In the winter of 1967, Professor Charles Goetzinger conducted an experiment in his Basic Persuasion Class, hiring an actor to attend all his classes wearing a large black bag. Strangely, after several days, the black bag began to inspire anger in the other students. Goetzinger's students would pick fights with, taunt and tease the black bag, seemingly unable to recognise that there was a human being within it.
What Goetzinger's experiment showed was that anonymity loosens the restraints on aggressive behaviour, and that when victims are anonymous, and therefore dehumanised, it grows easier to commit violence against them. This echoes the countless bizarre reports of children at Disneyland striking hapless costumed characters for no apparent reason and why most movies, especially war movies, deindividualize the Other in an effort not to implicate their audiences.
Richard Kelly's "The Box", which can be divided into three sections, deals with these themes, but goes a bit further. In its first section (lasting approximately 30 minutes) we have a fairly faithful retelling of "Button, Button", a Richard Matheson short story and "Twilight Zone" episode (1986). This section involves a couple (Norma and Arthur) who are given a box by a strange man named Steward. The box is equipped with one button, and should either Norma or Arthur push it, they will promptly be given a million dollars. The catch is, pressing the button results in someone they don't know immediately dying. Of course Norma pushes the button anyway. Why wouldn't she? The box facilitates disavowal. Modern man, though he knows his actions cause suffering, is himself increasingly isolated from the consequences of his choices.
Steward gives Norma and Arthur their money and then leaves with the box, but not before ominously stating that the box will now be offered to "someone whom you don't know". Shocked, the couple suddenly realise that thousands of these boxes are around the country, everyone given the chance to make easy money at someone else's expense. Norma and Arthur, far from being suddenly wealthy, are now in mortal danger; they may be exploited by any number of button pushers around the world. The message: if everyone is willing to have others suffer in order to facilitate their own personal gains, then all is already lost, the film drawing broad parallels between capitalism, war, human nature, greed and violence.
In the second part of the film, Kelly tells us that the boxes are really a test given to mankind by aliens. The aliens are gathering data, and if humans are found to be selfish and beyond redemption, they will destroy the planet. This is a classic flaw in science fiction films ("Abyss", "The Day The Earth Stood Still" etc), in which advanced beings "teach us not to be violent" by hypocritically "threatening us with violence". I call this "Big stick diplomacy", whereby a superpower negotiates peace whilst simultaneously threatening violence. Throw in a bunch of silly science fiction themes, worm holes, teleportation and the kind of apocalyptic pseudo-religious ending that ALL of Kelly's films have, and...well, let's just say Kelly sabotages his whole film with unnecessary mumbo jumbo.
Luckily the third part of Kelly's film salvages everything. Early in the film Norma mentions Jean Paul Sartre. Later, Norma and Arthur go to a performance of Sartre's 1944 existentialist play, "No Exit", and find the words "No Exit" written on their car window. Sartre, of course, famously said in "No Exit" that "Hell is other people", the implication being that the earth is "made hell" because we become throwaway objects when in the gaze of others.
More horrifically, modern man no longer has the ability to "choose" whether he presses the button or not. In the age of globalization, he has ceased to become a subject and is now a default participant. To escape the global system is to be free, but escape is impossible. This is partially why the film's aesthetic is labyrinthine and confusing, and wholly divorced from the cosy spaces of the 1986 Twilight Zone episode. Kelly recognises that Matheson's world is long gone. The system's labyrinthine tendrils criss-cross in all directions to such an extent that boxes and buttons are now continually overlapping and always unwittingly pressed. The film's way out of this gridlock is essentially what Godard espouses in "Our Music" ("Who are you?"), man encouraged to make empathetic connections born of mutual suffering, rather than either avoidance or blind tolerance.
This notion of "compassion born of mutual suffering" is articulated at the end of the film, when Norma begins to identify with Steward. She has a mutilated foot and he has a mutilated face, and by recognising his pain and suffering she is able to regret having pushed the button.
We then learn that "The Box Test" has a second phase. He who pushes the button must sacrifice themselves for their child, which of course is what Norma does. She allows herself to be shot so that her son may live. The implication is that whilst everyone on the planet has selfishly pressed the button, man is nevertheless inherently good enough to sacrifice himself for his fellowman.
Cue cheesy CGI water, worm holes and silly baptism, purgatory and hell metaphors. Kelly's point: there is "No Exist", no escaping the world, only the fleeting chance of a kind of mutual empathy, a kind of heaven on earth.
8/10 – Ignore what the film says about the acronym HREM. With the film constantly referencing X-rays, it means "High Resolution Electron Microscopy". IE – the box test is an X ray of humanity, the aliens trying to see what we're really like deep down inside.
What Goetzinger's experiment showed was that anonymity loosens the restraints on aggressive behaviour, and that when victims are anonymous, and therefore dehumanised, it grows easier to commit violence against them. This echoes the countless bizarre reports of children at Disneyland striking hapless costumed characters for no apparent reason and why most movies, especially war movies, deindividualize the Other in an effort not to implicate their audiences.
Richard Kelly's "The Box", which can be divided into three sections, deals with these themes, but goes a bit further. In its first section (lasting approximately 30 minutes) we have a fairly faithful retelling of "Button, Button", a Richard Matheson short story and "Twilight Zone" episode (1986). This section involves a couple (Norma and Arthur) who are given a box by a strange man named Steward. The box is equipped with one button, and should either Norma or Arthur push it, they will promptly be given a million dollars. The catch is, pressing the button results in someone they don't know immediately dying. Of course Norma pushes the button anyway. Why wouldn't she? The box facilitates disavowal. Modern man, though he knows his actions cause suffering, is himself increasingly isolated from the consequences of his choices.
Steward gives Norma and Arthur their money and then leaves with the box, but not before ominously stating that the box will now be offered to "someone whom you don't know". Shocked, the couple suddenly realise that thousands of these boxes are around the country, everyone given the chance to make easy money at someone else's expense. Norma and Arthur, far from being suddenly wealthy, are now in mortal danger; they may be exploited by any number of button pushers around the world. The message: if everyone is willing to have others suffer in order to facilitate their own personal gains, then all is already lost, the film drawing broad parallels between capitalism, war, human nature, greed and violence.
In the second part of the film, Kelly tells us that the boxes are really a test given to mankind by aliens. The aliens are gathering data, and if humans are found to be selfish and beyond redemption, they will destroy the planet. This is a classic flaw in science fiction films ("Abyss", "The Day The Earth Stood Still" etc), in which advanced beings "teach us not to be violent" by hypocritically "threatening us with violence". I call this "Big stick diplomacy", whereby a superpower negotiates peace whilst simultaneously threatening violence. Throw in a bunch of silly science fiction themes, worm holes, teleportation and the kind of apocalyptic pseudo-religious ending that ALL of Kelly's films have, and...well, let's just say Kelly sabotages his whole film with unnecessary mumbo jumbo.
Luckily the third part of Kelly's film salvages everything. Early in the film Norma mentions Jean Paul Sartre. Later, Norma and Arthur go to a performance of Sartre's 1944 existentialist play, "No Exit", and find the words "No Exit" written on their car window. Sartre, of course, famously said in "No Exit" that "Hell is other people", the implication being that the earth is "made hell" because we become throwaway objects when in the gaze of others.
More horrifically, modern man no longer has the ability to "choose" whether he presses the button or not. In the age of globalization, he has ceased to become a subject and is now a default participant. To escape the global system is to be free, but escape is impossible. This is partially why the film's aesthetic is labyrinthine and confusing, and wholly divorced from the cosy spaces of the 1986 Twilight Zone episode. Kelly recognises that Matheson's world is long gone. The system's labyrinthine tendrils criss-cross in all directions to such an extent that boxes and buttons are now continually overlapping and always unwittingly pressed. The film's way out of this gridlock is essentially what Godard espouses in "Our Music" ("Who are you?"), man encouraged to make empathetic connections born of mutual suffering, rather than either avoidance or blind tolerance.
This notion of "compassion born of mutual suffering" is articulated at the end of the film, when Norma begins to identify with Steward. She has a mutilated foot and he has a mutilated face, and by recognising his pain and suffering she is able to regret having pushed the button.
We then learn that "The Box Test" has a second phase. He who pushes the button must sacrifice themselves for their child, which of course is what Norma does. She allows herself to be shot so that her son may live. The implication is that whilst everyone on the planet has selfishly pressed the button, man is nevertheless inherently good enough to sacrifice himself for his fellowman.
Cue cheesy CGI water, worm holes and silly baptism, purgatory and hell metaphors. Kelly's point: there is "No Exist", no escaping the world, only the fleeting chance of a kind of mutual empathy, a kind of heaven on earth.
8/10 – Ignore what the film says about the acronym HREM. With the film constantly referencing X-rays, it means "High Resolution Electron Microscopy". IE – the box test is an X ray of humanity, the aliens trying to see what we're really like deep down inside.