By Christopher Barr
- John Doe
Spoiler Alert!
Se7en is a gritty masterpiece of film noir about two police detectives hunting down a sinister serial killer. The
killer uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi when choosing his
victims, punishing them because he believes that they need punishment. He thinks we all need to be punished for what we did to this world, for
how we are to each other, and sadly to ourselves.
John Doe is the place-holder name given to the
crazed serial murderer. He’s a man that certainly takes his philosophy to
an extreme but hopefully, his point isn’t lost on people. And that point
is; we as a society have become apathetic toward one another and also
complacent about that fact. Doe has simply had enough and decided
to be a teacher to those who aren’t willing to learn anymore, so his brand of
teaching is violence, his brand of justice is an awakening to a sleeping populace.
Detective Somerset is an older
man who has seen the tyranny of evil men in his long career and has decided to
retire to a place far away from the dark of city life. His new partner Detective
Mills is a young man still learning the ropes but has experience in law
enforcement. Mills is the hope the film has to offer but it also asks the
question; is hope simply a side effect of naiveté? The nameless dank city
they reside in is filled with decay and dread, Somerset wants out and Mills
thinks he can change things for the better, but for seven days, they are stuck
together to solve a series of bizarre, hideous murders.
Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to the light.
"When thou sittest to eat
with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee. And put a knife to thy
throat, if thou be a man given to appetite."
- Proverbs 23:2
Gluttony is overindulging, it's
over-consuming, it’s an inordinate desire for over-eating and drinking, it was
a sin in Sodom known as 'fullness in bread'. The gluttony victim in the
film is found dead at his kitchen table. A mammoth of a man with his head
face down in a bowl of spaghetti. His apartment was ill-kept with
cockroaches roaming about the filthy and disgusting sloven place.
Obesity is a pervasive problem in
the privileged parts of the world, the parts where McDonald’s sells
‘Super-sized’ meal deals by the millions and pizza comes in mega-large boxes. People it would seem are not only stuffing themselves beyond their
physical capacity but they are also filling their homes with a cluttered, warehouse of
stuff, transforming living rooms and hallways into busy sections at the local
Wal-Mart.
A pound of flesh, no more no
less, no cartilage no bone, only flesh.
American Psychologist, Erich
Fromm refers to Greed as “a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an
endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”
Greed is selfishly and
unethically wanting too much for you despite the cost of depravity it may
cause other people, the scavenging and hoarding of money and power for personal
gain, it also involves disloyalty and deliberate betrayal, exceeding the
dictates of survival and comfort.
In Se7en, a defense attorney is
found dead in his office after being bled to death; his charge for his life was
Greed. He devoted his life to defending criminals in the name of personal
gain and wealth. This is, at its heart, the problem of modern society,
greed kills the innocent, it kills the trees and land, and it kills the sea and
the air. The planet is dying because greed is winning, without any sign
or speck of evidence to convince any free-thinking person otherwise.
Somerset goes to the library to
research the seven deadly sins while security guards play Composer Bach’s
baroque piece ‘Air’ over their radio. Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine
Comedy, an epic poem, in the 14th century about his journey
into the three realms of the dead, Inferno (Hell), Purgatory, and Paradise
(Heaven).
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter
Dante first wrote about the nine
circles of hell, which was where those condemned souls were brought to suffer,
after living their lives under one or more of the seven deadly sins.
Through the gates of Purgatory, they were punished by which one
they were most guilty of when they were alive.
For Lust, one was
smothered in brimstone and fire, for Gluttony the overindulgent soul was
force-fed rats, toads, and snakes forever, for Greed the covetous soul is boiled
in the finest oil, and the lethargic Sloth is thrown into a pit of snakes.
The fallen angry victim of wrath is perpetually dismembered alive while those
souls subject to Envy were submerged in freezing water, leaving the Proud to be
broken on a wheel, for eternity.
Chaucer wrote The Canterbury
Tales at the end of the 14th century and within it is a long
treatise written in prose called The Parson’s Tale, which was on the virtue of
living. In the ‘tale,’ Chaucer offered remedies against the seven deadly
sins as a form of saving one’s soul and avoiding condemnation in the torturous
pits of one of Dante’s hellish circles. Through these heavenly virtues, one was able to heal their sins, these virtues are as follows; humility,
contentment, patience, fortitude, mercy, moderation, and chastity.
Medieval theologian St. Thomas
Aquinas said Sloth is “sluggishness of the mind which neglects to begin
good…[it] is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses man as to draw him away
entirely from good deeds.”
Sloth is apathetic, indifferent, and
a person who’s carefree with time, essentially a lazy person who fuels
procrastination which leads to unproductive behavior. It seems these days
because of hundreds of channels on the TV, endless gaming opportunities, and the
psychological reality of consumer dissatisfaction, people have for the most
part become paralyzed and content with their state of wastefulness.
In the film the detectives
discover a man that has been bound for exactly one full year via various
medications, only to just survive the ordeal and live what few days he has left
in agonizing pain. This was a man who did nothing to fulfill his life or
contribute to society and now has been punished for it. Society needs
progressive-oriented people to push the human project to a more
ever-lasting and harmonizing level. Laziness in all cultures is rightfully
seen as disrespectful to oneself and to psychological growth in general.
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
saw lust as “the only power that reigns is the inextinguishable desire to face,
at any price, the blind love present in human existence without any consideration
of the outcome. So the theme of lust is to consider the horrors which
will almost certainly follow the culmination of it.”
Lust is a powerful psychological
force producing an intense need for an object. Having lust is having a
piercing fervor for sex or power, having a pulsating thrust in the body to
attach itself to something in an often lascivious way but sometimes in a
ravenous one as well.
Mills and Somerset enter a sex
brothel of sorts, where they discover a terrified man who was forced at gunpoint by John Doe, to pugnaciously fornicate with an unfortunate
prostitute. The sadistic part of this was he had to wear a 14-plus-inch razor-sharp blade on his penis as he entered her, surely giving her an
excruciatingly bloody death. The prostitute made herself a tool of desire
for depraved men to lust themselves all over, thus John Doe felt it necessary
to teach her the truly palpable, penetrating force of the power of lust.
I would agree that lust could
lead a person down a path not so dissimilar to alcoholism, where a disjointed life could
get destroyed. I would argue that a little lust is a needed ingredient to
help drive a person toward a goal but it must be under control for one
to lead a fulfilling life. If unchecked, the downside to lust can often fuel
disloyalty, rape, and possibly murder.
The Marquis de Sade blissfully
summed up the two sides of bladed desire in all its pleasure and pain. “Lust is
to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all,
lends strength to them all; ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all
founded on lust.”
“Your heart became proud on
account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your
splendor. So I threw you to the earth.” Ezekiel 28:17
Body576585.jpg)
Lucifer the light-bearer, the
greatest of all the angels, was cast down by God because of his pride and his
desire to overtake the throne of God himself.
The allegorical implication of
that age-old story is that this form of hubris, having such love for one’s own
excellence could lead to exclusion.
We live in a world chock-full of
proud people; Reality TV invests lots of blood money based on that fact.
Self-love is such an infectious spectacle in our society that the progressive
side of learning and self-improvement has been all but lost. Advertising
and consumer culture are what the driving forces are now because they lead to
dissatisfaction, which drives a person toward more and more stuff for them to fill in what they believe they are lacking in life.
The thing with these ‘sins’ is
they all have two sides to them and pride is no exception. There is a
virtuous pride in one’s appearance and cleanliness, the magnanimity of a great
mind and heart is something one ought to be proud of. But in the case of
the film, the Pride victim certainly wasn’t righteous; rather her self-love
likely was met with a shallow sense of self and the world outside of the mirror
she obsessed over.
Shakespeare writes in The
Merchant of Venice, about the dangers of a person being green with envious
eyes, spilling over to jealousy. Portia states: “How all the other
passions fleet to air, as doubtful thoughts and rash embraced despair and
shuddering fear and green-eyed jealousy!”
Envy desires what another
possesses. This could be an object, another person, or behavior. This
could lead to a form of resentment toward another’s quality of life and achievements, which could result in the envious wishing the ‘fortunate’ didn’t
have it either and desiring to poison them with misfortune.
This is what likely leads to so
much unhappiness in people because these people become jealous of others and
never see within themselves what they have to offer. This is the case of
John Doe, the killer himself is his sixth victim, a man envious of domestic life with a lovely perfect wife, David Mills had such a life, or so
John Doe thought. Therein lies the problem with envy, I think most people
see themselves as boring and incomplete, whether this is conscious and/or
subconscious, thus transferring what they perceive to be their lack onto
another person or thing. It’s similar to Freud’s views on Transference,
where a patient redirects feelings and desires within themselves onto
another. I think fantasy exists in between our ability to know something,
so we use our vast wealth of imagination to fill in the gap between what is
real and what isn’t. This blurry line becomes the picture of how we see
another person and the fantasy is built upon that platform.
John Doe,
clearly a purist, was a man I think suffered from the very sins he punished
others for. I think he was too much of a coward to psychologically self-examine to live, and 'know thyself', with his faults and conversely, he wasn’t able to kill
himself either. So in the malicious recesses of his mind, he hatched out a
massive plan to transfer his guilt and self-loathing onto others and to
euthanize himself in the process.
Religion was clearly a problem
for him when trying to live his life. He
likely comes from a devoutly religious background where punishment for sinning
was commonplace. John Doe has become the
very evil his God fought so hard for him to avoid. But because there is no actual God in the
world, Doe along with many millions around the world are left with an
emptiness that they thought belonged to God’s love. That's the sad part of religion, and many around the world resist that revelation. The denial of reality is the true key to believing in something that doesn't actually exist.
Dante saw Wrath as a “love of
justice perverted to revenge and spite.”
Wrath is a psychological
interpretation that a person feels that they have been wronged, betrayed, or offended
and their desire to retaliate through punishment. This retributory
punishment for the offense can lead to all sorts of violence when one loses
oneself in anger. It is amazing how self-destructive one can get
traveling down that road to perdition, all in
the name of revenge.
Clearly, we have an ideal view of
people and when they betray us, some of us are unable to reconcile with that
and feel, we must be the ones to swing the hammer. Wrath
exposes the animal in all of us, the uncivilized beast that no longer belongs to
a society governed by rules and regulations. Wrath is the result of an
oppressive build-up within us that longs to breathe freedom.
.jpg)
Mills, at the end of the film, is
confronted with a dilemma. He is told that his wife has been murdered by
the very man in front of him on his knees, John Doe. Given the horrific
events that have transpired during the week, Mills is inclined to believe, with
much resistance, that Doe killed his wife.
So there Mills is with a gun
pointed at Doe’s head as the reality of the loss of his wife by this sadistic
man washes like acid over his mind. This is the tragedy of the film and
what the story led us to. A moral question of what is right and what is
wrong? We know that Mills puts a bullet into the head of the man who killed his wife and many other ‘innocent’ people. From a utilitarian
point of view, the greater good and minimal loss of life are best, but they had
this man in custody, he had been handcuffed, helpless really. This man
would have gone to prison and likely would have served many life sentences
without the possibility of parole if Mills hadn’t killed him.
Maybe the film is exploring the
necessity of the sins even in all their darkness. The film also throws a
hammer into the idea of divine morality, it’s saying we got it wrong and we’ve
become sick as a society because we don’t address that fact. In society
these days, what’s often good seems to somehow benefit capitalism in some way,
other than the basic day-to-day ethics of navigating through your home or walking
in the park. What’s wrong or bad seems to be what’s bad for business; our
greed for wealth and power has stepped on our humanistic need to grow as a
species.
Se7en explores the decay of
morality; it explores the idea that those with morals have to adjust themselves
to the decadence of the amoral man, the conformist man, and the sick man.
Intelligence and understanding hold no sway on the streets of the inner city,
where the rules are street rules and are often devoid of reason. The
decay of humanity for the cost of beauty, wealth, things, indifference, and sex
is a cost we pay daily.
The one point, around the middle of the film, we are in Detective Mills and his wife Tracy's kitchen when the apartment shakes, I think
symbolizing the fragile structure that is modern-day society, a place where a
man can’t even go to the sanctity of his own home and not be reminded of the
breaking down of a city. This symbolically happens throughout the film
with all the rain and the inconvenience of it all. It’s not until the
last act of the film when the sun finally comes out, that the
detectives believe they are finally in control. But they are
not in control because they are failures of the system, the ones that
convince us when we can feel safe or not. The house shakes because not only is society unstable but they are as well and they carry that with them everywhere they go. We are products of our environment but we are also contributors to its success, or to its misery.
The car ride out to the last two
victims in the third act was done quite interestingly. The metal screen
that divides Mills and Somerset in the car from John Doe plays a particularly important part in the editing of the sequence. Anytime we see Mills and
Doe talk, the screen is between them and anytime Doe and Somerset talk it isn't.
It’s clear that Mills is more emotional about his disdain of Doe and therefore
a cage is required to keep him from acting on his impulses. Somerset is more
controlled and less shocked by a man like Doe so the cage isn’t required of the
camera angles during their conversations. But at the end of the film when
Somerset discovers Mills’ wife, Tracy’s head in a box, things change for
Somerset. This is new even for him, which is why I think he agrees to
stay on at the police force during the last scene of the film after Mills is driven
away, handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser.
Mills was too emotional for the
coldness of the concrete jungle of modern-day society, whereas Somerset was too
indifferent. The monster of the machine beat Mills as Somerset thought it
beat him, but the only solace left at the ending is Somerset now sees that the
fight must come within him to ward off such evil in the world because
otherwise, the sins themselves will overtake a population to asleep to see them coming. This is declared when Somerset said in the end, “Ernest Hemingway once
wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the
second part. ”
The idea is to recognize there is a
problem and ultimately then a solution can be worked on. My cynical side
thinks that the world is too big, with too many differences for all to get
along, education is becoming too commodified and the government and corporations only
wish to keep us all tranquilized. But there is a side that does see the world as a bad place but
one worth fighting for.
Good topic. it helped me alot ..
ReplyDelete