Guy Yedwab

Writing The Essay

12/10/2006
The Vibrantly Invisible
Twice a week, I walk up and down Greene Street, on my route back and forth from class.
Greene, like many in New York, are grey and undistinguished; crossing other streets in the same
ubiquitous angular intersections that can be found almost anywhere in the city. It isn't the neon nebula
that is Times Square, nor is it the serene natural rolling of Central Park. Any one particular corner—say,
where Greene meets Washington Place—seems as normal as the next.
One day, as I was charting my usual path down Greene, I happened to notice a bronze plaque
attached to one of the buildings, declaring it a historical site. New York, with its distinguished history
dating back almost four hundred years, is littered with similar declarations. The building it was
attached to didn't seem like a monument, but even the most nondescript buildings can be a home to
history. I was interested in what politician had ordered the plaque, and why.
In a clinical, official tone, it told me that the building I was standing in front of had once been
the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. From there, I had to fill in my own memory of high school history
classes. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had been the site of a terrible fire; the women seamstresses,
surrounded by highly flammable material, had been locked into the room so that the boss wouldn't have
to give them bathroom breaks. As a result, the women were forced to decide between burning to death
in the building, or jumping out the window and dying on the pavement. The bloody brutality of that
evening had shocked the entire nation into finally creating the first workplace safety regulations.
This dull corner of Greene and Washington Place was unlike any almost any other corner in the
city. Suddenly it seemed to me filled with the blood of women and children, as though they had just
tumbled to my feet that morning.
Nothing had changed about the street corner. None of my five senses had changed at all. But my
perception of that corner would never be the same again. Every time I walk past that corner, I feel a
little colder, the street feels a little uglier, and the wind howls a little louder.
Our five senses provide a blank canvas of experience, but without the perception of the mind, it
would have no meaning or texture. It is our mind which focuses our attention, which identifies what we
see, and which provides meaning to the world around us. Consequently, a change in the ideas in your
mind can change the way you perceive your life and the world around you.
Many things can change the way your mind looks at the world. William James, in his seminal
existentialist work Pragmatism, said that the human mind changes its perception of the world whenever
some fact, idea, or experience does not fit your previous experience of the world. Either the new idea is
tailored to fit your previous experience, or your previous experience is reevaluated in light of the new
idea.
Most movies we see are evaluated in the light of our previous ideas, but a compelling movie
asks you to reevaluate your previous ideas with that movie in mind. I Heart Huckabees, a movie which
seeks to look at life through an patchwork of existentialist lenses, has the capacity to change your own
perceptions. The main character, Albert Markofsky, is attempting to shape his own perceptions, and the
movie takes you along his search for a way to look at his world. At the beginning of the movie, he sorts
his way through a maze-like office building to arrive, confused at the office of Jaffe and Jaffe,
existentialist detectives. They want to examine his life from the lens of an optimistic existentialism
which says that the entire universe is interconnected, and use this to find comforting patterns in
existence. But as the movie progresses, Jaffe and Jaffe continue to exert stress on Albert's life, losing
him chairmanship of the conservancy he created, until he finally rejects them. Through a new-found
friend, Tommy Corn (a fire-fighter who has been depressed about the meaning of life since 9/11), he
discovers a nihilist existentialist Catherine Vauban, who says that the entire universe is nothing but
division and pain. At first, Albert and Tommy find this new philosophy more comforting, because it
matches their own experiences with pain and the seeming meaninglessness of life. But at the height of
Albert's pain, he realizes that it is ignorant of him to deny that there are connections between the
different parts of his life. At the climax of the movie, he faces both Jaffe's and Vauban together, and
berates them for attempting to separate the connections from the disconnections, the pleasures from the
pains. Having realized that life is neither one whole nor fully separate, he forges out on his own with
Tommy, and the movie ends with the two of them ruminating on their experiences in the movie.
The storytelling allows the audience to examine the ideas that Albert struggles with by closely
following Albert during the movie. Most of the movie is filmed naturalistic ally, presenting things
much as they appear in Albert's life. But because most of Albert's life is so “normal,” the few times that
something extraordinary occurs, it is very clearly presented. The entire movie is set up in the first few
moments of the film, as Albert Markofsky is trying to find the office of Jaffe and Jaffe. He wanders
through the uniform walls of the office building, pausing at the forks in the corridor and constantly
referring to the business card which is his only guide. As he becomes more and more lost in the maze
of the office, he becomes more and more agitated. The maze is passing by faster and faster, the turns
quicker and quicker. Suddenly, as he turns a corner, he catches sight of another person turning the
corner at the end of the hall. A sharp eye can detect that it is, in fact, himself. He nearly catches up with
himself, but when he turns the corner, all he finds is the office of Jaffe and Jaffe.
Part of the existentialist philosophy presented by Jaffe and Jaffe is the idea of 'deconstruction,'
which Catherine Vauban later mirrors. The everyday life, they say, distracts from the deeper meaning,
and it is only at those moments when the everyday life seems to completely fall apart that one can see
the meanings. Lost in the maze-like hall, he reaches a point of desperation; and it is precisely in that
desperation that he 'finds himself' and, in turn, finds where he is going.
Both Jaffe and Jaffe and Catherine Vauban's philosophy is deeply rooted in a school of
existentialist thought called mereological nihilism. Mereological thought states that everything in the
universe is made of either parts and wholes. Mereological nihilism then takes the next step, and states
that 'objects' which are really just parts of larger objects or which are divisible into smaller parts are
just mental illusions. The only true wholes are those of the smallest, indivisible particles: currently,
quantum physics would hold those to be quarks.
But the consequences of that strain of thinking are not necessarily all the same. Jaffe and Jaffe
believe that, in the end, because the whole of the universe is subject to the will of the mind, the mind
can reshape the world around you into a more satisfying life. It's simply a matter of rearranging
patterns of connection until they satisfy. On the other hand Catherine Vauban holds the truly nihilist
conclusion, that because everything eventually divides into tiny particles which are completely separate
from one another, nothing in the universe is connected and everything is isolated and alone.
Even the same belief (that everything breaks down into tiny particles) holds vastly different
conclusions for different people. Why? Because of the matter of perception. Just as the same street
corner in New York can suddenly become a bloody, frightening place because of the knowledge of
what happened there, each of your beliefs becomes colored by the other experiences of your life which
lead you there.
The two Jaffes and Catherine Vauban have beliefs which seem to be perpendicular; one results
in a world which conforms to the optimistic view of the mind, the other results in a world which is
nothing but terror and pain that can only be temporarily coped with. Through the entire movie, these
two philosophies seem immutable and opposite. Albert, trapped in the middle, battles in his mind
between these two philosophies. They become confused in his mind; especially as Jaffe and Jaffe
accidentally increase his isolation by losing him the job he loves, and as Catherine Vauban suddenly
enlightens him as to connections between a coincidence in his life (a Sudanese orphan he encounters
repeatedly) and his own childhood (where Catherine says he has been “orphaned by indifference” by
his callous mother).
At the height of his confusion, the film suddenly throws both ideas into absurdity in an
argument between Tommy Corn, representing Catherine, and Bernard Jaffe. Bernard exhorts Tommy to
see the connections between the particles of air, which flow together in the wind. Tommy retorts that
each particle is floating alone. Bernard responds that those particles are still sharing electrons, which
travel freely between them. But Tommy observes that there are even smaller divisions between the
electrons, which are their own independent particles, isolated.
During this moment of film, the realism breaks down; small cubes of the film become still
frame super-imposed over the moving scene. They move slowly toward each other. Each is separate,
but they flow together between Bernard and Tommy. Each time Bernard and Jaffe argue over smaller
particles being connected or isolated, smaller freeze-frames fly between them, faster and faster. At one
point, Tommy lifts his finger and points out the separation between two of the smaller boxes. At the
very end of the debate, Bernard says, “Yes, but the divisions become smaller and smaller until you can't
tell where my nose ends and yours begins!” At this point, Tommy and Bernard have been slowly
getting closer and closer into a narrower frame, and both of their noses embark in freeze-frame cubes
toward each other.
Albert, in confused desperation, suddenly throws himself between the two of them. “None of
this even matters! You can't see it anyways!” The cubes fall out of the sky, and Tommy and Bernard
back away from each other. Tommy mutters under his breath, “Yeah, but I want to debate this cube-
particle thing.
The debate has no ending; both Tommy and Albert realize that. It is entirely subjective, based
on what answer you want to get from it. There is no scientific limit to how far that discussion can go.
The word “atom” comes from the Greek for indivisible, but it has been proven to be divisible; there is
not theoretical reason why we cannot split subatomic particles forever. And as all three characters point
out, once you have reduced the problem to solutions that small, the answer is no longer at all relevent.
In the end, as William James would argue in his Pragmatism and as Albert winds up arguing, what
matters is what you can actually see and observe in your own life.
But to what degree can you actually see and observe ideas in your own life? I can't see or
observe the blood from the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on the street-corner, but I can observe the
historical plaque which informs me that I am there. Is the blood of the Triangle Shirtwaist company
important? In one sense it is; I still feel its effects when I go to work and know that I won't be locked in
until the end of the workday. In another sense, I'm affected simply by the way I look at the street
corner. But at the same time, the street corner is exactly the same as it always has been.
However, it is not simply in the empirical world that ideas matter. Ideas also form other ideas.
While Albert Markofsky may have rejected the debate between interconnectedness and isolation in that
scene, he cannot have cleared it entirely from his mind. In a nihilistic rage, he decides to vent his
emotions by burning down the house of his arch-rival Brad Stand, who replaced him at his job. But as
he watches Brad Stand's sudden collapse in despair and sorrow, he can no longer picture himself as
isolated from his rival. Again, the movie explores the freeze-frame cube images linking Brad and
Albert together. Suddenly connectedness makes sense to him, because he has realized that his own
sorrow and Brad's sorrow come from the same place, from the same moment of losing everything they
have put their efforts into.
In the intellectual climax of the film, Albert rounds on the two Jaffes, and on Catherine Vauban.
To their surprise, he accuses them of working together. He says:
“You guys work together, don't you... It's not like some secret deal where she [Catherine]
picks up where you [Jaffe and Jaffe] leave off and vice versa? ... Well, there should be,
because that's the way it works. [Catherine]'s too dark and you're not dark enough! You
three were close, right? Maybe too close, and then it went sour, and it propelled you into
one extreme and you into another extreme, so voila! Two overlapping fractured
philosophies were born out of that one feud!”

Neither philosophy can fully satisfy Albert Markofsky through his entire life. Although at certain points
the nihilism of Catherine or the optimism of Jaffe and Jaffe draws him in, in truth, any philosophy can
only be evaluated based on how it affects his life as a whole.
How does that moment on the street-corner affect me? In that moment, nothing. For a few days
afterwards, I considered taking a different path to my class, but in the end, I decided that it was
probably better for me to see that building than to avoid it. A small detail in my daily life. But to what
degree does that moment of thought inform the rest of my life?
I remember I watched a documentary on the September 11th attacks called, simply, 9/11. It was
taken entirely from first-person footage—a pair of French filmmakers who were doing a documentary
on New York City firefighters, and happened to be with them during their morning routine when the
planes hit the World Trade Center. The filmmakers travel with the firefighters to watch the response to
the disaster. As they arrive to the base of the building, there is a noise in the background. A calm but
shaken French voice-over informs the audience that the crash they heard (which, for the next few
minutes, would be repeated several times) was that of a body falling roughly eighty stories.
There were many images in that documentary which were horrifying beyond belief—at one
point, the filmmaker deliberately avoids filming a person who comes screaming out of the elevator
shaft, covered completely in flaming jet fuel—but in my mind, I am always taken up to the top of those
towers, to the moment of choice presented to those victims of the Twin Towers and of the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company—to die passive, engulfed in flame, or to die active, watching your own death as
you plummet toward the ground.
It is precisely the senselessness of this helplessness which strikes the character Tommy Corn,
and brings him into contact with Albert. He is portrayed in the movie in a state of shock and horror,
wrapped up in politics he hates but can't escape from. His dilemma, which he puts to a Spanish seer he
meets, is this: he can't abide petroleum and the destructive influence it has on Middle Eastern politics
and on American foreign policy, but he knows he can't escape from petroleum use in his lifetime. As a
firefighter, he rides a gas-guzzling firetruck to the site of fire accidents; he wears a rubber suit (another
byproduct of petroleum use). How can he reconcile his idealisms with his everyday life?
He may not be in the same mortal danger, but the danger he feels presented toward his soul are
just as grave. It is precisely this helplessness which appeals to him Catherine's philosophy; if nothing
means anything, then abandoning any sort of moral structure is moot; moral structures don't actually
exist. On the other hand, if the world is truly interconnected as the two Jaffes say it is, then how can he
separate himself from the horror and destruction it contains?
In the end, when he too realizes that everything is both connected and isolated at the same time,
he finds the beginnings of peace. When he falls in love with the ex-girlfriend of Brad Stand, he realizes
that there are some things in the universe worth connecting to; and they balance the things in the world
worth disconnecting from. There is a limited sphere of influence which he can touch and change to
make a better life for himself, and he cannot ask to do anything more than that.
The war between ideals and reality is present in all places and all times. Vaclav Havel, who was
a playwright in the Communist Czechoslovakia, experienced a period where that war was taken to its
extremes. The 'ideals' of Communism had been taken to such an extreme that it was hurting the people
who participated in their beliefs. Havel wrote a series of essays, the most important being “Power Of
The Powerless,” on a concept he termed 'living in truth.' While it is not necessary for the average
person to fundamentally change the world around them, they can live in the truth of their own ideas,
and in that way, slowly turn the world around them.
What is living in truth? It is coming to an understanding with yourself about how you believe
your conduct should be, and not letting the world force that. In that way, you live without
compromising your beliefs. This, perhaps, is the way that Tommy Corn ends the movie; he continues to
ride his bike rather than take the firetruck to the site of the fire (which, comically, winds up being a
more efficient mode of travel thanks to traffic), but he no longer blames himself for things outside his
control. The world is exactly the same way that it was throughout the movie, but because his
perception of the world is not one of terrible, terrible guilt, he is able to cope with it more readily.
So when I walk past that street-corner and hear in my mind the screams of women and children,
it is not perhaps important how that immediately effects me or what it drives me to do consciously. But
on some other level, the level of the development of ideas, that street-corner might touch my life
repeatedly in ways I'll never fully understand. Perhaps it will influence me to be more adamant in the
defense of worker's rights. Maybe it'll influence my thinking about death. Whatever its influence, if it is
an important perception, it will color the rest of my perceptions. Perhaps it will affect my acting, or my
writing.
There is only one thing I know for certain about that street-corner: it has affected my perception
of I Heart Huckabees. And in return, the movie has affected my perception of I Heart Huckabees. The
mind is like the internet, with each idea containing hyperlinks to other ideas, each one placed in context
of all the others; a network of perceptions which influence each other, whether they come from ideas
we've stored, art we've seen, conversations we've had, or from our five senses.