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[Spoilers abound.
Swim at your own risk.]
The
2016 science fiction movie Arrival concerns many fascinating ideas,
but two, in particular, stand-out as being particularly intriguing or
noteworthy, especially given our current national and historical context.
The
first such notion involves a cornerstone of communication studies: The Sapir-Whorf Theory.
Broadly-speaking,
there are two readings of this particular hypothesis, but Professor Betty Byrne
explains
the hypothesis best in an interview at Slate with Melissa Martinelli, from
November of 2016:
“There are two ways of thinking about the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and scholars have argued over which of these two Sapir
and/or Whorf actually intended.
The weaker version is linguistic
relativity, which is the notion that there’s a
correlation between language and worldview. “Different language communities
experience reality differently.”
The stronger view is called linguistic
determinism, and that’s the view that language
actually determines the way you see reality, the way you perceive it.”
What is being discussed here, specifically?
No less than the idea that the code (language) that we use to
express our philosophy of the universe actually shapes our philosophy of the universe.
Denis Villenueve’s Arrival, as I noted in a response to
a blog reader yesterday, actually name-checks Sapir-Whorf in the film’s dialogue.
Much is made in the film of the notion that separate nation-states (with
individual ideologies) attempt to teach the aliens to speak meaningfully to
humans.
But since each nation-state -- China, Russia, etc. -- possesses
a different code, and a different understanding behind the code, each will
define terms like “weapon,” or “war” in a very different way. For the alien
learners, this is a problem.
Will they learn that human life is a competition? A game? A battle?
Or a “non-zero sum game?”
In discussing the ways that language can shape reality, Arrival
eerily forecasts, the “post truth,” “fake news” world we live in now, in 2017.
If those in power here view America as weak, being taken advantage of by
shadowy foreign governments, and experiencing “carnage,” do they risk shaping
America into the very dystopia they describe and fear? Is our reality being re-shaped on Twitter,
140 characters at a time?
The second idea of value in Arrival is much more personal. It
concerns the path one must choose once the mind has become open to new
ideas.
One can either embrace those ideas -- and move forward into a larger, more nuanced world -- or one can attempt to deny what has been learned,
and fall back on old outdated perceptions; essentially ignoring all new input.
If understanding the code of another culture can open up new
doorways, reliance or dependence on the old code, the familiar one that formed
our cultural understanding, can result in slammed doors. The response to
understanding the world better is then, in those instances, a retreat into a
bubble of confirmation bias, or pre-existing beliefs.
Arrival -- following on in the tradition of Solaris
(1972), or even the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) premiere episode, “Emissary”
-- comments meaningfully on the human condition, and its limitations regarding
perception of time. What the aliens teach us in the film goes against the
familiar code our language has established regarding chronology.
What if there isn’t a past, present or future? What if time is
non-linear…a circle?
And if time is non-linear -- if there is no past/present/future --
what does this new understanding of reality do to our concrete understandings
of birth and death, mortality and the afterlife?
Interstellar (2014) from Christopher Nolan was likely
the last big-budget cerebral science fiction film to play so cleverly with our
understanding of time, but Arrival is an even stronger, smarter
film, in part, because of the lead character’s humanity, and relatability.
Amy Adams’ Dr. Louise Banks sees her conscious altered by
contact with an alien race -- the Heptapods -- but the change doesn’t make her
immortal, or allow her to escape the bounds of reality. Instead, it permits her, touchingly, to
better perceive time, and contextualize a tragic experience in her life. What
she realizes, finally, is something amazing, and beautiful. The startling
manner in which the film permits her self-discovery to unfold actually reflects
the nature of the discovery itself.
In this case, form has reflected and augmented thematic content,
and -- as you know -- I believe that equation is the highest virtue of
filmmaking: the ability of an image to echo, mirror or encapsulate for
audiences the point of the narrative, or increase our understanding of it.
Thrilling and smart, Arrival is also filed with
unforgettable imagery, not the least of which involves the visualization of the
alien vessels, and their placement on our terrestrial landscapes. The design of
the Heptapod ship, too, seems to suggest the something vital about the alien
nature, and their way of understanding reality.
In short, Arrival, like its lead character,
Louis Banks, plays a “non-zero sum game.”
A non-zero sum game is a situation, in game theory in particular,
in which one player’s gain or loss does not necessarily equate to the other
player’s loss.
The aliens, the terrestrial combatants, and the individual lead
characters all undertake in Arrival an encounter that changes
them and forces them to grow in surprising directions.
If only they can contend with the new world-view their meeting
reveals…
“Not
everyone is able to process experiences like this.”
A linguist and college professor, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams)
watches from her class-room as twelve alien space ships set down at seemingly
random locations around the world.
As panic sets in across the globe, Banks is contacted by the
U.S. military. Colonel Weber (Forest
Whitaker) wants her to translate the alien language, and help him come to a
better understanding of what this possible enemy may want on Earth.
Dr. Banks counters that she cannot translate an alien language
until she learns something of the alien culture; until she is able to interact
with the aliens, called Heptapods.
Weber is reluctant at first, but soon agrees to escort Banks to
Montana, where the U.S. Army has set up a command post near one alien
ship. On the helicopter ride to the
site, Banks encounters another expert in his field, physicist Ian Donnelly
(Jeremy Renner), who believes, unlike Banks, that science is the foundation of
civilization.
Banks argues, contrarily that language is the “glue that holds a people together.”
Upon contact with the aliens, Banks attempts to form a common
fund of knowledge, or language, upon which to build mutual understanding and
trust. Other scientists around the world also attempt to do so but utilize
different learning approaches, some more confrontational than others.
As Banks learns more about the aliens and their strange
language, she begins to understand more about them. As other countries grow alarmed that the aliens
may be bringing weapons to Earth to cause fighting among its people, Banks
receives the full-language as a gift. She understands that the language is not
a weapon, but a tool.
It is a tool that fundamentally transforms Banks’ understanding
of life, and opens her up to a possibility that she had never before
contemplated.
“How
would you approach translating this?”
Language relates to culture. I think everybody agrees with that
premise. But can language determine
culture?
That’s a key question regarding the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and
also the themes of Arrival. We all understand what “war” is, for example, but what
if we understand that the word originally meant “desire for more cows” (in Sanskrit)?
Does everything we fight for -- and kill for -- come down,
finally, to a desire for more material wealth?
Is that how we understand war now?
Perhaps. Our language, our code, shapes our reality, every day.
We see this idea very clearly in our understanding of time, to
utilize a more illustrative example. We mark time as a force that moves in one
direction only, from the past to the future. We don’t die, grow young, and
undergo birth.
Instead, the opposite always appears to occur.
But what if time is non-linear, and has no direction whatsoever?
What if we can’t understand the true nature of time because of our (limited) definition
of time, which reads something like this: “the
indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and
future regarded as a whole.”
Arrival
proposes and depicts an
alien race that views time as non-linear. These aliens see outside the concrete
ideas of past or future, and thus view the world differently than we do. That viewpoint
is reflected in the alien language or alphabet, which is visualized as a series
of inky circles of different thickness and edges.
In other words, the Heptopod language reflects the way the
aliens see the universe (as a circle), just as our language code reflects the way
we view the universe. Our language has a beginning and an end. Our alphabet
starts at “A” and ends at “Z.”
Yet Arrival travels beyond Sapir-Whorf by suggesting that if Banks
learns the alien language, her perception will also change; and that she will also
possess the ability to see outside linear time.
This is poetic license regarding Sapir-Whorf, to be certain, but good
poetic license.
Why? Well, when we are exposed to different cultures and their
belief systems, we can’t go back to the narrow, parochial ethnocentric view we
held before. The mere exposure to different thoughts, different words, a
different language, opens up doorways to new understandings. Arrival
takes the idea literally, but I believe it also utilizes it as a metaphor for
what occurs every day in intercultural communication: the ability to grow beyond one’s set of precepts to understand that
existence is richer than any one world view suggests.
Stuck in our own ethnocentric bubbles, we believe there is but
one way to do things (our way!). But if we open ourselves up to other
languages, cultures, and world-views, we start to become relativistic in our
outlook; understanding that different people, living in different places,
possess different answers to problems. Sure, there are some customs or beliefs we
will always reject as too alien, or too different, or even too barbaric (see:
cannibalism in The Green Inferno [2015]).
But other customs or beliefs we will recognize as wise, or as having
things in common with our own traditions and morality.
Indeed, Banks almost magically assumes the power to view time in
a non-linear fashion in Arrival after being gifted with the
totality of the Hepatopod language. Yet metaphorically, this gift is something
akin to the scales falling from her eyes. Her mastery of the alien language and
culture grants her a new perspective on our own. Consider for a moment that the
key imperatives for studying intercultural communication are: Self-awareness,
demographic, economic, technological, peace, and ethical growth. In some-sense, Banks takes on several of these
imperatives in the film, or at least the peace, ethics, and self-awareness ones.
Now consider Banks’ embrace
of the new understanding she gleans from the aliens, and contrast it with the
xenophobia we see rampant in today’s political swamp. Of late, have we seen “others” consistently scapegoated
as dangerous bogeymen. For example, illegal immigrants are often deemed rapists
and murderers. Those of divergent religious beliefs would be banned from the
United States, and by a president who ostensibly supports religious liberty.
Banks reaches out to the
alien viewpoint with understanding, and saves mankind. If she simply retreated into fear and
fear-mongering, the human race would have been doomed, instead, by its own
self-destructive impulses.
That’s the big picture of Arrival.
It is the idea that language is “the
first weapon drawn” in a conflict. But that language can also be the basis
not for war, or battle, but for better understanding (just rarely in 140
characters).
How does Banks come to
understand herself better? How does intercultural communication make her more
self-aware?
Leave the cerebral notions
of Sapir-Whorf behind for a moment, and consider, what she chooses at film’s
end. With a knowledge of non-linear
time, Banks comes to see that she will have a child, a girl. She will love and raise that girl into young
adulthood, and then, tragically, see that young woman taken away by incurable
cancer.
But, knowing about her
daughter’s death is not a reason, finally, for Louise to choose a different
course. Instead, Banks sees that her
daughter’s life possesses meaning, and continues, always, even if in linear
time, Louise will have to suffer her child’s absence.
Oppositely, Banks’ husband,
Ian, resents her choice to have a child, knowing that the child will die young.
It’s as if all that love is wasted on a life that is short. It’s as if Louise
chose cruelty, giving birth to a child just to see that individual die.
But that child’s life is not
wasted, and Banks is able to discern that fact. Although we are “so bound by time and its order,” Banks
is able to see that the times of love and joy in her child’s life are not
outweighed by the shortness of her life-span, or by the sad way that her life
ends. For if time is non-linear, then
death is not an ending.
We saw this idea, in some
sense, in “Emissary,” the premiere of Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine. Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) was unable to get
beyond the tragic death of his young wife, Jennifer, in the Battle of Wolf 359.
He later encountered the wormhole aliens, who didn’t understand the concept of
linear of time, or his refusal to end his period of mourning.
If time is non-linear,
mourning is no longer necessary.
Banks chooses that her
daughter should exist, despite the fact that she will die of a terrible disease
when she is young.
Banks feels that because
time is non-linear, her child will “come
back to her” and that what she believed was the beginning and end of a
journey were no such thing.
“There are days that define your story beyond your life,” she
concludes. Life is not a zero sum game. You don’t live and then die. You live and die, and cycle goes on, in a
circle, never-ending.
Arrival’s twist
in terms of narrative structure is that the story of Louise’s child -- life,
growth, death -- is told first. It is the first mini-arc of the movie’s plot. Therefore,
we presume, throughout the film, that Louise’s child has died, and that she is
experiencing grief and loneliness over it.
Instead, the truth is that
Louise has not yet had the child, or even met the father of her child. She only becomes aware of these factors after
encountering and mastering the alien language.
We have, like Louise, misunderstood the nature of time, and the
time-line of the film. We see her child’s
story first, but are experiencing the cinematic equivalent of non-linear time.
By giving us the end of
Louise’s story as a mother first, the film structurally apes the nature of the
alien world view. Form reflects content. The visuals
symbolically teach us what we need to know about the Heptapod understanding of
the universe.
In terms of visuals, I can
argue that I find the film quite lovely too.
If language is an expression
of art, then imagery is, too. Consider the first, portentous visual of the
alien ship in Arrival. We are treated
to an aerial view of Earth’s green, rocky landscape, and a bed of encroaching
mist. Beyond and over the wall of mist is a giant levitating ship that looks
like a pebble perched on its side.
The ship, in fact, looks
like a pebble you might choose to skip across a pond. Its shape evokes the idea of a stone creating
ripples in time, its influence expanding outward in all directions at once
(past, present and future?)
Arrival is
smart, emotionally-powerful, and beautifully-wrought. It doesn’t possess all
the answers, but its brilliance arises in its ability to ask the right
questions about the world, and our existence as human beings.
How
would you approach translating this?
Arrival isn’t
a movie about a linguist who saves the world, but about a linguist who comes to
understand her own world in a way that makes her existence (and her daughter’s existence)
not just bearable, but meaningful.
This is the great challenge
for all of us, every day, isn’t it?
