Looking for Escape, I Found a Mirror

Renee Good was murdered by an immigration agent today. She was attempting to flee after a gun was pointed at her. In response, the officer used the gun. Renee’s wife was in the car. Her child was in school. For no reason, this family has been consciously destroyed, a life consciously taken. It’s Wednesday, January 7th.

I feel cursed with a knack for discovering major news stories as they are happening. Last Saturday morning, I woke around 1:00AM PST to a throbbing pain in my finger, which I had sufficiently carved a chunk out of earlier that night when slicing a garnish off an orange for a freaking mocktail. Thanks, dry January. While treating my pain, and the blood that came along with it, I checked my phone for a dopamine bump. What I found instead was an invasion of another country, a kidnapping of a foreign president, an act of hostility and violence under the cover of night. This act was not lawful, was not permitted, was not appropriately disclosed. I got my computer, attempted to convince myself that even one single source of news is reliable these days, and I scrolled, and refreshed, and scrolled, sometimes falling asleep, sometimes not, for the next 12 or so hours. I was still on vacation, so I had the time.

This morning, I woke with a terrible sore throat, and stayed home from work. I had the time. I let myself fly through Instagram Reels for almost two hours — a new allowance I’ve given myself after nearly a year without such feeds — before moving on, trying to move towards a productive day. I journaled, I set goals for this quarter, I ate soup, I finished writing something for this very newsletter, and I looked at BlueSky. That’s where I saw the news that, minutes ago, a woman was shot and killed by an ICE officer.

After two hours of scrolling, of reading, of searching for anything to do about this, after applying for a job that maybe would be some version of difference-making, I decided to give myself a break. To become Sisyphus would not serve me, nor the people I care about. Getting out of a tailspin would serve me, and the people I care about.

I decided to turn on a movie, to find something else to think about, to allow myself to maybe fall asleep. An hour of escapism sounded smart. I logged into HBO Max — which I’ve re-subscribed to so I can watch The Pitt, an essential show of our times — and poked around. For some reason, I clicked on John Wick, a stylish action movie filled with marvelous, unrealistic stunt work that, yeah, duh, is filled with gun violence and death. I gave it ten minutes, which are filled with what I find to be touching and effective character-building and empathy building, while also being deeply fucking sad. This was not going to do it.

So I scrolled backwards, towards the top of the offerings, where I had hesitantly passed over something more fantastic and much more removed from our current circumstances. It was long, but maybe that would be a blessing. It was a spectacle, so I got out of bed and moved to the couch downstairs where I could watch on our projector.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is, I knew, a complete marvel. I was 11 when it premiered, and while being partially over my head, it felt like real magic when we saw it in the theater. Now, however, it was being burdened with a reality it never knew, nor predicted, and I didn’t know how it would handle it.

Movies, and most other art forms, can be viewed as a mirror reflecting reality back at the viewer. But they aren’t regular mirrors; they do not show us our real selves, our reality, as a normal mirror does. Rather, they distort, recombobulate, mystify, agggrandize, minimize. They’re funhouse mirrors, designed to show us reality with a twist. They can make us feel small, they can make us feel massive, they can thin things out, they can bloat certain parts of us. There is joy and fun in these distortions, and in the right corners and pockets, there are patches of real truth, segments that lie perfectly flat, properly aligned, showing us exactly what is going on.

Fellowship is a beautifully crafted object. It is staggeringly self-contained and understandable, despite its high-fantasy nature, and it is crafted by human hands in the real world. I was struck by how, after a lengthy introduction to the violent history of this world, we land on the remote grassy hills of The Shire, and we spend a lot of time devoted to learning the pleasantries and peacefulness of this specific place. We are treated to its treats: butter and cheese and bread, fireworks, smoking pipes, reading books, visiting old friends, birthdays, travel stories, tomfoolery, dancing, music, family, families, community. The coming adventure, the additional 2.75 movies ahead, are devotions to this place and to these things. The story exists to protect these simple pleasures. They are worth trading anything for.

I was struck by the absurdity of explaining that the burden of civilization lays at the feet of a bystander, a chance connection, an innocent soul. Our hero is not given a choice, he must simply act, must stray further from home than he ever has before. He must. He must.

I was surprised to conjure no answer to my questioning of the ring and its real-world comparison. Would it be easier, simpler, more forgivable if the major sins and torments brought upon by men were explained by a physical object that promised ultimate power? Would that satisfy me more than the infinite, aimless thirst that plagues the worst of us now? Money does not solve bad actors’ problems, nor does attention or power. Alas, the Ring did not provide me with an analogy here. Does it need to? I don’t think so.

I was struck by how effectively Peter Jackson and his fellow screenwriters deliver an actionable, powerful, and empowering message of choice, of response. When faced with peril and societal collapse, we don’t get to control anything other than our response. We do get a choice, one that demands choosing: what to do with the time that is given to us.

Again, we need not take upon ourselves the stance of being the one true hero. The story here is about the many hands that the burden-bearer passes through, how many weary travelers choose to help our hero, despite the risks and consequences. Again, the movie focuses on community, on chosen family, on mutual aid, on the little things. One can be helpful in oh so many ways.

Of course, I was also struck by the sheer majesty of what Jackson and his massive crew was able to put onto the screen. This might be the truest representation of fairy tale and fantasy that I have so far witnessed in cinema. Other films come to mind within the conversation: Spirited Away, The Thing, Jurassic Park, The Wizard of Oz, even moments in the Harry Potter movie series, which started around the same time as Lord of the Rings did; these are all movies that care about details, about every inch that fills the screen, about real objects and real people occupying real space. Find real artists and craftsman, and give them time and tools to create, and then point the camera at their work. Jackson is a wonderful image-maker and moment-maker, and having a single object to represent so much, in the titular Ring, is a magic trick for creating images and moments. Above all else, Jackson understands what makes for effective cinema: characters, moments, settings, action, small-talk, costuming, subtleties.

The film’s ending was a gentle aid to me, in the state of things as they are. We try to protect others by going it alone; we don’t want to share our burdens with others, we want to smother and strangle our burdens in solitude and in darkness, to protect anyone else from burden’s weight. But we simply cannot make it alone, and we cannot allow those closest to us to try it alone. We have to share the weight of our neighbors, our friends, our families, and we have to let people into our struggles. There are certain hardships we cannot avoid, so we might as well face them alongside someone we love.

I did not set out to find a story for this moment. Nor did I think I would find it in a twenty-five year-old adaptation of a high-fantasy novel that is more than seventy years old. Tolkien, who was working on this world of stories for decades, was writing the Lord of the Rings books during a prominent rise of fascism and violence. Intended as another book for young readers, Tolkien’s continued writing drifted darker and more mature. But we wasn’t writing to repsond to this moment, and Peter Jackson wasn’t making a film to respond to this moment. Art carries the infinite burden of being a mirror that must reflect the viewer back to themself; art must hold the baggage that each viewer brings to it. It is not the responsibility of the artist, nor their art, to solve anyone’s problem or answer anyone’s question. But the best of them can hold baggage, and the best of them can reflect an image back to us that holds something meaningful, something moving. It can, for a little while, stand alongside you in times of trouble, not to provide solutions or answers, but to be reflected upon, to distort, to discombobulate, to, hopefully, show us something new.

This piece was written on January 7th and edited, revised, and posted on January 8th.