EPISODE 238: THE KEENAN
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
(I don't watch the Walking Dead anymore, but I know it's returning this weekend, and still has a lot of fans. So, this one's for you, Dead heads! Call me when Carol and Daryl finally get together.)
It's a short newsletter this week; lots going on and TinyLetter acting crazy. If what you get in your inbox is nothing but Wingdings, my apologies. (Also how has no one made a movie about a computer that starts translating everything into Wingdings and driving its owner crazy? Wingdings -- they're the font equivalent of painting your room hot pink; I don't care what you thought you were doing, it's still going to drive you insane.)
One of the first things I bought when I moved to Los Angeles was a bulletin board for the wall over my desk. Every book or interview I had read about screenwriting always talked about how important a bulletin board was to help them “see” and rearrange the path of their story, each new scene represented by a notecard they would pin up, move or toss out.
In seven years I’ve never used my bulletin board that way. I’m not really sure I see the story that way, as much as it seems like a good idea. Mostly I’ve used my bulletin board to post art I like or cards from family or friends. Some pieces have stayed up so long when I took a bunch down I found dark boxes left underneath, the cards having protected the cork from the bleaching light of the LA sun.
Recently I’ve been putting up words or very short phrases I want to remember when I’m writing. “VISUAL” – for every scene, is it more than just heads talking? Is there a chance for a cool visual. “SLOWER” – a reminder in rewriting to take my time, give the characters and scenes a chance to surprise me; there’s more there than I know. “BLINDERS” – the idea that every story takes place from a certain point of view; in film and TV you see and move through the world through the eyes of your main character or characters. So when writing to keep asking myself, what is my character seeing? What’s their particular take on things?
Just this week I added a new card: “THE KEENAN”.
When I was studying theology I had this moral theology prof, Fr. Jim Keenan, who had this classic move he’d make every once in a while in class. He’d be lecturing on this or that – the class was sort of a survey of developments in moral theology through the ages (like how confession came about by way of Irish monks). And then all of a sudden once in a while he would step out of the flow of the lecture and offer a definition of something. Almost always it would be for a concept so familiar to everyone no one would think it actually needed definition.
Like the day he said he wanted to tell us the definition of mercy. Really? Fifty students studying theology (some for many years now) need a definition of mercy?
In the seminary we were encouraged to drink martinis during lectures.
#Jesuits
But then his definitions would always surprise. So mercy he defined not as being compassionate or showing forgiveness but “entering into the chaos of another.” On the one hand that definition can seem a little passive – entering into chaos doesn’t seem to necessarily answer the need the merciful one is seeing. But it also eliminates the power differential. Usually mercy keeps the one showing or doing the kindness in a relative position of power or authority – they’re the ones acting, they’re the ones with something to give, and the other the one “in need”.
In Jim’s definition, mercy instead requires first and foremost a letting go. Rather than me being in a position of authority, to show mercy is to submit to the experience and struggles of the other, to be with them in that. It’s now not about “fixing for someone weaker” but “being present with an equal”.
Love it or hate it, it’s an interesting definition, and one that I’ve kept coming back ever since.
Even beyond the cool idea, what I really came to like about Jim’s definitions was the way they invited me to think for myself. Each time Jim stepped back, like a baking show contestant pulling off the cover on his latest incredible confection (I’ve gotten into the Great British Bake Off this year, it’s the first time I’ve ever really watched a baking show and God we have got to talk), he wasn’t just offering some delicious morsel for us to savor. He was also revealing that the world is a lot more interesting than we know. That it’s filled with stuff we’ve taken for granted, each concept or relationship a treasure chest in waiting.
It empowered us to look around, in other words, notice the wallpaper of our thinkings and our lives and give our own fresh takes. You don’t have to be a PhD or a priest, he showed us. At the end of the day we’re each of us a font of insight and beauty.
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As a screenwriter one of the things I feel like I’m learning right now is that a truly great story involves more than just a great and unexpected chain of events. Or even that plus a really good set of characters.
No, the best stories have all that, and they offer at some point a Keenan or two of their own. It could be a momentary reflection from one of the characters, even a throwaway comment.
But it can also be the writer sneaks up on you; I’ve been catching up on back issues of Batman lately, and they’ve been doing this months and months long war between The Riddler and the Joker. Which is one of those ideas that you hear about and think of course those two characters should hate each other, but it turned no one had really done a story like that with them before.
The story has been fine, lots of twists and turns and drama. But then in its very last issue writer Tom King sort of pulled the curtain away from what we’d been watching to reveal this is really a story about how we choose to look at the world. For the Riddler, life is a puzzle, to be represented in his own tests of Batman, but also solved. Riddles have answers. Whereas for the Joker the whole idea of “understanding” or “figuring out” reality is an absurdity. Life cannot be figured out; neither can human beings. Everything is both ridiculous and a mystery.
Batman spends the duration of the war between these two characters, trying to end the violence. But personally he’s firmly Team Puzzle. His whole ethos is “I can figure this out”, “I can fix this.”
And what he has to learn is that that will only get you so far. That at some point you have to face the fact that life and other people and even you yourself are all a lot bigger and stranger than anyone can possibly comprehend, and so absurdity is a matter not of despair but course. Rubik’s Cube life all you want, at some point you have to learn how to laugh.
To work my way through this somewhat standard trope – super villains fight, super hero is caught in the middle – and suddenly be given at the end this meditation on human existence... it was such a satisfying meal. I’ll be thinking about it for months.
I can get so wrapped up in having great plot twists. But at the end of the day, me personally, what I really want is a character struggling with something big, and some small moment of insight.
I wonder what it would be like if we each occasionally proposed our own Keenans, whether on social media or letters to the editor or just old-fashioned conversation.
Even a good corny meme could do.
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Lately my Richard Rohr newsletter has been about trying to have a broader perspective on reality, to see things from the perspective of centuries and millennia rather than the RIGHT NOW. I’ve been finding it really reassuring.
Here’s a quote from contributor Cynthia Bourgeault:
When we lose sight of the cosmic scale, the result is anguish and impatience. If we measure human progress only by our usual historical benchmarks—the span of a presidential administration, the not-yet 250 years of the American democratic experiment, or the “mere” 2,500 years of Western civilization—we are still only catching the smallest snippet of the inevitable process of what Teilhard [de Chardin] calls tatonnement, or “trial and error,” part of the necessary play of freedom on its way to new combinations and creativity.
I don’t much like the “play of freedom” right now, not sure any of us do, but to see it all as a part of something much bigger, to step back and appreciate how far we’ve come as a species...for me, anyway, it's a great source of hope.
++ LINKS ++
How Steven Spielberg is a classic autumn.
How Thomas the Tank Engine is actually a nightmare story filled with repression and authoritarianism. (I did not know Thomas before reading this but after watching some clips I was shocked at how dark that show is.)
How do we fix software development so that the people writing the code can see what the heck they’re creating. (A deep dive, really fascinating stuff.)
How did Emma Thompson feel about the Harvey Weinstein revelations? (Spoiler: Furious. Some very good words from Emma in this BBC interview, including, when asked if she thought there were many others in Hollywood like Weinstein, “to that degree”, she said: Maybe not to that degree. Do they have to all be as bad as him to make it count? Does it only count if you’ve done it to loads and loads of women or does it count if you’ve done it to one woman, once? I think the latter.”)
Lastly, once again Bill Murray does something wonderful. (If you look at nothing else online this week, do yourself a favor and check this out. It’s pretty incredible.)
Have a good week. Look after yourself.