Still throwing out fodder for discussion ( and/or overreaction :-), I
thought I'd rap for a bit about one of the things I consider most
brilliant about HBO's Enlightened. That is, that Amy has to perform
her coming out as an enlightened being (or at the very least as a
person who has had an experience that transformed her life) in front of
a tough audience.
In the short scenes of the ashram in which Amy had her realization
experience, we get the impression of a loving, supporting New Age Woo
Woo environment, one in which her coming out about her realization
would have been not only believed, but applauded. Telling others there
her stories about her realization would have been reacted to with hugs
and rapt adulation, because everyone believes the same things and hopes
for such an experience themselves.
But now she's back, not only back in the real world, but back in the
environment of a large, soulless corporation. And she has to do the rest
of her coming out THERE. That's brilliant, IMO, Mike White's best
contribution to Laura Dern's original idea for the series. The reason is
that Amy is deprived of having an easy audience, and has to lay her
enlightened routine on people who have either never heard of
enlightenment, or who don't value it if they have.
That is a very different situation than we see here on FFL. Pretty much
by definition, everyone here has paid their dues in the past not only
believing in enlightenment but believing (as they were indoctrinated to
believe) that achieving it is the highest goal in life. NOTHING, in
the view presented by the enlightenment dogma, is more important than
achieving it. And NOTHING is more special than those who have achieved
it.
Which explains why so many of the drive-by enlightened drop in here.
They look at the home page and perceive this place as an easy
audience, a place where everyone already believes in the specialness
of the enlightened, desire it for themselves more than anything else in
life, and will treat them the way they want to be treated -- as
special, and wise. As it turns out, this is in many cases an incorrect
assumption, as a lot of the Yes, I'm enlightened -- adore me crowd
discover to their dismay. Still, it's an easy environment, because
almost everyone on this forum is familiar with all of the buzzwords and
all of the dogma they're playing upon in their attempts to be regarded
as special.
Amy doesn't have that going for her. Her mother and her ex-husband are
not automatically going to value her declarations of either having
become enlightened (if she ever declares that in the series), or even of
having been completely transformed by her experience. Her ex (played
well by Luke Wilson) listens to her rap and finally, exasperated, says
that he thinks she's hanging on by a slim thread, just as crazy as she
was before, only now in denial about it. We can only imagine how most of
the people in the corporation she's returning to are going to react to
her being the very avatar of blissninnytude.
There is great potential for comedy here, and I hope they go for it. But
I also think it's a wise choice, because it presents a more real-world
view of this coming out as enlightened phenomenon does than FFL. Here,
most of the Yes, I'm enlightened crowd haven't been successful in
convincing even an easy audience that what they say is true; try to
imagine what it would be like for them if they tried it in front of a
tough audience, one that hadn't been told for decades that 1)
enlightenment exists, and 2) that it's the best thing since sliced
bread. We'd hear the howls of laughter from California or from Canada if
they tried that, even from wherever else in the world we live.
Anyway, I look forward to how White deals with this situation he's set
up, and how Amy deals with dealing with a tough audience. There is great
potential in the scenario for humor, but also for deep insight. Bottom
line, after all, is that the achievement of enlightenment is a
*manufactured goal*, one that has been *sold* to people by teachers or
groups promising it. Most of the people on this planet have never been
subjected to that sales pitch, much less subjected to it for decades, so
much so that they take it for granted. So how are *they* going to react
to Amy's blissiness and declarations of Truth? Will she have any more
success convincing them in such a tough environment than the Supposedly
Enlightened have been here, playing to an easy audience?
