What Shape Is the Cookie Cutter and Why?
Why aren’t people horrified by the idea of looking like someone else? Aren’t they scared of dressing, talking, or acting the same way? Of fitting into one short label or being a ‘type?’ Why don’t people do everything they can to ensure that they never walk the earth the exact way someone else walked it? Life is short and we are told we should never forget that. If this is true then why should any of us ever live the same life? Aren’t there millions upon millions of iterations of ways to live? Why are people sheep?
Is a synonym for ‘boring’ just ‘numbness?’ Looking like others is to be comfortable with complacency. And complacency requires a high degree of numbness to excitement— its opposite. Somewhere along the way the valve shut of, denying passion and feeling, and the numbness set in. The boring people who are numb who are complacent who are sheep are okay with not expressing themselves. Essentially, they are okay to withhold the self. At first I want to pity them for this state they seem to have found themselves in, but when I look a little closer and probe a little deeper it starts to seem that they haven’t just settled into this withholding of the self, but strive to do so.
When I am feeling generous, I think that these people, who, unfortunately, are most people, just want to protect themselves from the harsh lows of the world. They are okay with the price to pay for that, which is restricting the ecstatic peaks. I don’t think it's a coincidence that some of the loudest and most colorful people are also some of the more depressed. To feel the beauty of the world you have no choice but to leave yourself vulnerable to the rest of it. So the choice is made to limit the downs at whatever cost— take my individuality and expression and go. Life is then made supposedly easier which then people use to convince themselves that this makes the world more tolerable. People confuse ease for perfection.
Let us examine filmmaking as a way to understand what is lost when you confuse perfection and ease. Filmmakers hold certain works up (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Lost in Translation) as ‘perfect’ films. They point to narrative story arc, directorial vision, and acting choices as key building blocks of this perfection. If you think of a film in its nascent stages as a goo-like substance, you would see that it will expand to fill whatever shape it is placed into. The factors that determine the shape of the object that it will be placed within are all the variables of filmmaking— sets and locations, budget, script, and talent.
If you asked any filmmaker, they would tell you that they want a limitless budget, the perfect locations, and excellent talent. They would want everything as it ‘should’ be. What they would have then is a square: a perfect shape in its symmetry. But the thing that people fail to realize is that putting inconvenient or supposedly undesirable constraints on art is what creates a unique shape— the hexagon, the pentagon, or any other shape that is too unusual to even have a name. People do not realize that even if the shape is unusual, there still is a shape.
When there is enough budget that the costume designer can order the exact replica period piece dress, the actors are normal and show up on time and can be perfectly type-cast to fill the role, the locations are easily accessed and is exactly what is called for in the script. It will be what the idea of a ‘film’ is supposed to be— even lengthen sides, and no odd nooks or crannies. Supposedly perfect, but, realistically, boring.
If you start to mess with the constraints, or you place some constraints on a film, then you get more interesting shapes. New ways to shoot fight scenes or simulate outer space when you do not have the budget to properly train someone in Karate or use CGI effects. An interesting camera effect when equipment is rigged up using a skateboard and a stretchy elastic exerciser band. Untrained editors bucking the rules and creating an unusual sequence. That’s how you get funky shapes. And funky shapes that work are christened with new names. It is easiest to strive for square, but then it will always be a square.
And some people like squares. Some people are more comfortable with them. Unusual shapes are unnerving because the eye cannot immediately identify what they are looking at. When gazing at an unusual shape, the eye flits from corner to curve to nook to cranny to side to point. It is distracting, and unsettling. And people don’t like distraction. They like their routines. They like what drives them forward in a straight line, or neat circle, or crisp square. A walk with unpredictable directions is jarring— you just keep moving forward, and then to the left and then to the right and then onwards for 300 meters, all the while unsure of where the end is. A walk where you make a left turn at the end of every block is fulfilling enough (You are making turns!), and the scenery is just intriguing enough to not kill your soul in a sisyphysian manner (Look who your new neighbor is now.) It is predictable so your stress levels are never raised. The square is satisfying, but it is easy to achieve. You will never achieve perfection.
People do not realize that with great creations comes great pain, usually emotional but sometimes physical as well. It is a pit in your stomach when your point is not communicated clearly in writing. It is the pain in the soles of your feet when you’ve been standing for two days straight, running around wearing three hats of production designer, costume designer, and assistant director. When you are tired and anxious about what you are creating or doing, squares suddenly become that much more enticing: calming in their smoothness, and appealing in the way that you don’t even have to know what comes next— you can see it. Aah, there it is. Another side of the square.
People confuse ease for perfection, but even those who understand the difference don’t realize that what they really want is peace. And peace comes from within— from not just being okay with yourself, but from expressing yourself. It takes a leap, but once you gather your energies to do the thing I promise you won’t fall. If you’re making the path, there’s nowhere to fall.
Be there or be square. To be boring is to be numb is to be subdued, which really is to be cocooned. A cocoon is comforting and protective, but it removes you from true joy, excitement, and ecstasy. Prevented from feeling, really, anything at all. And it’s hard to tell who’s who when you’re all cocooned.
