All of us romantics are too distracted by our imminent deaths. We sit in front of the television, wringing our hands and pursing our lips. We have no time or energy for love in between all that worrying.
Some have said the “culture of fear” in the United States of America is politically paralyzing, that it leaves no room for free thinking, rationality, or dissenting opinions. This may be true, but we must also consider what fear does to love. Love, that fragile beast so well tended to by our artists of fiction, is seldom observed in modern case studies. It has been supplanted by fear and worry.
As much as we like to pretend, our world is nothing like your typical Hollywood action picture. We are not prone to meeting our soul mates during a global crisis. When the end of existence is haunting us, love tends to be the last thing on our minds. We are constantly made to feel as though we are just about to die. With my heart in my throat, it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe, let alone love.
Extinction is not regarded as a distant threat anymore. In my lifetime, I have seen large buildings full of my countrymen topple to the ground in flames. I have seen numerous school shootings. I have seen anthrax poisoning, SARs, chicken flu, and swine flu. Every day, people die at the hands of suicide bombers, gunmen, officers of the law, and other murderers. This list is by no means exhaustive and does not even mention natural disasters or accidental deaths. I can be sure there are more attacks, epidemics, murders, accidents, and catastrophes to follow. I can also be sure that someday something will bring about the end of my species. This knowledge surrounds the idealistic concept of love with a thick layer of perceived futility. By the time I find love, it may very well be too late. Do I still try?
I am eighteen years old, I have lived through two wars, and I have never been in love. It seems all I have done so far is get my affairs in order in preparation for the apocalypse. Other than the occasional one-night stand, not much thought is given to romantic pursuits. I often catch myself assuming that there will not be enough time.
I have to believe, though, that there is always enough time for love. It is one of the quickest and most unconscious actions we make as human beings. Love happens in the time it takes to look quickly over my shoulder at someone standing behind me at a concert. It happens in the time it takes to interpret the waitress’ handwriting on the check. Really, it happens independently of time. Even if the death of our species was seconds away I would still have plenty of time for love. I just need to learn to use that time for something other than indulging in neuroses and irrational fear.
The very idea of love is worrisome enough already. It offers heartbreak, frustration, betrayal, and —very rarely— happiness. We seem to crave these exciting turns of fortune; perhaps because that element of danger is familiar to us at this point. When a lover spurns my advances, treats me poorly, or leaves me for another, I can almost consciously enjoy the rush of emotion that follows. It is not preferable, of course, but it is something. I’ll take heartbreak in an age that usually deals me numbness.
Real love, though, the kind I pine after but do not see in my life, is waking up late with another person under your arm and being completely content. It is the holding of hands and the glances across the room and the telephone calls and the exchange of words and touches. Please tell me this brand of love is real.
I was born on January 16, 1991. Coincidentally, this was the day Operation Desert Storm began in Iraq. Born into war, I now live in it again. For the past six years, the United States of America has been occupying the country of Iraq. Now that I am an adult, I could realistically be dying for my country as early as next year. I am almost too old for love now. Love is something reserved for the young. Am I doing something wrong? Am I too scared? Not scared enough?
The terror comes to me when I turn on my television to check the weather but find instead ten dead in a shopping mall shooting spree and thousands dead in wars across the world. It is irrational, I suppose, to think that my death will come at the hands of one of the many television images burned into my memory, but the fear is still palpable and paralyzing.
The trouble is our entire social and political structure is built around danger and fear. In his “Movements And Migrations,” Edward Said notes that the government now uses the media as a tool to incite fear in its citizens in the name of patriotism. In one case he observes, “In the spring of 1986 the Reagan administration decided to deal “terrorism” a blow, the raid on Libya was times to occur exactly as prime-time national evening news began.” (327) Years later, when the United States dispatched a huge army to the Arabian Gulf, they commandeered the media to help carry out the operation (326). This is terrible news for a romantic like me. How many letters to my congressman will it take in order to reverse this trend? The government should be sympathetic to my plight. I am a citizen just reaching adulthood, not so much in love with my country, granted, but very much enamored with some of its inhabitants. In the interest of love, let’s put the guns and cameras down for at least a few hundred years.
Not that I haven’t tried to love. I have. I’m irrational about it, in fact. I’ve fallen in love while passing someone on a street, seeing them across from me on a train, meeting them in my dreams. So how do I navigate our culture of fear and make it work for me romantically? In Chris Marker’s La jetée (1962), The Man was forced to travel back in time to before World War III in order to find love. This is not an option for me, as far as I know. No, I am already deep within the catacombs of that Parisian art gallery, awaiting my death. Is this a self-imposed feeling of imprisonment or has it been forced upon me?
The love depicted in La jetée doesn’t seem to exist in our society’s conscious except maybe as mimicry of what we are sold by popular culture. I’ve accepted the fact that the love I find on illuminated screens in dark theaters will not be the love I find in my life, but then what will I find? Have I already had love without knowing it? I may well be expecting something completely irrational.
The Man is able to travel back to this woman and love her. In that age, no one knew the war was coming, so they spent their time in gardens and museums. In one instance, there is a long montage of nude statues in “the museum of his memory,” which would seem to allude to the sexuality deprived of The Man by war and imprisonment. He sees the human body in an entirely new light, not as pornographic but as purely organic and awe-inspiring. The human body was not made for fighting. Our skin punctures very easily and our vital organs are all clustered in the upper portion of the body, making for easy targets. It stands to reason, then, that it was meant to be in love rather than at war. Even our necks, which serve many practical purposes, are shown in one of Marker’s many striking images from the film as seemingly perfect objects of adoration.
The peacetime depicted in the film fosters much better conditions for romance than today, when everyone’s eyes are to the sky waiting for the first bomb. Even our gardens and museums reek of fear at this point. People walk quickly and nervously, with their eyes to the ground. Our art is cold and terrified. Our films are about global disasters and tragedy. There is no time to wander the halls of a museum of “ageless animals” when everything in our lives asks us to be very afraid.
The Narrator’s use of the term “ageless animals” puzzled me at first. Are they ageless because their corpses are preserved in the glass boxes of museum? Are humans ageless as well? No, it seems that in our quest to stock our museum galleries full of animal bodies, we have forgotten our own. As with any other animal, human beings have an age, and with every passing day we are a step closer to the end of it.
There are those who escape this fear and lead fulfilling lives unhindered by the neuroses that weigh me down. I applaud them for their bravery, but I wish I could ask them how they do it. Are they blissfully ignorant or is there something in their character that tells them to set that fear aside and take life in with all of themselves?
True, I have worry-free days. Sometimes I forget to watch the news or forget to read the papers. Sometimes I just forget to be so afraid. How can I replicate this? It always comes at random and I never know until it is over. My mind clears itself of nerves and fear and allows me time to love and live. On these days I become The Man watching The Woman pull her hair back at the museum and revealing her neck. I stare at my potential lovers with fascination and wonder. I wish that they, as in the film, would “welcome as a natural phenomenon the ways of this visitor.” Lift your heads and love me back! Free yourself of worry as I have somehow unconsciously done! Because it is natural to have a clear head and an able body, to spend a free day finding love. I want more days of this.
So how do we go about freeing ourselves from our culture of fear? If everyone weren’t so nervous all the time, we’d have a much better shot at romance. It cannot be a new sensation, this fear. It must be as old as the human race itself. As a species, we have been in a state of constant war for hundreds of thousands of years. So has there ever been love? Can love exist in wartimes? Certainly not love in the way it is sold to us, as an eternal, uncompromising, all-encompassing force. Are we just fooling ourselves as to the nature of love then? Are we simply chasing after our animal lust for sex while “humanizing” it under another name?
It strikes me, though, that while our species has been at war since its inception, the supposed danger of our situation is more apparent now than ever. With the advent of mass media, we were exposed to a constant stream of tragedy and horror available to us at any time.
To draw another comparison to the catacombs of La jetée, our newsmen function as The Scientist, that “reasonable man who told him in a relaxed way that the human race was doomed.” At every turn, we are reminded of the risk we run by being human. This is no way to live for someone looking for love. Any search for romance seems futile when everything around me suggests I will die before finding it. Will I? Am I in true danger or is it only manufactured and imagined? Is the appearance of danger more paralyzing than the danger itself?
Marker, Chris. La jetée. 1962. DVD.
Said, Edward W. “Movements and Migrations.” Culture And Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. 326-336. Print.
