Otherness

 

Once again our country convulses with yet another social problem. Last month people lived in tents for two days in order to get a seat to hear historic arguments concerning same sex marriage. The outcome seems sure under the promises of the Constitution; the right to privacy, to equal treatment under the law and the pursuit of happiness.

While watching a Swedish movie about three men thrown together in Greenland, my thoughts turned to Otherness once again. What happens when three Swedes find themselves living in Greenland, a landscape of ice and snow, hunting animals for a fur company based in Oslo?

Larsen,a tender hearted poet, joins Radbaek, more wolf than man, one who has killed his wife's lover. Holm, the middle of these two extreme personalities, does the scientific work for another company. But he fails because conflict is inevitable in this violent ping pong game of life.

 Zero Kelvin dramatizes the struggle we all encounter when facing alien circumstances, i.e., geography, climate, a new work place, a "new" person in our lives as neighbors and acquaintances. Or could the person we loved become someone "different” than we anticipated?
 
The three fall into conflict about everything from Larsen's poetry about his true love and Radbaek's view of human nature as "red tooth and claw," a world of betrayal, hatred and even murder. Holm can only arbitrate, balancing precariously on a tight rope trying to separate two antitypes. But in this universe of ice, there can be no middle ground. And that inability to come to terms can make all the difference in our lives.

Ironically, the film 's language [fair warning: terrible language] was far more Other than I choose to tolerate, I watched, spellbound, by the inevitable decline of Larsen's sensibility, what his girlfriend calls "soulfulness," into just another copy of Radbaek. "You have become me," the wolf-man tells him.

And Larsen does. The poet shoots Radbaek when he finds him beating Larsen's favorite sled dog to death with a rock, then returns with more bullets to finish him off. "You will never find peace and soul-full-ness again," Radaek mutters through bloody lips.

Celebrating Easter this year I thought about The Christ, who was to the Jews, after all, too much Otherness. All the wrong trappings: Nazareth, carpenter's son, not a member of the Sanhedrin, a "religious revolutionary."

So in the end we must anticipate Others and Otherness--the alien. Joseph Conrad's characters can't survive alone--especially in the jungle. In the "Outpost of Progress," solitude, jungle lushness and fevers, bring murder-suicide. For some of our children and adults yet another meeting seems more than they can bear. And for loved ones, sometimes even their own loving family is more than they can bear. Or even a classroom: Rules.Work. The redundancy that builds character and patience and good citizens.

My dad always said, "never say you won't live__________. "Go where the work is.” We all can't live in Orem. Someone is going to have to move to Alabama--or Nevada. And with that traumatic move comes neighbors whose skin is not white, whose marriage style is same-sex, with children. The climate personifies the Mojave desert. You could live miles away from family and too broke to bridge the gap. You may have to learn Spanish. Or Icelandic.

How large is your world? How much Otherness [anything that is not me] can you tolerate and perhaps even love?