Where does evil come from?

Recently I viewed two stories that were engaged with evil and the havoc it causes in the world. They were good studies of evil in that they didn't shirk the consequences, although I wouldn't say they were among my favourite experiences.

The first was a live play called "Gagarin's Way" set in Scotland in recent times when economic hard times have hit. There are four male characters, each reacting to the hard times in different ways.

The youngest character is the kind of modern liberal who espouses the "middle way". He is caught up in nefarious goings on because of his greed and sense of superiority about his degree in politics. He allies himself with two men who are plotting violence against one of the management. The manager himself is a study in cynism, a local made good, he is so world weary the prospect of meeting an untimely end at the hands of two kidnappers doesn't seem to bother him much. He understands that the proletariat of old has been seduced by the materialism of modern culture, something the older of the kidnappers doesn't understand. He is an old school political activist, trying to stir up a political movement. He is the most sympathetic character, in a way, because at least he believes in something and he also shows concern for his victim, to the point where he doesn't want to carry out the plan. In the end it is his tear stained face that haunts you as you leave the theatre.

The fourth character is a psychopath who enjoys violence and making trouble. He has no political beliefs at all and indeed, cleverly skewers them all in a way that makes you understand the futility of human systems of social organisation. His view of the world is bleak and completely amoral. The play is a comedy of the blackest kind, but the blackness only grows on you as you realise that the two kidnappers are completely different. The psycho has no interest whatsoever in the anarchist's agenda.

Where lies evil? In the amoral perceptions of a psychopath who uses the hatreds of others for his own ends? The play flinches a wee bit in making it clear that the psycho is, indeed, a psycho, having been in an institution. Although it is a clear eyed play about politics and its shortcomings as a philosophy, it cannot face the truth of the existence of pure evil. An evil man must be sick ...

The second was the movie "Four Lions" - again a black comedy. Here it was hard to locate an evil character at all. They all had their moral weak points (clearly, as they were jihadist bombers), but they were also sympathetic characters. Perhaps the least sympathetic was the white Moslem, who felt he had to be more jihadist than his peers because he was white. They were all idiots so it is hard to label any of them the source of the evil. It was more as if a source from outside had simply stoked their hate into a force for evil. This of course is the cause of fanaticism on such a scale. Get enough people hating hard enough and you can persuade them to do anything.

The most intelligent of them, their leader, was perhaps the most culpable. In one scene he persuades his somewhat intellectually deficient friend that his gut feeling that what they are doing is wrong is really the devil usurping God's place in his heart. It's a clever, amoral manipulation of someone who clearly doesn't have the capacity to make a properly informed decision about being a suicide bomber.

Although this is laugh out loud funny in many places they don't come to a good end. And it left me with lots of questions. These men were just ordinary British moslems with ordinary lives . And yet they were the type of people (not just men) who's hatred can be stoked to the point of violence.

Perhaps hatred is the biggest evil - the one we are all capable of and the one we should be on guard for all the time.

Natcoll Student Vid Blast

There were several excellent short films at last night's Natcoll end of year show for 3D animation and post production video courses. For us the outstanding item in the 3D was David Morris's "Breaking Point" which he rightly described as dark, but which was stylish and well executed. We also especially enjoyed "My Apocalypse" (Govind Dhir Singh) an interesting POV short about a dragon attack with an ear splitting sound track and an iconic shot of a dragon landing on the Auckland Skytower.
While the 3D show was obviously the work of a class of 100% young male artists (ie games, comics and movie influence) they were mostly original in their take on popular media.

The Video post production show was more diverse and included an excellent, although unfinished hand drawn animation by Joe Faga ("Fetu"), which I sincerely hope he finishes and we can see in its entirety, and a very accomplished live action short from Michael Miller ("And We Think in Colours"). This was a film that worked on every level and would have been at home in any professional short film programme. Miller tracked the story of a relationship in a symbolic, short form way that was emotionally and artistically complete.

The debate-stirrer of the night was the first item, the joint project for the 3D animation class. This was a film they made for a client and thus they were not responsible for the design of the characters. In fact they seemed embarassed by them. The two female characters were basically naked, which is not how any woman would (un)dress in order to "kick butt". This is a common fantasy in the gaming world, but is, in all practicality, laughable. Breasts flop around and are uncomfortable and get in the way, guys!