Crazy Hippies

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 29 March 2015.

Captain Nemo witnesses the attack of the squids from the viewbay

I'm still stuck, but I'll continue to ponder.

Arthur Miller's common man isn't a mystic, and as figures of science go, Farthington is kind of cartoonish...kind of in the tradition of Verne, Stevenson, and Wells, but sillier.

I get that there is a fallen analog to the high road, but I don't get why he wouldn't take a more attractive low road. I guess I don't see what Knology offers that can even seem better than the mystical visions. If I've seen and had conversations with Mary, what could Farthington possibly say that would stand up to that? I can get being hollowed out, but why in that situation would he not just be hollow.

Why not either succumb to entropy or fight to get Mary back?

I can see friendship being a motivator, and I can see being understood as a motivator. What am I missing in Farthington? Is part of my problem that cults have never really had much appeal to me, other than as tabloid entertainment, a moment to say, "Those crazy hippies..."?

Scripturally, I've been thinking a lot about Jesus' words to Nicodemus in John:

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

The last line especially gets me. There is a crystal clarity and simplicity to it. Don't worry about the judgment, because it is totally obvious what the judgment is--God gave you The Light and you preferred the darkness. Now let's get down to brass tacks...salvation. The judgment is easy and obvious. The salvation is baffling. I think about the balance of those two ideas in our story telling. We are pretty good at baffling and convoluted, but I want that aspect of clarity, too. In sharpening cliches, I guess I want to follow Jesus' lead in showing the simplicity of the complex and the complexity of the simple.

That quest informs every part of the story to me, but I'm still hung up on Arthur and Farthington. In your vision of Arthur, are the mystical visions just part of childhood, and does he not know that Mary is Mary or that The Sweet World is new creation? I've always thought of Arthur having visions throughout his life. Does he dull them with the sensual life and Farthington helps give them back to him?

Is Arthur just dumb? I don't like that idea much. Somehow in my mind, he keeps turning into Peter Sellers in Being There.

I know that you have to repeat yourself a lot to answer this question and that I'm slow in understanding it. I appreciate your help!

Also, I feel bad that I still haven't seen Household Saints. I just haven't figured out a way to get a hold of it.