The philosophy of J. J. Abrams

345 Pages·2014·1.85 MB·English

by  Abrams

The Philosophy of J. J. Abrams
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
J. J. ABRAMS
Edited by
PATRICIA BRACE
and
ROBERT ARP
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Copyright © 2014 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The philosophy of J. J. Abrams / edited by Patricia
Brace and Robert Arp.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8131-4530-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8131-4534-1 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-
81314533-4 (epub) 1. Abrams, J. J. (Jeffrey Jacob), 1966—Criticism and interpretation. I. Brace, Patricia,
1960– editor of compilation. II. Arp, Robert, editor of compilation.
PN1998.3.A27P55 2014
2014006363
791.4302’3092—dc23
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for
Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
C
ONTENTS
Introduction
Patricia Brace and Robert Arp
Scene 1: Identity Issues
“Grey Matters”: Personal Identity in the Fringe Universe(s)
A. P. Taylor and Justin Donhauser
Person of Interest: The Machine, Gilles Deleuze, and a Thousand Plateaus of
Identity
Franklin Allaire
Are J. J. Abrams’s “Leading Ladies” Really Feminist Role Models?
Cynthia Jones
Scene 2: Memento Mori
The End Is Nigh: Armageddon and the Meaning of Life Found through Death
Ashley Barkman
The Fear of Bones: On the Dread of Space and Death
Jerry S. Piven and Jeffrey E. Stephenson
Do We All Need to Get Shot in the Head? Regarding Henry, Nicholas
Wolterstorff, and Ethical Transformation
Adam Barkman
Scene 3: Moral Matters
Fringe and “If Science Can Do It, Then Science Ought to Do It”
Phil Smolenski and Charlene Elsby
An Inconsistent Triad? Competing Ethics in Star Trek into Darkness
Jason T. Eberl
The Monster and the Mensch
Randall E. Auxier
Scene 4: Friends and Family
Abrams, Aristotle, and Alternate Worlds: Finding Friendship in the Final
Frontier
Joseph J. Foy
Heroic Love and Its Inversion in the Parent-Child Relationship in Abrams’s Star
Trek
Charles Taliaferro and Emilie Judge-Becker
You Can’t Choose Your Family: Impartial Morality and Personal Obligations in
Alias
Brendan Shea
Scene 5: Metaphysically Speaking
Is Abrams’s Star Trek a Star Trek Film?
Daniel Whiting
Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility in Alias
Vishal Garg
Finding Directions by Indirection: The Island as a Blank Slate
Elly Vintiadis and Spyros D. Petrounakos
Scene 6: Your Logic Is Flawless
You Can’t Change the Past: The Philosophy of Time Travel in Star Trek and
Lost
Andrew Fyfe
Rabbit’s Feet, Hatches, and Monsters: Mysteries vs. Questions in J. J. Abrams’s
Stories
Paul DiRado
Scene 7: Considering Cloverfield
Monsters of the World, Unite! Cloverfield, Capital, and Ecological Crisis
Jeff Ewing
Cloverfield, Super 8, and the Morality of Terrorism
Robert Arp and Patricia Brace
Scene 8: Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution
A Place for Revolutions in Revolution? Marxism, Feminism, and the Monroe
Republic
Jeff Ewing
A Light in the Darkness: Ethical Reflections on Revolution
Michael Versteeg and Adam Barkman
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Index
I
NTRODUCTION
Patricia Brace and Robert Arp
American auteur Jeffrey Jacob “J. J.” Abrams has a knack for creating the kind
of twisty, densely plotted TV series and films that keep us on the edge of our
seats and begging for more. His particular genius seems to be in the way he
combines geek appeal and broader commercial and critical successes in TV
shows like Felicity, Emmy-nominated Alias, Emmy-and Golden Globe–winning
Lost, the critically acclaimed Fringe, and films such as the Godzilla-inspired
Cloverfield, the reboot of the Star Trek franchise, and his Spielbergian ode to the
late 1970s, Super 8. As writer, director, producer, and even composer, he puts
his particular stamp on everything he touches—a stamp that at times is rife with
philosophical themes. His name on a project promises that your heart, mind, and
sometimes even your soul will get a workout.
The Philosophy of J. J. Abrams is a collection of chapters by thinkers
highlighting the philosophical insights present in Abrams’s television and film
work. Using Abrams’s works as a touchstone, the book leads the reader through
some basic concepts in philosophy, making it useful for an introductory
philosophy course, but it also contains enough content on Abrams’s individual
works to satisfy his fans, media and popular culture students, film students, and
people who would like to dabble in a little philosophy.
Philosophical themes may be found throughout Abrams’s continuingly
popular works. As cocreator of Lost, Abrams melded the popularity of the reality
show Survivor to the twisted concept of a living island with incredible monsters
and a fascinating set of characters—many of them named for famous
philosophers—whose interactions take place in the past, present, and future via
flashbacks and flash-forwards. And if that wasn’t enough, in the final season we
got flash-sideways into alternate pasts, presents, and futures! If any show
contains philosophical analysis, it is this one. Man of science or man of faith?
Nature vs. nurture? Live together or die alone? The Island could be seen as a
heavenly tabula rasa—or was it purgatory, or even hell? Would we ever get any
answers to the show’s many mysteries?
Continuing his pattern of having an overarching mystery move the action of
a television story, Abrams next took on Fringe, with its “Pattern” mythology
slowly revealed as we learned more about the heroes of the piece. As with his
other works, relationships are central; in this case, those caught in the orbit of the
unconventional and at times quite mad Dr. Walter Bishop, whose highly
unethical medical experiments on young children allowed him and his partner,
William Bell (played by Leonard Nimoy), to find and eventually travel to a
second Earth. When Walter’s son, Peter, died as a child, the grieving father
kidnapped his doppelganger from the other Earth—what parent wouldn’t at least
contemplate it? That Peter grows up ignorant of his true origins and estranged
from his father (who has gone slowly mad and been institutionalized) is just the
sort of poignant irony Abrams’s work celebrates.
Abrams’s film work champions the ability of ordinary people to undergo
transformation and become, in their own ways, heroic. In Armageddon the least
likely guys, a bunch of rough oil drillers, face their fear of death and save the
world. On a more personal level, his script for Regarding Henry uses a sort of
reverse flashback technique to show how a damaged man regains his simple
humanity. In the wrong place at the wrong time (another common problem for
Abrams’s heroes), Henry is shot in the head and loses his memory. His struggles
to refill his blank slate reveal a portrait of a hard-driving, unethical corporate
lawyer who was estranged from his family, having an affair, and ignoring his
wife and child. It turns out that the damage was not the gunshot; that bullet to the
brain was his salvation or a reset, bringing him into accord with his true ethical
and familial center.
This “resetting of reality” is found in most of Abrams’s work (in television,
we see how 9/11 played out in two different ways on Fringe as well as seeing
the alternate worlds on the final seasons of Felicity and Lost and Sydney’s
missing three years on Alias) and most recently in his big-screen version of the
classic Star Trek. Again, a framing device provides continuity for the piece—
Mr. Spock, long retired from Starfleet, has lived among the Romulans for
decades, working to reunite them with their ancestors, the Vulcans. When
catastrophe looms, his efforts to save their planet fall short and set into motion a