Lies for Living

Netflix gets me.

Of course it does, the cynic might say. Netflix is big tech, one of those nebulous entities that have algorithms to predict everything from your hat size to your shoe preference. Input your information, and it will output things you like. And if you lie about your age, your zip code, your nationality, and your income—all things I do every time I sign up for any big tech account—it will know you through your viewing habits over time.

My Netflix predictions definitely come through this latter function of the algorithm, which can be a bit comical. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and so when I do log on Netflix seems a bit desperate to keep my attention. The problem is that I will start almost anything that looks like an interesting story, but will quickly give up if it doesn’t hold my attention. As a result, I get tons of suggestions for things I tried but actually hated—alien-themed sci-fi, German crime thrillers, movies based on best sellers, and such.

Lately, however, Netflix has been spot on. A quick scan of my browsing history will tell you what the algorithm already knows. I prefer movies to television because of the smaller time investment. I prefer drama to comedy. I don’t mind violence or swearing, but I will stop watching if a sex scene feels gratuitous or exploitative. I like creepy but hate jump scares. If I like an actor, I’ll watch almost anything he or she is in.

Enter those data pieces in, and voila! You get movies like Ava.

Ava (Jessica Chastain) is a special ops assassin with plenty of personal demons—alcohol, paternal abuse, guilt, regret. She talks to her subjects before she kills them to try to give them a good death. “Think of it as though it’s already happened,” she tells one mark. “Because it has.”

Cold-blooded, that one. But also reflective of a complex hero—another must-have to keep my viewing attention.

When I scroll through movies or shows I’ve watched in the last year, I see a lot of troubled protagonists who are trying to outrun a sordid history. Usually, the trouble involves some mundane failure. Before she was a hero, she was an addict. Or a bad parent. Or the cause of an accident that left her wracked with guilt. Regrets of the past drive her actions through the plot.

The troubled hero is so common as to be cliche, of course.. Spider-Man was indirectly responsible for his uncle’s death. J.K. Rowling filled volumes with Harry Potter’s family issues. The aforementioned Ava wrecked her one chance at love through alcohol, and this at the same time her abusive father was ostracizing her from the family.

I think what keeps me from rolling my eyes at such tropes is a baseline knowledge of the human condition. The sources of our hurts tend to fall within a fairly narrow band of categories, and while each carries its own unique pain, the aggregate of our torments reveals a list that isn’t terribly creative.

I wonder if this isn’t why I like movies like Ava, dark and violent though it is. I want to know that exceptional people still deal with run-of-the mill problems, that even the most outwardly successful don’t escape life unscathed. I’m not sure if misery loves company, but I know it hates being alone.

On the flip side, I also love tortured heroes because they are, well, heroes. The troubles in their pasts aren’t just obstacles to be overcome. In the best stories, they are indispensable motivators, essential to their quests.

I want to believe it works the same for those of us on more ordinary hero journeys. I want to believe that failure and regret are just setbacks, that we will all overcome our pasts and save those we love and get credit for it all at the end.

I don’t believe that, of course. Life doesn’t work out for everyone. Some of us never repair our damage. Some of us fail despite our best efforts. The universe doesn’t owe us anything, and God doesn’t always intervene. History is strewn with the bodies of the innocent.

I’m not okay with that. I don’t think anyone should be.

So how do we keep from giving up, in the face of all this despair?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot in recent days. It’s no secret that the past few years have been tough on pastors, but the past six months have been especially trying in my context. Isolation and disappointment have taken up residence in my work life, and there’s no clear next plot point to move my story forward.

Honestly, and with all due respect to the easy optimism of self-help bullshit, there isn’t much I can do. I’m in the lull between scenes, the parts they don’t show in movies. After all, who wants to watch the protagonist get a speeding ticket or stop to go to the bathroom? We’d much rather fast-forward to the part where she kicks Collin Farrell’s butt in a well-choreographed martial arts scene. We want a hero we can relate too. Just not too much.

In yet another sign that I’m turning into my mother, I find myself reminding my students that life is not like television, that struggles go on much longer and rarely end with a tidy bow. So before anyone throws that advice back at me, let me assure you that yeah, I get it.

But I still need the fictions to keep myself going—and a particular kind of fiction at that. At the end of Ava, the hero walks away from her victory after having vanquished the bad guy and redeeming her place as the family protector. But she’s trailed by another assassin, one equally motivated to kill. She doesn’t get away scot-free. We’re left to wonder if she gets away at all. Death is coming for her, just like it does for everyone else.

But I don’t need the happy ending. I’m more concerned with a hero that stays in the fight. Whatever may happen during the in-betweens, I want to know that she is ready to act when the time comes. I want to know that she will die rather than quit, even though quitting is the more sensible course.

I know these stories are not real. A synonym for “fiction” is “lie.” I have no illusions that the movies I’ve watched lately are true or even all that plausible. But they are nonetheless essential for living. They remind us to stay in the fight, regardless of past failure or future anxieties. We do know know how our stories will end, but we need to know that everyone fights a hard battle, and that dangers of all stripes come at us from the darkness. And when they do, we need to swing away, like the heroes that we are.