This is not a review. This show hit way too close for me to be anything near objective about it. There will be spoilers. Like, I'm just going to type and then lightly edit and then release and then that's it.
There was a moment at the end of the show, the one shown right above, when I was begging Steve to just burn the whole damn house down. All the horrors that had happened inside that house... just burn it all down. I wanted to be able to look at the house as it burned and laugh at it.
Steve walked away. I was furious.
And some little voice, deep down in my soul, told me "You missed the point. That was a test. And you failed it. There is still more work to be done."
I am still shook.
It is important to ask: what evil did the house actually do?? The show is very careful to point out the difference between actual mental illness and medical issues and real hauntings. And the only times an actual haunting is going on from someone who is definitively evil the show tells you very clearly that it's wrong. For all its gray areas about the nature of reality the show is remarkably clear about intention. Nell seeing her own death was not the house's fault. The house is a house. Not its fault that time bends within it and that Nell continued having issues with time throughout her life. The ghost following Luke? It never actually strikes out at Luke, but actually shows that it may have similar tastes. The ghost follows Luke because he likes him. Not the ghost's fault that Luke doesn't understand! And not the ghost's for not understanding either, because how the hell can a ghost understand the living anymore?
Like, at the end of the day I find this show an exercise in theodicy: why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the good suffer? The answer, from what I can tell is that pain is another indicator of reality, and trying to avoid pain via addiction is fundamentally wrong. If you're trying to feel pleasure all the time that is wrong. Pain is important. Terror is important. Hell, the dead and rotting and falling apart is important. We are limited beings and trying to deny the definitions of what makes life worth living doesn't do anyone any favors. Part of that limit is pain. Pleasure is only important as an indicator of the world around you and has no moral component. Pain is the same.
Notice I didn't say a frickin' word about suffering.
Suffering is a choice.
Suffering is to take pain and fixate on it.
Suffering is wrong. You suffer because you choose to. It's the same difference between anger and rage. Anger is having a boundary being crossed. You should feel angry when something is crossed, you're designed to feel it! Anger itself is neutral. Rage, though? Oh, rage is a fucking monster. Rage is when you take revenge for the crossing of that boundary. You decide to make your own pain God. You worship it, enshrine it, and refuse to let anyone have a say in it. Because I've got news: pain is not private. Precious little is. Your actions in response to pain are most certainly public, dragging the pain that provoked them into the light.
But pain is neutral. Pain is information. You can do whatever the hell you like with pain. That choice can have a moral quality to it. It may not. Taking your hand off the burner is a decidedly neutral act. Maybe keeping it on is neutral too. Maybe it isn't. Kinda depends. But taking revenge, saying that your pain is merely private, is a moral choice. Saying "my pain is private and thus insurmountable" is a moral choice. It is a choice that puts you in your own sad little world, where nothing can get through. And the more centered on you you get the less you're able to see... until there are no more ghosts, no house, no family, just you. Oh, and that includes what you think about those external objects you excised from your consciousness. See, that's the trick: even if the external objects that provide pain are gone you were still formed by them and will continue to think about them, even if it's just reacting and keeping the thoughts at bay. Which doesn't stop you from forming the wrong opinions about them, because how can you check to make sure you aren't creating your own sad little world?
And if that's not Hell I don't know what is.
Peter Lee, from the Peanut Gallery tier, was the one who requested I look at this show and you can do the same!
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