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Journal of Religion and Film Fall, Creation, and Redemptionin Neil LaBute’s The Shape of ThingsBy Dr. Duane Olson |
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Vol. 8 No. 1 April 2004 Fall, Creation, and Redemption in Neil LaBute’sThe Shape of ThingsBy Dr. Duane OlsonAbstract[1] The Shape of Things is a contemporary restatement of the biblical story of the fall. Unlike other recent films about a fall from innocence, like Pleasantville and The Truman Show, which portray the fall as a rise into a meaningful life with limited and guarded harshness, LaBute’s drama presents the fall as entrance into a world of unreserved individual and social depravity. I analyze LaBute’s creative interplay with the biblical story and show the different directions of sinfulness that the film exposes, including the social critique underlying those directions. While the film presents no social redemption, I disclose the brief glimmers of the possibility of individual redemption that shine through it. Introduction[2]
Writer/director Neil LaBute first gained national attention when his
picture, In the Company of Men, won the Filmmakers Trophy at
the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. He followed that success with
Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), proving in these films to
be a serious analyst of the twistedness of contemporary
relationships and an unrelenting critic of contemporary culture.
After directing two relatively light-hearted films for which he did
not write the screenplays, he returns to the theme of human
depravity in his latest film, The Shape of Things (2003).1
[3] The film
was originally written as a play. It opened in London in 2001 under
LaBute’s direction with the same actors in the same roles as the
movie. There is minimal adaptation in the movie version, something
for which LaBute has been criticized. Like the play, there are only
four characters with speaking parts in the film, and each scene in
the movie is limited to what is easily staged and involves minimal
action. The movie is driven by the subtleties of dialogue and plot,
and while this may not lead to box office success in a day of
computer-generated special effects, it gives ample substance for
reflection. [4] LaBute’s
work is filled with symbolic actions, multiple ironies, and double
or submerged meanings. The Shape of Things is an extended
play on submerged meaning, since it involves the retelling of the
biblical story of the fall. The main characters, Adam and Evelyn,
reenact the major elements of the drama played out by their biblical
counterparts. One of the purposes of this paper is to explore the
way in which LaBute creatively restates the main themes of the
biblical story: the temptation of the serpent, the forbidden fruit,
the fall from innocence, the gaining of knowledge, and the emergence
of sexuality. LaBute interprets the fall into sin as entrance into
a world of unrelenting brokenness, a world containing only the
faintest glimmer of redemption. [5] In LaBute’s
restatement of the biblical story, the main characters sin in
different ways. Adam fails to use his freedom to actualize his true
self, while Evelyn fails to submit to finite limits. I call these
two directions respectively the sins of sloth and hubris. I analyze
each under the same comprehensive religious categories drawn from
the thought of Paul Tillich: ultimate concern and the demonic.
Ultimate concern is the religious directedness toward some object,
which places ultimate meaning upon it. The object of ultimate
concern becomes a god, or bears sacred meaning, demanding complete
sacrifice while promising total fulfillment. The demonic refers to
a destructive rather than a fulfilling ultimate concern. It can
take different directions, but when an ultimate concern destroys
one’s being instead of fulfilling it, it is demonic.2
In their sloth and hubris, Adam and Evelyn display different forms
of a demonic ultimate concern. I analyze Adam and Evelyn’s sins
respectively, before turning to the glimmers of redemption in the
film. [6] We first
meet Adam and Evelyn at the art museum of the college they attend in
a small, unnamed town. Adam (Paul Rudd) is a pudgy undergraduate
literature major with rimmed glasses and unfashionable slick hair
combed to the side. Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) is beautiful and
alluring. A graduate student in art, while she is often enigmatic,
she nevertheless displays an appealing boldness, a kind of
unapologetic certainty about who she is and what she does. [7] Adam is a
security guard at the museum, and in the opening scene he approaches
Evelyn, who has “crossed the line” by stepping over the ropes
cordoning off the statue of a large male nude. The statue, we
learn, is Fornecelli’s representation of God. When Adam steps over
the ropes himself to confront Evelyn, we have a symbolic recreation
of the garden of Eden scene. The garden is the world of art at the
museum. Adam is the keeper of the garden, and Evelyn is a late
arrival, who, as we learn, has plans to disrupt the order in the
garden. [8] Evelyn
boldly and without shame tells Adam that she has come to the museum
with the intent of defacing the statue of God. She explains that a
plaster cast of leaves and grapes was added to cover the exposed
genitals on the statue “by a committee who had complaints from local
townspeople.” She intends to spray-paint a penis on the plaster.
In Evelyn’s plan, we see the meaning of the temptation of the
serpent in this story. The serpent is the lure of absolute art; art
at all costs that demands a complete sacrifice for its creation and
is not bound by any norms or standards. The serpent has been
speaking to Evelyn and has drawn her to the museum with this plan. [9] As keeper
of the garden of art, Adam objects, but in his characteristic
low-key fashion. He is clearly more intrigued with Evelyn than the
demands of his job. In what appears to be a reference to the
forbidden fruit, Evelyn explains her project to Adam and takes Adam
to the side of the statue where they lean over to look behind the
plaster leaves and grapes. Evelyn tells Adam, “Look at it, you can
see the… See, right behind the grapes there, you can just see
his…” [10] As the
forbidden fruit, the penis represents sexual allure and all of the
attractions that go along with it like good looks, style, fashion,
and composing oneself in an enticing manner. It represents what
Evelyn will later call in a reference to the title of the movie “an
obsession with the surface of things, the shape of them.” In this
sense, it is the knowledge of good and evil from the garden of Eden
story. It is the kind of knowledge that breeds popularity and
success in a culture obsessed with attractiveness, fashionableness,
and sex appeal. [11] By
painting a penis on the plaster covering, on a surface level, Evelyn
is an art major making a statement against censorship. As we will
see, however, on a deeper level, she is denying that there are any
lines in art or that the artist is limited by any standards. This
statue is fitting for making such a statement, since it is a
representation of God and has itself “crossed the line,” breaking
the second commandment against visible images of Deity. But there
is still another level of meaning in what she does, given the fact
that the penis represents the forbidden fruit. Painting the penis,
and in effect exposing it from its hiding place, is symbolically
partaking of the forbidden fruit. Following the biblical story,
Evelyn partakes of it and will give it to Adam. Adam is a bumbling
nerd, who looks and dresses funny, bites his fingernails, and even
into his 20’s rides a bicycle instead of owning a car. Evelyn will
lure Adam into a relationship through which she will give to him the
knowledge of sex appeal. Gaining this knowledge constitutes his
fall. [12] While Adam
is simply entranced by the beautiful Evelyn and wants a
relationship, unbeknownst to him, Evelyn views Adam as an art
project. She feigns attraction to him, entering into relationship
simply to get him to change himself and make himself more physically
appealing. Sculpting Adam into a hot guy becomes her master’s
thesis. Evelyn prompts Adam to change with suggestions backed by
the promise of a deepened and more committed relationship, along
with evermore thrilling sexual encounters. [13] It is
certainly a contemporary twist on the biblical story to define the
knowledge of good and evil specifically in terms of our culture’s
obsession with appearance and sexual allure, and to make this web of
attraction that into which Adam falls. Still, LaBute maintains the
connection with one of the major themes of the biblical story by
showing that sexual awakening and the fall coincide. Adam’s fall
into the standards of surface appeal is simultaneously his sexual
awakening. This awakening is shown poignantly in an early scene,
where Adam and Evelyn are alone in bed, having just made love. They
are discussing Adam’s becoming less inhibited about his body,
something Adam admits he is only beginning to overcome. The scene
ends with Evelyn giving Adam a blow job. She eats of the forbidden
fruit as she simultaneously brings Adam out of his sexual
innocence. [14] LaBute
does a masterful job of presenting the cause of Adam’s fall as an
inextricable combination of deceit and personal responsibility.
Evelyn deceives Adam effectively and shamelessly. Early on, she
chides him for questioning why she would like a guy like him, claims
that she likes him, and says he should trust her about this. A bit
later in their relationship, in the midst of what we will discover
is a lie, she calls herself “a very straightforward person,” and
says “It’s the only way to be. Why lie?” [15] Adam, for
his part, falls hopelessly for Evelyn. While he goes through
moments of self-reflective questioning about whether he should
follow her suggestions and change, he always overcomes these inner
qualms by sacrificing who he is in order to maintain the
relationship with the enchanting Evelyn. She gets him to work out
and lose weight, though he admits he does not like to do it and is
doing it only for her. At her prompting, he changes his hairstyle
and eating habits, buys a new wardrobe, wears contacts, and quits
biting his nails. She encourages him to keep a journal about his
progress, which is ironic since journals are supposed to record
one’s inner thoughts and feelings, but she gets him to use it to
record progress on his surface changes. [16] The climax
of his transformation comes when she convinces him to get a nose job
and give up his friends. Adam says he never imagined himself as
someone who would have cosmetic surgery, and at first he balks about
going through with the procedure. Evelyn points out the
ordinariness of the procedure, but also makes a coy demand with the
claim that he has a “good face, a nice shape to your nose, actually,
but it’s just got that bit of… …bulb…at the end.” Finally, Evelyn
distracts Adam with sexual banter and Adam goes through with the
procedure. [17] In the
next scene, Adam wears a bandage on his nose and explains in a
wonderful double entendre to a friend’s query about the bandage, “I
fell.” Adam is ashamed to admit he has had plastic surgery and gets
angry at his friend’s persistent questioning about what happened.
Beneath his inability to expose publicly what he has done or why he
has done it, is an implicit awareness of personal responsibility.
He has done something out of character, only to please Evelyn, and
he must cover it up. [18] The only
other characters with lines in the movie are Adam’s friends, an
engaged couple, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phil (Frederick Weller).
Before meeting Phil, Jenny had a crush on Adam, and while he
apparently felt the same way, Adam was too reserved to act on his
feelings. Deep into his transformation, Jenny and Adam meet alone,
presumably to talk about Jenny’s doubts about Phil’s faithfulness.
Jenny is overcome that Adam would change for a woman. She calls him
“hot” and “cute.” Being sexually awakened, Adam responds. They
kiss and apparently do more. Both Phil and Evelyn find out about
the kiss. In a scene in a coffee shop, Evelyn ruthlessly confronts
Adam and Jenny. Jenny leaves angrily, but Evelyn continues to work
on Adam’s guilt and threatens to leave the relationship. The threat
prompts Adam to exclaim, “I’ll do anything you want, okay? …I just,
I just don’t want to lose you.” Adam agrees to Evelyn’s demand
never to see or speak to Phil and Jenny again. [19] These
final acts of compliance show how the relationship with Evelyn has
become a totalizing obsession. In religious categories, it is an
ultimate concern, demanding complete sacrifice, and, at the same
time, promising total fulfillment. It is a demonic ultimate
concern, because it destroys who Adam is rather than leading him to
deeper levels of self-fulfillment and self-actualization. The Adam
we get to know at the beginning of the film, for all his nerdiness,
displays a clever wit and a knowledge of literature, from which he
quotes frequently. He shows himself to be an interesting
conversationalist. It is true that he is not fully alive. His
shyness and insecurities have locked him away from others and kept
him from realizing his potential. It is because of his insecurities
that he is such an easy prey for Evelyn to manipulate. Yet there is
never a moment in the movie where who he is, as a unique individual
with special creative potential, is affirmed by Evelyn. Instead, he
continually sacrifices himself in order to change his surface
appearance to become acceptable to Evelyn and to receive the rewards
of this surface appeal, which include sexual rewards and the ego
massaging that comes from having a hot girlfriend and being regarded
as cute. His fall involves sacrificing meaningful
self-actualization for something shallow. [20] Presenting
the fall in this way, LaBute plays on the old moralist theme that in
our relationships with others and even our view of ourselves, we are
more dominated by surface appeal than the deeper aspects of personal
identity. We care more about the shape of things than the character
of people. The universality of the fall is expressed in the fact
that Adam will fall into a way of acting and being already firmly
entrenched in the culture. Because the culture is dominated by the
surface standards of sex appeal, Adam’s fall is, ironically, a
rise. Evelyn acknowledges this when she makes her deception public
at the end of the movie. Speaking of Adam, she says, “open any
fashion magazine, turn on any television program, and the world will
tell you he’s only gotten more interesting, more desirable, more
normal, in a word, better.” The double irony is that a rise by
cultural standards means to lose one’s true self. A cultural rise
is in fact a fall into depravity. [21] LaBute is
unrelenting in his social critique on this point. He gives us no
sense that a person can appreciate human physical beauty without
being dominated by the standards of surface appeal and driven by the
desire to receive shallow physical rewards. Similarly, he gives us
no sense that there can be a genuine sexual awakening without being
dominated by these same standards. Those who stand outside the
cultural drivenness by these standards, like Adam at the beginning
of the movie, do so not because of some higher realization, but
because of their insecurities, and they miss out on life. To
participate in culture means to participate in its brokenness, and
it is this brokenness that is unrelentingly brought to the fore in
the film. [22]
Religiously analyzed, the web of objectification and surface appeal
into which Adam falls is a kind of works-righteousness. Failing to
experience acceptance of who he is, Adam works desperately to make
himself acceptable to Evelyn. Evelyn is a demonic ultimate concern,
but she can only lead Adam to fall because the cultural standards of
objectification and surface appeal have universal power. Evelyn is
able to be a demonic god of law because of a perverse ultimate
concern within the culture that seeks acceptance in the endless
quest for physical beauty and the promised reward of physical
pleasure. [23] Adam’s
fall is simultaneously Evelyn’s creation. At the end of the movie,
when Evelyn unveils the fact that Adam was her thesis project, she
expresses no regret for what she has done. She says, “I have always
stood by the simple and single conceit that I am an artist, only
that. I follow in the long tradition of artists who believe that
there is no such concept as religion, or government, community, or
even family. There is only art; art that must be created whatever
the cost.” Art is the serpent that has beguiled Evelyn, and, like
her biblical counterpart, she holds it accountable for her actions.
It is her ultimate concern that negates all other concerns and also
promises complete fulfillment. It too is demonic, although this
demonry moves in a different direction than Adam’s. [24] Evelyn
absolutizes art to stand above ethics. If Immanuel Kant is correct
that the foundational ethical maxim is always to treat others as
ends in themselves and never merely as means, Evelyn’s maxim that
everything is a potential object of creation, of aesthetic
expression, overrides this. With Evelyn, the individual stands
above the universal on aesthetic grounds. As an artist, Evelyn
experiences the demand to create, or to bring forth something new.
Absolutized, this demand means she is above or beyond any standards
that regulate what-is.3
[25] Evelyn’s
absolutization of art is an example of hubris. It is the
counterpart to the story of Adam’s fall, which is an example of
sloth, defined as the failure to use one’s freedom to actualize
one’s true self. Evelyn refuses to acknowledge genuine human
limits. In a twist on the biblical story, she does not want merely
to know good and evil, but to enter the realm of the gods where she
is beyond the standards of good and evil altogether. Yet another
layer of meaning in her spraying a penis on God at the beginning of
the movie is that she refuses to be subject to God’s moral law, or
any laws of finitude, above her. She makes God into another human
being in order to take God’s place. [26] There are
significant transformations of the biblical story in LaBute’s
portrayal of Evelyn, even while he maintains the basic idea from
Genesis that the female is more active in sinning while the male is
more passive. Evelyn’s participation in sin is not in gaining the
knowledge of good and evil, but in denying that good and evil have
any validity. Unlike Adam or her biblical counterpart, she feels no
shame for what she does. She is unrepentant to the end. She
insists to Adam that they tape their love-making against his
objections, and eventually makes the tapes public as “supporting
materials” for her thesis project. Whereas the biblical Eve seeks
the covering of her nakedness, Evelyn seeks exposure. All of this
is required to make Evelyn, with her sin of hubris, a genuine
counterpart to Adam. With her, we have an active, assertive
sinfulness, rather than a passive fall. [27] In her
assertiveness, absolutizing art above all else, Evelyn is a demonic
creator, destroying what she creates. The movie shows, ironically,
that her failure to submit to standards is destructive not only of
the potential in relationships, but of art itself. [28] The Adam
that she creates is not someone genuine and unique, someone fully
himself, or more himself, the telos of genuine relationships. As
her creation, he is either an object of social critique or he is a
stereotype. Social critique presumes some standard of good and evil
to be valid, and this is the very thing Evelyn has abrogated to
create him. At the end of the movie, Adam is nothing other than a
cookie cutter co-ed. He is bad art. [29] Bad art,
however, is something Evelyn is unable to acknowledge. Her failure
to submit to standards applies even to art. Several times in the
movie, Evelyn mentions that art is “subjective.” It is clear she
means by this that art is nothing other than what the individual who
makes it or looks at it takes it to be, and there are radically
differing opinions about what that is. In an inconsistency of
character, while Evelyn holds this position in theory, in fact, she
gets angry with those who question her interpretations of art. The
main point, however, is that if art is subjective, there can be no
great art and no bad art because there are no standards to judge
it. In fact, there cannot even be a line between what is and is not
art. The failure to submit to standards destroys the meaning of art
altogether. It is all subjective. Anything can be art, and
anything is as good as anything else. [30] A critique
of ethical and aesthetic relativism runs through the movie in the
figure of Evelyn. Ethical relativism destroys people. Aesthetic
relativism destroys art. The irony is that the relativist,
represented by Evelyn, claims to affirm others in affirming that all
positions are subjective. Since there are no standards of any kind,
anyone can have their own opinion and every opinion is as good as
any other. What LaBute exposes, however, is that if there really
are no standards, then anything goes. One who manipulates another’s
freedom has just as much validity as one who respects it, and there
cannot be anything like good and bad art. This means that the
relativist is not the one who affirms others, but is actually the
one who destroys them in a hubris that stands beyond all standards.
It is unclear exactly who the object of LaBute’s critique is in the
figure of Evelyn, because we know nothing about the influences on
her. However, she appears to represent a relativistic tendency in
culture, a tendency perhaps most prevalent in the academic
environment from which she comes. [31] In a
common critique, feminist theologians have pointed out the
problematic definition of sin in the Judeo-Christian tradition as
most fundamentally pride or hubris. They say hubris is typically a
male problem, while females typically struggle with the opposite
problem, with easy acquiescence to others and the failure to use
their freedom to actualize themselves. With Adam and Evelyn, LaBute
has reversed the typical sins of the genders, without suggesting
that a problematic part of Evelyn’s hubris is her failure to submit
to the traditional female role, or of Adam’s sloth to realize the
traditional male role. Paradoxically, it is perhaps a positive sign
that gender roles have become undifferentiated enough that the
traditional male and female sins can be reversed in this way. Sin
can be understood as a human problem, taking different forms in
different individuals. LaBute has, of course, opened himself up to
feminist critique in creating a character as revoltingly
manipulative and aggressively sinful as Evelyn, but Evelyn is
balanced by equally perverse male characters in LaBute’s other
films.4
[32] In the
biblical story, God condemns and covers Adam and Eve, casting them
from the garden to a life of harshness for their acts. This sets
the context for the biblical drama of redemption, understood
variously by biblical writers in this-worldly and other-worldly,
present and future, social and individual terms. In any case, the
last word on the world in the biblical view is not the brokenness of
the fall, but redemption. [33] By
contrast, the world LaBute shows in his film lacks the healing of
redemption, at least explicitly. Adam, who had gone so far as to
propose to Evelyn, faces a public exposure of the truth of her
manipulations. As the film ends, he is ashamed to show his face in
public. Evelyn is unrepentant and unfazed. Presumably, she will
approach life and her next art project with an unchanged attitude.
Even Phil and Jenny break off their engagement, although given the
nature of their relationship this seems to be a good thing. In any
case, LaBute’s world is a fractured, topsy-turvy world, where nice
guys get manipulated and shamed, while those who do unconscionable
acts simply move on without their consciences. [34] Despite
this, at least two glimmers of redemption can be drawn from the
film. One glimmer comes, paradoxically, in the fact that LaBute’s
characters are so unreservedly twisted. Evelyn is a manipulator
beyond compare, and, viewing the film from a distance, it is
actually astonishing that LaBute is able to make her as realistic a
character as he does. Adam proves to be a hopeless wimp who cannot
stand up for himself. [35] Both
characters, though Evelyn especially, expose a kind of raw
perversity, and one cannot watch such perversity without feeling
some kind of revulsion. Such revulsion, in turn, involves the
awakening of conscience. Whatever her motives, to see someone like
Evelyn be uncaring enough to engage in the complete manipulation of
another human being, awakens one to disgust at manipulation in
relationships, all manipulation. To see Evelyn as unrepentant,
seemingly without a conscience, awakens one’s conscience in judgment
of her. To see someone like Adam fail to be true to himself, to
objectify himself and become obsessed with his own surface appeal
and that of others, awakens one to disgust at this deeply entrenched
cultural game. [36] While
there are no doubt many biblical analogues to this kind of awakening
of conscience, a notable one is the prophet Nathan’s parable to King
David in II Samuel 12:1-9, after David’s adultery and murder. By
telling the story of a wicked person, Nathan effectively arouses
David’s conscience and gets him enraged at such an evil act. Nathan
is able then to turn David’s judgment back onto David himself in
such a way that he sees the fullness of what he has done and has no
place to escape from his own conscience. [37] Jenny and
Philip express the revulsion and awakening of conscience in the
film. Both are seated in the audience (like the movie-goer!) at
Evelyn’s master’s thesis, where she exposes that Adam was her art
project. While they are no paragons of virtue, when they discover
what Evelyn has done, they leave in disgust. [38] It appears
that LaBute is too pessimistic to present any substantial conversion
in his characters. We see no hope for any substantial social change
in the film. Still, at least the possibility of an awakening of
conscience, a critical awareness, is present in the perversity of
his characters. In both the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions, the
first use of the law is said to be to convict one of sin. LaBute
turns this upside down, using perversity to bring about such
conviction. [39] The other
glimmer of redemption comes through an odd scene in the movie. Adam
and Evelyn are alone in Adam’s bedroom early in the relationship.
They have just made love, and Adam has agreed to allow Evelyn to
tape their love-making. The tape is still rolling while they talk.
Conscious of the tape, Adam whispers something into Evelyn’s ear.
Evelyn smiles, responds with a whisper, and they laugh and hug. At
the very end of the movie, Adam confronts Evelyn, asking whether
anything about their relationship was true. Evelyn can seemingly
think of nothing, and goes through a list of lies. Finally,
however, she says the one genuine thing she said was in her whisper
to him. [40] The world
of LaBute’s movie is full of manipulation, lies, and deceit. In
fact, LaBute himself manipulates his audience, letting us think
Evelyn is genuinely attracted to Adam until the very end. In the
midst of this, we are told that there was one truthful thing said in
a whisper, but we are not allowed to hear it. We know it is there.
We see the whisper. But we do not know what it is. [41] The fact
that Evelyn and Adam are being taped in the scene represents a
reflexivity in the movie. LaBute is acknowledging to the audience
that he is making a movie. In that context, he appears to be
stressing to the audience that in this movie you will not be allowed
to hear anything genuine or real. All you will hear is
manipulation, lies, and deceit. But you are to know that there is
something real. It appears in a whisper, which seems to be a
reference to the whisper of conscience. The whisper is not given
content in the movie. It is not something LaBute will say to us.
The place it is given content must be outside the movie. It is
something we must say to each other. FILM CREDITS
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