Robert K. Johnston, "The Meaningful Meaningless of Multiverse Movies: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ecclesiastes, and Camus," 9/28/2023
Over the last decade or so, the multiverse has become an important topic both in theoretical physics and in popular culture. What might be the significance of there being parallel universes to our own? While physicists are divided on the topic, filmmakers, in particular, have increasingly embraced the notion. This year’s Academy Award winner, EEAO, uses the multiverse as a deeply affecting metaphor, one particularly suited to the Asian American immigrant experience, but also one suited to the absurdity and chaos of contemporary life, which we all feel. While the filmmakers humorously use the multiverse as a gigantic symbol of life’s meaninglessness, paradoxically they also invite viewers back to the need to accept and love one another despite our different values, experiences and orientations. In this way, the film invites an intertextual dialogue with Albert Camus and his commitments both to life’s absurdity and to a stubborn humanism rooted in love, as well as to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures which recognizes that all our efforts to make life meaningful are “vanity,” while also recognizing that joy in life is both good and possible. Life is meaningless, absurd (perhaps all the more so because of the multiverse); but it is simultaneously meaningful, wonderful!
Robert K. Johnston, Senior Professor of Theology and Culture, Fuller Theological Seminary is author / coauthor of books on theology and film including Useless Beauty: Ecclesiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film (2004), Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (2nd ed 2006), and Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue (2019).
This event was part of the series, Multiverses and Alternate Realities: Other Worlds in Film, sponsored by the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute, September 25-29, 2023. The idea of multiple universes existing simultaneously has roots in both philosophical reflections on possible worlds and contemporary physical cosmology but has become a major theme in recent popular films, such as 2023 Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once and movies in the Marvel Universe. These explorations of other cinematic worlds join older films that explore alternate possible paths of experience and action such as the classic Run, Lola Run, virtual realities of The Matrix and the Westworld series, imaginary worlds of fantasy films such as Avatar, alternative history explorations such as The Man in the High Castle, and films such as Total Recall that combine different forms of alternative reality. What motivates cinematic interest in alternate realities, especially at this particular historical moment? Do multiverse and alternate reality films reflect fears of possible dystopias far worse than the world we inhabit? Better possibilities to inspire us? Variant duplications of the world that we find more intriguing than mundane reality?
Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute
Gonzaga University
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