Mystic at the Movies #3- Everything Everywhere all at Once: Jobu, Joy, and Evelyn

Mystic at the Movies is an exploration of contemplative themes in popular culture.  We have begun with a deep dive into the amazing Everything Everywhere All at Once.  So far, issues of identity, boundaries, and duality have been our central considerations. For the first installment of Mystic at the Movies click here. To read article #2 click here.

This time,, we take a look at the two central figures in a film driven by an intricately formed ensemble.  Though the many supporting characters are certainly amazingly done, Evelyn and Joy are in so many ways the center of the whole drama.  The journeys of each has numerous mystical implications when considered individually, but some of the richest wisdom that might be gleamed comes up from the dynamics between them.

They are opposites in so many ways.  Not only are they mother and daughter,  but Evelyn is repressed where Joy is explosive.  Consider, for example, the fact that Evelyn is so unwilling to engage in conflict that Waylon feels forced to file papers for divorce in order to instigate a fight compared to Joy’s bold confrontation in the laundry parking lot.

Secondarily, Evelyn is traditional where Joy is contemporary.  For example, it is clear that Becky has been coached to called Evelyn “Mrs. Wang.”  This is sharply contrasted just a few minutes later with Waymond, who delights in Becky addressing her by first name.  On the otherhand, Joy wears tattoos, is quite open about having a girlfriend, and is even needed to help translate from the IRS.  

 Finally, Evelyn is fatalistic, submitting to societal expectations for her life path, while Joy is iconoclastic, rebellious, and determined to take action to change the course of events no matter what the cost.  This distinction is perhaps the most important to each of the characters’ trajectories.  We see this fatalism in everything from Evelyn’s unwillingness to confront her father to her almost inexplicable unwillingness to do anything about the IRS audit, even though it threatens her very livelihood.   Meanwhile Joy is desperate to buck the status quo that she literally risks the entire multiverse simply to attain a sense of peace and understanding about the nature of her life.  

One way to view the film is to see it as  the story of the pair learning from each other.  They are opposites, holding the tension between themselves dynamically.  They are extremes, not coming merely to cancel each other out but here to become something new.   Evelyn, for example, emulates her daughter in absorbing and welcoming all the identities that she has.  Joy is the first person to absorb all the alternate universe versions of herself.  Evelyn, it would seem is the second.

It’s worth considering these dualities with care.  As we discussed previously, this approach to holding polarities in tension is a highly important aspect of mysticism.  But Joy and Evelyn’s relationship also offers some new insights into the nature of mysticism.  The idea that a parent learns from their child is counter cultural.  The story we are generally told is that the young should be learning from the old.  Mysticism is at home in paradox and transgressions in general.  But this particular reversal is especially central to the mystic’s journey.  Zen traditions speak of beginners mind.  Jesus told his followers to take on the aspect of a child.  EEAAO represents this idea by having Evelyn emulate Joy.

One of the notable aspects of this lesson learned is the fact that it goes against the common perception of right and wrong.   The film, in fact, as a whole, tells a story whose protagonists and antagonists flip so frequently and convincingly that a viewer can end up with a sort of psychic whiplash.  

One of the major examples of this happening is the positioning of Jobu and Evelyn.  Jobu is initially presented to the audience as the most evil villain imaginable.  She is the ultimate Satan Figure.  The characters we assume to be our protagonists, Waylon-prime and his support are engaged in a life or death battle with her.  And suddenly…  Jobu becomes a sort of spiritual guide to Evelyn.  And they are united in a battle against Evelyn’s formal allies, the occupants of the prime universe.  

Of course, this evokes the idea explored previously, that a hallmark of mysticism is a transcendence of traditional concepts of right and wrong.  But we can go even a little bit further than this.  Evelyn might be seen as a person in the early stages of a spiritual journey.  

Waylon prime and all of the people from his universe resemble in a sense the traditional religious establishment.  Evelyn steps into a deeper world, understands the true nature of things, begins her journey stewarded in by the champions of non-mystical religion.  They present her with not only a wider story to live in, but also a series of absolute laws of good and evil.  They approach her not only with reverence and love, but also a willingness to combat her if she ever steps out of line, beyond the narrow confines of their rules and expectations.

Just as so many mystics took their first baby steps in literalistic, fundamentalist environments, so Evelyn begins with a group who are quite sure that they know right from wrong.  They experience the world in a black and white way.  They are uncomfortable embracing Everything.  

In those environments so many of us are told things are evil when someday we will find ourselves madly in love with them.   A person who meditates for hours a day might once have been told and even have believed that meditation is evil.  A person who would later come to experience union with God might have, once upon a time believed that God and man are wholly and forever separate.  An immature religious person might violently cling to the narrowest confines of their own single tradition even if many years later he might find the glorious ecunemical dance of interspirituality to be the most life giving thing imaginable.

So it is that Evelyn was taught that something she will later embrace is the root of all evil.  There are, in fact, two aspects to this.  There are two dynamics that Evelyn will eventually come to embrace, even if she was forbidden them earlier.

The first thing that Evelyn will embrace is Joy.    She will come to heal the rift with her daughter.   Perhaps, there is even a bit of word-play going on here.  In the act of embracing Joy, her daughter, we see for the first time that Evelyn has the possibility of embracing joy, the emotional reality: the first time we see Evelyn truly happy is when she realizes she must support and embrace her daughter rather than attacking her. 

 The second thing that Evelyn will embrace is all the various aspects of herself as represented by the alternate versions of her life.  She owns and accepts them in order to accumulate their gifts and abilities.  

Yet again, we find ourselves confronted with this macroscosm/microcosm fractal.  The drama is played at on the outside via the interactions with Joy.  The drama is played out on ths inside via the integration of all her different selves.

So much screen time is given to the teaching-relationship which is characterized by Evelyn learning from Joy.  But the most critical one, the climactic realization is one which is defined by learning flowing in the opposite direction.  The climax of the film is a teaching opportunity where Evelyn becomes the teacher.  

Groundwork needed to be lain for this to even become a possibility.  Though she seemed outrageous bordering on demented, Jobu initially appears powerful, confident, and self-satisfied.  It is only the gradual smudging of the boundaries between Jobu and Joy that make room for the climax.  

In a mystic-worthy annihilation of the differences between two things we had once been sure were distinct, as the movie reaches the end, it becomes more and more difficult to know when we are dealing with Jobu and when we are dealing with Joy.  Suddenly powerful, confident and self-satisfied Jobu becomes indistinguishable from disempowered, insecure Joy.    

If we never believed a pure and omnipotent Jobu Topeki could have anything to learn from Evelyn, we might see that a Joy-Jobu hybrid would be imperfect enough to need some wisdom from her mother.  As I watched the film, I found myself wondering whether perhaps we were misinformed about Joy all along.  Just as the traditional, literalistic, non-mystic religionists might say things to a future mystic that initially prejudice them against this or that initially, Waylon prime and his cohorts say things to Joy and the audience that prejudice us against Joy/Jobu Topeki.  

Complications arise when we see that Jobu was a murderer.  But nuance and complications are part of the lesson for us.  It pushes us into that mystic’s realm of both/and.  Joy was and was not Jobu.  Jobu was and was not misunderstood.  Evelyn should learn from Joy-Jobu; and Joy-Jobu should learn from Evelyn.

Ultimately, then, we are left with another both/and.  On the one hand, a case can be made that Jobu was good all along, and we just saw her unfairly.  On the other, she does seem to go through a transformation, ultimately even a journey of integration.

In so much as the Jobu we see earlier in the film is evil, she need to integrate the life experiences of the main Joy to become something better than she was.  Even while that Joy longed for liberation through Jobu’s power and strength, as Jobu becomes indistinguishable from Joy, she picks up the basic goodness of the protagonist.  On this level, it seems like this is a story that introduces us to Joy in the first act, focuses on Jobu in the second act, and brings them together in a single character Joy-Jobu in the third act.  

A common conclusion offered within mystical communities is the idea that the end-game we think we want is not the same as the the destination we are actually headed for.  Awakening, enlightenment, and similar concepts are quite frequently described as things that work quite differently than our minds are anticipated.   Often times one of the biggest obstacles to these “destinations” is our mistaken understanding of wat we are actually doing.   Along the way are dark nights of the soul, times of desolations, confrontations with the absolute other-ness of God.

Evelyn’s ongoing evolving understanding of just what she is doing is not unknown to a mystic.  There was a time that I personally felt surprised, and almost embarrassed by how quickly things can change.  There are many times that I have experienced so much change that the “me” of five years ago would hardly recognize the “me” of today.  As times go by, I have learned that these times, when I go through such absolute transformations in such a small duration, these eras are so very often the richest times of spiritual growth.  I have learned to, on the whole, trust the process of spiritual maturation.  I am finding myself surprised at how rarely there are huge missteps, such that months and years end up feeling like a journey in the wrong direction, a series of missteps.  

At the same time, we find ourselves coming back into some of the same scenery, just from a new and different perspective.  Often times there is a departure, and then a return.  We might leave behind a religious community only to find that at a certain point we are ready for it again.  We might think that we have finished mourning a loss or celebrating a joy, only to find that now we are newly positioned to re-experience either positive or negative emotions.  We might spend some years apart from the tradition we grew up in, only to find ourselves newly equipped to much more deeply appreciate elements of the faith we grew up in.  

It shouldn’t be surprising then, that many elements of Joy are not present in the middle portions of the film, but that she is reintegrated into the whole at the end.  It’s worth returning, at this point, to the earlier point about the surprising, counter cultural elements  of Evelyn learning from Joy-Jobu.  This is merely an external manifestation of a dynamic operating within: even as we reach a certain point that we see it worth to emulate someone else who is more of a beginner, it is also necessary to find the beginner within– the Joy who had been left behind– and follow her, in all her niavete.

There is, in the end, a circularity to this.  And circles play no small part EEAAO.  The importance of motifs like googly eyes and The Bagel With Everything are worth leaning into.  But that will have to wait for future installments of ‘Mystic at the Movies.’

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Mystic at the Movies #2: Everything Everywhere All at Once- The Journey of Integration

(Though this is a follow up to the first episode of Mystic at the Movies, I think it’ll be pretty easy to keep up with even if you didn’t read that. On the other hand, if you haven’t seen the film, not only is this unlikely to be very interesting, it’ll also hand over pretty major spoilers for what might be the best movie ever.)

Last time, Mystic at the Movies took began it’s exploration of the brilliant Everything, Everywhere All At once.  In that post, we looked at some ways that the film’s transcendence of boundaries was a handy lens for exploring the mystic’s journey.  We  took a beginning peek  at the concept of identity.   Today, we’ll dive a little deeper into this delicious topic, laying the groundwork for future installments of Mystic at the Movies, which will explore ideas like God, Good and Evil, and more.

Part of the brilliance at work in this film  is the manner in which it just gives a little twist to what could otherwise have been dry, academic discourses.  The film gives us a vocabulary, almost a symbolic system.  It might appear that we’re discussing some rather minute aspects of the film’s mythos, but in fact what is also happening is a profound discussion on the nature of reality. More specifically: it might feel abstract, stuffy, and irrelevant for us to discuss the nature of identity in the abstract.  Some people might be scared off of such a topic, fearing that they lack the proper background and training to “do” philosophy.  Others might think such a thing unworthy of their time, assuming it will never actually change anything about the day-to-day experience of living their lives.

EEAAO sidesteps this philoso-phobio  by hiding a heady topic in plain sight.  The main use of alternate versions of main characters in the film is really an opportunity to look at the competing aspects of our own self.  Alternative dimensions, in the movie, are ultimately short hand ways to explore the concept of identity.  

It’s worth noting at this point that  though it’s true that alternate universes have become quite a popular trope in recent pop culture, it has rarely been leveraged in just the manner it’s being used in the film.  More obvious and common symbology for alternate universes is to explore roads not  travelled.  Philip K Dick was interested in this question on a historical kind of level with his Man in the High Castle.  The central question at work here is “What if Hitler won World War I?.”  Other times, contemporary uses of alternate universes explore the personal aspects of what might have happened if things had ended differently.  In the Multiverse of Madness Dr. Strange meets and hears about versions of himself who made different choices at key moments.  Numerous versions of a popular Flash story explore the question of what would have happened if the titular character’s mother hadn’t died.  The recent animated Marvel series (which is in fact an homage to a comic series of the same name) went so far as to be clear about this common usage.  The title of both series, of course, was ‘What If?’

The thing that is worth noticing is that the various versions of Doctor Strange are completely independent of each other.  In some way, they are mutually exclusive.  One Doctor Strange comes about from a certain set of circumstances.  An alternative Doctor Strange results from other circumstnaces.  This is a stark contrast to the experiences of Evelyn in EEAAO.  While she does explore the world where she made a different choice, somehow, she is able to access the memories and the abilities of that other Evelyn.  

In summary, the use of the multiverse in EEAAO is fundamentally different than how this conceit is normally handled.  While these other stories are explorations of what might have been, EEAAO is about the ways our different identities integrate themselves.  If traditional multiverse narratives center the question “What if I had done something different?” our film centers itself on the question “Who am I really?”

“Who am I?” is a question that has some importance in the history of mysticism.  It was famously asked all night by a tormented St. Francis.  As the story goes, he spent the whole night in a  monastery asking “Who am I, God?  And who are you?”

Meanwhile, across the world, the question formed the very basis of a Self-inquiry: a Vendantic practice which invites the contemplative to consider the likely “locations” of our trueest self.

This practice puts words and gives a level of specificity to how to go about the process.  Self inquiry brings a journey to a high degree of focus.  But it taps into something quite universal, and rather central to a mystic’s journey in general.

The journey of the mystic is an inward one.  And it is profoundly a journey of integration.  The question for a mystic becomes one of proper relations.  How are these tiny portions of me meant to connect.  It is a recreation of the macrocosm at a microcosmic level.  

Even as a mystic contemplates the possibility of an interpersonal union, as he longs, hopes, and believes that all the people, all the matter, all the energy, all the actualities and potential, as he considers that all these seemingly independent entities that began as larger than himself melding, melting, becoming one…

Just as that is going on there is a similar longing happening within.  There were these dis-integrated, independently functioning, sometimes competing pyschodynamics.  We speak of mind and soul and ask which is supreme.  We categorize id, ego, and super ego and consider which is best.  We contrast body and spirit…  A mystic heals these divides by rejecting these dualities.  

As above, so below.  

EEAAO portrays this selfsame journey inward, this path of descent and integration.  And in the film, we see it in the same external and internal venues.   Just as the mystic has a longing for external union, where all the things larger than the self become one, we see numerous examples of people wanting an external union in the film.  The Bagel with Everything is the most conspicuous example of something which threatens to make everything one.  

And just as the mystic is on an internal journey to bring together all of her internal experiences, thoughts, etc, in the film  we are confronted with at least two pictures of such internal  integration.  One is Jobu Topeki.  In a sense, Jobu’s journey is complete.  She is presented as someone who knows all the versions of herself.  (And strangely, she is the incarnation of evil.   Whether or not Jobu’s journey really  was complete, and why she is something of an antagonist are topics due a full assessment.  For now, we leave those questions aside though, in favor of sticking with the topic at hand: identity.)

Evelyn, meanwhile, represents the very beginning stages of this journey of integration.  There’s a sense in which this is quite literally woven into the plot.  Evelyn gains the strength of the alternate versions of herself when she comes to accept them.This concept is also thematic.  Evelyn– the main one–  grows by integration in other ways.

She comes to accept Joy’s bisexuality. She learns to come to grips with  her father’s lack  of affection; she ends up embracing her similarities with her daughter, and ultimately is willing to accept the inevitably of hurt in her relationship with Joy.  On her path to the climax of the movie, Evelyn must integrate the kung-fu prowess of an alternate version of herself with the gentleness of her husband as she declares that she will fight like him and suddenly, even as she does Kung-Fu, she is adjusting one person’s neck, slamming together  a pair destined for love, feeding the desires for kink of yet another person.  

There is, of course, a connection between this dynamic and some of the considerations we consider in the initial installment of Mystic at the Movies.  Recall that last time we explored the artificial binaries that EEAAO transcends.  That was a necessary first step, but in many ways, simply naming the existence of binaries falls short of the act of integrating these extremes.   The difference is around the important distinction between naming that such-and-such a thing is a reality and proclaiming that both are worthy and good.

This is no easy task.  It is not easy to look at all the parts of ourselves and declare them all worthy.  It is not easy to consider all the things which have happened to us and claim them as our own.  It can be even more difficult to integrate within ourselves the feelings, attitudes, and thoughts that we grow so accustomed to deflecting, projecting, and other-ing; this is shadow work, and involves embracing the part of ourselves that had once been denied.

For a mystic, this eventually leads to reconsidering the very nature of Good and Evil; it is an act of reclaiming the actions we had once ascribed to God or God’s nemesis, whatever our tradition names it.  This is the territory of Rumi, when he invited us to meet him in a field beyond good and evil.  This is the territory of carefully excavating the creation myth, where the root of the fall of humankind lies in our unfortunate decision to eat from a tree said to bestow the knowledge of good and evil.  

For the film that is our primary concern here, this bring us to consider Jobu Topeki and her mother Evelyn.  It brings us face-to-face with the whiplash changes the film has for who counts as the protagonist and who counts as the antagonist.  That topic is at least as big it sounds, and is deserving of a much deeper assessment than we have here.  I hope you’ll join us next time, as we begin to assess these important topics.