TIME AND PRESSURE

Information is Ammunition: Risk Management in "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"

      Although Stephen King is most famous for his works of horror, his range as a writer extends far beyond that. His novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" was adapted by Frank Darabont into the film The Shawshank Redemption, and is widely regarded as one of the best films of its time (Richard Armstrong, "Self-Made Man: The Shawshank Redemption" 83). Hope is a central theme of the story, and the protagonist Andy Dufresne battles with hopelessness throughout the film. "That tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass", Andy is sent to Shawshank prision for a crime he did not commit, and should have been broken by what he endured (Darabont). In spite of this Andy remains resilient, even rebellious. "Get busy living, or get busy dying" Andy quips (Darabont). He ultimately uses his knowledge of the prisons walls and sewer systems to free himself and retire to "a warm place that has no memory" (King 66). Though having hope is important, Andy's hope is not just a vague panacea for worry. Andy's hope drives him to "perseverance and hard work" (King 85). It drives him to accumulate the knowledge necessary to manage the risks of prison life, and prison escape.

      Ariel Meirav, in his essay The nature of hope, presents an interesting hypothetical scene between Andy and his close friend in the story, Red. In it, Meirav attempts to understand the role of hope in the film:

"Suppose Andy and Red have been discussing the chances of attaining freedom, reviewing all options . . . Perhaps Red summarizes the picture by saying that the chances are one in a thousand. And Andy does not disagree. But, assuming them to be as rational as we like, where does this compel them regarding their hopes one way or another? Red will say, ‘I grant you it is possible, but the chance is only one in a thousand!’,whereas Andy will say, ‘I grant you the chance is only one in thousand, but it is possible!’." (223)

Meirav presents Andy's hope and Red's relative hopelessness as the crucial difference between the characters. Although Andy may indeed believe in the possibility that his hope grants him, this alone cannot be all that sustains him through his time in prison. Nor is hope the soul cause for his schemes. A "tough-minded" calculator, Andy uses all of the skills that propelled him to success outside the prison to make good his escape from inside it (Armstrong 80).

      Frank Partnoy, a professor of Law and Finance at the University of San Diego School of Law, in an interview for the PBS documentary series Frontline, presents a somewhat different assessment than Meirav as to why two parties with the same odds of success might make different choices. The question regards were risk will flow in financial markets: "If you ask people, they're basically split between two camps: One says that risk will flow to the smartest person, the person who best understands it, and the other says that risk will flow to the dumbest person, the person who least understands it". Andy takes an incredible risk by attempting to break out of the prison. Red estimates that there have been about 400 escapes from "the Shank" and only about 10 had succeded (King 75 ). Andy takes the long odds on breaking out of the prison because his hope is married with years of meticulous plotting. In the film Red remarks, "I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall . . . Andy did it in less than twenty " (darabont) . Andy's plans work on geologic time scales. He has a "patient, meticulous nature" (King 86) . He researches the lay of the prison sewer lines, and experiments with the strength of the prisons walls. Andy invests in something that the warden, the other prisoners, and the guards, do not, knowledge. Because he is better informed he can manage risk in a way other prisoner of Shawshank can't.

      Carving strait through the prision walls was a gamble. Andy was "playing for high stakes" (King 90). Though prisoners of the past had also took the gamble, it was Andy's insider knowledge that made his success "possible" (Meirav 223). The walls of the prision that had confined so many men were only a challenge to him. Hope planted the seed, but Andy then got to the hard work of making that hope a reality.

(ed. not the greatest paper but shawshank is boring and I like the Partnoy quote.)

I WANT TO GO BACK IN TIME AND HAVE SEX WITH CARSON MCCULLERS

IF I COULD FIGHT ANYONE ALIVE OR DEAD ID FIGHT CHUCK PALANIUK

Dont make me say it!

PRERAMBLE:

     Fight club was the zeitgeist film of my high school age. It set a fire in everyone of my friends bellies and we immediately began making rumors and small talk of starting our own fight club. Whispered about in the back of the class, this terrified a few of my post-columbine teachers who obviously never got the joke. We were fascinated by the nihilistic philosophy and tylers undeniable charismatic swagger. But personally, a decade later and inexorably wiser, the didactic, anarchistic mode of the film falls very flat. I dont need tyler to tell me how to think. I dont need tyler durden to define masculinity. Trying to define something like this, even in fiction, is just silly. Instead id like compelling answers to the problems raised in the book. Unfortunately the solutions given are ineffectual or absurd. Stripped of its wit and aesthetic polish the story reveals itself to be a sophomoric, though entertaining, fantasy. The whole thing has this weird late 90s "geewiz!" buzz to it that doesnt take itself seriously but simultaneously wont let the viewer take it seriously. It still makes for great fiction, but not very compelling social criticism. 

     That being said, the film has an amazing kind of longevity. It has this social purchase I almost cannot understand. Even today I hear random references to the flim in the conversations of passers by. It is routinely parodied in television. It may be nothing but fantasy masturbation, like Stokers dracula or something, but somehow it keeps being relevant. The incredible thing when I think about this, it would have been relevant in the 1970s as well. It is a critisism of the past and the future. I think one of the reasons for its staying power is the declarative nature of the film. Its far and away different from so much of this "choose your own adventure" type postmodern literature bullshit. Fight club doesnt leave the ending up to the viewer, it doesnt let you wonder about what its saying. It emphatically beats you about with every one of its messages until you understand it, and once you think you understand it?Well it keeps on beating you with it until it no longer makes any sense. Maybe its just my hazy nostalgia but I cant help but think of it and the matrix at the same time. Both of them are so different, so good, in sections and yet they are both so obviously flawed. Whatever the case, I guess I still love them like some kind of goofy faced childhood crush. Anyway, on to the homework:

I saw a shirt like this for 10$ at target yesterday, what the fuck target.

From cautionary tale to passion play, the transfiguration of Fight Club.

      Chuck Palahniuks's novel Fight Club, and David Fincher's subsequent film of the same name, have become the zeitgeist of late 20th century angst. Its nihilistic philosophy and anti-consumerist ideology paint a bleak veiw of American life in which, as Asbjom Gronstad puts it in his essay "One-Dimensional Men: Fight Club and the Poetics of the Body", "Strategies of apathy have become the only seduction" (8). Although the film has been wildly sucessful, and garnered Palahniuk much fame, there is a striking divergence between the book and the film in the closing scenes. Palahinuk's book was a cautionary tale. Although it criticized contemporary America, it also cautioned against those who would destroy it to save it. Fincher's film flys in quite a different direction. It roundly celebrates nihilistic self destruction while simultaneously operating as a parody of that nihilism (Gronstad 5). It then goes on to build that nihilism into a constructive, self-actualizing, ending for our main character, Jack. In doing so it dramatically shifts the message of the book. Palahniuk's book paints Tyler's philosophy as a dead end. Fincher portrays it as a means to an end.

      Most fiction is constructed as a morality tale and Fight Club is no different. This being the case, the end of the fiction, and the events that lead to it, can dramatically alter the message. As well, we should not conflate the message of specific characters with the message of the author. Palahniuk's book ends with a bleak and temporally endless scene. Jack is locked away in an asylum, presumably more or less forgotten by anyone but himself. ‘‘The complete and right-away destruction of civilization’’ was Tyler's goal but it fell far, far short (Palahniuk 125). Although Jack seems to have matured beyond his Tyler Durden phase to some degree, he is only brave enough to contradict himself a bit when he lets slip near the end of the book, "We are not special. We are not crap or trash either" (154). Little development seems to have happened between Lou's basement and God's walnut desk. There is a self conscious disdain for the nihilistic philosophy of Tyler Durden that Palahniuk writes into the ending of the book and this is a very real and personal level of criticism from him. It is easy enough to lampoon IKEA furniture and middle class consumerism, but the obvious next question - the existential question for which Tyler and project mayhem is infatically not Palahniuks answer – is, whats next? So we are the "all singing, all dancing crap of the world" (Fincher). Okay, what next? Jack hits bottom and builds a personal army. Okay, what next? Jack's answer in fiction is project mayhem, but this leads Jack to ruin and near as the reader can tell not much else.

      Fincher's Fight Club comes as a much neater, do it yourself, type package (Marla Misek "Case study: for Fight Club and Seven, PACKAGE makes PERFECT")(1). Many of the most clever and insightful lines of the book are given to Tyler and this heavily emphasizes his importance in the master-student relationship he has with Jack. Tyler is supreme, everyone else is subordinate. "THE FIRST RULE OF PROJECT MAYHEM IS YOU DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS!" (Fincher). Fincher constantly breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience. The already didactic narrative of the book becomes a direct scene by scene lecture. Built into this is Fincher's in-line commentary. When Robert Paulson is shot and brought back to the paper street house, Jack's reaction is that of any reasonable person taking a look at the project mayhem play book: "You morons! You're running around in ski masks trying to blow things up? What did you think was gonna happen!?" (Fincher). Strangely enough this self-destructive, superman tale even has a happy ending. Rather than the defacto prison of the book, Jack in the film is liberated not just from his previously banal life but from Tyler himself. Gronstad teases out a crucial point from this final scene: "it is tempting to read Jack's execution of his alter ego at the end of the film as the completion of a long process of symbolic divestiture." (6). Not only does Tyler not lead Jack to ruin in Fincher's film, he is a crucial step to maturation. Hitting bottom "works" for Jack in the film. Tyler is the yang to Jacks IKEA boy yin, but both must eventually be destroyed before Jack can graduate into a more mature, self-actualized form.

      Tylers Character is turned from a savant terrorist into a messianic man's-man figure. Jennifer Barker, in her essay "A Hero Will Rise: The Myth of the Fascist Man in Fight Club and Gladiator" quotes Robert Kolker as saying that films such as these affirm "what the viewer has always believed or hoped is (odiously) right and accessible. . . The films offer nothing new beyond their spectacle, nothing the viewer does not already want, does not immediately accept" (173). The viewer is coaxed into loving the charismatic wit of Tyler because he reinforces their own beliefs. They are in on all his derisive jokes. He articulates what they can't articulate. He looks, dresses, and fights in a way they never could. There is nothing unsettling about the ending of the film or the death of Tyler himself if you adhere to his logic.

      The dramatically changed final scene and the elevated importance of the Tyler Durden character are part of what has made the movie such a cult hit. The somewhat ambiguous anti-climax of the book has been replaced with a feel good ending. Even if our humble narrators alter-ego is finished he at least has one last hurrah with the credit card company head quarters going down in flames. Not exactly the most realistic ending, but we must accept the fiction as well as the universe it operates in. And to that end Fincher's climax is much more internally consistent and fulfilling.

IF YOU ARNT WASTED THE DAY IS