Category: Uncategorized

The Shift Change, Metropolis (1927)

One of the early masterworks of the silver screen, Metropolis examines the industrial revolution’s effects on humanity. In this scene, workers march in rigid lockstep. They exit a monstrous factory, the scale of which makes them seem small and insignificant. They are almost indistinguishable from one another, due to the drab uniforms they wear and the fires of industry casting dark shadows over their faces. Metropolis directly references the ancient pagan god Moloch, a deity that demands human sacrifice to be sated. In this new age of mechanical progress, does technology serve man, or does man serve technology? This question resonates with audiences to this day.

The Ruination of Charles Foster Kane, Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane is a masterwork of the silver screen, crafted by auteur director and lead actor Orson Welles. The film is a character study, following the life of the titular Charles Foster Kane. Kane begins as a brilliant, charismatic, and principled young man. Tragically, his own pride and ambition grow year by year, eventually displacing all that was once good in him. This climactic scene sees Kane old and alone, having just cast out the woman who was his last connection to humanity. He wanders small and aimless inside his immense and ostentatious mansion, a potent symbol of his own humanity being lost in his outsized desire to be a Great Man of History. The film calls to mind the Biblical proverb “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” This question resonates with audiences to this day.

The Terror of Getting Exactly What You Want, The Graduate (1967)

Legendary actor Dustin Hoffman was the breakout star of The Graduate, a masterwork of the silver screen. The film expertly tells a timeless story. Young Benjamin Braddock, fresh from school, must now forge a life for himself. But Benjamin is disinterested plotting a course for the future. He spends his time day drinking and having morally dubious dalliances with an older woman. He is at the same time both listless and self-destructive. Is he overwhelmed at the enormity of choosing his own path? Cynical about society’s expectations? Some mixture of both, or neither? In The Graduate’s final act, Benjamin realizes that he loves Elaine, the daughter of the older paramour he’d been seeing. He interrupts Elaine’s in-progress wedding to another man, and they run away together in a fit of romantic rebellion. The film closes on a shot of their excited faces slowly fading to a kind of stunned sobriety. “Now what?” their expressions seem to ask as the credits begin to roll. Indeed, each time we fall in love, or reach a goal, or pass some milestone in life, joy always seems to subside and the uncertainty of the future settles into the space where that joy used to be. How does one find happiness, and can you ever make it last? These questions resonate with audiences to this day.

Killing an Evil Space Wizard with Laser Swords, The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

The supposed final chapter in the modern American mythos that is Star Wars is a masterwork of the silver screen. This energetic film tells the classic tale of an evil space wizard who died decades prior coming inexplicably back to life, and how his secret granddaughter must collect various baubles and trinkets that will guide her to his location so she can kill him. This scene of their final confrontation seems to pay tribute to history’s greatest storytellers, as we witness an old man screeching with laughter as he shoots lightning out of his fingertips at a woman who is holding two glowing swords. She seems to intuit that she needs to cross the swords into an “X” shape, and this maneuver is, of course, the key to defeating the ultimate evil of the universe once and for all. The Rise of Skywalker left audiences in a state of awe. The film raised many, many, many, many questions. These questions resonate with audiences to this day.

Humans are unique among all forms of life on planet Earth; we are the only creatures to be born with a human heart. Many other species have tried. Chimpanzees and pigs can only manage a close proxy. Some blue whales succeed, but only briefly. They die almost immediately because a human heart is way too small for one of those big dudes. Most blue whales born with a human heart live only long enough to think “Aw sweet, a human heart. I’m gonna swim around here and….oof…I’m a little dizzy…..uh-oh,” and then they die.

We have understood the heart to be important since time immemorial. Many ancient cultures believed the heart to be the seat of a person’s intellect or will. This is interesting. In modern times, with our modern-ass scientific gizmos, we know that thoughts and emotions are chiefly the domain of the brain. We understand that cognitive experience happens in the head. In fact, when I am deep in thought, I will say I’m “in my own head”. Or when I am facing a stressful situation, I develop a headache. I wonder how much of that sensation is innate, and how much of it is because of my cultural schema. Somebody told me it happens in my brain, so that’s how I experience it. But what if I had been raised to believe that my “self” came from my heart? If I had been born three-thousand years ago, would my chest feel like it was buzzing while working out a problem? Would I get chest pains from a shitty day at work?

That way of conceptualizing one’s true “self” through the heart still dominates culture today, even though we don’t really think it’s totally-for-real-true. It’s more a metaphor. As evidence, I will point you toward literally any facet of culture. If you love someone, you give them your heart. If they reject you, your heart is broken. If someone is kind and generous, they have a big heart. If someone is evil, they are heartless. If someone is a sniveling, petty, needlessly-combative shrew made of shit, they are my landlord.

And just look through song or movie or book titles to get an idea of how much significance we give the heart. “Hearts in Atlantis”, “Heart of Glass”, “Heart Cooks Brain”, “Heart of Darkness”, “Heartless”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Heart of Stone”, “My Heart Will Go On”, etc. etc. etc. The band Heart.

It has become a cultural symbol of intention. To send someone a ❤️ is shorthand for love, support, compassion. It represents the seat of emotion rather than the seat of the intellect now.

I mean after all, the heart’s real function is utilitarian. It pumps blood around your body. Keeps the oxygen moving to where it is needed and keeps the carbon dioxide moving out of you. Moves nutrients and hormones and all kinds of juices around. It’s completely different than the real mastermind, the ol’ brain.

Or is it?

Scientists have discovered that a cluster of neurons hang out near the top of the heart. Using badass Alienware microscopy, we found out that a tiny brain is helping to regulate the activity of our principal subject here. Nervous system cells are scattered all over your body, but these ones sitting atop the heart are basically identical to the ones inside of your skull. Your ticker gets it’s own little thinker called an “intrinsic cardiac nervous system”. Heart gets brain, brain regulates heart, man brings back dinosaurs.

For a long time, if your heart was damaged in battle, you were dead. If a fellow caveman drove a particularly sharp rock into your hairy chest, it was game over. Same for if a rapier found home in your cardiac rhythm machine, or if a musketball burrowed into your aorta while you were standing next to Napoleon. The heart was too quintessential and mysterious to be subject to human attempts to repair it. As the physical phylactery for your soul, it was beyond our capabilities. We could amputate your leg or stint your arm. If shrapnel found it’s way into your heart, well, goodbye.

Until World War One. The Great War, as it was called then, because it was so fun and awesome. In WW1, some guys were like “Nah man, fuck that shit. I can totally do surgery on the heart.” George Grey Turner was a British doctor. He received a patient who had been shot right in the heart with a machine gun round. He used a brand-new technology called an X-Ray to look at the patient’s chest, and he could see a bullet inside of the patient’s heart, moving with every beat. Figuring “Well, if we go by the book, he’s already dead,” Turner cut him open and reached in and grabbed the dude’s heart. He palpated around, hoping to extract the bullet. He never did, but he dislodged it enough to heal his patient’s hit points, and the man survived. I like this story because World War One is such a fuckup. There was no legitimate motivation for either side, but we had all this new technology that we just had to try out for the purposes of killing people. Planes! Tanks! Chemical Weapons! All kinds of ways for the industrial revolution to kill people! But there was also some dude who was like “Hey maybe some cool cutting-edge tech could be used for Life.” And it was to salvage a man’s heart. Other doctors had done work on the heart before. Not in the same way but also progressing the thought. Daniel Hale Williams was a noteworthy one. We slowly learned that it wasn’t sacrosanct and beyond reproach. We could heal it.

Werner Forssmann was a German, as if you couldn’t tell by the name, who did heart surgery on himself. Again, there was a superstition that too much intrusion into the heart itself would be fatal. So he decided to test his own hypothesis about putting a catheter up in there. He duped a nurse into assisting him to cut open his own chest and to insert a needle to better take an x-ray of his heart. The man touched his own heart with his fingers. Aware and under only local anesthesia. He was reckless and stupid, but it proved that such a thing was possible. He later became a Nazi, but um…I mean. Nobody is saying he was smart in that way. I certainly am not. Ugh, okay.

What is the dang heart? We may never know for sure. Metronome of the soul? Perhaps. Thick knot of muscle, squeezing carbohydrates around my body? Perhaps. A delicious nugget of muscle in an otherwise offal bucket of livers and gizzards? The world may never know.