Andres Nicolas Zarta

ID Number: N13537695
January 21, 2016
CINE-UT 215-00 Film Directors: Coen Brothers
Professor Chris Straayer
The Absent Shapes
Coen Brothers Mythology of Existentialism
Plato and Aristotle proposed the idea that a culture required a mythology
in order to provide coherence and grounding to its ethical and intellectual virtues.
This idea of mythology, which is nothing else than a sort of all-encompassing oral
tradition that seeks to the explain nature, history and customs of a given people
through story-telling and shared experience, resonates with the human need to
find meaning and unity. Indeed, many aspects of our western civilization are,
fundamentally, derived from the great pantheon of myths that originated in
Ancient Greece and later found new name in the Roman Empire. Notions such
as justice, liberty and fairness that inform our modern institutions are ideas that
have been preserved and retold through time in the form of archetypical
categories. Through myth, humans shape the social practices and ideals of their
society, by referring back to a past that finds its form chiseled in a rock so
resilient that permeates all aspects of human interaction. Yet, in a time where the
very fabric of reality is being questioned, and it seems that attempting to attribute
meaning to our mortal experience is a futile endeavor, how can one reconcile the
function that mythology has had in the centuries-long process of human

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development and the angst that arises from the concern of our own existence in
the world.
The filmography of the Coen Brothers seeks to explore this tension, by
cleverly laying out the works of many existentialist philosophers through the
behavior and interactions of their mythic characters and their impossible stories.
The examination of films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for
Old Men clearly renders visible this ongoing preoccupation to put the existential
ideas of Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir in the context of an imagined
contemporary America. Imagined, because it springs naturally from the Coens
perception of what truly lies behind the world theyve known all their lives;
America as a place where any layman can find himself in an absurdly impossible
situation that questions his (or sometimes the audiences) own belief system. In
this exercise, theyve created stories that resonate so deeply with the
contemporary preoccupations of mankind that slowly theyve started to replace
the more ancient myths and transform into a new age terminal that allows a back
and forth inner dialogue between our awareness and an inaccessible substance.
The pure act of their imagination is an evidence of the Coens latent
existentialism as it intentionally poses the existence of an object (in this case
their fiction) as both real, because they can access it, and absent, because it has
an intangible substance in the world.
Various thinkers and academics have tinkered with this idea of an external
substance. Throughout the history there has been an active search to
understand the metaphysical and ontological dimensions of this substance, but

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during the modern and post-modern times there has been a shift towards
understanding not what is, but how humans interact with it. Kant would be one of
the first who would render it inaccessible, and would claim instead that we ought
to form categories within our head to make sense of it. Nietzsche would not deny
its existence, but would render it as chaotic and meaningless, and therefore the
act of seeking it was void. Gods absence plays a central role in Nietzsches
argument, as He is the figure that most readily comes as answer to mankinds
search of meaning. The existentialists would somewhat agree with Nietzsche. In
the end, after decades of Enlightenment, the human world was in the worst
shape it had ever been. The search for outer meaning and purpose had failed
when mankind realized that they were the harbinger of their own destruction, and
therefore the relation between substance and subject had to be based on
something different. Anton Chigurhs line when he confronts Carson Wells in No
Country for Old Men examines this transformation in human thought. Unable to
find common ground with Chigurh, Wells resorts to tell him to go to hell, to which
Chigurh laughs and then responds with If the rule you followed brought you to
this, of what use was the rule? Despite not knowing the nature of the substance,
Kant and other enlightenment thinkers were able to propose different ethical and
moral models that not only explained but also ought to inform peoples behavior.
Its the belief that when something is heightened to apply to all things, then it
must be accepted as moral and as rule. Chigurh and the Coens question this
idea of morality by bringing it down to its earthly ultimate consequences, Wells is
going to die regardless of what is morally good or right.

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Existentialism owes its name to the act of existing. Different from any
other beings, humans are not only capable of knowing that they exist but they are
also capable of choosing how to be. Freedom of action becomes then a
fundamental component of existentialism as it accentuates the active role that
the human being plays in the act of existing. Because existentialism can only
attest the existence of the individual herself, it becomes impossible to know the
nature and identity of others. We can only attempt to understand and recognize
others by our own active subjective thoughts. In Fargo, almost all of characters
are unable to find true communication with one another. Their different value
systems constructed through their own experience are rendered unintelligible to
others, highlighting how essential the subjective experience is. At the end of the
film Marge Gunderson is unable to comprehend how the horror and brutality she
has witnessed takes place in the same world she lives in. We understand, as an
audience, that this is not a mere faade of decency and propriety, but a legitimate
lack of understanding and connection towards the primitive actions of Jerry and
Gaer. Many of the characters in Fargo have rejected the mythological virtues of
Ancient Greece, and the new project is based on the pure experiential, on the
yearnings of the average American.
The social detachment and absence of connection in Fargo would seem to
suggest that as humans we no longer have a common identity that pertains us as
a society, and therefore the thought of a mythology is to be rejected. Certainly,
the Coens have gone at length to deconstruct the old archetypes of fiction
emphasizing how inefficient theyve become at emulating the human condition.

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Early in their careers, with films like Blood Simple and Raising Arizona, the
Coens attempted to trump the expectations of genre by subverting the roles that
archetypical characters had. A Femme Fatale abandons her femininity to rise
above a group of incapable men. An outlaw struggling with his infantile longings
dares to dream of a risk-free future full of happiness. O Brother Where Art
Thou? is a revisiting of the classical myth of The Odyssey, and through the film
we follow Ulysses journey through the more modern setting of the early 20 th
century American south. The brilliance of the film lies not on the parallels that it
draws between the source material and the Coens own story, but the differences
that it underlines. Ulysses McGill is not the brave Greek soldier that faces the
threats that the gods pose in front of him with courage and wit, but a mere toy
that goes from place to place, plot point to plot point with no other conviction but
that of a whispering command that echoes through time. But far from being a
parody or satire, the irony in O Brother Where Art Thou? is an indication of the
incongruities that exist between man and myth and how ineffective The Odyssey
has become at reconciling the transcendental and the ordinary.
Once there has been recognition that the old mythology is no longer valid,
then we must ask ourselves whether or not there is a need for a new one? After
all, if humanitys new project is that of complete isolation and independence,
what good is the notion of a shared mythology that claims to relate to all
mankind? An answer to this perhaps lies not on the ontological level that has
been discussed up until this point, but in an aesthetical one. Existentialists
believed that, under certain conditions, the exercise of freedom granted the

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human being the capacity of revealing essential features of the world and the
beings that inhabited it and that through artistic practice we unravel some of the
mysteries of our shared continuum. They will find the concept of intentionality,
borrowed from Husserl phenomenology, as the key element that sanctions this
endeavor.
Intentionality, in phenomenological terms, implies that when any kind of
meaning is attributed, a specific act of consciousness is occurring. These specific
temporalities of mental acts are what give one or other meaning to any perceived
object. Consider this passage from Sartre's What is Literature?: It is we who set
up this relationship between this tree and a bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star
which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are
associated in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our car and our
aeroplane which organises the great mass of the earth. With each of our acts,
the world reveals to us a new face. But, if we know that we are directors of being,
we also know that we are not its producers. If we turn away from this landscape,
it will sink back into its dark permanence. At least, it will sink back; there is no
one mad enough to think that it is going to be annihilated (Sartre 1948a, 26.)
This entails that the relationship between subject and substance is not
necessarily broken. It doesnt imply that there is no substance, but rather it
deepens the understanding that meaning isnt inherent to the substance but
rather to the attitude of the subject.
The Coens fourth film, Barton Fink, heavily draws on the
phenomenological ideas of conscience and the intentional object. The

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relationship between the film itself and the audience that experiences it is an
exemplar of this dynamic. Barton Fink is a film filled with symbolism, so
unintelligible and resilient to interpretation that its impossible to recognize any
meaning or make sense of the different elements as they are presented to us.
The audience finishes the film without knowing for certain what certain objects,
such as the box or the picture, were supposed to mean. The drama of its main
character, Barton, is no other than the disconnection between the mind and the
body, the subject and the substance. Bartons isolation from the world, which is
symbolized by the hotel room, runs parallel to our own isolation in the exercise of
trying to interpret the film. The truth is that, it is precisely the inaccessibility to
meaning that renders Barton Fink so essential to understand the Coens new
mythology. Symbols dont carry with them any inherent meaning, and have to be
informed by the conscious act of interpretation and deliberate attribution. In order
to attribute meaning one has to isolate the object and then find it surrounded by a
landscape of relationships with everything else that has been perceived before. It
is a condensation of relationships and an imposition of the unity of mind on the
diversity of things (Sartre 1948a, 27.) In this, every attempt at disclosing a portion
of the world naturally follows a reference to a broader horizon of future potential
perceptions.
In its pursuit to disclose the nature of the substance, the Coens
filmography has found purchase in determining that the context in which this
dynamic takes place is no other than in the absurd. In his work, Camus exhibits
the natural resistance of the world to human undertakings. Efforts to attribute

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order and sense to a world that is inhospitable are doomed to fail. In this
absurdity, is that the Coen Brothers find their comedy. Their films presents us
characters with high ambition and poor impulse control, that dare to dream of big
rewards and glorious ideals only to find that their determination is no match to the
chaotic nature of the world.
The characters from The Big Lebowski are subject to this tragedy in the
absurd. The film presents us with a setup in which every major character wants
something. The Dude wants a new rug, Lebowski wants to get away with his
scam to prove the might of the capitalist, Walter wants to live by his code, the
Nihilists want to exercise their belief in nothingness. However, regardless of their
efforts, their fates and objectives are contingent upon the raw fabric of the world;
the random play of blind forces. In the end all of their projects fail, and its up to
each character to accept the chaotic, absurd nature of the world or tragically
continue resisting its substantial forces. The Dude is the one character that more
readily abandons his pursuit and embraces this reality, while the Nihilists and, to
some extent, Walter continue to tragically adhere to an unviable code.
Camus absurd also finds its place in the gruesome landscape of No
Country for Old Men, only this time it serves not as an act of comedy but as the
source of horror and brutality. Chigurhs mysterious allegory to doom in the form
of the coin is a clear symbol to this chaos. He has chosen to accept that he, like
the coin, is brought to meet his victim at a crossroads within the chaotic
landscape. Chigurh is an almost unstoppable force of nature, a being with the
intention to harm and terminate. He has chosen to be that force; it is his way of

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accessing a semblance of substance. But he respects the random nature of the
world, and accepts its void whims. It is only at the end, when he is unable to act
as an agent of chaos and is forced to act with responsibility, that chaos comes to
bite him back. With the car crash in the last minutes of the film, the absurd finds
its way to remind Chigurh and the audience that the human project of meaning is
still punishable.
These stories, the stories of contemporary American men and women,
have created a new collection of myths that now inform and inspire the new
fiction of the 21st Century. It comes as no surprise that the Coens have inspired
new writers and filmmakers to revisit these stories and further expand on the
issues they attempt to resolve. In TV series Fargo, based on the namesake film,
there are two levels of mythology occurring simultaneously. At a first level, within
the story, the characters recognize the myth that is Fargo, the fact that they live
in a country of existentialist angst and ontological void and that their lives hang
on a thread. At a second level, the audiences recognition of the mythology that
now explains our current philosophical preoccupations.
More than informing fiction, though, the Coen Brothers have provided
mankind with occasions to appreciate and connect with the substance through
art. They have created a new pantheon of characters, plots and themes that are
analogue to our existence, but whose essence remains virtual and inaccessible
to us. Fundamental manifestations of sublime connection with the substance that
brings us no closer to understanding what it is, or the meaning it has, but allow

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us to, in the beauty of our ignorance, appreciate what it means to be human and
the glory of our inconsequential exercise of freedom.
Works Mentioned
Conard, Mark T. "Heidegger and the Problem of Interpretation in Barton
Fink." The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers Lexington: U of Kentucky, 2009. N.
pag. Print.
Abrams, Jerold J. "A Homespun Murder Story." The Philosophy of the
Coen Brothers. By Mark T. Conard. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 2009. N. pag.
Print.
Deranty, Jean-Philippe, "Existentialist Aesthetics", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/aesthetics-existentialist/