IMPACT OF AESTHETIC

In a culture where we document everything, why are people still so offended by the messy experience of being a human? Women are taught that their values come from being likable, desirable, and digestible: a “fact” that Collins strongly detests in her work. She has inspired a generation of girls to believe that their worth is not contingent on their appearance and how palpable they are to others. Petra Collins’ art continues to establish a unique and much-needed stylistic tone, confirming her place within the feminist lineage.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF “EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE”

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE AND SUICIDAL IDEATION

WRITER: NATHAN BROOKS

PHOTOGRAPHER: KRYSTAL PHAM

DESIGNER: JADE SUNG

MODEL: LINH TRAN

Joy Wang is the college-aged, queer daughter of Evelyn and Waymond Wang. Joy Wang is also Jobu Tupaki, the interdimensional entity and main antagonist of “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” and her psychological arc is one of vast importance to modern society, no matter how seemingly unreachable her predicament within the film may be.

Jobu Tupaki is Joy Wang, but a version of Joy Wang from a different universe. Jobu is from a universe known in the film as the Alphaverse, as it is the first universe to develop the technology to travel between different universes. In the Alphaverse, she was extensively experimented on in what would amount to torture in order to study the effects of repeated verse-jumping on the human mind. Instead of the death that was expected of her, Jobu’s mind broke, and her consciousness became scattered throughout every universe. As a result of this, she was able to inhabit every version of herself, in every universe, amounting to an infinite amount of experiences at any given moment in time.

In this, Jobu Tupaki became a part of Joy Wang, just as she became a part of all infinitely-many versions of herself. She drifted through endless worlds in which every possible combination of existences dwelled, living through everything, always. Her choices no longer mattered, for every choice had already been made. No decision yielded any significance, as there were always infinitely more universes to inhabit in which every other possible decision was made. There was no more reason to continue. Everything had already been done. Everything had already been seen. The vastness of every possible universe had been unraveled in front of her, and in being given everything, she had nothing.

The story of Jobu mirrors the beliefs developed by Hegesias of Cyrene, or the philosophy of existential nihilism. Like many philosophers of his day, Hegesias believed that the central purpose of life was to seek pleasure; however, he came to his own conclusion that true pleasure simply did not exist. He believed that it was impossible to be completely happy, and that nothing in existence is objectively pleasant or good. With this he deemed all action as indifferent, as none can be expected to yield any happiness in return, and all life as ultimately no more desirable than death. He is known to this day as Hegesias the Death Persuader, as his philosophical writings were seen as so inescapably depressing that many who read his works were said to have committed suicide as a direct result. His most famous book, “Death by Starvation,” was not only banned from being taught, but resulted in Hegesias himself being banned from teaching in many places just for having written it. The book has been lost to time, as have many of his teachings.

Jobu Tupaki is one of the most fulfilling representations of a modern existential nihilist. As a result of her undeniably existential predicament, there was no more happiness to be had, no more pleasure to seek, as every action held no longer any novelty, but was just a statistical inevitability. She saw death, as did Hegesias, as an equal if not preferable alternative to life, and for this, she planned to destroy herself. She constructed what amounted to a black hole, in the form of an everything bagel that truly had everything on it. “All of my hopes and dreams. My old report cards. Every breed of dog.” Her plan was simple: Allow herself to be sucked into the bagel. End everything.

In the film, Evelyn is recruited to help stop Jobu, and she decides to do so by subjecting herself to the same experimentation that created Jobu, under the pretense that if she could somehow become like Jobu, she could stop her. However, when her own mind “breaks,” she quickly falls down the same path as her daughter. It is only through the power of her husband, Waymond, who, while unaware of the magnitude of the conflict at play, faces existential nihilism head-on.

The philosophical conclusions created through existential nihilism are indisputable. That is why they can seem so overwhelming at times. There is no logical answer to the idea that life has no meaning. It is an unfalsifiable stance. The only way to move forward is to accept this. To live meaningfully in a meaningless life is, by definition, absurd. There lies a discrepancy between the understanding that there is no value to life and the ability of oneself to live it as if every moment is infinitely valuable, and that is, by definition, absurd. To somehow bridge that gap, and live comfortably in such a state of existence, is by definition, absurd.

Absurdism is a philosophical belief system first developed by Albert Camus. The belief is outlined by the fundamental acceptance of the meaningless of reality, and the conscious decision to rebel against that fact, by living enthusiastically in spite of it. As Alexander McKechnie put it, absurdism is to “party at the end of meaning”. It is accepting that life is absolutely, positively, absurd, and that any attempts to live meaningfully are ridiculous, but to accept that one has to be ridiculous to live at all, and so to be as ridiculous as possible. To accept the meaninglessness of life is to grant oneself infinite freedom, to allow oneself to live life to the fullest in spite of all that may come. To look into the abyss with a smile. To be absurd is to want, to hope, to dream, despite knowing what lies at the end of every journey. To be absurd is to fight against all external factors, by simply continuing to live.

Near the end of the film, Waymond, in a universe in which Evelyn left him, never moved with him to America, and never raised a child with him, tells her,

“When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything. This is how I fight.”

And in this, Evelyn learned the truth, a truth that leads to the resolution of the film as a whole. That our choices may not matter, that we may never know why we’re here, that the universe is strange, and harsh, and uncaring, but that we should only live more intensely because of it. That we should fight everyday by seeing the good side of everything, and enjoying life in spite of it all. That everyone we love may just be a random assortment of atoms, but we’ll love them even harder anyways. That is to be absurd.