The haggard old bag lady wandered Toronto's streets at night, pausing briefly in front of the emergency entrance to a hospital. Perhaps provoked by some unseen dislike of health care, she launches into a commentary of her life, shouting out obscenities, professing her lack of control over her situation and cursing names that drift away in the wind.
Where did she come from? Why is she homeless? Did her family leave her on the curb, when the toll of alcohol and drug abuse became to painful a burden to bear? Or is she struck with a mental disorder that distorts her reality, and has been let loose on the urban jungle? Are the people she blames real, or figments of her imagination?
These questions may seem trivial in the face of potential nuclear destruction on the Korean peninsula, but it dawns on me, like the first shaft of the morning sun piercing skyscrapers and condominiums, that this individual is living proof of perhaps the greatest skill known to mankind: the ability to falsify.
Everyone lies – that's the plain simple truth. Whether they are huge whoppers (Iraq had WMDs), entertaining exaggerations (I once caught a fish this big), or convenient falsities (Not tonight honey, I have a headache), lies allow individuals to carry out their lives by avoiding confrontation. Quoting Nietzsche: “The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offence.”
Other species on this rock are content fulfilling their animalistic needs: I need food, I hunt or graze. I don't want to dehydrate, so I find a watering hole. Every so often, I get raunchy and the need to procreate takes over. Simple needs, simple solutions...if only we were so lucky. In fact, our capacity to think (and consequently, to believe) is what separates us from the rest of the earth's inhabitants – it allows us to continue existing in falsehood.
At a very fundamental level, each and everyone of us plays an ongoing game of deception. We create an ideal “me” that is projected outwards and continue to repress the real “me” under a technicolour dream coat of deceit. I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned – these size 30 jeans fit perfectly, even though my love handles sag like an out-of-control souffle. Kim Il Jong sincerely believes his atomic crotch-grabbing will force bilateral negotiations with the US, even though the likelihood of that happening is slimmer than whatever celebrity waif graces the covers of this week's tabloids.
We create our own realities – there's nothing wrong that, mind you, since a good imagination is a terrible thing to waste. We just have to be cognizant that doing so utilises un-truth, deception and fakery – appropriately enough, the central theme of Martin Scorcese's The Departed, an adaptation of Infernal Affairs.
Adaptation: the word itself means changing something to make it suitable for a new situation. Like the book adapted to a play, or a movie into a comic book, adaptations are an easy way to make a quick buck in the world of entertainment. The movie industry has finally admitted the truth in storytelling, namely that there are no more new, original stories to tell. Every narrative is another permutation of mythical archetypes, every filmmaker is influenced by his forerunners - its just easier to “borrow” from another source.
Back to the film: For those in the dark, here's a brief synopsis: The mob has a mole in the police, and the police has mole in the mob. Each has created a web of lies that threaten at each twist and turn. Both moles (or rats) must discover his counterpart before succumbing to the pressures of living a false life. Perhaps Scorcese's return to cinematic glory, this thriller excites, entrances and shocks the audience. It also shatters their preconceptions of how a story should end. Without spoiling it (go see it already), let's just say the ending ain't pretty for Msrs. DiCaprio and Damon.
As tonight's title (from Metallica's “The God That Failed”) dictates, at the end of the day we make the decision, conscious or not, to fool ourselves.
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