to his mind, forfeit the illusion of normalcy for him and his family. He explains his turmoil well in the following to Elijah Price.

Did you know that this morning was the first morning I can remember, that I didn’t open my eyes and feel that sadness… Do you know what I’m talking about? That little bit of sadness? (beat) I thought the person that wrote that note had an answer for me. For why I survived that train. For why my life feels so out of balance… (Shyamalan)

The mimetic tension, which has existed from birth for both, builds to a breaking point as these two characters cannot acquire what they desperately want.

The mimetic tension formed by this long-harbored acquisitive mimesis is dispelled through the assignation of a scapegoat. The point of a scapegoat is to place the blame on something or someone concrete, rather than a hard to grasp, abstract idea such as world famine or a corrupt government. Who receives the title of scapegoat? It is usually an arbitrary victim, and this victim is usually completely innocent and removed from the situation. In Ancient Greece, scapegoats traditionally were cripples, or beggars - helpless citizens that were blamed simply because they were helpless citizens. Helpless, so they were unable to retaliate, and a citizen, so that the anger felt because of a tragedy may be purged through one of their own. This is true of the scapegoats in Unbreakable. David Dunne’s scapegoat is close to home - he chooses his wife as his scapegoat. The evidence found in the movie is their failing marriage and Dunne’s consideration of moving out. He blames his wife for making him choose to fake his injury so that he would be ‘normal’ for her, normalcy in this case not being a football star as a career. And the faking of the injury covered up any of his talents that he may have used later in life. His resentment is illustrated in a key piece of dialogue.

MEGAN Do you knowingly keep Jeremy and me at a distance? Beat.

DAVID Yes.

Megan’s face tenses. She’s on the verge of getting upset.

MEGAN

Why? DAVID

I don’t know Megan. MEGAN

It’s like you resent us David. Resent the life you have.

(Shyamalan)

When the need to cover up his ‘power’ is defeated and he finds his purpose, helping a victimized family, the scapegoat is no longer needed and his marriage recovers.

Elijah Price’s choice of scapegoat is further reaching. He scapegoats the regular populace. This is proven at the end of the movie, when it is revealed that he himself had been creating all the tragedies that were featured on the news. He desired purpose, he desired a place - and he played out his feelings of poor chance by killing others ‘in search of a hero’. While he may have been committing murder for some twisted ideal of good, the fact that he still killed these people without batting an eye remains true. He feels no guilt, because he places no blame on himself. It had been placed on the backs of his victims long before they fell into his disastrous rat-trap. And this scapegoat-ing helps ease his pain. He says, speaking of seeing Dunne’s miraculous escape from harm, “[when] I saw it this morning. I felt a part of the world again.” (Shyamalan)

The fastest, the strongest, the richest, the rarest. These all exist on the ‘best’, the ‘most coveted’ end of the spectrum of Western society. But what happens when one begins including normal citizens on this spectrum? Most find themselves in the middle - average people. Those who do not, who like Dunne find themselves at the strongest end, or like Elijah who find themselves at the weakest end, face a sometimes unending battle with society. A true pressing of the eye to the keyhole of the human’s love of bests and worsts, and the conflicts spawned from this love is offered through the application of mimesis and scapegoating to the movie Unbreakable.

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