Scripts! (And something else)

Hi, everyone! First of all, thank you for making Audience Appreciation Month so much fun. Second, my backlog of commissioned episodes has grown a lot over the summer. So, for anyone looking to request an episode, bear in mind that the earliest it can be finished is January. That's how booked I am.

Work on the movie, Left Behind and the Translation of God, continues bit by bit. Most of the writing is done. I will probably spend all autumn editing it. Projected release window is still winter.

With all that out of the way, here are some episode scripts. There are usually some differences between the scripts and the finished products.

CHILDREN OF MEN

 AUDIO 1
 Children of Men is a 2006 film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. In the near future, the world population has become infertile. Humanity has not been able to procreate for eighteen years. It is unexplainable, and this sends the planet into a downward spiral. People riot. Religious groups claim it is the end of the world and God's punishment. There are a creeping dread that this is the last generation. The United Kingdom is one of the few stable nations remaining, and because of this, immigration soars. Refugees of shattered nations have nowhere else to turn. The UK becomes more nationalistic in response, mistreating its immigrants rather than allowing them to assimilate. Theo, our protagonist, is kidnapped by an activist-terrorist organization called the Fishes that fights for the immigrants. Through his well-to-do cousin, Nigel, he is able to procure safe passage for a refugee.
 This refugee, named Kee, is revealed to be pregnant, the first known case in eighteen years. The Fishes are desperate and plan to use Kee's child as a political tool. Theo discovers this, he and Kee escape and search for their contact in The Human Project, an organization that believes they can save the world. After a long and bloody journey, Kee gives birth to her child – a girl – and she and Theo make it to the ocean to find The Human Project's ship, The Tomorrow. During a battle, Theo is wounded, and he dies on the rowboat on the way to The Tomorrow. The film ends as Kee is found by The Human Project, and the sound of children laughing in the credits suggests that the world is saved. Some say the ending is more ambiguous than that, but Curoan said that he did not want to make a film that ends when the credits roll. He wanted to make a film that, when the final credits roll, that was really the beginning of the film. This quote combined with the children laughing makes the optimistic ending rather clear.   
 [5:56 Our government cuts them down]  
  AUDIO 2  
  Children of Men reveals a form of prescience in itself. A prophecy of how the United Kingdom will view immigration, the panic that will ensue and the rise in nationalism and xenophobia.  The modern United Kingdom has a great many social grievances that have been ignored by politicians. Lack of secure jobs, the housing crisis, underfunded public services. Yet, all these issues of late are seen – perhaps falsely – through the prism of immigration. Immigration has become a convenient scapegoat for framing growing social and economics problems. This contributed to a loud isolationist statement in the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union, a decision that has had great economic consequences rather than healing any wounds.  
  We see this in Children of Men. Refugees flee their native countries in hopes of saving themselves and their families in this apocalyptic time. Public transportation has frequent, Big Brother styled messages from the government about the necessity of turning in your friends, loved ones, even family to the government if they are undocumented – if they are illegal. Signs flash that to the British citizens that they must report anything suspicious. The borders have largely been closed. Theo's meeting with Nigel reveals that it is a near impossibility for someone to enter the country legally anymore. The Fishes must recruit the cousin of a very important figure to obtain documentation, and even then, Nigel is uncertain he will be able to help. This suggests that nearly all immigration has become vulgar to the United Kingdom – in government practice – much in the way that all immigration become anathema to nationalistic citizens in the real world.    
  AUDIO 3  
  This is certainly NOT relegated to the British people alone, of course. Nationalism takes root in many nations. Borders are toughened up, and walls are built. Nationalism does not simply aim to keep others out, it also aims to make life difficult for anyone who appears “foreign” who is already inside. In Children of Men, when the police arrive, everyone scrambles for their passports before anything else – authentic or fabricated – because they know that their nationality is the only thing that can save them in an authoritarian, nationalistic society. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in a speech about Children of Men, said “That's obviously something that should be on people's minds after Brexit and after the rise of Donald Trump and a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment.” Children of Men has had a kind of re-examination in the past couple years – a re-evaluation of its worth.    
 Cuaron initially did not want to make the film. What changed his mind...was 9/11. He believed, on that day, we began living in the future and feared the reactionary consequences that lead to even greater conflicts and wars. Children of Men was made in 2006, making the war in Iraq relatively new. The United Kingdom was part of the coalition forces along with America and others. A close examination of this shot gives us anti-Iraq war images. This shot was made to resemble abuses at Abu Ghraib. There are various references to the Department of Homeland Security in the film. Nothing is accidental. This is all intentional. Cuaron recalls his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki once declaring “We cannot allow one single frame of this film to go without a comment on the state of things.” The director and cinematographer make the curious but meaningful decision to occasionally break from following the movements of the protagonist to drift into shots of the refugees – the immigrants – locked in cages and carted off to a city that acts as a modern concentration camp.    
  
  AUDIO 4  
 We see propaganda from the government, saying that Britain still prevails while other nations fall, but as we linger on the many long shots in the film, we begin to wonder if this level of “survival” is worth it. The film references art and music in ways that embolden the director's outlook. This scene conspicuously features a reference to Pink Floyd album “Animals” which borrows imagery from George Orwell's Animal Farm, a novella denouncing authoritarian rule. The song “Ruby Tuesday” reoccurs in the film. As a comment on the importance of outside influence on one's culture, this Rolling Stones song, quintessentially British, is covered by an Italian. His thick accent allowing the audience to recognize the beauty of integrating cultures to create something beautiful. This painting is Guernica by Pablo Picasso.  
  
 It was painted as an overtly political response to the bombing of Guernica, a village in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – two highly nationalistic countries that tore Europe apart in World War II. Children of Men rarely gives us people with whom to connect to the government and its nationalistic political decisions. One named police officer and nameless soldiers that exist more as background than as characters. In a sense, there is no principle antagonist of the film. The situation is the antagonist. The setting is the antagonist. The film shows us the past, the present and a potential future. The film does not struggle too hard with our incredulity. We can look around our own world now and see what is happening and not have to strain our imaginations too much to picture our world as the world of Children of Men.    
  [MUSIC CUE: ]  [TRANSITION]  
  
 AUDIO 5
 The name of the film and the novel from which it was adapted comes from The Book of Psalms: “Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You turn man back into dust and say, 'Return, O children of men.'” Religious imagery permeates throughout the film. The camera lingers on this mother and her son, who was been killed. This is made to resemble Le Pieta, a work of art depicting the Jesus Christ in the arms of Mary. Earlier in the film, Theo's brother says he was unable to procure Le Pieta – his mission is to preserve art as the world dies. Kee tells our Theo that she is a virgin before laughing and revealing she was only joking. Kee reveals her pregnancy in a barn, surrounded by farm animals, akin to Mary. Upon seeing this, Theo swears “Jesus Christ.” in a moment that seals its meaning. It's not a one-to-one parallel, of course. Kee does not actually give birth there. Michaelangelo's David is also depicted, another Biblical figure.    
 Kee's pose in this scene is that of The Birth of Venus by Sandro Boticelli – an image that gives Kee more mythical weight. We see men and women entrench themselves in faith as a means of understanding what has happened to the world. No explicit reason is ever given for the global infertility or why Kee is able to overcome it. Cuaron has said of this “There's a kind of cinema I detest, which is a cinema that is about exposition and explanations. It's become a medium for lazy readers... Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I'm very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema.” Children of Men is better off this way. If the film were a mystery about uncovering the reason and then a cure, it would drift away from its more spiritual essence. In one scene, Theo remarks that the world was ruined before the infertility even occurred. This is important. Jasper, in this scene, says “Shantih, Shantih, Shantih” – a reference to The Wasteland by T.S. Elliot, which is itself loosely based on the mythological Celtic concept that the barrenness of the land is related to the behavior of its rulers. The land is barren because we have failed it. The world is barren – infertile – because we have failed it. We get the world we deserve.    
  [7:07 Nothing to look forward to]  
  AUDIO 6  
 There are a variety of reactions to what appears to be the end of the world – different characters with differing philosophical views. Nigel runs the Ark of Arts – a project to gather and protect the world's greatest works of art, preserving them as the planet crumbles. Theo tells Nigel that this is senseless because no future generations will be able to see this art. Everyone will be dead, and nobody new will be born. Nigel responds to this by explaining how he deals with this fact: he does not think about it. This might seem ridiculous, but that is actually how many people are able to cope with their lives and the inevitability of their death. Blaise Pascal “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.”  
 In other words, thinking about our small place in the universe, our encroaching death or a seemingly meaningless existence makes us unhappy, and some choose not to think about it. Ignorance is bliss. Nigel does not think about the end of the world in the same way that some prefer to live in a kind of denial about their own mortality. He focuses all his attention towards his work instead. Theo tells Jasper that his unseen ex-girlfriend Lorna joined a religious movement and turned to God. Pascal would say that this is a wise move, famously wagering that believing has greater benefits than not believing. And what of Theo? His reaction to the state of the world is existential ennui. Theo  sleepwalks through is life – devoid of hope. He lost a child in a flu epidemic, and now that children do not even exist anymore, his pain has been magnified on a global scale. Jasper says Theo's faith has lost out to chance.   He was once a youthful activist. When he meets Kee, his hope returns. Hope, more than anything else, is the core of Children of Men. There is a reason the ship is called The Tomorrow. Hope in the face of incredible odds may be naïve, but it's better than giving up. 

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND

 AUDIO 1
 Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind is a 1984 animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. One thousand years after the world ended in an apocalyptic event called the Seven Days of Fire, the world faces new dangers. The ever-growing toxic jungle is filled with dangerous spores that are lethal if breathed. It is also home to giant insects. Nausicaä, the princess of the Valley of the Wind, explores the jungle and uses an unexplained ability to communicate with the insects. She is determined to find a way for the insects and humans to co-exist. The Tolmekians, a military state, seizes an embryo of a Giant Warrior – one of the living weapons that destroyed the Earth a millennia ago. The Tolmekians conquer Nausicaa's home, killing her father and subjugating her people, hoping to unite the world under one rule and destroy the toxic forest with the Giant Warrior.    
  The people of Pejite, another neighboring city-state, vow to crush the Tolmekians inside Nausicaa's home, but in doing so, this will also destroy her occupied land. The Pejite military lures a herd of insects with one of their young. The Tolmekians' Great Warrior is ineffective in stopping the entire herd. Nausicaa saves the young insect, earning the herd's trust. They heal her wounds, and the day is saved. The Pejite remain in the Valley to rebuild, the Tolmekians retreat and a sprout begins to grow in the underground lair of the toxic jungle, signifying that a non-toxic future may be possible for the people of the valley.  
  [Nothing Grows from Nothing]   
 
 AUDIO 2
 The toxic jungle is called the Sea of Decay or Sea of Corruption in other translations, but for the sake of uniformity, the term “toxic jungle” will be used here. Environmentalism from a philosophical viewpoint can be summarized with this question: What obligations do we have to our natural environment? Various religions have God-given or gods-given answers to that question. This is sometimes called Stewardship – the theological belief that we, as humans, are responsible for the Earth. Tu BiShvt is a Jewish holiday, the New Year of the Trees. In modern Israel, the day is celebrated as a kind of environmental awareness day and trees are planted in celebration. Christian Stewardship refers to the responsibility that Christians have in maintaining what God has given them. In Hinduism, the Pancha Mahabhutas or The Five Great Elements – creates a web of life.  A more secular view of environmental philosophy is to answer simply that we will be lost if we do not control our actions towards our environment – this is called Anthropocentrism. This refers to an ethical framework that grants “moral standing” solely to human beings.  
 Philosopher Peter Singer famously wished to extend moral standing to non-human animals, stating the the ability to feel pain or pleasure indicates sentience. “All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.” For some philosophers, superiority does not create fewer moral obligations. It follows that it may even create greater, superior obligations. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind does not take the positions of anthropocentrism and opts for something resembling animism: the concept that everything has a spirit, that nature is a part of us, and that we are a part of the lives of non-human animals.    
  AUDIO 3  
  We actually see this a lot in Miyazaki's filmography. He portrays worlds in which humans and the spiritual world are connected. Worlds in which humans and animals are connected. Worlds in which humans and nature are connected. Generally, his films showcase an Earth in which everything is intertwined on an emotional and spiritual level. Humans are not granted the Earth to use as they please by God, and they are not given stewardship over His creation either. Humans are simply another consequence of nature. The film also rejects anthropocentrism. Nausicaa cares for the insects deeply. They are at times the harbingers of death and at other times, the key to life. Nausicaa, both the film thematically and the character actively, grants moral standing to non-human animals. Their importance – their lives – are just as integral to the world as themselves. In the film, the trees of the toxic jungle evolved to purify the Earth of all the pollution that humans made.    
 The trees absorb the pollution so that it becomes inert. The insects evolved to guard the toxic jungle. It will take centuries for the trees to cleanse the Earth, which means the humans are unwilling to cohabitate with the insects for that long. In the film, the trees are connected to the actions of humans because they changed to cure pollution, and the animals changed to protect the trees. Nausicaa believes in the value of life, whatever form that may take. Environmentalism need not be entrenched in myth and super naturalism, of course. Protecting the Earth benefits ourselves because an atmosphere that is inhabitable to humans is not in any human's self-interest. However, fiction and fantasy can be more persuasive than hard facts. After all, hard facts have not been enough to persuade everyone about ongoing environmental threats to humanity. The name Nausicaa comes from The Odyssey. Nausicaa in The Odyssey was said to take delight in nature and have a receptive personality.    
  AUDIO 4  
 The film's Nausicaa obviously is a caretaker of nature and her personality is able to transcend the limitations in communications among species. The name of the insects – the “Ohmu” – comes from "Oh Mushi" -- "Sando Uomu" – the Japanese pronunciation of "Sand Worm" from "Dune") and "Aum" in Buddhism. Any Christian imagery is apparently accidental. Nausicaa being a kind of foretold savior who seemingly comes back to life was not intended to represent Jesus Christ. Although many Christians see this in the film, bear in mind that Christianity accounts for about one percent of the population of Japan. An undercurrent of Buddism and Shinto flow throughout the film. The Buddhist roots of evil are shown in the film: greed, ill will and delusion. Fear of the toxic jungle and insects is what drives the conflict between Tolmekia and its neighbors. This results in greed over who should own the Great Warrior and ill will among the various people.      
 Shinto, Japan's native religion, is seen in the film – as the religion insists on honoring nature.  Trees, mountains, the water, animal and human beings possess kami – or spirit. Nausicaa's respect for all nature seems to be rooted in Shinto. The decision to make the animals these grotesque insects is a curious one. The film says that the environment must be preserved for both humans and animals – even if these animals are not the cute and fuzzy variety. This is Miyazaki’s most outright and unambiguously environmentalist film. It’s no great surprise that it was supported by the World Wild Life Fund for Nature. But that's not everything that the film expresses.  
  [clip]
 AUDIO 5
 The danger of nuclear proliferation is consistently highlighted in the film. The Great Warriors being the obvious stand-ins for nuclear weapons. Miyazaki's films often contain anti-war sentiment. In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, two competing nations struggle over weapons supremacy. Each desires access to the Great Warrior while the rest of the world watches in horror and tries to get them both to stand down. I'm going to assume we're all on the same Cold War page here. Tolmekia believes it they must use the Great Warrior in order to ensure the safety of humanity – and Pejite believes it must destroy Tolmekia and anyone in conquered Tolmekian territory to ensure this does not happen. Both have violent, militaristic goals with a lot of collateral damage, and each nation thinks itself entirely justified. In the end, neither of their war plans work out.  Princess Kushana of the Tolmekians uses the Great Warrior – this doomsday weapon – against the insects, but it is not enough.   
 The people of Pejite eventually thrown down their arms and help the Valley rebuild. Only Nausicaa has the right idea. She seeks a peaceful solution to the conflict. She takes care of the insects rather than demonizing them. She works towards a habitable world between the humans and insects rather than attempting to destroy the toxic jungle, endangering everyone in hopes of a greater victory. Japan understands the devastation of nuclear weapons more than any other country. It is the only country to have been victim of nuclear weapons during wartime. Its influence on Japanese film can be seen in everything from this film to Godzilla. Japan had been reticent for a long time to create a powerful military – not to mention being constitutionally barred from doing so. In recent years, Japan's military  has been growing again, blamed on shifting security dynamics in the region. Miyazaki has spoken out against this, in spite of the obvious backlash that would create in his home country.  
  AUDIO 6  
  Even the scenes of violence in the film are not sensationalist. There is no joy in the violence. It does not glorify warfare. In this film, war is terrifying. Lord Yupa is called the greatest swordsman in the world, but when he is forced to draw his blades, he always uses them to non-lethally end a dispute. He stands between Nausicaa and someone she is trying to harm. He quells an attack on himself without cutting anybody's throat. Even the violence of the film is anti-violence. Nausicaa tries to solve problems with science and with diplomacy. Many characters in the film have shades of gray to them. Nausicaa is strong and brave – never a damsel in distress, which is true of Miyazaki's women protagonists throughout his filmography – but she also violently loses her temper. The villainous Kushana mistakenly believes what she is doing is right.    
  The people of Pejite believe their ends justify the means. Asbel has conflicting feelings and changes allegiances to help Nausicaa. This is not a failing or a muddying of the issue. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind simply acknowledges that the world is not cast in black and white – that would be too simplistic for this director – but the anti-war stance, on the other hand, is non-negotiable. Another war with nuclear weapons is not a matter of black and white. It's life and death. 

FARGO

 AUDIO 1
 Fargo is a 1996 film written and directed by the Coen Brothers. Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard is in desperate need of money. He travels to Fargo, North Dakota and hires two criminals, Carl and Gaear, to kidnap his wife, Jeanie, and extort a ransom from his wealthy father-in-law Wade. The criminals are pulled over by a state trooper. Fearing he will discover Jeanie in the back seat, they murder the trooper and two witnesses. These murders are investigated by Marge, a local police officer, who puts clues together that eventually lead her to the car dealership. Jerry tells Wade that the kidnappers want a million dollars, but the kidnappers are under the impression that they are splitting only $80,000. Jerry is trying to con everyone, but he is woefully unprepared for the consequences. Wade demands to make the drop, ruining the plan in which Jerry would take most of the money, and Wade dies in a poorly planned shootout.    
  The two kidnappers have an argument, Gaear murders Carl, Jerry flees the police, and Marge arrests Gaear. Jean is presumably dead after Gaear attacked her for being too loud in the cabin. Jerry is located by the police, and the film ends as Marge and her husband reflect on their lives and their impending child. Fargo begins with a lie, that the events depicted are true. The Coen brothers changed their story about this a few times over the years before eventually admitting that it is all fictitious. It adds to the web of mystery that surrounds the narrative. Towards the end, Marge wonders aloud why all these events – these murders and other crimes – had to happen. She says that she just does not understand it. … Let's try to understand it now.   
 
 
 [culture of commodification and authority]
 AUDIO 2
 One identifying mark of the film is commodity culture, the working theory and belief that everything is up for exchange and the study of how this affects us. Jerry meets with two criminals and arranges a kidnapping of his own wife. The criminals do not understand why Jerry would kidnap his wife and split the ransom from his father-his-law, Wade, when he could more easily ask his wife to her request money from her well-to-do father. Jerry also does not explain why he needs the money. The two criminals, largely in the dark as to the inner-workings of Jerry's mind and his machinations, still agree to perform the task because there is money on the table for them, and the particulars are not their concern. Jerry goes about the kidnapping with disturbing nonchalance. He dehumanizes Jeannie as a bank machine all the while not actually needing the money. Jerry and Jeanie live a comfortable, Norman Rockwellian life in a midwest suburban house. Jerry is gainfully employed in an executive position at a car dealership.   
 His desire for more has its origins in his inadequacy. His need for even greater financial independence is born of his knowledge that he has not lived up to society's preconceived notion of what a “man” is – of what “masculinity” is. His father-in-law is a masculine figure of authority, and Jerry sees this usurpation as a threat to himself and to his self-confidence. Jerry, perhaps, does not realize that he actually has satisfied traditionalist gender roles: he provides for his family, and his wife and child seem overall satisfied. But the presence of Wade is enough to make him existentially nervous. The commodification of all things is a way in which to exercise authority over others. His rips off his customers with phony sealant costs for cars, and when they complain, he disingenuously informs them that he only has the ability to reduce the price ever so slightly. When Jerry is faced with situations in which he has no authority or control, he fails, like when he must comfort his son or face a flipped gender role situation of a woman police officer figuring out his schemes. Rather than confront her, he flees the police interview.
 AUDIO 3
  When Carl enters a parking lot to take a license plate and leaves without actually parking, he is informed by the toll collector that he must still pay four dollars as the minimum fee. Carl has the money, and he is about to come into a great deal more, but commodity culture is not only about financial security – it is about power and, conversely, the indignity faced when a lack of power is exposed. Carl angrily gives the toll collector a speech about how pathetic this job is and how the employee must love his miniscule position of authority over others – that is must give him great satisfaction to flex his power over others. The employee is deeply confused. He was only doing his job, but Carl finds any slight to his own authority unacceptable. So, he pays the “capitalist machine” – this smiling, unassuming man – and drives off. Carl’s insecure resentment of someone who meant no harm, disguised as anti-authoritarianism, later explodes when he murders another toll collector off-screen following his shootout with Wade.  
  There is a lot of misunderstanding about how money and authority work – because the invisible systems of power are difficult to track. Carl, upon discovering he has ransomed far more money than he anticipated, buries most of it and shares only a small portion with his partner, Gaear. When Gaear says that they must also split the new car they received as an up-front payment from Jerry, Carl belligerently admonishes Gaear, in spite of the fact that he has ripped Gaear off and can more than afford a new car with nearly a million dollars to his name. But the money isn't about...money. It's about his insecurity and his inability to exert his authority over others. For this hubris, he dies. Jerry foolishly asks Wade and his associate for an investment in a parking lot – not to be business partners to share equally in the profits but more as a bank loan. Wade patronizingly tells Jerry that they are not a bank. Marge and her husband Norm never discuss money and never argue about their roles in their marriage. Neither attempts to dominate the other. They have figured it out.    [Everyday Absurdism]  

AUDIO 4  

The Absurd, in philosophy, is the conflict between the human need to seek for meaning in the universe and the human inability to discover it. The Absurd does NOT mean that there is no meaning or value to anything but that it is humanly impossible to fully understand it because of our inherent limitations. The Coen brothers are NOT nihilists – moral or existential nihilists – as they are famously unsympathetic to them, but they do seem to present absurdism as an alternative. Absurdism, as put forth by Albert Camus, is the conclusion of this existential search for meaning. Let's go back a little. Camus believed that we live a cruel existence. We desire meaning for our lives and value in our actions, but we are not capable enough to reach any kind of satisfactory resolution to our plight and to our understanding of the universe.  At the end, when Marge spends a few minutes attempting to comprehend why Gaear would murder people, why he values money more than human life and why any of this happened, she is experiencing a microcosm of the larger concept of the absurd. Marge does not give an explicit answer to her question. She may not even realize she is ruminating on this philosophical concept and may only be speaking rhetorically. Upon faced with a universe that we cannot understand, people come to a series of  conclusions: one is to turn to God or another belief that Camus would consider invented. He would call that “Elusion” –  escaping the question altogether by crafting a falsely objective meaning. Another option, he would say, would be to commit suicide, which is probably the worst one. But his preferred choice is to embrace the absurdism of life by accepting one will not find an objective meaning to life and/or creating a personal meaning for oneself that is not objective.  

AUDIO 5  Marge has no answer, which means she defaults to the absurd. This makes Marge an Absurd Hero, someone who does not care to understand what happened and instead embraces the beauty of her life anyway. Characters in fiction who are faced with an existential problem and receive a resolution in the end are not Absurd Heroes. In The Myth of Sysaphus, Camus wrote about stories that have a resolution that places meaning on the events: “It is not an absurd work that is involved here, but a work that propounds the absurd problem. … An absurd work, on the contrary, does not provide a reply; that is the  whole difference.” A side effect of searching for answers in a universe that does not deliver them to us can create a sense of isolation. There is a lot of distance in the shots in Fargo – this famous one, for example – as Jerry realizes how alone he is in his plight. There are a lot of shots in which we are peering at our characters from over banisters and other, unfocused sections of the visual plane.    The picture of Jerry's wife is on the other side of the room rather than the traditional place of on the desk. Jerry has conversations with other characters with their backs turned to him on more than one occasion.  Emotional distance. Not to mention these wide landscape shots and the opening of the film: a white nothingness. Gaear prefers his isolation. He is often seen hypnotically staring into a television that shows no picture. He refuses to speak to Carl unless he has something necessary to say – a fact that greatly annoys his partner in crime. Human beings find it comforting to think of themselves as being endowed with greater meaning – more importance than any creatures that walk the Earth. In Fargo, however, Marge's pregnancy is compared to that of a beetle in this darkly comic reveal, and one character more explicitly makes this connection, screaming the word “Animals!” in reference to the actions of Shep Proudfoot.    

AUDIO 6  There is a kind of “everyday absurdism” in Fargo. So much of the film revolves around parking lots. Jerry wants to buy a parking lot for the tolls. Many scenes take place in paid parking lots. Everything is occurring in the most mundane of places. Marge examines the three bodies with indifference. She says “Real shame.” without any noticeable distress. One could argue that as a police officer, she sees graphic homicides frequently, but there is also this kind of insouciance to the way people speak in the film – an exaggerated Minnesota Nice that every character exhibits save for Carl, who actively resists the behavior of the townspeople, in some scene exasperated by how unconcerned and lethargic everyone seems. Have they accepted the absurd or are they utilizing “elusion” to avoid thinking about it? As the film prepares to fade to black, Marge tells her husband that she will give birth in two more months. It feels sweet, but it also feels as if something is missing. This is the world they will raise their child. A world that Marge cannot understand.