Death of the ‘Self’

Completion of fantasies and self-destruction in movies

Movies present an interesting space for reflection. Fictional in nature (mostly) they still need to remain tethered, even if in the loosest sense, to reality and logic. It is for this reason that movies are fertile territory for analysis and reflection, their fictional nature makes them far enough from us that we can try to objectively analyse them without the influence of our own experiences while remaining ‘real’ enough to make transferable lessons that can be applied to our own lives.

A repetitive theme in movies surrounds the concept of the ‘Self’. Many movies touch on concepts such as ‘finding yourself’ and present a smooth developmental perspective of the ‘Self’ or a coming to terms with who one ‘really is’. These uplifting stories are usually found in your romcoms or coming of age movies and even your regular action flics where the hero becomes the vengeful killing machine he is (this is who I am, even if I don’t want to be) — but of the good kind of course. All these presentations of the self depend on an essentialist interpretation. That is that someone’s identity can be distilled down to one essential characteristic. It is only once that essence has been uncovered and accepted that someone can truly become themselves. Essentialism can be linked to another philosophical concept, raison d’etre which loosely translates into reason/purpose for/of being/existence.

More interesting than the concepts of finding oneself, though, are the instances in movies where the ‘Self’ is completely destroyed. These presentations confront us with the opposite of the simple ‘finding’ narrative and compel us to question what the ‘Self’ even is in the first place.

Three character examples from Les Miserables (2012) and The Phantom of the Opera (2004) can help us understand this dynamic some more.

Death number 1: Jean Valjean — Les Miserables

Jean Valjean is the main character of Les Miserables, it is his story that ties together the several storylines from revolution and love. His story, however, is one that starts in destitution. Released from prison after 19 years (5 for his theft of a loaf of bread to feed his sisters child and the rest for trying to escape) he now carries a parole letter, a letter that shows he is a criminal making it nearly impossible to seek employment.

His fate changes, or is met (depending on how you want to look at it) after he is given sanctuary by a Bishop. Having been destitute for so long, Jean Valjean, spotting plenty of silver in the Bishops home, steals it and escapes into the night. The next day, he is brought back chained by the police who tell the priest that Jean Valjean has taken them for fools and told them that the priest had given him the silver. At this pivotal moment the Priest, instead of outing Valjean for a thief tells the police that Valjean is telling the truth. Moreover, he looks and Valjean and tells him you left too soon and forgot the best bits, and proceeds to give him two additional silver candle holders.

Valjean is completely baffled by this gesture and the next musical bit is him poetically presenting his struggle to understand who he is and the absurd gesture taken by the Bishop.

Valjean begins by lamenting the way he has been treated, how the harshness of prison has reduced him to thievery and hatred “Sweet Jesus, what have I done? Become a thief in the night Become a dog on the run… For I had come to hate the world This world that always hated me Take an eye for an eye Turn your heart into stone This is all I have lived for This is all I have known”. He then describes the absurd moment from his perspective “One word from him and I’d be back Beneath the lash, upon the rack Instead he offers me my freedom

I feel my shame inside me like a knife He told me that I have a soul How does he know? What spirit comes to move my life? Is there another way to go?” To finally come to the conclusion that the only thing he can do is to ‘Kill’ Jean Valjean “As I stare into the void To the whirlpool of my sin I’ll escape now from that world From the world of Jean Valjean Jean Valjean is nothing now Another story must begin”. And escape he does, the next time we see Valjean he is a mayor of a Parisian town and an owner of a tile factory but is living under an assumed name.

Transformation or accommodation?

Many take this scene as a transformative one. The ‘killing of the self’ is the sacrifice Valjean makes to go on and live an honourable life his transformation from embattled victim to hopeful citizen. The interesting thing here is that it is at this stage that Valjean commits his real crime of assuming a new identity and destroying his parol documents. Prior to this, his crimes were of necessity, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's child and then stealing silver so he could survive.

Another interesting thing is that this ‘killing of the self’ is also peculiar considering that Valjean himself does not consider it a suicide (i.e. he did not commit the killing of the self himself) for in his song he acknowledges that Valjean was killed by the prison system “My life was a war that could never be won They gave me a number and murdered Valjean When they chained me and left me for dead Just for stealing a mouthful of bread”.

This then reveals an interesting multitude of movements and not just one single ‘liberating’ transformation. Valjean is ‘Murdered’ by the prison system for being himself — someone doing what he needs to do to survive, and then is ‘killed’ by himself to justify the commitment of sin. It is sin then that is the liberating movement in Valjean’s development.

But if Valjean seems so pious, singing about feeling his shame like a knife in him, why did he commit a sin to lie about his identity? If anything, his absurd interaction with the Bishop should go to prove to him that he does not have to lie about who he is to be alright, that absurd interaction should give him hope to continue being Valjean, indeed to reincarnate him. Instead, Valjean chooses to kill him once more.

The answer here, then, is that Valjean committed a sin, not due to a profound and poetic transformation or finding one’s self. But a sin of perceived necessity, that for Valjean to make the best use of this silver he must kill Valjean. Opportunism then, and not self-discovery, is what drives the affirmation of Valjean's ‘murder’ and the commitment of the original sin.

The final revelation

Later in the movie, however, Valjean’s lie catches up to him as another person is captured and is about to be sentenced to prison for being Valjean, a false accusation. When the real Valjean hears of this it sends him into another introspective trip accompanied by the musical number “Who am I?” where Valjean wonders if he should let this man take the fall for him and retain his freedom but be damned or reveal the truth and be condemned — be sent back to prison. Valjean eventually chooses the later, and for the rest of the movie lives as a fugitive.

Some may take from this message that one cannot escape who they truly are. That it was only normal for Valjean to ‘return’ to his essence — a victim of the system who is good at heart. That his true self will be revealed. Indeed this is affirmed by Valjean who, in the existential crisis brought on by this news, asks “Can I conceal myself for evermore? Pretend I’m not the man I was before? And must my name until I die Be no more than an alibi? Must I lie?”. Valjean even hints that it was this lie that allowed him to “journey on” but as we have seen before the lesson from the absurd interaction is specifically that he does not have to lie and that he did not have to affirm the murder of his ‘Self’

The takeaway from all of this then is not that there is an essential self that we must try to uncover — or that will naturally uncover itself. It is that the self is moulded more by absurd happenings in our environment than our introspection. Both ‘trasformative’ instances underwent by Valjean were triggered by absurd interactions, the first when the Bishop provided Valjean with his vote of confidence, the second when the fake Valjean is facing trial — for what else is the idea of a random person being mistaken for someone else but absurd?

If who we are is determined by the absurd happenings around us then the introspection we usually associate with self-discovery becomes nothing but an after the fact rationalisation.

Death number 2: Javert — Les Miserables

Javert’s case is significantly easier to uncover than that of Jean Valjean. The anti-hero, Javert is the prison guard come captain of police who gives Jean Valjean his parole papers and then continues to hunt for him after he never turns up.

Javert is the ardent officer upholding the rule of law and receives his duty with the strictest consideration. So strict is his devotion to upholding the law that when he first wrongfully assumes that the mayor (Valjean’s alias) is Valjean, he asks to be punished and for Valjean to press charges against him saying “I’ve done you wrong Let no forgiveness be shown I’ve been as hard On every rogue I have known”. This fanaticism is confirmed in Javert’s first solo “Stars” where Javert’s conviction is given godly status.

Comparing himself to Valjean, he claims “He knows his way in the dark Mine is the way of the Lord Those who follow the path of the righteous Shall have their reward And if they fall As Lucifer fell The flames The sword!”. For Javert, the immovability of the law is just like that of the stars, and justice must have its way at any cost “And so it must be, and so it is written On the doorway to paradise That those who falter and those who fall Must pay the price!”

The only other thing we know about Javert, is that he comes from a background of poverty and crime. He says as much in one of his confrontation with Valjean (they have several) where he makes it clear to Valjean that “You know nothing of Javert I was born inside a jail I was born with scum like you I am from the gutter too!”.

Unlike Valjean, then, who is reactive when it comes to who he is, Javert has a much clearer idea of his identity and his chosen mission, his raison d’etre.

It’s easy to romanticise Javert’s commitment to upholding the law. However, we must look closer.

The Universal

For many of us, as is the case for Javert, the law is seen as a universal principle, something that we must all bow our individualism too. For the law is the expression of justice, it is the ethical.

Law is not the only thing that we view as universal, other concepts such as ‘humanity’, ‘love’ (in all its different forms), ‘duty’, etc. share the category of the universal. All things that we accept require us to bend our individualism too.

What is interesting, however, is that, for us, there is always a dissonance between the universal and the individual. We ebb towards the universal but our individualism is maintained. The universal is something we hold above us. As such, it is ridiculous to imagine holding the universal as our raison d’etre, for that means losing any and all sense of the individual. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Javert does, he sacrifices his individualism for the universal.

Here is where it gets interesting. Knowing what we do about Javert’s past, we must question if his commitment to upholding the law is because he views it as the universal, or, if by subsuming his identity within it, he can then escape facing what his identity may have been, an identity closer to his scum and gutter riddled birth. This presents a bit of a paradox where, if Javert’s fanatic belief in the law is simply an escape, then his raison d’etre is specifically a reason to not be!

Unravelling the universal

At a pivotal moment in the movie. Javert is captured by revolutionaries only to be saved by Valjean (he tells the revolutionaries that he will execute him and then lets him go). Javert makes it clear to Valjean that he is a fool to provide him with this gesture of mercy saying “Yes, Valjean, you want a deal. Shoot me now for all I care! If you let me go beware. You’ll still answer to Javert!” Valjean replies by saying that Javert is wrong “and has always been wrong” and even gives him his address so he can find him later.

Eventually, Javert catches up to Valjean. However, instead of killing or arresting him, and to his own bewilderment, he lets him go.

This sends Javert into a violent existential spin. He curses Valjean for showing him mercy. Valjean did not live up to Javerts expectation of being ‘always a thief’ otherwise he would have not spared him. Here the absoluteness of the law clashes with the fact that Javert was not able to uphold it. Javert is so aware of this he proclaims that “Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief!

Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase. I am the law and the law is not mocked I’ll spit his pity right back in his face There is nothing on earth that we share It is either Valjean or Javert!” and takes his own life!

Javert’s suicide can be read in either of two ways. The first is that by subsuming his being into the universal, and then upon realising that he cannot live up to the universal, chooses to take his life for the sake of maintaining the universal — I would rather die than have to live in a world where I have failed the universal, or, where the universal does not exist.

The second reading is significantly more tragic. It is not the breaking of the universal that broke Javert, rather the realisation that one does not have to be bound to a universal, that a thief does not always need to be a thief. This he was shown when Valjean spared his life. The realization that one does not need to be tied to a universal means that Javert’s choice to bind himself to it as an escape from his past was unnecessary, in other words, it was a waste. Javert hints at this when he says “And must I now begin to doubt, Who never doubted all these years? My heart is stone and still it trembles The world I have known is lost in shadow.” In the instance that Javert breaks with the universal, he realises that his binding to it was wholly unnecessary and in that very instant he sees the infinite possibilities of lives that he could have lived, that his raison d’etre was indeed a reason to not be. It is this realisation that crushes him and pushes him towards making a final genuine act of taking his life.

Death number 3: The Phantom— Phantom of the Opera

The final instance is one that presents an even more interesting challenge. The Phantom, in the Phantom of the Opera, spent his life stuck several layers under the theatre which he haunts. Not only does the Phantom extort the Opera Theatre’s owners for a salary but also provides them with direction on their productions and staff, particularly who should get the lead role.

Throughout the movie, we learn that the Phantom has an infatuation with one of the singers, Christine, which he has helped train. The rest of the movie is centred around the singer choosing between loving a wealthy patron, Raoul, or the Phantom who she has a curious interest in considering his mysterious identity and the fact that he was her “Angel of Music”.

To woo Christine, the Phantom secures her a lead role at the Opera and eventually writes an Opera (Don Juan) to honour their love. During the opera, Christine confesses her love to the Phantom and he reveals his face to the crowd and the Opera house owners who have set a trap for him. In the scuffle that ensues, the Phantom drops the Opera House’s Chandelier setting it on fire and escapes with Christine into his lair. Raoul persues the Phantom and eventually finds him but is bested by the Phantom who then turns to Christine and forces her to choose between them, threatening to kill Raoul (but give her her freedom) if she does not choose him (in which case he would set Raoul free).

Christine chooses the Phantom. At this stage though, the Phantom becomes extremely insular and pushes Christine away while also freeing Raoul and disappearing. In the next scene, well into the future, we are informed that the Phantom lives as a rose with a black bow (his signature calling sign) is found on Christine’s grave as Raoul was visiting it.

This presents us with a peculiar case, where, the instance in which all the Phantom’s dreams are met is also the instance in which he denounces them and his role as the Phantom of the Opera to disappear into the night.

The popular interpretations of why the Phantom pushed Christine away and disappeared is either that he realised that Christine did not choose him voluntarily (although she did proclaim her love to him during the movie) or, that by the time the Phantom was able to secure Christine, any chance of them having a life together was lost since the opera house had burned down and the phantom was being pursued.

But there is a lapse in this analysis. Unlike Javert, the Phantom does not truly think that all is lost, he does not kill himself, he just withdraws and lives a solitary (?) life — we don’t really know what happens to the Phantom after the ultimate confrontation. His success at doing so suggests that he could, if he wanted to, have taken Christine with him and begun anew. However, he didn’t, and his actions of pushing Christine away and freeing Raoul came with no hesitation suggesting something deeper.

Fantasies of reality

For the entirety of the movie and really his life, the Phantom existed as the polar opposite to the Opera house, its owners, and Christine — his infatuation with her was obviously long founded as he trained her to be the Opera singer of his desire, and him being her “Angel of Music”. Who the Phantom is was determined by this juxtaposition and his belief that he was an outsider to the ‘other’ (the opera house itself and all that it comes with). In other words, there is no Phantom without the Opera house and the tension between the two.

This tension subsumed the Phantoms identity, it became who he is, and, from it, developed his fantasy of eventually overcoming the ‘other’ developed. His life’s purpose was in pursuit of this fantasy — that he would get with Christine and become the director of the Opera house (?). But the truth is we do not really know what this fantasy is, and neither does the Phantom since he never really expresses a goal clearly, just a wishy-washy trajectory.

But this is exactly what makes a fantasy so important, it is that it cannot be defined. It remains within the subject as a ‘feeling’ because if it could be defined then it could be rationalised and a subject can eventually talk themselves out of its absurdity and move on with their lives. The Phantom did not have to be the reclusive Phantom of the Opera that he was as is proven by his ability to just walk away at the end of the movie. For all we know, he could have become a successful Opera producer anywhere else, he could have freed himself from the suspension with the ‘other’ at any time, but then he would have been confronted with the absurd and frightful task of securing another identity, of taking charge of becoming, of being, someone else, something else. The fantasy provided him with security from this task and he embraced it till its end, that is, till the fantasy was achieved and it usefulness became obsolete. At that stage, the phantom had no choice but to embark on the very thing he thought the fantasy was giving him, figuring out who or what his ‘self’ really is.

In other words, the moment the Phantom met his ‘objective’ the suspension it produced disappeared leaving him with nothing because the fantasy was never what he really wanted, it was only what gave him form.

Fantasies of our own creation

This is not just something that happens in movies, we are all guilty of developing fantasies that help give us form and justify irrational behaviour that without would provide us with a much larger challenge. In this way, fantasies become a sort of path of least resistance.

Think about relationships you have that don’t necessarily provide you with any value except giving you some ‘form’. Toxic relationships with someone you ‘love’ — a parent, a friend, or a significant other, because you believe that it will eventually ‘all work out’.

More than relationships with others, think about our relationship with things or ideas. The number of beliefs we hold that are not of our own choosing but that ‘make us who we are’ or a dream that we know is absurd and irrational, becoming the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, accumulating immense wealth — irrational things because they are statistically improbable and because wealth is often multi-generational and inherited, not created. Even the idea of finding a ‘soul mate’ is one that can leave us in suspension unable to progress or even let ourselves experience life as it happens.

Most of the time we end up feeding such fantasies, and many others, simply because we would be lost without them or, we are afraid of finding out what ‘form’ we would take if we didn’t hold on to them. In the worst of situations, we become so convinced by our fantasies that we believe that holding onto them is our only option eventually becoming nothing more than our fantasies, just like the Phantom.

These three examples provide us with a much deeper and more critical reading of what the ‘Self’ may or may not be than any ‘discovery’ story could. Is the ‘Self’ nothing but a retroactive rationalisation of the absurd things that happen to us? Or is it moulded by our pursuit of Universals which we mistake as good or desirable? Even more alarmingly how much of the ‘Self’ is of our own choosing as opposed to a forced suspension we create with the fantasies we hold on to? Our hope of ever uncovering who we truly are lies in asking these questions and being ready to face whatever comes by asking them, even if we don’t like the answers we might reach.