No Martyrs II
"The Platform," and the myth of martyrdom.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the movie The Platform.
Have you ever played a game of ‘Telephone’? You know—that game where everybody sits in a circle, and someone whispers a word or phrase in the ear of the person next to them, who in turn repeats the word or phrase to the person next to them, and so on and so forth until whatever was said eventually gets back to the person who started the chain reaction, who then reveals the original word, and everyone laughs because the two words are inevitably nothing like one another.
Martyrdom is like a game of Telephone.
I’ve written about this topic before. A martyr’s legacy is out of his control. He may be sure of making some sort of impact, at least for a little while, but the message that he conveys is completely unknown. A martyr is a sort of abstract figurehead—a blank slate upon which to project one’s own presumptions and beliefs. His legacy is preserved through word of mouth, and people cannot pass on more than they understand, or more than they want to believe. A martyr thus serves as a type of Rorschach test for the society that he lives in. The legacy that lives on is more of a reflection of the society that created it than the individual it is supposed to represent.
I was reminded of this fact when watching The Platform. The film follows the protagonist, Goreng, throughout his stay in ‘the Hole’—a unique type of prison whose inmates are housed vertically, two to each level, and fed via a descending platform that moves directly through a hole in the center of each level, upon which a gourmet feast is laid. There is only one catch: the feast is presented to the top level first, and each subsequent floor has to eat their predecessors’ leftovers.
There is some very blatant social commentary here, and it is clear that certain aspects of this towering prison are intended to mirror our social order. For one, it points out rather correctly that, when resources are available, people typically consume all that they please (which means, typically, all that they can). It points out that, no matter a person’s position in the social hierarchy, they typically feel resentment towards people with more than them, and scorn for people with less. It addresses the fact that it is way easier to go down in the hierarchy than up. It acknowledges that there is nothing about an individual that condemns him to one fate or another. It is just dumb luck—each month in the Hole, the prisoners change floors, and where they are placed is chosen at random. It does not matter where they’ve come from; they can be placed anywhere, and wherever they go, they always act out their role to perfection. The film acknowledges the ‘nature versus nurture’ question. The prisoners’ behavior is not automatic, but instead learned through deprivation, fear, and self-preservation. Our protagonist is repulsed by the food for several days after entering the prison. He does not eat until he is too hungry to resist. He gives in, as everyone eventually does once biological necessity trumps human decency.
When Goreng first arrives at the prison and learns of the horrific way that it is organized, he immediately wants to form alliances with the people above and below him, to try to cooperate with them and ration food so that there is enough for everybody. One might assume that, from here, the film might try to make some kind of collectivist argument about how the only barrier to world peace is individual wealth, and how equality is achievable if people will only work together. This is not the case. In fact, the writers take a stance pretty early on that this is an impossibility. When Goreng tries to get his ‘upstairs neighbors’ to help him, he’s mocked and ridiculed. When he tries to communicate with the people below him, he’s met only with hatred. Then, to Goreng’s surprise and mine, his ‘cellmate’ then starts peeing straight at the people Goreng is trying to communicate with. Goreng asks him why he does this. He says, very simply, that it is because the people are beneath him. Goreng reminds him that they might be above him next month. His response: “and then they’ll piss on us.”
Essentially, what we see is that there is within humanity an extremely powerful drive towards utopia, but also an equally powerful opposite force that calls for division. In fact, each character in the film who tries to deny this human inequality is portrayed as foolish. Take, for example, the character of Imoguiri, an administrator of the prison who signs herself up to live there in the hopes of changing it for the better. Her character is incredibly naive, privileged, and out-of-touch. Everyone is allowed to bring one item with them into the prison. She brings her dog. Some people bring weapons. Others survival tools. Goreng’s object of choice is a book. Imoguiri is the only person in the entire place who chooses to bring a liability. An extra mouth to feed. She’s sentimental; she couldn’t bear to part with an animal that she loved. She’s foolish; she brought her dog to certain death.
As a character, she is certainly naive. But what about her plan? She certainly thought it was solid—after all, she gambled her life upon it by voluntarily entering the prison. Her plan was this: to suggest to the people above and below her to ration out their food, leaving enough for everyone. I assume that she must have thought that the inhabitants of the ‘hole’ were stupid, if she thought that no one had tried that before. As one might expect, they pay her no mind. Disappointed and desperate, she starts preparing the rations for the floors below, to make it easier for them to comply. No dice.
What happens next is powerful. Goreng manages to ‘persuade’ the people underneath him to obey Imoguiri’s wishes. The way he accomplishes this is simple: he tells them that, if they do not stick to their rations and pass the same message on to the people below them, he will shit in their food. It works. They resist, begrudgingly, and do what they’re told. It’s possible that this chain reaction led all the way to the bottom of the ‘Hole.’ Goreng and Imoguiri would have no way of knowing, and thus neither would we. It is a brilliant statement about human nature. Logical reason will not compel people to sacrifice. Not many people, anyway. What human beings can be guaranteed to respond to is force. It requires constant vigilance to keep a system such as this in line. Once the orders cease, so does the compliance. And there is one final shortcoming, perfectly articulated by our protagonist:
“I can’t shit upwards.”
He has no way of influencing the behavior of the upper tiers. The only people within his reach are those below him. It is a precarious situation which is sure to crumble once he is no longer there to enforce it. This happens, of course. The pair are relocated to a floor in which they are nearly certain to starve. Our optimistic ‘bourgeois’ ends up killing herself. It is unclear whether it is fear or disappointment that pushes her over the edge. Her body sustains Goreng for the month.
Cannibalism is rampant in the Hole—a testament to how brutal a picture this film paints of human nature. In an appalling but not entirely unforeseen twist, Goreng’s first cellmate and alleged ‘friend,’ Trimagasi, turns on him when they descend to a low floor in which there is no hope for food. The old man had been through a similar situation before; he knew what starvation felt like and knew that he wanted to avoid it. He experienced the way it eroded friendships, turned people into savages. Goreng, with whom he had once read books and shared laughs, was suddenly a threat to his own safety. Trimagasi was getting released soon; this was not something he could accept. So, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Goreng wakes up on his new floor tied to his bed, with a maniacal-looking Trimagasi over him explaining his plans to slowly eat him alive. In a particularly disturbing scene we actually see Trimagasi cut off a piece of Goreng’s flesh and eat it. He is then saved by an unlikely heroine—a young woman named Miharu, making her monthly descent on the platform in search of her child, who is rumored to be trapped somewhere in the Hole. She gives Goreng the opportunity to kill Trimagasi and, in another brilliant scene of the darkest side of humanity, he elects not to show his ‘friend’ any mercy. This haunts him later on. Would you do any different?
On first watch, I found these vicious statements about the ruthlessness of human morality to be the most important message of the whole movie. There were certainly some allegorical elements to the film, but any abstract concept that the structure might represent pales in comparison to the film’s main point: if put in such a structure, this is how human beings would act. The Hole’s analogy to real life is exaggerated, imperfect. We are not thrust from one ‘rung’ of the social order to another from month to month, violently and without warning. Many of us manage not to move at all, and remain completely ignorant of the fact that it is possible. As an allegory, the story has its limits; it can only go so far. As a mirror, though, the film is spot-on. It shows us exactly what we are: animals, liable to go from friendly to monstrous with the flip of a switch, as soon as situations turn less favorable. This is something that we claim to know in the abstract, but not something we often understand. This film makes us understand. We are not the enlightened beings we claim to be. This state of being rests on luxuries that we take for granted, but that are not infallible. Once they disappear, our primary concern is survival. We are animals.
This is certainly the version of reality the film asserts. But is it true? Are we all ruthless killers? In the film, we see some variability in the way different characters react to their situation. Trimagasi’s reaction was aggressive, ruthless. Some of this could be attributed to the fact that he’d starved before—after all, he hadn’t tied down his previous cellmate. Nevertheless, we know that his predisposition to violence contributed to his choice. (After all, the object he brought with him into the prison was a knife.) Not all characters responded to their situation with violence. Imoguiri, our symbol of wealth and naiveté, pointed all of her aggression inward; when she faced imminent starvation, she killed herself. Perhaps one might argue that this is because she is a woman. Then what do we make of Miharu, a hardened killer?
And what do we make of Goreng? He brought a book into the prison. This is an important point, and is emphasized repeatedly. In a place where most people were concerned merely with their own survival, his intent was to learn. To grow. This makes him different. Fundamentally different, from the beginning, before the horrors took place. Are there people in life who are truly different from all the rest?
In this film we see three. First, of course, is Goreng. There’s also a brilliant little detail in which the camera pans over two starving men wading in a kiddie pool. What an ingenious detail! First of all, it suggests that this person, knowing that he was going into a brutal death trap, planned to simply relax and have a good time. And, even more brilliantly, his strategy worked. While all of the floors around him were populated with corpses and misery, he and his cellmate relaxed in the pool. They had nothing else. They were hungry and could die at any moment. But they found a way to be happy despite their suffering, and this happiness seems to have actually kept them alive. Thus, the most remarkable character in the film is someone who enjoyed less than two seconds of screentime.
There’s one other outlier worth noting. It’s Goreng’s final cellmate, Baharat: a confident, boldly optimistic man. His object of choice was a rope. His intent was to escape, to climb up the tower all the way to the top. It seems like a simple, foolproof plan. Of course, it turns out to be impossible. He managed to climb a few floors, and met some people who were willing to help him, but for the most part, people were callous. They did not want anyone encroaching on their territory. One couple even defecated in his face as he climbed upwards to their level. Why would they do this? They would have been no better nor worse had he succeeded. It seemed like pure malice. Evil.
Does this make Baharat and Goreng symbols of “Good”?
Here we are led back to the concept of martyrdom. A martyr is, of course, a representative of virtue—a person whose values are so strong, that they would die rather than abandon them. But do they deserve the honor? Does the martyr volunteer, or do they merely stumble upon their fate? The idea that martyrs are made by accident somewhat dampens their allure, but it also makes them seem more human. In the film, our two martyrs start their journey with the intent to save themselves. Baharat’s motivation is escape, not benevolence, and even Goreng’s altruism bears with it a hint of self-preservation. Their condemnation occurs almost by accident, after their plan took an unexpected turn and they realized that they had nothing left to lose. Does this lessen their impact? Would history even know that there was ever a point in which they were less than committed?
Our heroes’ journey starts with an idea. They can’t escape the prison by going upwards (even though they are close to the top level) and they are not content with staying where they are. Baharat is hellbent on escape, and Goreng is a charitable man. His sentence is almost up, and he is likely to survive just by waiting out the clock, but he does not want to leave behind a broken world. He’s convinced that if he could only show all of these people that there was a better way to live, it could change their behavior. So the men devise a plan: they are going to ride down the platform, to compel everyone they encounter to eat only the amount of food that is rationed for them. They do this, of course, through threat of violence. A little socialist commentary is thrown in where the heroes ask the people at the upper levels to abstain from eating (because they had eaten yesterday), and are met with scorn. For the most part, though, the plan worked—with a caveat. Most people were not happy with being told what to do. They would simply rather do what they were told than fight against it.
Something changed, though, as their journey went on. It was a subtle shift—something I did not notice the first time I watched the movie. As they descended, they encountered two friendly men with the appearance of wisdom. Baharat had met them before, on one of his futile journeys upward. They offered the travelers some advice. They criticized the heroes’ use of violence, said that it was not persuading people at all. People were only complying because they were threatened; the next day, their behavior would continue unchanged. These ‘wise men’ advise our heroes to approach people peacefully, to try to preach their message reasonably, and strike violently and ruthlessly only if their message was ignored.
They had another suggestion, also. Their original goal—to feed everyone for a day—was not enough. The people outside the Hole would never hear of it, and the system would never be changed. They needed to bring a message with them upwards and outwards, so that it might reach the people outside, who could have the power to shut the whole thing down. The ‘wise men’ provided them with a message: to make it all the way to the top with one piece of panna cotta untouched. This would be a symbol of mankind’s restraint and civility.
It was after this that everything changed. The journey became a bloodbath. Before, people obeyed the two men, under the threat of violence. It wasn’t a pretty way of doing things, but they got what they wanted. The people listened to them. Now, people were being blindsided, attacked without warning. It struck me as unfair. Authoritarian, even. And the heroes’ original mission—to persuade and to feed everybody—failed. Goreng and Baharat were attacked and badly injured. The food they’d been rationing was eaten. The floors below starved. They were likely to die. The only thing they had left when they reached the bottom was their ‘message’—they managed to preserve the panna cotta.
Then, something interesting happened. They reached the bottom: floor 333, a mystical number. This was way lower than anyone anticipated, begging the question of whether there was ever enough food to feed the entire place in the first place. Imoguiri, working for the prison’s administration, thought there were only 150 floors, and confidently asserted that there was enough. Goreng had made his own calculation, using the time it took the platform to reach the bottom. He concluded that there were somewhere around 250 floors. In reality, there were nearly one hundred extra floors, two hundred extra prisoners, to feed. Whether there could have ever been enough food is questionable. Even if there was enough to sustain everybody, it is likely that everyone who had anything would need to cut corners.
However, if it is possible to feed everybody, are the captives morally obliged to sacrifice in order to do so? That is, perhaps, one of the biggest questions that the film poses, and one that can be argued back and forth indefinitely. It is one of those abstract philosophical questions that could only exist in the sphere of human imagination. In fact, it is so futile, it barely deserves to be dwelt upon (although many years and many lives have been wasted doing just that).
The film takes the stance—which is supported by all of history—that sacrifice for the ‘greater good’ is impossible to enforce. The whole thing feels a bit like a warning against any type of collectivist revolution. The people were not cooperative—they had to be coerced with violence. They refused to cooperate even though the changes would benefit them. They had no promise that it would work. And they were unwilling to see past instant gratification enough to want the safer structure they were promised. They did not accept the changes willingly, and, due to the heroes’ new ruthless policy, they were then attacked without prior warning. Thus, more people died than would have if Goreng and Imoguiri had decided to just stay where they were and feast, never having made their descent at all. They didn’t succeed in distributing the food, anyway, and everyone who was going to starve ended up starving. Plus, the people who would have enjoyed their good fortune (which they arguably have a right to) ended up slaughtered.
Was what they did worth it?
Well, one might argue that this depends on the value of the ‘message.’ When the two men reached the final floor, they found a little girl. It was the child who Miharu had been looking for every time she descended the platform. Perhaps she’d been making her monthly trip in order to sustain her daughter, who had been hidden on this bottom floor. This month, however, Miharu was dead, and the little girl was starving. What happens next is very much open to interpretation. The heroes manage to bring their panna cotta, their ‘message,’ all the way to the bottom. Then, upon seeing the starving girl, they feed it to her. Her life was more important to them than this abstract concept of civility, which was a fabrication anyway. Still hungry, the girl kills Baharat for food. We wonder if she’s done this before. Goreng nearly resigns; his plan was a failure. Then he has an epiphany, whispered to him in that hypnagogic state between life and death—the girl is the message. He must send her up on the platform. Why she hadn’t gone up before is uncertain. Perhaps she was waiting for her mother. Either way, she hadn’t ascended until now. Goreng considers joining her, but decides not to. He’s unimportant; the message is stronger if she is alone. So he dies there, and the girl rides up the platform, where she is found by the chefs who had prepared the immaculate feast to be sent down into Hell.
We never find out what the ‘message’ that is conveyed actually is.
Perhaps, knowing that children were not allowed in the Hole, the chefs’ consciences were shocked, and they wondered what else was going on that they were not aware of. Perhaps they were inspired to change the Hole, or shut it down altogether. Perhaps the whole thing was viewed as a scandal to be covered up. After all, it is implied that some very powerful people knew exactly what was going on in the Hole, even if the majority of administrators (like Imoguiri) were ignorant. The place was under surveillance. This is easy to forget, but it is true. In the beginning of the movie, Goreng tries to keep an apple for himself for later, and an alarm rings, and his floor keeps getting hotter and hotter until he drops it. How could this happen if he wasn’t being closely watched? Someone knew. Nothing was done. Are we to expect things to be different this time?
The film makes the subtle point that it is impossible for anything to be different. Every attempt to change peoples’ attitudes via persuasion fails miserably. The film only displays two possible options: the ‘status quo,’ and a system in which more people eat, but this is enforced via threats of violence. The latter is a system in which everyone is afraid, everyone is angry at their alleged oppressor. It does not produce happy people, even if it arguably benefits the greatest number of them. And we’ve already discussed such a system’s drawbacks. It only lasts as long as its enforcer remains vigilant. It makes people angry—they will fight back, and there will be no peace. Which situation is superior? It is entirely subjective. Someone at the bottom of the hierarchy might be happy just to survive (although, from their point of view, they may simply view themselves as an oppressed victim). Someone near the top might wish for the status quo, where at least someone can be happy. It seems like the only way out is to destroy the place altogether. But then what happens to the people contained within it? Perhaps, in the film, this is a possibility. In real life, this is not so easy. What would the system be replaced with? We’ve already established that our tendency for hierarchical organization is inevitable.
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the ‘Hole’ is shut down. Are the murders that were committed somehow more justified, since the end result seems favorable to us? How about if a new place just like the old one springs up again a few years later?
Although the utility of the martyrs’ quest is dubious, there is one good thing that we can identify with certainty: the child escapes. She is a symbol of hope, and she would not have been saved without the heroes’ naive but benevolent act. In all likelihood, this girl would have starved. Even if she somehow managed to survive, she would have been a ruthless killer, and her life would have been a nightmare. The administration did not know about her; she had no end to her sentence. If someone hadn’t done what Goreng and Baharat did, she would have died there. Does this one child make it all worth it? She’s still young, still pure. Who knows—perhaps news of her escape spread across the entire prison, inspiring its residents towards compassion.
This encapsulates the entire point of martyrdom. At the end of this dark and horrific story, this is the last glimmer of possible change. It is left up to us to decide the message. We, as an audience, with our many interpretations, are a live embodiment of the variability of a martyr’s impact.
A martyr does not have the power to save the world. We will always live in this messed-up world where there may or may not be enough for everybody but there will certainly be people who do not have enough. But some of us choose knives and some of us choose books, and some of us simply choose to wade in shallow water and enjoy life. This is okay. It has to be. As long as humans are in charge of making the structures which contain us, it cannot be any other way. But that does not mean we have to abandon hope. In fact, I don’t think we can. Whenever it seems that all hope is lost, some unseen law of nature seems to ensure that someone comes along to swing the pendulum the opposite way.
Let’s start a dialogue. What are your thoughts on The Platform, martyrs, and the yearning to change the world? Subscribe, and follow me on Twitter @TweetingMan_ more updates.