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On the old Coast

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A Guilty

The above photograph is from Aneta Bartos’ collection titled, Family Portrait. The title and the image paired together seems strange and, for some reason, wrong. The picture invokes an illusory emotion to capture; guilt. Nothing out of the ordinary exists in the image alone. If not for the title, Bartos’ photo would be like any other photo on a social media site with sexual undertones and might elicit from some a criticism of the age gap. The image becomes disgusting when presented the information of their relationship as father and daughter. Family Portrait is a clear example of how context shapes the way people perceive images.  What the viewer sees is a family bonding moment between father and daughter eating ice cream on a hot summer day, yet observers may also feel a sense of guilt and disgust when presented information that suggests that they are biologically related  after applying a sexualized reading to an otherwise innocuous image. The basis of my analysis is to break down what the image contains that creates this feeling of guilt so prevalent through examining the ethos, logos, and pathos of using such imagery.

           The most important portion of the photograph is the text assigned to it. The image loses much of its subversive qualities without the knowledge of the father-daughter relationship between the two subjects. Text directly governs how people perceive the image and Bartos acknowledges this to maintain control over her work. Further context situates her photograph beyond a conduit to provide shock value, and instead, she incites a feeling of the guilt in the audience. It is simultaneously as an expression of a lost connection between father and daughter (Yerebakan, Aneta Bartos: Family Portrait). This work not only highlights the peculiar delicacy of the father-daughter dynamic but also brings attention to popular media’s glossing over of the subject. A plethora of films, books, photographs, and other artworks exist that discuss the mother-son paradigm, and even more so in psychoanalysis. Family Portrait elicits a feminist ethos to draw attention to the very thick line that alienates women and their relationship to men from popular culture’s discussion of parental influence.

           An appropriate excerpt from Marika Sturken and Lisa Cartright’s Images, Power, and Politics mentions the “expressive, symbolic vehicle” accurately describes the role of Family Portrait. In Barto’s case, however, it is less of documenting a spontaneous space in time. More of a particularly planned documentation of an occurrence, but none the less still fulfills the same function that Sturken included in her book. The way she utilizes the medium of analog film to depict her art is impressive because of the depth it achieves in doing so.

           One of the most noticeable aspects of Bartos’ work is her use of Polaroid cameras (Yerebakan). The way she blends old and new technology seems to be the underlying code of her works to reinforce the ideas she is trying to express. She takes a photo of herself and her father through the lens of an antiquated camera, in order to place themselves in the same scenario they were in her youth in her hometown in the center of Poland, this  would make the content of the frame innocent, because it would be a little girl with her bodybuilder father, and it would be an entirely different message altogether. The introduction of this old Polaroid to the scanning process brings an outdated outlook of their naive life and brings it into the modern world where the image can be manipulated and perverted. The colors and exposure introduced to the original photograph, call back memories of innocent experience, are now changed through technology, much like our perception of the world around us has changed through the same medium. I think what is being suggested by the blend of aesthetic practices is taking from the old and exposing our wealth of knowledge and social activism is somewhat in vain. We often look at old practices and beliefs common in societies past as misogynist, racist, homophobic,  etc.;  yet many of those beliefs are still engrained into us. We look at this picture of a shirtless bodybuilder in a speedo and a young woman in a bikini eating ice-cream as sexual, therefore, when we pair the image to the text: we are repulsed.   The notion of hypocrisy in our modern day “movements” of progressive action are still tinged with these repressive ideas of sexuality of women and their relationship to men in adulthood seems to be the point Bartos is trying to bring to the forefront. Barto’s use of this particular “screen,” in the words of Sturken, is interesting because, in the case of the Family Portrait series, the filters in conjunction with the analog film hide the subject in a way while also putting the subjects on a sort of metaphorical pedestal. It works in the way it simultaneously blends the image’s colors while also calling attention to itself by having the outdated aesthetic motivates an observer to analyze the photo and from there realize what and why we think it’s wrong. The result is a highly reflexive and socially malleable piece that lends itself to interpretation (The Wall, The Screen, The Image).  

            The framing of the two subjects also plays a vital role in the institution of the ethos emitted from the work. Bartos wants people to take the image as a guilt-ridden, taboo foray into sexually explicit imagery, but the way she does reinforce this is especially interesting. If one looks at how Bartos positions her father in relation to her, one will notice he is in the forefront of the image. It may signify the role the male plays in sex as well in sexual assault, as the aggressor. Bartos is behind him and slouching complacently. The blocking scheme not only works visually to show the power dynamic of a misogynist reading but also capitalizes the sexual overtones from the same sort of perception by framing their genitals in a parallel space. Even their breasts are symmetrical. I think the purpose for this is as an even more detailed, visual red herring in an attempt to steer passive observers in the direction of misreading the image and highlighting the fact that they are wrong in their assumptions.

           This photograph does not inherently convey any explicit appeal to pathos, I consider this  a weaker point of the piece, but also generates the question of whether or not it would be possible to inject that rhetoric into the photo while simultaneously delving deep into the political and societal issues it confronts. The Brooklyn Rail article I used for contextual purposes accurately examines the entire album in addition to the previous works by Bartos that inspired this one. It does so by analyzing the absence of her father throughout her childhood and these works as a way of reclaiming the lost time and immortalizing them in this respect. Yerebakan notes as he calls it, the “unsettled relationship” between Bartos and her father due to their split when she was sixteen.  The gap in their relationship grew more by  Aneta leaving Poland to live with her Mother in New York. With this information, the themes of a reclaimed past and re-introduction to present day via the fusion of old and new technology garners itself another meaning, one that is less politically and globally focuses on a small-scale the personal journey of a daughter separated from her father and the lost connection that resulted. The photo does not show that particular thread very prominently in this piece as a stand-alone, but when viewed with the entire album, the thread is much more apparent and more accessible to denote.

In a way, that multiple layered meaning and symbolism send the observer down a wormhole of suspicion. Bartos is effectively bombarding us with questions that are very common in the surrealistic genre of art. The surface level understanding of the image is perverse, the layer a level deeper is one of political discourse, and the one the nearest to the center is even more personal and pathetic. The way Bartos loads the image with sexual symbols such as the ice-cream and the subjects’ clothing keeping inquisition going until the observer can get to the grounding elements of her intention,  a difficult task for most artists. Once the work goes out into the public, all context and intent wastes away. However,  Bartos’ approach of constant inquisition ensures that her  intent will always surface because of its provocative nature. It draws attention in a way that is meaningful despite its obscurity and provokes the passive consumer to consider the photograph and come to the “correct” conclusion of what Bartos wants to say.

In contemporary society, it would seem logical to assume Family Portrait is a direct affront intended purely for shock value, disgust, and apathy;  the self-awareness of Bartos distinguishes her work from other postmodern artists whose focus is primarily on nihilism and absurdity for the sake of controversy. Her abuse of surface level reading is a direct response to the logical assumptions of pairing the text to the image.

Family Portrait

has seemingly infinite potential to be dissected and analyzed on many different bases in the fields of visual rhetoric and semiotics due to its multiple layers of symbolism and intent that are thoroughly thought-provoking.  It is an illustration of her estranged relationship with her father. Her technologic mastery of the manipulation of antique analog film digitally scanned, and her ability to capture sensual energy of her subjects provides a complex work of art that lends itself to the perceiver to interpret.

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Deceit, Desire, and the 1980s

           Excess, greed, and apathy are words that are equally relevant in describing America in the 1980s as well as Girardian concepts persecution and mediated desire. The application of two of Rene Girard’s books, The Scapegoat and Deceit, Desire, and the Novel with American Psycho, Wallstreet, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, will prove that the core of these films is rooted in significantly older psychologies -- though Rene Girard would contest this term -- than the contemporary interpretations offer. My argument is that beneath the satire, exposure, and portraiture lies novelistic-mediated desire and elements of mythic persecution.

           Definitives are seldom found in nature, and the same is true of a definitive categorization of mediated desire. Several of the implementations by the old masters of the novel, Dostoyevsky; Stendhal; and Cervantes, are different forms of mediated desire and contain idiosyncratic differences among them, but all are demonstrated through the structural model of the triangle (Girard 2).

           Girard offers the triangle because it provides a spatial mode of thinking when comparing and contrasting elements of a story. He acknowledges on the second page of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel that all stories can be described with a straight line, from the subject (protagonist), and the object of desire. The object of desire can be anything, and often, anyone: primarily women. What Girard’s triangular model of mediated desire does is introduce a mediator that hovers over the straight line of subject and object and acts as the interpreter of desire. Only the great novelists can articulate this relation according to Girard.

           Stendhalian vanity is perhaps the most easily recognizable connection to the culture of the 1980s because it is centered around a protagonist that Girard labels the vaniteux (Girard 6). Stendhal demonstrates vanity through terms like “copying” and “imitating” and it is the latter that draws the most attention. “A vaniteux will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is already desired by another person whom he admires.” (Girard 7). This quote would suffice as a summary of Patrick Bateman’s character profile in American Psycho. The following sentence further connects Bateman as a modern vaniteux by including, “The mediator here is a rival, brought into existence as a rival by vanity, and that same vanity demands his defeat.” (Girard 7). This firmly establishes an idea for Bateman’s mediator, but that will be covered later.

           Firstly, it is essential to detail the aspects of Patrick Bateman that situate him as a vaniteux, despite the description fitting so accurately. Patrick is a vessel; he states in his opening monologue that there is no Patrick Bateman, only an idea. He can only exist as a reflection of others’ perceived desire. He is capable only of wanting and imitating those around him. One of the primary objects that Patrick pursues throughout the film is a reservation at Dorsia, first for the status that comes with being able to get one and secondly because of Paul Allen’s assumed ability to get one. “Humiliation, Impotence, and Shame” are terms that can be interchanged with obstacle (Girard 178). Girard quotes from one of Denis De Rougemont’s books, Love in the Western World, and tells the reader that, “Desire should be defined as a desire of the obstacle.” Patrick desires the obstacle of obtaining the elusive reservation put in place initially by his circle of friends which mention it among their group, but Patrick’s desire is amplified when he discovers that Paul Allen supposedly frequently gets tables at Dorsia and this establishes Allen as a rival to Patrick. Allen as determined the obstacle for Patrick to pursue, it is the most serious obstruction (Girard 179). Passion intensifies throughout the film at this point, even after a modern twist to Stendhalian vanity in which the subject defeats his mediator.

           Two primary forms of mediation exist among all of the novelists’ desires, and they are external and internal. These terms are used to demonstrate proximity between the subject and mediator. External mediation exists when the subject is so far removed from the mediator that their realities cannot or would be unlikely to interact. Metaphysical desire falls into this category because a good example of external mediation is the Muslim and Mohammed or any follower of religion and cult. The novelistic example used by Girard is Don Quixote by Cervantes. The opposing side of the spectrum is internal mediation in which the spiritual distance between subject and mediator is close enough for the two spheres of possibilities to “penetrate” one other (Girard 9). Internal mediation is where rivalry begins and is the type that best describes American Psycho. The entire film revolves around class symbols such as fashion, real estate, and rank; the movie embodies physicality. Patrick is only able to imitate what he sees; he is incapable of reciprocating any emotion. He doesn’t desire to be any particular person, only to possess what others have.

           Girard says that the hero of internal mediation, or anti-hero in Patrick Bateman’s case, is careful not to have his imitations known, he carefully guards them (Girard 10). Patrick’s plots of murder and social climbing are never uttered to anyone; he does not even acknowledge them to himself through monologue. Girard explains why this is:

In the quarrel which puts him in opposition to his rival, the subject reverses the logical and chronological order of desires in order to hide his imitation. He asserts that his own desire is prior to that of his rival; according to him, it is the mediator who is responsible for the rivalry. (Girard 11)

Patrick kills out of hatred only in the murder of Paul Allen. He is subsequently the sole character that Patrick considers to be equal to, or worse, better than. He takes careful note of Allen’s successes and possessions: the Fisher account, the reservation at Dorsia, and his business card. These empty symbols elicit in Patrick two opposing feelings, that of “submissive reverence” and “the most intense malice” which constitute the passion of hatred (Girard 10).

           American Psycho as a film fits neatly within all of Stendhalian vanity because it too works to persuade the viewer that, “the values of vanity, nobility, money, power, [and] reputation only seem concrete.” (Girard 18). Mary Harron works from the source material written by Bret Easton Elis which depicts exceptional vapidity among members of significant affluent status. Patrick Bateman is in possession of all of these things, yet he simply isn’t there. The film shows the audience the danger of a perversely inflated ego, the disassociation between the wealthy and the poor as fellow human beings. There is nothing concrete about Patrick Bateman nor among any of his friends, save for Bryce who seems to have some investment in politics and social issues. It is he who at the end of the film remarks to the group about Reagan’s ability to lie in the face of American people, he is about to make a mention of what is inside Reagan’s false exterior, and Patrick intercedes:

But it doesn’t matter. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, The Vicious and The Evil, all the mayhem that I have caused and my utter indifference to it, I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no further knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

Sadism is indubitably a large section of Patrick’s character, but the finishing monologue introduces to the audience the closest Patrick could ever come to admitting his role as the masochist. In “Masochism and Sadism,” the eighth chapter of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Girard discusses the mediator and subject as Master and Slave respectively (Girard 176). These terms are more in line with external mediation rather than internal, but Girard also explains how a hero of internal mediation can eventually fall into external mediation. Recall that the difference between the two is one of spiritual distance between mediator and subject, therefore, if the mediator grows closer in a story centered in external mediation, then the desire will transform to one of internal mediation and vice versa. American Psycho performs this change at the time of Paul Allen’s murder, which is undoubtedly the most important portion of the film regardless of analysis applied. It is with the death of his rival, the overcoming of the obstacle chosen by his mediator, that Patrick Bateman is able to walk among his own Gods; we will see something similar with Wallstreet later. It is here that Patrick’s mediation is further away, more abstract, and he is even more tortured as a result. “Metaphysical desire always ends in enslavement, failure, and shame.” Patrick elects to be tortured with these tools earlier in the film, he tolerates Paul Allen’s denigration of him, calling Patrick a loser and so on, because has a hero, or rather a victim, of internal mediation, these are the terms that the masochist must accept in desiring objects through a mediator so close in proximity. Patrick deifies Paul, and it is after the acknowledgment of this that Patrick acts. He becomes aware of the connection between his desire and what it truly is, that of Paul’s. Girard says that this is the defining point of the masochist, he is aware of the machinations of mediated desire and endures it (Girard 182). The difference lies in Patrick’s acting upon the structure he assigned himself to rather than the traditional Stendhalian hero who lives to serve his master.

Both the fiction of the film Wall Street and the reality that inspired it are rife with examples that fit into, “Men Become God’s in the Eyes of Each Other.” This chapter focuses on desire as articulated by Proust and Dostoyevsky with the latter’s implementation more relevant to Wall Street. To say that a connection between Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Wall Street is a dramatic understatement. Stanley Weiser, the film’s co-writer, and Oliver Stone explicitly said to each other about making, “Crime and Punishment on Wall Street.” (Lewis) It is also interesting to note Weiser’s admission that he did not read the entirety of Dostoyevsky’s book and opted for the Cliff Notes version. He says the paradigm of the book would not translate to the story of the film, but the proof is in the finished product. What this admission says is that Weiser and Oliver read the highlights of what makes Dostoyevsky’s work effective: mediated desire.

…Dostoyevsky’s hero dreams of absorbing and assimilating the mediators Being. He Imagines a perfect synthesis of his mediator’s strength with his own ‘intelligence.’ He wants to become the Other and still be himself. (Girard 54)

Bud fits into Girard’s definition of a Dostoyevskian hero nearly perfect. Bud does not covet only Gekko’s office, cars, and women; he wants to be Gekko, filtered through what he deems his own experience. He has the grand delusion that all protagonists of mediated desire have: that what is desired can be obtained. Many different explanations exist that connect the subject to the object and Girard often goes back in forth between whether the subject truly wants the object, if he wants to want, or if he wants to be humiliated. Bud appears to fit into the masochist role. Wall Street begins in external mediation as opposed to American Psycho in which the desire mutated from internal to external.

           Before the discussion of Men and Gods, it is pertinent to speak of Bud’s fantasies and what his concept of self is. Girard says, “The subject must have placed his faith in a false promise from the outside.” (Girard 56) The false promise is metaphysical autonomy. Bud wants to be at the top, where he thinks that decisions are made. He desires to control the desires of other men as Gekko does unto him.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." (Nietzsche, The Parable of the Madman)

Girard asks, “Why can men no longer alleviate their suffering by sharing it?” (Girard 57) He deems that solitude, a word that predates loneliness, is an allusion just as autonomous desire. A better question more fitting to this paper is, “Why can Bud not realize that his desire is not his own, why can’t he accept that neither he nor Gekko is in intellectual solitude? That they are master and slave?

           The answer is because Bud is trapped in external or metaphysical desire. I included Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God because it relates to Dostoevsky's work greatly and Bud and Gordon Gekko’s relationship by proxy. Jordan Peterson draws the relationship between Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky as the latter predicting the former. Peterson makes clear that Dostoyevsky was not a nihilist but instead a very astute observer of culture (Peterson 213). He takes time in his argument to speak of Dostoyevsky’s prediction of the horrors of communism and how he was in favor of religion and morals over postmodernism, etcetera; however, what interests me most about this line of thought is the connection back to Wall Street. Gekko is to Nietzsche as Bud is to Dostoyevsky.  

           Gekko grew up in a world abandoned by God, where his father worked himself to an early death and one where he had to become the provider of his own prayers and fill the void. Gekko is revered to by many as a God in many ways, but the best example of praise is when Bud presents to him a cigar as an offering.

…as the gods are pulled down from heaven, the sacred flows over the earth; it separates the individual from all earthly goods… (Girard 62)

Bud sacrifices any possible claim to autonomy by affirming Gekko as his God. Autonomy in the liberal sense is an illusion according to Girard, but the subject does believe it, as many do, as an actuality. Bud cannot look freedom in the face, and as a result, he subjects himself to anguish. (Girard 65)

           Bud’s freedom gradually lessens as he grows closer to his mediator. He is a struggling yuppie in the beginning of the film and is not seeing as much progress as he envisioned. He tries to distance himself from his father and the tradition that he represents, the old Father. The destructive nature of the close interaction between mediator and subject is the driving force of the plot. Bud rises throughout the film to walk along his mediator, hand in hand with God. Bud shows all of the symptoms of a victim of metaphysical desire, much like Patrick Bateman in the latter half of his story. Bud seeks out obstacles which are presented to the audiences as “challenges” and disguise themselves as symptoms of his lust for power. They are instead examples of Bud subjecting himself to humiliation and degradation. He accepts Gekko as his master and God. He grovels beneath him and eats his scraps; he accepts the women he has already used. Girard notes a common theme in Dostoyevsky’s work whose name derives from his novella The Eternal Husband. The eternal husband, Girard’s term, is used in cases such as cuckoldry or latent homosexuality, though it is most commonly in reference to the former. Desire in the Eternal Husband stories is a competitive one, but it also relates back into Sadomasochism and the deifying of man. The story of the novella revolves around a man seeking out the lovers of his dead wife and seemingly befriending one that interests him most. What results is that the seeker finds a new wife and convinces the former lover of his wife to try and take her away from him. The analogy directly traces back to Gekko performing the same kind of play onto Bud. The difference is that the narrator of the novella is actually the mediator of the story, a clever twist. (Girard 46)

             Wall Street is confused when the Eternal Husband is applied. It introduces a symptom of external or metaphysical desire: double mediation. As Bud imitates Gekko and becomes him, Gekko reflects this desire and seeks to build a complete copy of himself. The film makes a point to relay that Gekko sees himself in Bud several times throughout and is the most explicit at the end with Gekko’s immense disappointment at the end of their reciprocated desires. This is common when mediation becomes a rivalry. Bud becomes the equal that he himself pursued from the beginning, but he is not yet the perfect copy made out of vanity by Gekko, and the result is conflict. Darien occupies various roles in the film. She is more of an indirect object, which sounds intensely misogynist but is nonetheless true. Gekko uses her as a gift to Bud, but this is not a gift given out of kindness; Gekko offers her to Bud in a mimetic way as the cigar was offered to him, but with vastly differing intention. The intention can be best described with the following quote from De Rougemont, “One reaches the point of wanting the beloved to be unfaithful so that he can court her again.” The film is a very complex retelling of the Dostoyevskian method. Characters shed and share characteristics without warning and some gain more and more over the course of the plot. Darien begins as an offering made by Gekko so that he can desire her again later and expose Bud as a masochist that is subservient to him, and what complicates her role is that the result of Bud’s awareness of his role is that he persecutes her instead. Girard discusses how mimetic rivalry ends in conflict and how it is resolved in a video interview with Hoover Institution on YouTube. The audience may see Darien as the conflicting object which directs both of the main characters’ desires, but she is instead the scapegoat that is used to resolve, though only momentarily, Bud’s anger with Gekko. She does not appear again in the film, which may suggest that Gekko has also completed his use for her. If this is the case, then she stands as a failed resolution through scapegoating, and this leads to the destruction of the mediator. Girard says that mimetic rivalry is inescapable in society and the only way for communal life to persevere is for the opponents to choose a scapegoat to explain their apparent differences and ardor. If the scapegoat fails, the result is war. Darien was an attempt by Gekko to soften future contempt by Bud in the hopes that Bud would fall blindly into masochistic desire and continue to serve him. The masochistic hero is, however, a much more lucid and dangerous kind of subject. Bud slowly learns over the course of the film that he has been used; he reflects on his humiliation and sees the structure that he had placed himself in and on his freedom that he sacrificed to pursue the ideal.

The masochistic vision is never independent. It is always in opposition to a rival masochism which is organizing the same elements into a symmetrical and inverse structure. (Girard 188)

           Of course, desire in terms of this paper cannot exist without at least two participants, but what Girard calls the masochistic vision works in a different way in contrast to what has been discussed previously. The masochistic vision is desire that is in spite. The masochist, “has a grudge against the very spirit of evil; and yet, he does not want to crush the wicked so much as to prove to them their wickedness and his own virtue; he wants to cover them with shame by making them look at the victims of their own infamy.” To see Bud’s reaction to Gekko’s betrayal as revenge is justified, but the prime motivation is not to hurt or destroy Gekko. Bud wants to shame him, to show Gekko that what he has done has negative side effects. Bud wants to surpass his mediator and teach unto him lessons that derive from his own, apparently higher morality. Hatred is observable in Bud’s actions, but he still thinks of himself as morally superior to Gekko and that his string of bad, or immoral decisions, were a result of Gekko’s manipulation. Bud has at the end come to terms with the limit of his autonomy; he recognizes the imminent destruction that comes from mimetic rivalry. This partially undercuts the primary objective of the film’s creators by trying to expose the greed of Wall Street and the culture of the ’80s, but overall it functions in the same way, just through different means.

           Both films discussed have cultural icons within them and were largely successful commercially. They both have comedic elements that produce satire and expose the immense greed and corruption that was prevalent in the time periods of their worlds. There is nothing new to be said about desire as the primary focus of the 1980s, commercially anyway, but there is more to be investigated into the why. The 1980s was an era that was symbolically in regression; it was a reversion to the 1950s, but also much further. Ancient ideas that centered around religion and tradition also brought back the largest faults of human ancestry. Girard says in his interview with Hoover Institution that mimetic desire is man-made, it does not exist in nature. It does not have to be an inevitability, just as persecution and scapegoating need not also. What both films do accurately describe the harm that comes from intense infatuation with the desire of others. There is no escaping it, as referenced earlier, but the level of interest and disassociation with oneself is up to the individual. Human beings that live within a civilization have the responsibility to become good masochists. Ones that know of the triangular structure that we have to live in and acknowledge that no alternative exists wherein a comfortable mode of living is possible. The choice lies in what and who one is her master. Girard would suggest that an abstract thing, such as a conception of the good (i.e., religion) would be a less problematic imitation because there is no chance of interaction or spiritual proximity to the divine to the rational mind. Philosophy can also occupy this role so long as the individual does not confuse the thoughts of others as their own and seek to compare themselves as equals to those whose thoughts have been stolen. More films like these two should be made so that the public can get a better understanding of what and why they want and believe.