Even more about the bad stuff: “Hannibal” revisited

After this big chunk of my last posts I was resolved not to push it into the new year, but I GOT pushed. I took up “Hannibal” again, just because I thought that it was the right month. (I am getting more and more convinced that the bleak seriousness of November deserves horror, and, since last year, one of my least favourite months of the year - not because of the weather but because of the increasing menace of Christmas - has temporarily become one of my favourites.) But when I finally took up “Hannibal” it was definitely “pre-Christmas” (cookies and snowmen and so on …) and I wasn’t in the mood anymore. And, as there was still “House of Cards” (which I always watch from the beginning when there is a new season) it took me until Mid-December to finish “Hannibal”. So, I just watched it “on principle”, without conviction. I even firmly expected that I wouldn’t enjoy it like I did seeing it the first time, and maybe there is no comparison. But I don’t really remember the surprise and the genuine enjoyment, and maybe, this time, something EVEN BETTER happened. So, I HAVE to write this.

Seeing it this time, I CONSCIOUSLY expected something. I expected not just that I wouldn’t enjoy it anymore but kind of dreaded that I wouldn’t understand anymore why I had enjoyed it so much. Sometimes I find it really weird how much I DISTRUST myself as a reader – though I know that a good deal of distrust is always in order because, as I have observed, significant reading CHANGES ME AS A READER. It always changes WHO I am as a reader. I knew this but never as I do now.

So, I wasn’t really looking forward to watching the series again, but I thought I should do it nonetheless, probably to see if I was right. And I reckoned that at least some of the beauty would still be there. What I couldn’t have predicted was how much more beautiful it would become by finally UNDERSTANDING it. THIS is what I didn’t expect at all: that there was still something crucial in there that I hadn’t (fully) understood, and that finally understanding it would make such a difference. What had happened while I neither watched it nor thought about it - except for moments to remember the “climactic” beauty – was that Hannibal’s fragile teacup had quietly come together, and I could watch and understand EVERYTHING in its TRUE beauty. (Very bad sentence which I keep because it has the advantage of being absolutely exact …)

I think, what makes the series so exceptional is that it takes an almost insane amount of patience to make the cup come together. One reason for this is that, to do this, we actually have to deal with ALL these people. In my opinion, it is one of the major advantages of series that there is so much time to develop ALL the characters and provide them with a human interest story. One of my absolute favourite moments of “Doctor Who” is in the Christmas special of the 6th series when somebody says about somebody else that they are not important, and Matt Smith as the Doctor remarks ruminantly: “Interesting – I have never met anybody who was not important!” So, in series there is, like in real life, room for everybody to become important if they want to, (and are played by the right actor with the potential to make them special …) But in “Hannibal” it is even more crucial than usual to treat everybody as equally important because practically everybody gets their own “becoming” in the end – (though, in some cases (Dr. Chilton!), “undoing” is probably more like it). And all these becomings are somehow tied to Hannibal. And only if we understand this structure, and read it (potentially) completely, the cup will come together in this way. As I missed the point when I first watched it, my reading was incomplete and what I read was mostly bullshit - as what I wrote was. I was absolutely right though about one thing: the importance of “participation”. But my concept of participation had still been incomplete. It isn’t just that it is ME who has to make the cup come together. To put it together LIKE THIS, “beautifully”, without any visible crack and blemish, it really is important HOW and IN WHAT EXACTLY I participate.

This structure of individual “becomings” was also, I think, what made the series so special for actors – judging by the amount of meaningful commentary. From one of the commentaries I inferred that they chose the actors more according to the potential of working with them in this way – rather then who would fit the type one might expect from the book. And THIS, I think, became the formula of success for this series. Because - I am almost sorry to say - the series is REALLY NOT about what is displayed on the surface. As, I think, I suspected from the beginning, it is about significant relationships between people which, in my opinion, don’t become less important because they are strange and “exotic” (at best!), but more so. In my experience, the “perverse” context doesn’t diminish but highlight the universal aspects of these relationships. This is, of course, difficult to “prove”, especially where it gets most important: in the relationship between Hannibal and Will Graham. So, I’ll begin with a less “demanding” example. The love story between Francis Dolarhyde and Reba McClane might be the best, most moving love story I have ever “read” (including the ones I invented myself!) just because of the beautiful simplicity of the fact that she gives him pie and he gives her the most precious and sophisticated gift anybody could possibly give her in return. And who can honestly say that something like this isn’t what they would like more than anything?! And, in fact, something like this - just still more extreme and “conscious” - applies to Hannibal and Will Graham. The highest form of love we can reach and receive is certainly not to be used to fill one of the many needs and deficiencies in another person’s live but, as it is called in the bible, to be “recognized” as absolutely special, and fully accepted as the person we are. What “we” would do, or not do, to get this is, in fact, the big question …

And there is so much meaning contained in these relationships that it is impossible to take it all in “at one bite”. Interestingly, my strategy of not taking anything people say in the series, or what is suggested about them, at face value proved right and wrong at the same time. It took an insane amount of (active) reading to explore the full semantic potential of what is happening and said. And “deferring” the process of drawing conclusions obviously bought me time to evaluate everything and finally come to a much more complete understanding than I would have just jumping to conclusions. Examples will follow …

Watching the series again, I was more “detached”, less driven by predilections (for actors), or fears, or moral concerns. This means I had more time to “read” and appreciate all the characters and, through the characters, detected a lot more meaningful context. Of course I was totally pleased to notice EVEN MORE how special Richard Armitage made the Red Dragon, and enjoyed to discover even more layers of acting that he put on this character. But for other characters I obviously had never found the time nor patience to deal with them in their own right and analyze their “becoming”. For example, I NOTICED the fundamental change in Alana Bloom between the second and third series as something I have never seen happen quite in this way. (In fact, I have seen it in REAL LIFE – when people I hadn’t met for twenty years and remembered as alive had changed into something like dead matter.) I noticed it, and admired it, but I didn’t really think about what it might MEAN. This time I actually traced when and how exactly she gets changed – from a bright (and innocent!) child into a knowing adult. What has changed her world is mirrored completely in the changed expression of the person she has become. And this - though it is not as spectacular as some of the other “stunts” in the series – is certainly some of the most significant acting I have seen. How significant it became – especially where the aspect of “growing up” is concerned – to understand the meaning of these relationships on its deepest level will be developed further. Not understanding the complete context Hannibal “gives” these characters, I mainly saw it as a destruction. We might not be able to control the manner we get changed in real life, but we decide how we deal with change. Without doubt Alana gets changed by trauma, but, if we look closely, we can see that she is finally changed into knowing who she is, and, KNOWING WHAT SHE WANTS, she is even able to find happiness. Though it might not LOOK like “happiness” at all … Appearances are deceiving in “Hannibal”. The “bone structure” of each character or relationship will be laid bare in the end.

I remember that, at some point during my last reading, I consciously turned my back on Hannibal and focused on Will Graham. And I am not sure why I did it. I thought it was because I felt uneasy about him – afraid of getting under his influence - but I think this was just a pretext. I even wrote, as I remember, that the things other people like about Hannibal didn’t impress me at all – which also might have been partially “self-protection”. In fact, I think it was that I got bored with Hannibal, not because of becoming bored with Mads Mikkelsen’s acting – which I still admired – but somehow not understanding the “fuss” everybody is making about him. I didn’t understand it, or him! – and why should I? (Seeing “The Silence of the Lambs” on Halloween made me think: I still don’t like Anthony Hopkins as an actor, but he is certainly good. At least he makes Hannibal genuinely SCARY. Making Hannibal so very civil and sophisticated in the series partly took the “spike” out of him.)

But, and this realization probably helped as well, Hannibal in the series isn’t AT ALL about what the Hannibal of “The Silence of the Lambs” is about. The reason I turned my back on Hannibal was probably that I couldn’t get anything out of him anymore at this point. But this was not because Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal doesn’t keep what he “promises”, rather that I was unable to understand him. OF COURSE he beat me, as he does (almost) everybody else! The most important thing I got out of watching Alana Bloom getting changed by Hannibal was the realization that Hannibal is in fact the KEY to understanding the series, and that all my attempts of “breaking in” through one back door or the other had to be futile.

There is nothing to indicate that Hannibal is pleased with Alana’s “becoming”, but I inferred from a different context that he might have been. I was fascinated from the beginning by how much Richard Armitage succeeded at showing the child in Francis Dolarhyde – making him appear genuinely dangerous and vicious at the same time. But, I think, only by looking at what happens to Alana did I realize why this is so crucial for the narrative, assisted by the precision of Mads Mikkelsen’s “commentary” of Hannibal on Francis Dolarhyde. I think he is totally fascinated and moved by the singularity and beauty of this becoming but nonetheless FAR from taking Francis seriously. But this is of course what Francis wants – not even to have a MEANINGFUL relationship with Hannibal (which is what Hannibal himself aspires to with other people, in his own, crooked way!) but to be recognized by him as what he thinks he is and to be taken seriously. I really noticed for the first time that he has IMAGINARY conversations with Hannibal all the time, respectively what this means. I should have done so before, especially as I might be the world champion of imaginary conversations as there is practically no opportunity for me to talk to people about things I really care about. So, even though I do my best to make them interesting, I observe that people in imaginary conversations tend to tell me what I want to hear. And this is of course how I should have noticed that Francis Dolarhyde’s “sessions” with Hannibal are imaginary IN THE FIRST PLACE, which I didn’t! Sometimes, I must admit, I can be quite thick … No good therapist would do this. If this applies to Hannibal is of course open to debate. As Hannibal is extremely intelligent, and dedicated to his “vocation” in his own way, he is at least TRYING to be a good therapist. We have to give him that. And if he was a real friend to Francis Dolarhyde he wouldn’t do this either. On the other hand, grown-up people KNOW that there is something wrong with imaginary conversations (- even if they like to have them …) Francis Dolarhyde clearly doesn’t.

In truth, Hannibal wouldn’t dream of taking Francis seriously, the way he is taking Will Graham, Abigail Hobbes, and Alana Bloom seriously (- AFTER he has changed them!) I imagine he is secretly smiling at Doctor Chilton trying to tell him that he is overshadowed by the Dragon. There is in fact at least one moment where he allows himself the smallest of condescending smiles. As Ralph Fiennes is the world champion of the (human) bad stuff, and Michael Fassbender of “pioneering” unknown human territory, Mads Mikkelsen is undisputed champion of the minimalist expression (with maximum effect). He didn’t need to do more for me to get the full statement after what I had already observed about Francis Dolarhyde. And then there is his beautiful sentence right at the end which I always forget to memorize about Francis Dolarhyde still dreaming his “beautiful child’s dream”. Maybe it is a kind thought that he dies dreaming, with his eyes open … It might not be the worst ending for him, but Hannibal certainly wouldn’t see it like this. He wouldn’t deem it dignified, after having lived wide awake and painfully conscious of himself all his life – exactly “the same in his own act and valour as he is in desire”. And he certainly prefers to die IN THE TRUTH of his relationship with Will Graham. It is in fact a fitting conclusion that he doesn’t die alone.

There was one other thing which I realized about Francis Dolarhyde for the first time. Of course I NOTICED it before because Richard Armitage gave special emphasis to this moment where Francis experiences Reba as a LIVING woman during and after their first intimate encounter, but I thought that this is just about the fact that he has never had sex with a living woman before. It probably is, but the depth of the epiphany when he is feeling her heart and recognizes her as a living being indicates something else. I think it means that he doesn’t usually recognize other people as living beings and that, up to this point, there hasn’t really been a living being in his live apart from himself. So, he doesn’t lie, neither to himself nor to others, when he speaks of “changing” people instead of killing them. As impossible this is to understand, killing is, for him, rather an innocent occupation. Hannibal isn’t “innocent” when he is killing. He is conscious of killing and enjoys it BECAUSE it is killing. He enjoys the moment of killing as a climactic moment because he knows very well that the person he is about to kill is alive and, after he has killed her or him, they are dead. This is the TRUTH about killing as a “relationship” between the killer and the victim. And, for Hannibal, killing (and eating) the other person can be part of a significant relationship, or even something that makes a relationship finally significant. And the truth about human relationships certainly is a major issue for him. As it is for me - I just didn’t want to go there where Hannibal is concerned. But this time I did, and maybe it wasn’t chance that I noticed for the first time that there is a repetition of “participating” in the third series when Bedelia DuMaurier “accuses” Will Graham of participating in Hannibal’s crimes.

I think, the “difficulty” of understanding Hannibal mainly results from the fact that he is supposed to be a psychopath. And “we” don’t want to understand psychopaths, respectively take them seriously. I am not so sure that Hannibal is, in fact, a psychopath, though he seems to apply this concept to himself. Maybe it gives him some kind of security in determining what he is – and, as a psychiatrist, he should know. But, in my opinion, a psychopath is somebody with a serious and potentially harmful deficiency in his relationship with himself and/or other people – the kind I just described about Francis Dolarhyde. Hannibal might be accused of many things, but certainly not of being DEFICIENT.

(The difference to real psychopaths – and why the series is, of course, mostly “bullshit” - is in both cases that psychopaths in real life are usually dull and unattractive, and mostly harmless. The only one I have known was one of the most unattractive and least interesting human beings I have ever met – though it isn’t unlikely that he had the same impression of me. Thinking about him now, I am intrigued by the realization that I have in fact known one of these strange beings and am asking myself if not almost everybody has (maybe thinking about “our” respective bosses might help …) In truth, psychopaths are what we really don’t want anything to do with – though the content of bestselling novels and major feature films suggest otherwise. I don’t think I would ever have recalled this guy if not this moving scene I described about Francis Dolarhyde had COMPELLED me to a deeper understanding of what a psychopath is, probably for the first time. I suppose I could have figured it out for myself IF I HAD WANTED TO, but I didn’t. And hours of tv footage on Anders Behring Breivik had zero effect in this respect, so there might be something to what I wrote about fiction and beauty and clever “shortcuts” … The most beautiful thing about “Hannibal” might even be that, unlike “Hollywood”, they took these issues seriously, kind of transcending the bullshit as well as the beauty towards the “real issue”.)

Whatever Hannibal’s own assessment of psychopaths, basically, he doesn’t think of Francis Dolarhyde as very special. Set aside the singularity and perfection of his becoming (which Hannibal doesn’t even SEE. Nobody but the audience ever sees his secret life with the dragon!), he is a very common brand of psychopath. And Hannibal, as a psychiatrist specializing in this field, realizes this without doubt and finds it ridiculous that other people are making so much of him just because of his spectacular murders. (Murder, as such, isn’t what intrigues Hannibal!) And this comparison, and “non”-relationship with Francis Dolarhyde left me with the strange conclusion that Hannibal is probably NOT a psychopath. I may say, WHERE I AM CONCERNED, he is not a psychopath because I wouldn’t understand him – I mean, CATEGORICALLY, as I couldn’t understand what it is like to be Francis Dolarhyde anymore than I can understand what it is like to be a bat … To cut a long strand of speculations short: if Hannibal WAS a psychopath I would never have CONSENTED to PARTICIPATE.

I think it is even somewhere in the series (Will Graham says it!): “Who wants to eat with the devil needs a long spoon.” I think the same rule applies to psychopaths. Having already seen Francis Dolarhyde in his attic with the dragon I would never have given him anything from my kitchen, or bowl of fruit, or whatever (– even though he is played by Richard Armitage! Strictly speaking, I am probably lying, as Richard Armitage was the reason I watched the series in the first place. As a rule, I don’t use a spoon with psychopaths, I usually keep my fingers (and cutlery) entirely out of this kind of text …) My personal theory is that Hannibal isn’t a psychopath because he is not somehow “less” than a normal human being, but more. And this is what makes him REALLY dangerous. He has something I definitely aspire to, and which is totally uncompromising honesty and truthfulness where his relationships with other people are concerned. As this is something definitely top of my list, I cannot but admire and envy Hannibal for having somehow got completely “past” the bullshit. But the way he got there matters as well, and I don’t think I realized for the first time that, as with every great thing, there is a big prize tag attached.

And - though I am afraid there is already more waiting in the pipeline – this is definitely all about the “bad stuff” for THIS year …

The Big Question, part 5: Reading interpretations and getting smarter with complexity

"Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again to make up nine ..."

Approaching now, as I hope, the centre of my argument, there is something I think I should repeat and make come out clearer. And it is about what is the SUBJECT of my argument, and what is not. It is not about “trivial” text and trivial readings which are, from my perspective, the same thing. Not seeing this was one of the reasons, I think, why my master thesis didn’t work out.

By “trivial reading” I just mean any reading where nothing happens when I am reading. Where I don’t experience anything new, or do anything different from what I did before when I was reading. I have already stated that all these reasons that have nothing to do with the SPECIFIC text I am reading, like “recreational” and “social” reasons, are important. I even think they will always be REGARDED as the most important reasons for engaging in such a questionable activity without any “reasonable” purpose, like making money or improving ourselves. And, depending on our point of view, everybody will always be right about this. Though, from an idealist – or, as I see it, “naturalist” – point of view, there has to be an INDEPENDENT reason for fiction to come into existence.

And, as this is my blog, not a rewrite of my master thesis, I am not obliged to conceal that this is personal. Even though I was successful at school, and happily submitted to all of its rules, I loathed and despised this institution from the bottom of my heart - I think, without even knowing why. The day of my revenge on this place of ignorance called “further education” came, late but nonetheless. It was the day when our new history teacher in upper school began his first lesson by actually pointing at one pupil after the other and asking them when the Middle-ages began. NOBODY had a clue. Then he stated, his voice dripping with satisfaction, that we obviously never learned anything, and that he would have to start all over again. And I wasn’t THE LEAST BIT ashamed that, at sixteen, I didn’t know when the Middle-ages began, I was PLEASED. It was just like: “O, so I have been RIGHT all this time! We ACTUALLY never learned anything …”

And “O, so I have been right …” occurred a few times in the last decades, but it didn’t occur often. One important instance certainly was my professor at uni, in his first lecture, telling us that reading was part of the human activity of solving problems. I don’t remember the original shock when I heard this, but I know what happened as a result. Whereas I remember the shock on the occasion of the much more recent interview with Richard Armitage – which I also quoted, and will probably also repeat a couple of times. Where he said that playing Thorin Oakenshield had made him reconnect with what he wanted from his carrier, which was not fame and fortune but the opportunity to investigate a character in this way. And this wasn’t even the kind of big revelation like the problem-solving bit. It is just a very clear statement about what is the best, and deepest, and most satisfying thing an actor can do with what he has learned to do. The shock was rather about the fact that anybody would actually SAY something like this in public. Or, for me just then, that somebody FINALLY SAID IT. (And the statement itself as well as its context makes it very clear that doing the things we do FOR THE RIGHT REASONS – the reasons they have been invented for – is rather the “luxury” part of things, not the “every-day” part.) But this time I was better prepared for this “window of opportunity”. This time I knew how to take up the suggestion and DO something with it.

So, what I did in the last two years and a half writing this blog was - apart from having fun with text - to collect non-trivial readings, mostly by myself, as when I was watching “The Tempest”, or “Hannibal”, or “No Man’s Land”, or “Mother!”… (I might add one more, just now, about the musical project my brother took part in, singing in the choir. They took one of the forgotten texts from the Old Testament, The Book Ruth, and, making the best use of the “trivial” means at their disposal, created something breathtaking. In fact, I couldn’t believe what HAPPENED on that stage, especially as I didn’t expect anything of the kind. I’d say, if somebody actually wants to remember WHY they believe in God, they should watch this instead of hearing a sermon. ANY sermon.)

I also collected significant “statements” on their readings by other people. Mostly by actors, in fact, because there is extremely relevant reading “behind” John Cleese playing Petrucchio, or Ralph Fiennes Richard III, or Lucian Msamati Iago, or Simon Russel Beale Prospero the way they did which I can see and describe. It doesn’t have to be conscious, as for me who immediately begins to write in my head when I see something relevant. I suppose their reading mostly goes directly into their acting. – And I have also collected a few significant statements by other readers like myself, for example by my sister about reading Kafka. Even though there is just this one sentence, it is probably the best summary of reading Kafka ever made. Or the one by my friend about reading interpretations. This one is much more comprehensive, and I have to repeat it here again:

She wrote that it came to her as an epiphany that reading (different) INTERPRETATIONS of a text is actually part of her TECHNIQUE of dealing with the world and other people. As everybody is a universe of their own, to get on in the world and be able to deal with other people, she has to find out how they think and feel. If this doesn’t work she might be in deep shit, much worse than if she knows that she will never get on with the other person, or find any common ground at all. And she enjoys reading (different) interpretations (of one text) because they explain the MANY FACETS of a fictional world, in analogy to the many facets of real people and real life issues.

I think there are a number of relevant points about reading contained in this statement, partly even about reading fiction, though this is not at the centre of it. But I think that the “many facets” of a fictional text are the key point here about fiction. Of course, reading interpretations of fictional texts is closely related to reading fiction, as interpretations are texts ABOUT a fictional text. And reading interpretations makes us see not only what people THINK about the text but what actually might be contained in the text that WE cannot see. At least this was how I used them when I still had to read interpretations. To understand what I didn’t understand and uncover blind spots. I never really ENJOYED reading interpretations. I always felt that they tended to disturb my own immediate and exclusive relationship with the text - that they might destroy my reading. But I certainly regard it as ONE technique of reading fiction, pointed at the many facets and possibilities contained in the text. And this COMPLEXITY is certainly an extremely relevant point why we love, and enjoy, and need fiction.

I wrote a few times already that, for me, the most important part of dealing with fictional text appears to be to find TRUTHS that I wouldn’t be able to find in any other way. But I don’t think I really explained what I meant by it. I don’t think I could before I hit on this. For example, truthful acting occurs when an actor is able to “fuse” the many facets of a fictional character in his acting, and it is often only then that we can SEE the character – see the forest INSTEAD of the many trees, as we would say in German - and feel that he or she is represented convincingly and truthfully. And this kind of truth is in fact the domain of fiction – what fiction provides MORE EFFICIENTLY than any other medium. To show us the many facets of a fictional world, and, by this, makes us experience the world as MULTI-DIMENSIONAL. We usually don’t consciously deal with the real world as multi-dimensional because we have to DEAL with it. Most often we envisage it as two-dimensional: good or bad, beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, rich or poor, important or unimportant … This is our mental TECHNIQUE of dealing with it because, usually, we have to take decisions fast and without much thinking. And, as they obviously work so well, we are easily influenced and “corrupted” by these simple pairs of opposites so that we don’t even SEE anymore what bounty the world actually provides. Reading fiction, we enjoy this bounty. Reading interpretations might even enhance this experience because we have to BECOME AWARE of it.

“Investigating a character like this” is also about this complexity, which is why I liked it so much. A complexity we USUALLY don’t experience in real life – where people seem to be mostly interested in how much people drink, and with whom they have sex, and maybe what car they drive and how much money they make - not even WHAT they do to make that money!  This is probably at the bottom of why we experience fictional characters so differently, and enjoy their existence so much. And it is what ONLY actors can do “in this (extensive) way”. It is their field of expertise, and their privilege. It is actually about something that wouldn’t exist without what they do. This is obvious, at least for everybody who loves to see this kind of thing. Needs it as well to help their own imagination. What is less obvious for us to see is that, through relevant reading, we are creating complexity, meaning, and truth FOR OURSELVES. I enjoyed “Hannibal” from the start, but I loved it from the moment I discovered “participating”. It is this moment where we “join in” – get ourselves in there – that it begins to happen. That complexity is created. In “Hannibal” it was probably the reason why I was thinking of ART all the time, not horror. In particular, it restored the meaning of BEAUTY by twisting the received concept of it to the furthest point – without losing it by JUST disgusting or frightening me. My deep dissatisfaction with the “two-dimensional” perception of beauty in real life got addressed for the first time in this radical way. (In the meantime I have used the experience to “deepen out” other texts!) I think I was even deeply moved because of this, and felt that I was taken seriously for the first time. And I ENJOYED this.

(Thinking about this, I suddenly understood why the number 3 is considered to be so special and kind of “magical”. It is because three is what is ABSENT in our current representation of the world. What appears impossible – or the thing that we cannot imagine, or have to figure out in the first place. I remember this sentence from “The Spooks” (series) which stayed with me, though I didn’t know why, that “OF COURSE there is a third possibility” (I didn’t check if I quoted it exactly but this was what it meant.) And now I know why, and I found the explanation in “Macbeth” – which I was very pleased with. It was some time ago that I hit on the “equivocation” which is, in my opinion, the most important element of semantic structure in the play. (“Fair is foul and foul is fair”…) But the real power I believe the witches wield is that they command complexity dealing with the three and nine. So, they are always one step ahead of “us” for whom it is already difficult to deal with the fact that every thing has TWO sides – as, like Macbeth, we are driven by the desire to make the world exactly suit US. His story proves that this single-minded perspective is neither the smartest nor the most humane. One of the wisest things I ever heard by the famous Bavarian comedian Karl Valentin - though probably not strictly true – is that “every thing has THREE sides: one good, one bad, and one funny”. It might have been strictly true for him - so, the third possibility is kind of contingent. What we chose to fill this slot – and if we want to fill it at all - is up to US. It is our own choice about how we see the world, or ability to see the space between a rock and a hard place, or - if we want – up to magic or transcendental powers. Three is ominous, and we very rarely manage more than three. IN FACT we are probably doing more than three all the time because every problem of any importance obviously doesn’t have just three possible solutions but x to the ten – or something like it. “We” are getting smarter with computers and algorithms all the time when it comes to constructing cars and the like, but on a personal level … I don’t know. It might still be “Macbeth” most of the time.)

But it isn’t JUST about what we enjoy. In “Hannibal” murder and cannibalism are the background for beauty being set off like this. And I REALLY didn’t enjoy watching “Mother”. My GENUINE bad feelings were what made the metaphor work. The truth that I discovered became integrated into my experience on a much deeper - and more permanent - level because of the WAY I discovered it. Watching “No Man’s Land” was so great because I hit on unknown human territory, but the truth of it was about something frightening. To actually SEE that space between the speaking and the kind of material content of a person open up and widen was unsettling. And “The Big Short” became one of my favourite examples as to which extent a fictional text is able to uncover the truth about a real-life issue because - in the most entertaining way imaginable – it unravels what actually happens when we ACT UPON THE TRUTH. Makes us able to picture the consequences of just starting to do this instead of lying indefinitely. Our world, as we know it, would just go to pieces … There is this uncomfortable truth about problem-solving: even though any number of problems are probably “solved” by not dealing with them I am convinced that the first step to actually move an issue forward is a thorough analysis. One that takes its complexity into account and doesn’t do away with something as important as the constitutive role of lies in the fabric of reality. (There is this belief – which I also hold! – that we don’t lie as a rule, just as an exception. But this might be one of the biggest lies “we” are telling ourselves … (My BIG favourite about lying “truthfully” - which might also be called “the art of giving successful interviews” - is the bit from “House of Cards” where Claire Underwood unexpectedly faces the challenge to have to talk about her buried past. Somehow I never get around to analyzing it. My favourite sentence by her: “I hate lying.” might actually be the clue to lying successfully.))

Most of the time, complexity is no fun at all. What suits us in real life are simple solutions to complicated problems, but this isn’t how it works. What I liked best about my friend’s statement, and what compelled me to understand it, was what I called its “harshness”. It has an urgency to it that suggests that it is about a REAL problem. It is not about making friends or liking each other. (Which is partly what READING FICTION is about if we follow Schiller. A big part of it certainly is about the luxury of “being human” – which certainly is very important in its own right!) Not about the surface on which we are all one big family, but about what is beneath the surface where people use what little power they have ruthlessly to get others out of their way, bully and frighten them to take advantage. Most people who are doing this on a daily basis – which IS most people, by the way - wouldn’t own to it, not even to themselves. In fact, it is called “networking”, and there are probably few people who would describe it like I just did. But my big think about her statement began with the realization WHY I didn’t understand at first. Because, even though in the back of my head there is always this little space for the “real world”, I had quite forgotten about it. I had an unexpected reminder, just recently, that this is IN FACT the real world, which can be very uncomfortable to live in and where we HAVE to “network” not to go under. Which means that we have to FIGURE OUT what other people REALLY want and think. What they actually SAY is of little consequence, but I had forgotten how little until recently my workmate, whom I see every day, unexpectedly told me how she had been bullied by one of my other workmates – whom I see every day as well – to the end that she decided to work fewer hours. I was shocked – actually less about the fact THAT this happened than that I hadn’t been aware of it. Not being aware of the things going on “underneath”, and not networking, might not be something I can afford. It might just be a matter of time until the same thing happens to me.

Absurdly, reading fiction CAN be some kind of reminder that a real world of infinite complexity is STILL out there. It isn’t often, I think, but I know that seeing “The Big Short” made me finally change my attitude towards politicians and other people suggesting simple solutions. I DON’T LISTEN to them anymore. I don’t take ANYTHING of this kind seriously anymore. Which means that I ACTUALLY became smarter. But I don’t think that this is what usually happens when I am reading. The really interesting bit about my friend’s statement in this context is that this might be what happens when we are reading INTERPRETATIONS. At least for me her description makes perfect sense, because, doing this, we are leaving the comfortable area of ourselves and the text having an intimate relationship of whatever nature. When we are reading interpretations we are dragging the text out into the open to submit it to a different kind of game which consists in figuring out what other people are doing with it. As I wrote, I don’t like it that much, as other people are likely to lie about or conceal what happened between them and the text when they are telling others about it, telling them what they are supposed to think and feel instead. (Not networking, in my case, is not an expression of how much but of HOW LITTLE I trust other people …) But this doesn’t mean that, if you really like it and are good at it, it might not be a great technique of figuring out what is going on in OTHER PEOPLE’S minds.

And the reason for this, I think, is that, unlike the real thing, it is still PLAYING. Networking can be great, I don’t doubt that most people like it – as long as it isn’t them who are getting hurt. I suppose, playing, we can “do” a great deal of things without getting hurt, even getting hurt … (I remember somebody actually saying about his vr experience that he experienced dying – which wasn’t PLEASANT. I bet …???!!! But, even though he died in virtual reality, he wasn’t actually dead. So that, I figure, he can try again and get better at it. And it is strange that there are very few questions I would like to ask an actor if I ever met one. But, as such an astonishing amount of what they do has to do with dying or killing, I’d like to know what felt better. I doubt that I would get an honest answer in this case of ANYONE, but I actually suspect it is dying. At least they always look as if they genuinely enjoyed their death scenes – which cannot be said for most sex scenes, by the way.) In real life, if we get hurt, we avoid doing the same thing again. It is also, I think, how we think we LEARN – which is very rarely true. Even small children are rather smart at avoiding damage in the first place. And I supposed we have developed SMART techniques for not being hurt in a world of unforeseeable complexity - one of which is certainly playing.

Even though this felt as if I had made a lot of progress on the Big Question, this is probably only a beginning. Technically speaking, it is only about one kind of “fictional activity”: reading interpretations. So, there is no answer yet to how exactly reading fiction plays into the activity of solving real-life problems. And there are probably more ways than just one to get smarter - and better at solving real problems - by playing with fictional text. What is important though, and should be made absolutely clear, is that, with probably very few exceptions, no real-life problems ever get SOLVED directly by playing or reading (– same as nobody learns anything useful by playing violent video games, not even killing!) By playing, we probably rather experience that we can imagine and try things we haven’t encountered before. (Which might be the reason why violent video games actually can become dangerous.) We can try out more and get smarter – but it will only get EFFECTIVE if we use some of it in real life situations like networking situations.

In particular, we might get used to the fact that our view of the world is not the only way of looking at it. I always think that I know this, but I always forget how long the way from knowing something to making this knowledge work actually is. Playing and reading might be two of our most efficient techniques of taking shortcuts, speeding things up – which doesn’t seem to be much but in fact can hardly be overestimated in a world of infinite complexity. I am sure that there is something in it, but it is still very fuzzy. And, right now, I have no idea how to proceed. Maybe, for now, I’ll just weather the incomprehensible yearly madness called “Christmas” which now starts already in Mid-November – at the latest! - and ENJOY complexity watching “House of Cards” – whereas, right as I am writing this, “out there” the four negotiating parties who have to come to an agreement today if they want to run this country, are probably beaten by complexity.

I am ALWAYS beaten by complexity watching “House of Cards”, by the way, but this is what I like about it. Being “on top” obviously doesn’t interest me anymore – though it has to happen occasionally for the game to proceed. But KNOWING that I know nothing seems still to be the best part.