‘”We
have a great war of spirit. We have a great revolution against culture. The
great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.” (Chuck
Palahnuik, Fight Club)
Notable
examples from Martin Scorsese’s filmography illustrate Palahnuik’s ‘great
revolution against culture’ and consequent ‘spiritual depression’ in relation
to self-destruction. In Shutter Island,
Teddy Daniels attempts to unravel the mystery of Rachel Solando under the
facade of self-determination. However, unbeknownst to Teddy and the audience,
his narrative is invariably arbitrated by the psychiatric hospital’s staff;
furthermore, that he and his immediate society (the hospital) are conditioned
by self-destruction and madness. Similarly, in Goodfellas and Casino the
protagonists, and many of the main characters, believe that their lives of
excess and crime are, although illegal, not definably immoral as they are
upholding the traditional Italian, morally reputable values of family and
honour. In Scorsese’s moralistic universe, pain incited by immoral actions
obliges brief wealth and happiness before eventual, inevitable misery. Scorsese’s
gangster societies, embraced by amorality, are ultimately functioned by
self-destruction. This essay will first judge the protagonists of each film in
terms of their environmental context; and their appropriateness in representing
their society’s morbid relationship with self-destruction. Secondly I will
analyse each film’s respective social order, how their cultural tendency
towards amorality and hedonism habitually leads to self-destruction. Finally, I
will reach a conclusion about why Scorsese’s condemnation of spiritually
deprived excess is relevant to Palahnuik’s explanation of Fight Club.
Shutter Island’s destructive
universal politics can be seen as personified in its protagonist, the
delusional Andrew Laeddis, who will be referred to hereafter in this essay as
Teddy Daniels, Andrew’s synthetic identity. Teddy is given a ‘last chance’ by
Dr. Cawley to escape his delusion, by embarking on an artificial federal
investigation-which Teddy perceives as reality-to subversively achieve
realisation and acceptance that he killed his wife.
Scorsese
sticks unilaterally to Teddy throughout the film-even facial expressions and
dialogue Teddy does not experience are kept to a minimum-so that the viewer is
ignorant of Teddy’s secret as long as he is, and so they sympathise with him
intimately when this secret is revealed. Although the narrative is linear,
Scorsese routinely breaks up Teddy’s investigation with fragmented, but
elaborate, dreams, migraines and hallucinations; markedly the fire in his
building which allegedly killed his wife, and his experience of liberating a
Nazi concentration camp. Scorsese uses the sensationalist nature of these
scenes to infer Teddy’s suspicion of the hospital’s implication in Rachel’s
disappearance, and involvement with inhumane psychological experiments, while
concurrently supposing the unreliability of Teddy’s narration; the frequency
and intensity of his visions clearly demonstrate his mental instability even
before the epiphany. Teddy has been an article of misery most of his life, not
just at the island; he faced humanity’s vacuous violence in Dachau, was
afflicted by alcoholism, and was devastated by his wife’s insanity and
subsequent homicide of his three children. As the, purportedly real, Rachel
argues, ‘they’ll use your past trauma to explain why you’re crazy’. Scorsese’s
inference of doubt in this scene further complicates the already abstruse
depiction of Teddy’s psychology.
Equally,
Teddy is himself a violent man, ‘as violent as they come’ in fact, and
unconsciously seeking violence. Roger Ebert purports that ‘the hero is always
flawed’. Arguably
then, he is destined for self-destruction because of who he intrinsically is.
In one of the film’s brief moments of pathos, the warden confronts Teddy by
telling him he cannot be controlled, that he needs an amoral authority because
there is no moral order. Furthermore, as Dr. Naehring comments, ‘wounds create
monsters’, suggesting that Teddy’s violent nature and traumatic past combine to
create someone integrally immoral ‘the [island’s] most dangerous patient’. Ultimately
the question of his punishment being justified is irrelevant, as Teddy suffers
the same fate irrespective of his culpability, signifying that misery and chaos
is permeating on Shutter Island. While Teddy’s morality remains ambiguous, his
universe’s certainly does not.
The
idea that Teddy is subject to Shutter Island’s [a]moral order, that he is not a
hero in his own separate narrative but an insignificant actor in a cynical universe,
an entirely distinct ontology from what he understands, underscores the
futility of his journey. The outcome of the roleplay determined Teddy would hurt,
regardless of whether he achieved realisation of his past actions and face a
lifetime of unendurable guilt, or relapse into delusion. Teddy’s investigation
is therefore not one of self-discovery, but self-destruction. In the final
scene Teddy says ‘This place makes me wonder; which would be worse-to live as a
monster, or die as a good man’. James Gilligan contends that this indicates he
feels too guilty to carry on living, that he ‘vicariously commit[s] suicide’.
Shutter Island differs
from Casino and Goodfellas; Teddy lives, and therefore suffers, in an amoral
universe within the confines of the narrative, rather than existing as an
immoral figure in a moralistic universe; he is predetermined to suffer, it is
not his choice. When the memory of Teddy’s wife tells him he needs to kill
Laeddis, ‘kill him dead’, it is Teddy’s subconscious provoking him to remove
the last shards of his real self. In rejecting Cawley’s ‘last chance’ offer of
coherent memory and identity, and George Noyce’s ultimatum of ‘digging the
truth or killing Laeddis’, Laeddis assumes his Teddy personality. Cawley
identifies acceptance as redemption, Laeddis identifies it as damnation; he
poignantly states ‘you can never take away all of a man’s memories’. By opting
for a lobotomy, a symbol clearly indicating death, he destroys his final sense
of person.
In
Goodfellas, Henry Hill’s plot follows
the traditional ‘Rise and Fall’ formula because he exists in a moralistic
universe where his dissolute actions
invoke injurious consequences. From the opening line of dialogue, ‘as far back
as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster,’ the prevalence and
allure of the Mafia is immediately apparent. Scorsese uses quick cuts and
erratic camera movements to emphasise the transient thrill of such an excessive
reality for Henry. Equally, his employment of extended tracking shots-particularly
in the scene where the camera moves from outside the restaurant to Henry’s
table-articulate the intimate, familial bond shared by Henry and the Mafioso.
Some
characters, like Karen, find the Mafia’s ethical ambiguity difficult to accept,
but Henry’s assumption of amorality is instinctive and absolute, even from a
young age. For Henry gangster culture represents the realisation of the
American Dream, but for the objective, sensitised viewer ‘it's the American
dream gone completely mad and twisted’[3]. Henry
has wealth, power and a loving family; conversely he has betrayed Scorsese’s
concept of a cosmic morality to achieve this. As Billy Batts says, ‘good is
good,’ and Henry is not a good person.
Goodfellas differs
from Scorsese’s ‘Catholic’[4]
cinema, exemplified by Mean Streets,
because the protagonist (Henry) is not seeking redemption for his sins, or a
solution for a moral crisis. Emerson contends ‘the world Henry describes is one
in which there's no higher power taking moral inventory’[5]. He
is Palahnuik’s ‘spiritual depression’ personified. Charlie in Mean Streets attests that ‘You don't make up for your sins in church.
You do it in the streets. You do it at home,’ signifying that Henry’s fate is
inescapable. Henry’s decadence degrades him into adultery and drug
addiction, eventually leading to the collapse of his family and his testifying
against the Mafia. Goodfellas concludes
with Henry in the Witness Protection Programme, living in fear and isolation;
his own personal hell.
Similarly
to Henry in Goodfellas, Casino’s protagonist, the gambling
handicapper Sam Rothstein, is castigated for his adherence to mob culture’s
parochial amorality; because he exists in a narrative monopolised by Scorsese’s
Catholic values. When the viewer is introduced to Sam he is already an
established footsoldier in the Mafia, and in gang ethics, which raises an
interesting comparison with Henry’s moral development in Goodfellas’ opening, where he transgresses from naivety into
sociopathy. The audience will naturally find Sam a more difficult character to
relate to because the film does not chart his moralistic arc, which makes his
actions seem unequivocally wicked; for example, his violent employment of
‘cheater’s justice’ where he breaks the bones of anyone caught cheating. Not
only does he consider himself as above conventional morality but as above the
American legal system.
Moreover
Sam suffers Palahniuk’s spiritual depression. As an elapsed Jew, he is not
concerned by religious guilt or God’s omniscient judgement, and expects the
only power he answers to are his Mafia superiors. Sam eventually supersedes the
role of his absent God to become his own deity in his role as Tangiers Casino’s
manager, even to the point where he challenges the Mafia bosses; Emerson notes,
‘[he] aims for an infallible position where [he] can get away with anything in
the name of piling up cash’[6].
In Las Vegas, the Garden of Eden[7]
of amorality, Sam is a God. He notes, ‘here, I’m Mr. Rothstein’, offering a
figure of supreme authority.
Sam’s
towering arrogance, his genuine belief in his own omnipotence, is
characteristic of a self-destructive psychology. Self-destruction is the only
possible conclusion to the regime of reckless excess which Sam symbolises. His
God Complex inexorably leads to his downfall and the collapse of his hedonistic
paradise, as Scorsese ends with images of various casinos being demolished and
Sam’s nostalgic, unrepentant declaration, ‘the town will never be the same’.
The
narrative of each film’s protagonist represents their separate society’s
self-destructive ethics, but the protagonists are also circumstantial, trivial
actors in the context of their universe’s inclusive morality, or amorality.
The
moral landscape of Shutter Island is palpably
chaotic and destructive. Scorsese photographs the island as being hellish; it
is cut off from civilisation, and the cold barrenness of the scenery and storm
weather accentuates the unsettling confusion of the plot. Scorsese uses natural
grey light and jagged cinematography: scraggly rocks: crashing waves:
claustrophobic, dank hallways: and graveyards, to establish a sense of unease. Ominous
string and brass movements symbolise the volatility of the island and its
inhabitants. Scorsese’s utilisation of atmospheric music and imagery transforms
a conventional mystery thriller into psychological horror, with an overpowering
sense of fear and neurosis.
Along
with the obvious implications of paranoiac conspiracies and psychological
instability central to the narrative, various ideas contribute to the dread surrounding
the global horrors of post-modernism. There are references to controversial
psychosomatic experiments, genocide, Cold War suspicion, and nuclear weapons; one
patient claims ‘we hear things about the outside world, why would anyone want
to leave here?’ Alongside the use of German scientists in the hospital itself, these
elements allude to the evil inherent in man, as Teddy observes ‘after Dachau,
we’ve seen what human beings are capable of doing to each other’. The world was
undergoing a terrifyingly rapid transition following the 2nd World
War, and as another one of the patients insinuates, it would be a struggle for
anyone to adapt and progress in the real world, not just the criminally insane.
Ebert corroborates this; ‘everything is brought together into a disturbing
foreshadow of dreadful secrets’.
Even outside Teddy’s doomed investigation Shutter Island is home to a decaying
morality.
The
notion that Shutter Island suffers Palahnuik’s ‘spiritual depression’ is
evidenced by a lack of an orthodox God. As well as indifference a deeper moral
order of destruction mediates the narrative, as the warden comments ‘God loves
violence’, implying that there is a God, but not of the traditional
Judeo-Christian kind. There is no
Catholic morality, the only ethical code enforced is the methodical judicial
system, embodied by the warden and the board of directors, and the only
compassionate hospital official, Dr. Cawley, has little power over this amoral
ubiquity. Cawley claims he believes in ‘a moral fusion between law and order,
and clinical care’ and providing ‘calm’, a benevolent approach to psychiatric
treatment which directly contradicts the board’s irreverent attitude.
Significantly, his act of altruism, the only true act of empathy in the film-to
provide Teddy the intricate opportunity to escape his delusion-fails.
The
board want to tear out the soul, the individuality, of their patients by having
them drugged or lobotomised rather than treated therapeutically. The Warden
orchestrates a society of destructive apathy, a self-contained dystopia, where
vacuum of personality is preferred to madness. In lobotomising his patients, he
is systematically eradicating the spirituality of the island; ‘there is no
moral order at all’.
Where
Shutter Island corresponds with Goodfellas and Casino is in Scorsese’s implicit admonition of their collective
ethics. However, while his condemnation is categorical in his two gangster
films, where the protagonists are punished for refuting Catholic values and the
values of common decency, in Shutter
Island the moral figures are punished. The circumstances of universal
amorality determine Teddy’s suffering, not character actions, while Cawley and
psychologist/partner Sheehan fail in their attempt at compassionate treatment.
In condemning morally upright characters Scorsese highlights contemporary
America’s disdain for the mentally unhealthy, but more pertinently, the
deplorability of the island’s ethical politics and its indissoluble
relationship with self-destruction.
Scorsese’s
depiction of Mafia lifestyle in Goodfellas
has, being based on a true story, been praised for its authenticity, yet
Scorsese’s universe is not realistic but moralistic. David Chase refers to Goodfellas
as ‘The Koran’[9],
painting Scorsese’s film as a guidebook of gangster discourse and morality.
Certainly, it captures mob culture vividly.
Henry
Hill, and his immediate friends Jimmy and Tommy, live decadently and to excess.
These corresponding philosophies suggest a pervasive, cultural amorality and
spiritual void in Mafia society. Henry summarises this astutely, ‘when I was
broke, I’d go out and rob some more’. Considering most characters are from
Italian-Catholic backgrounds, a deep sense of Christian morality would
assumedly be instilled from a young age. However, these characters’ actions
prove to be the antithesis of Christian values; as well as drug abuse, they
murder, steal and commit adultery, breaking three of The Ten Commandments as an
active lifestyle. There is no spirituality to their lives despite their stanch
belief in the institution of family, both figurative and literal.
One
incongruous element of Goodfellas’ amoral
universe are the female characters; the gangster wives. While they do not
participate directly in their husbands’ criminality, the women are not helpless
spectators homogenised by a patriarchal environment. Karen enjoys her wealth
aware of her family’s source of income, and is fully capable of escaping that
life; which, arguably, renders her morally complicit. She concedes ‘I got to
admit the truth. It turned me on’. Indeed, Vinessa Erminio asserts that they
'all made certain moral compromises - looking the other way sometimes when the
men fool around, enjoying a good life paid for with blood money'[10].
The only truly innocent party in Goodfellas
is young children. Though gangsters perceive themselves as righteous
because of their familial love, substantiated by their self-idealisation as
bread winning, blue-collar workers, this is a misconception. Their families are
just as criminally and morally implicated as they are.
Each
character’s narrative seems to be regulated by an implicit, vengeful
Utilitarian power, and Utilitarian morality seems indivisibly linked with
self-destruction. Mill argues that Utilitarianism involves ‘giving to each what
they deserve[…] evil for evil[…] a proper object of that intensity of sentiment
which places the Just above the Expedient’[11]. In
this context the gangsters are attributed justice; they administer pain rather
than happiness, and are administered pain in return, ‘evil for evil’. For their temporal decadence they suffer moral
judgement. Tommy is killed because he murdered a ‘made’ man, a capital offence
in gangster ethics, while Jimmy was served a 20 years-to-life sentence. Paul
Cicero also died in prison. In a Utilitarian universe the gangsters’ amorality
and spiritual depravity means their downfall is inevitable; therefore, Goodfellas is self-destructive.
Casino’s portrayal
of gang culture ethics can be paralleled with Goodfellas’, especially since its setting is the metropolitan
embodiment of amorality, Las Vegas. While Sam, Nicky and Ginger individually
represent moral corruption and spiritual negligence, and indulge in the general
delusion of invincibility, in Las Vegas destructive apathy and deceit is
collective. The casinos try to cheat the public, a proposition the public
reciprocate. Nicky tortures, steals and murders, while Ginger and Lester
Diamond denote prostitution. Even the police are corrupt, as Commissioner Webb
targets the Tangiers after Sam fires his brother-in-law. Scorsese shows Las
Vegas to be quite literally Sin City. Sam describes it as a ‘morality car wash.
It does for us what Lourdes does for hunchbacks and cripples’. Evidently, the
denizens of Vegas are not seeking Charlie’s pathological concept of redemption,
but a vapid, temporary escape from their sins.
Furthermore
Mill’s definition of Utilitarianism is applicable since their escape is, after
all, only temporary. Las Vegas is an ephemeral Utopia in a moralistic universe,
and the characters’ sins will eventually damn them. Steven Sanders elaborates,
‘The Las Vegas setting provides the context for the social and psychological
realism that fills Casino and propels
the plot, whose moral centre lies in the predetermined ending’[12].
Surely, the fates of the protagonists are predetermined, and by distributing
only malignity to others they are repaid with only malignity. Nicky is killed
by his own gang, Ginger dies from a drug overdose, and Sam, like Henry, is
exiled to a life of reminiscing about the past. Assuming their fates are fixed
because of their self-indulgence, that the characters continue to exist in
depravity reveals Las Vegas to be an intrinsically self-destructive society.
In
conclusion, Palahnuik’s notion of the contemporary ‘spiritual depression’ and
the ‘self-destructive’ society is relevant to Scorsese’s filmography. In Shutter Island Teddy Daniels’ morality
remains ambiguous, yet he suffers because he is subject to a cruel,
uncompromising environment. By contrast, Henry in Goodfellas and Sam in Casino
are manifestly amoral and, although they enjoy fleeting success and happiness,
they are ultimately actors in a moralistic universe which punishes amorality.
All three films represent a culture either devoid of a God figure, or as
embracing an antipathetic God figure, therefore expressing Palahnuik’s
spiritual depression. Additionally, because the protagonists’ fates are,
arguably, predetermined, their insistence on intensifying their decadence-or
delusion in the case of Teddy-hints towards a self-destructive tendency. This
in turn can be seen to signify a wider social self-destructive psychology.
Filmography
Casino,
1995, Martin Scorsese. (USA: Universal Pictures)
Goodfellas,
1990, Martin Scorsese. (USA: Warner Bros.)
Mean Streets,
1973, Martin Scorsese. (USA: Warner Bros.)
Shutter Island,
2010, Martin Scorsese. (USA: Paramount Pictures)
Bibliography
Gabbard,
Glen. The psychology of the Sopranos: love, death, desire and betrayal
in America's favorite gangster family, 1st ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2002)
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, 3rd
ed. (London: Digireads.com, 2005)
Steven Sanders. No Safe Haven: Casino, Friendship
and Egoism in Mark Conard (Ed). The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese, 1st
ed. (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2007)
Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese, 1st
ed. (London: Faber, 1989)
