An article in the Huffington Post talked about the good and bad of the character Kylo Ren in Star Wars. The author wrote, “No offense to Adam Driver, but when Ren took off his mask, I was expecting someone more… evil looking (maybe monstrous, or at least more rugged), not someone with boyish, clean-shaven good looks.”
I disagree. I think Ren, with his youthful, boyish face, perfectly embodies the greatest villain of our time: the entitled white young man who abuses the inherited power and privilege he was born with.
It has always been a disturbing trope to me that the evil must be ugly or scarred – and therefore the ugly and scarred must be evil.
That myth has always been to evil’s advantage, since being injured leaves far more scars than doing injury.
*points up* *points up harder* *gestures wildly* This this thissssssss!
One by one, the rooms of your house disappear. One day, all that remains is your backyard. You don’t know why, but you know that if you put out certain objects and fill the cat bowl with food, the cats will come. This becomes your life. Filling the cat bowl. Buying the cat toys. Watching the cats.
A faint, peaceful tune is always playing. The sound of meows is ever-present, even when the food bowls are empty and the cat toys lie dormant, with no cat in sight. You do not know where the music or the meowing truly comes from.
No matter how much food you put out, they are never sated. They are always hungry.
Then you wonder if it’s actually the cats eating the food. Although the food continually depletes while they are present, you realize you have never even seen them eat it.
In fact, you never see any cats come or go. They are either present or they are not.
You begin to wonder if the cats are truly real. You realize they are all actually the same cat, with the same faces and the same movements. Only their colors, and occasionally costumes, differ.
And who puts them in costumes? Are these cats sentient? Why do some cats respond to the names of deceased historical figures?
The cats do seem to possess greater intelligence and resourcefulness. They leave behind fish to show their gratitude. Fish you can use in a strange market in exchange for goods for the cats. Who makes these goods? And why would they accept fish as any sort of currency? What does the owner of this market use the fish for?
You could save up 10 gold fish to trade for 250 silver fish. But gold fish is hard to come by, while silver fish accumulate fairly quickly, so this trade is useless to you. The only trade you are forced to make, in what must be a capitalist society more unforgiving and unfair than your own, is 500 silver fish for 10 gold. How this kind of exchange could exist in any kind of sensible or stable economic system in whatever society these cats must be part of, escapes you.
One day, everything goes completely black. You wonder if you are about to lose consciousness. Out of the abyss quietly walks one of the cats to the center of your vision. It sits there, quietly, silently, unmoving, waiting. When you finally approach it offers you something. A memento. This happens time and time again. The items they give you seem to have little if anything in common, most are useless, some are disgusting. They don’t seem to have any particular value, but the way each cat presents it to you, tells you it means a lot to the cat. You feel incredibly grateful with each memento, saving each one, and you don’t know why.
You save enough gold fish to buy what they call “an extension”–you are able to make one room for your house, but this room is for the cats only. You think you may be able to live here, reclaim your life again. But you cannot enter the room. As before, you are a but an observer. You realize there is a cat bowl in the room already. You fill it with food. You put toys in the room. The cats come again. You are happy.
Are they cats? Were they always cats? Are they lost souls in purrgatory, carrying lost items from their former short, brief human lives? Are you meant to watch them in this endless resting place, for the extension of eternity, a quiet, passive host, waiting for an end that will never come?
