Zarathustra’s metamorphose
In Thus
Spoke Zarathustra we find a concept of three metamorphoses of the spirit. In this part I will try to link this concept of metamorphose to the movie Badlands.
In the first stage of the metamorphoses the
spirit is a camel. The camel lives passively with a big burden upon its
shoulders; the burden being a symbol of the constraining values of society. The
camel suffers under the burden, but has accepted this burden as its lot in
life.
The lion is the second form of the spirit. The
lion has realized that there is no such thing as the truth and wants to conquer
its freedom. The lion must therefore fight the dragon. The dragon can be seen
as the symbol of authorities such as politicians, priests, teachers, the media
etc., and it claims to know the truth and be in possession of all values.
The third and last form of the spirit is
that of a child. The child can be said to be Nietzsche’s übermensch (overman),
who sees everything in a new perspective and discovers the world authentically
and on its own; “… a sacred ‘Yes’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own will,
and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.”. The child
has an innocent approach to life and treats it as if it were a game. The child
is the symbol of the übermensch. It has no preconceived values or opinions but creates
them on its own; it is the heroic human.
If we look at the main characters Kit and
Holly Badlands we see a similar, although not completely identical, development.
At first we may define them as ‘camels’. Holly goes to school, practice her
instruments and does what her father tells her. Kit has a job, although he may
be a bit of a rascal, he is so far not to be considered a criminal. The young
couple carries, more or less, the established values of society, but when Holly’s
father opposes the relationship, Kit retaliates and kills him. In other words
Kit fights the dragon. Here we can say that Kit transforms into the Lion, he wants to conquer his freedom. After this
the couple flees to the woods where they start resembling the
spirit of the child. This is best exemplified by the following scene in the movie:
Out in the woods the couple builds a treehouse
to live in. Their first task every day is to invent a new password. We see Holly
painting her face, Kit running around wildly with his gun, and the two of them dancing
together. Their actions are arbitrary, spontaneous and guided by their desires;
they are creating their own utopia. We see no remorse, sadness or feeling of
guilt for the shooting of the father. They seem as were they “innocent as
children”. As the movie continues we see Kit killing even more people, and his
reasoning for the killings is often very vague, as exemplified by the scene
where he is caught by the police:
-
Cop: Kit, I
got a question for you: you like people?
Kit: They're
o.k.
Cop: Then
why did you do it?
Kit: I dunno... I always wanted to be a
criminal - just not this big a one. [shrugs] It takes all
kinds.
He has no
reasoning for the killings, because he did not do it because of reason, but
because he had a spontaneous desire to do so, and afterwards he feels no
remorse or guilt. As Holly describes him, he is “Trigger-happy”. This is exactly
in line with Nietzsche’s idea of an übermensch, which ”goes
back to the innocent consciousness of
the beast of prey, as triumphant monsters, who perhaps emerge from a disgustin
procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of
soul, as if it were no more than a student’s prank,” (Genealogy of Morals:40).
On moral
Nietzsche proclaimed that ‘god is dead’. A
true world therefore becomes unattainable. Eternal and universal truths do not
exist and we must therefore make a “revaluation of all values”. For Nietzsche,
morality is nothing but a certain perspective and a certain set of values. Since
values cannot be true, morals cannot be true. “All the old moral monsters are
agreed on this: il faut tuer les passions
[One must kill the passions]”. All the old morals are in opposition to passions, and this
is a disaster for Nietzsche as “an attack on the roots of passion means an
attack on the roots of life.”. Is it with
Nietzsche possible to consider Kit and Holly as immoral? They are neither moral nor immoral; they are simply amoral or nonmoral.
On Truth
In a scene, where Holly and Kit is driving away from a town into the dessert, we see Holly sitting in the backseat of the car reading a gossip magazine aloud:
“Rumor: Pat Boone
is seriously considering giving up his career so he can return to school
full-time and complete his education. Fact: Pat has told intimates that so long
as things are going well for his career, it's the education that will have to
take a back seat...Rumor: Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth are in love. Fact:
True, but not with each other.”
Even though this
is not truths as in ‘true values’, this scene can be seen as an example of how arbitrary and meaningless ‘truths’, humans can be occupied with.
The individual vs. society
Latsly, let us pay attention to the final scene
of the movie. Here we see Kit being transported by the police in a helicopter,
presumably on his way to court. The Trooper next to Kit tells him: “You're
quite an individual Kit” to which Kit replies: “Think they'd take that into
consideration?” With this question posed, the movie ends, leaving the question
unanswered. The trooper acknowledges that Kit is a remarkable individual and
Kit replies if ‘they’, which could refer to the judges that has to convict him
or the whole of society, will take it into consideration. This may be an
attempt to pose a more general question: whether or not society cares for the übermensch/remarkable
individual? The movie seems to answer ‘no’ to this, as we know that he was sentenced
to death. Society does not care for the true individual/the übermensch, who
does not conform, but breaks the established values and instead follows its own
passions and intuitions; “all ordered society puts the passions to sleep”.
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