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Nobody ever accused The Verge of being the brightest star in the sky, but their political
take on Arrival did help explain, to me, why some of my semi-politically engaged friends, like Lara, or someone, whose claim to activism is more spiritually inclined, like my good friend Abigail—only the names have been changed to protect the innocents—would reportedly feel touched in such a deeply personal and emotional way by the film, a well-meaning, if somewhat dated movie, imho, which might have felt fresher and more original had it been made, say, three or four decades ago, at a time when advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics was renewing interest in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and the New Age movement was at its peak—but apparently the critics loved it, so what do I know?
I mean, "
America’s colossal missed opportunity"? Seriously?
The commentator, here, is literally equating what the female lead, in the movie, achieved for (I quote) "
global cooperation," "
working together," and "
communicating and keeping open minds about [one another]," to what Hillary Clinton (I quote) "
a massive talented diplomat with years of experience," would have achieved for America and the rest of the world, if only she had won the last presidential election.
Are we talking about the same Hillary Clinton?
And is anyone who didn’t vote for HRC "basically evil"? I am not sure. Just trying to make sense of the commentator’s take on the result of the election, where she explains that while she saw in Arrival an "
argument that most people are basically good," (I quote) "
looking back at it after the election," she finds it "
hard to believe in that argument [that people are basically good.]"
Perhaps, and not too surprisingly in those turbulent post-electoral times, there is a certain measure of expected political-spin, here, and, to a certain degree, some element of propaganda in all this. One must keep in mind, after all, that for all practical purposes, The Verge has been and remains a media network operated by
Vox Media, the same Vox Media that owns the Vox website, derided for its so-called "
explanatory journalism." (Glenn Greenwald, among others, criticized Vox for "
suppressing reporting that reflects negatively on [the Democratic Party] and instead confin[ing] itself to hagiography" in the run-up and aftermath of the election.)
But, I think, there is more to it than that. There is something about the thread and the commentator’s take on the whole thing, that causes me to suspect that, quite possibly, she’s sincere and genuinely believes what she’s saying.
And what about my good friend, Lara, for that matter?
Or starry-eyed Abigail?
I don't know. According to
cognitive dissonance theory, it is said that there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their conditions (i.e., beliefs, opinions, actions). As a result, a person who experiences inconsistencies tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and so is motivated to try to reduce the cognitive dissonance by actively avoiding situations and information likely to increase the psychological discomfort.
Most certainly, deep in the human psyche is a pervasive dependency to the psychological shelters, people do create for themselves.
A. A. Attanasio had that quote, that I love, which says essentially that we are made of our stories, and because we do create those stories from nothing, with strength, they make us whole.
It all depends on the stories, of course.
This is the reason why one must be vigilant about the kind of stories one tells oneself.
While it might appear, of course, easier and emotionally comforting to reduce one’s understanding of the world to a simpler black and white "reality," in which people are either good (those who vote like you do) or evil (those who vote differently than you do), the real universe is always more complex. And so are people.
The point I have been painstakingly trying to drive home, here, is that, simply put, Hillary Clinton is NOT Louise Banks (the fictional hero of Arrival).
Really, really wishing that this were the case doesn’t make it so.
Basically, there is a reason why characters like the one portrayed in the movie (that of an expert linguist) by Amy Adams are not the same kind of characters usually cast in the role of politicians in other movies, or in the real world.
If what we know of history is of any relevance, it appears doubtful that the female of the species behave any differently than their male counterparts in any position of power, and, while in terms of breaking the glass-ceiling, a female POTUS would certainly be a positive development, there is no reason to believe she would behave any better, nor any worse, because of her gender, than the males of the species, especially when it comes to a person with such a polarizing hawkish reputation and foreign policy track record as Hillary Clinton (which either registers as a positive or a negative, depending on one’s level of political awareness and what one's opinion might be in support of or against "regime change," America's role in the World, and the kind of hegemonic geopolitical policies advocated by the Project for a New American Century).
In the end, when it comes down to it, even the fictional character of Louise Banks fails the test, and doesn’t, in her interaction with Ian Donnelly (when he asks her if she’s ready to have a child), exhibit the behavior of a person who believes that "
people should work together, COMMUNICATE (emphasis mine)
, and keep open minds about each others."
A point another commentator, on that same thread on The Verge, addresses, possibly unwittingly, when responding to the question of whether she would make the same choice Louise Banks made:
Even Kaitlyn had to agree (—up to a point):
The title of the post, "
Vous voudriez au ciel bleu croire," is a line taken from
Louis Aragon's poem, "J'entends, J'entends".
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