Recently, I have been quite addicted to Emily Levine, the American philosopher-comedian, or comedian-philosopher, whatever. Emily passed away in February 2019 due to stage-IV lung cancer, but she most likely prefers to say that she has gone back to Emily’s universe. In her last appearance as a speaker on TED, she talks about death, American politics, quantum physics and nasty feminist jokes. She does not ask for pity but shares her experience of making peace with reality.
The truth is, Emily does not get along with reality, and if Tinder existed when she met reality for the first time, she would swipe left without hesitation. Reality and Emily do not share similar values or goals, and Emily does not even have goals; she only has fantasies. Fantasies are exactly like goals but without the hard work. Or maybe Emily has long realised that her fantasies would never be realised as they belong to another universe. Achingly, all of her aspirations are just fantasies. Although she jokes about her experiences in reality, she embodies a lifelong struggle to fit in, to overcome self-doubt and to seek strength besides her disillusionment towards reality. And that is the central theme of her talks. It turns out that Emily is great at dealing with reality, something she only realises shortly before her death. That is perhaps the most bittersweet confession in all comedian shows I have watched in recent years.
Here is how I understand standup comedies: the comedian talks while her audiences laugh. Jokes come from the most unexpected places, but somehow they are readily comprehensible to the general public. But Emily’s one-woman talk shows stand out to me unlike any other stand-up comedies I have watched. She talks, and I am still in charge of laughing. The format does not change. Still, the content is much more cerebral and requires some dedicated sharpness to pick up the irony. One can say that her context is readily comprehensible at different levels. At one level, she criticises toxic masculinity and its manifestations in everyday life, culture and philosophy. Men get to actively dislike their sexual partners, but women do not have a voice. Economists talk about penetrating new markets, if not forcing the governments to open their markets. Descartes believe that men are rational animals with a consciousness detached from the irrational, whimsical body…
On that level, Emily offers some Heideggerian, existentialist critique of Cartesian rationalism. It is the often-assumed inferiority of the body, of one’s emotions that Emily finds perpetually problematic. It is when one denies the body that one also denies women. Those irrational, whimsical women can only labour, just like those irrational, uncivilised slaves men used to own in the past. Some might be surprised that women still struggle in today’s world after they seem to be granted equal opportunities in political election, education and workplace. But Emily’s argument is not about the legal framework, but the stubborn conceptualisation of the world, the subject-object relationship, the superior, smart and indifferent subject versus the inferior, lifeless and passive object. The world is separated into the two domains, with one dominating the other. It is the superstructure of society that does not just hurt women, but certainly men, people of colour and residents with colonial heritage as well.
When Emily was offered a job at Disney, her office decoration included a giant Mickey Mouse, a symbol of Disney’s pervasiveness in life, I suppose. The Mickey Mouse is labelled “life-sized”, and that was when Emily realised that reality might be hiding beneath the appearance of the world. Just like the life-sized Mickey Mouse, reality is another almost-too-real construct that obscures the distinction between truth and falsity, essence and appearance, everything and nothing. Even as she talks, her box containing all her speaker notes is labelled “This is NOT a box” while some American politicians keep denying climate change. Sometimes, Emily feels suffocated, so it is perhaps comforting that the reality that contradicts her values might be a forgery.
It is until this point I realise that Emily is going somewhere else. Her talks can be comprehensible at a metaphysical level, underneath the superstructure of society. And that is, what she calls, “reality may not be reality”. Emily claims to have great interests in science, except for the real science. What she means is that many modern scientific theories speak to some of her deepest intuitions about the world and human nature. Although she does not understand the mathematics of modern sciences, she readily knows what is at stake and what matters, existentially and morally, as we understand more about the universe. For example, quantum physics demonstrates the duality of matter, like how a photon is both a particle and a wave. Nothing is certain or settled anymore. To Emily, Quantum theory is a better approximation of the ultimate reality as everything in this world is about duality. People are good and bad, masculine and feminine, and Sigmund Freud is right about penis envy but wrong about who has it, LOL. That is the moment Emily realises that life has its duality; to affirm life, one is also affirming death. To deny death and the limit of human existence is also to deny life, the living and the present.
Beneath her insight into reality, Emily shares her source of hope with her audience. She finds hope in the dual nature of things, morality and life. Like all living matters, Emily will pass away one day, and she cannot avoid it. If she can somehow escape death, life will be meaningless. She likes death, apparently, as if it is the ultimate ritual that makes her breath worthwhile. Such ironic elements, like her personal confessions, invite me to a place of the unexplainable, the irrational and the uncertain. Her talks claim to be about life, universe and everything, but I sense some recurring themes such as feminism and her rejection of Cartesian mind-body dualism. Or maybe these themes are broad enough to be life, universe and everything, or at least to be the superstructure of them.
No one can deny the fact that Emily’s stand-up comedies have some spiritual overtone. Interestingly, she does not mention God or any form of supernatural entities or to force any faithful commitment. She loves modern science, as she acknowledges, and modern science values empirical evidence. But Emily’s talks are not just about modern science, but also what has been missing in the nihilist cosmic picture portrayed by science. She talks about hope, almost excessively, and how she eventually feels so okay about death and beyond. A living creature like a human being is a particular, if not peculiar, arrangement of particles. Perhaps such arrangement means something, but sometimes toxic masculinity asserts dominance, denies uncertainty and disregards limit. The superstructure of the world perhaps exaggerates the meaning of life and existence, and in the process of denying death, one also denies life. In the process of denying limit, one also denies hope and grace.
I would like to modify my words a little bit. Emily might say that she has gone back to Emily’s universe. But I sense that she is still with us today. Don’t get me wrong; I am not writing in a haunted house or suggesting any supernatural existence. I am only telling the truth. Death is not the end just like birth is not the beginning. Emily’s universe shares the same stars, flowers and people with us, but she alters the superstructure beneath life, universe and everything. And sometimes, all it takes is to realise the duality, uncertainty and messiness of life. Instead of dominating nature like driving a car, control is probably illusionary and eventually a dangerous belief.
People share different senses of social justice, and Emily is not an exception. I suppose that one can call Emily a feminist, but she never uses that title in her talks. In fact, she might not think she is a feminist, or perfectly aligning with the feminist politics in the United States. What she has in mind certainly involves women; in fact, in Emily’s universe, women will not be treated unfairly. But what she offers is more aligning with secular humanism and what gives us hope in an excessively scientific universe. Reality might not be reality. That is perhaps one of the deepest human intuitions about the world, from Ancient Greek to India. What Emily believes is that we should make peace with uncertainty, limit and not being in control of everything. Human society might for quite some time keep focusing on the wrong things or misunderstanding science. We might be watching giant Mickey Mouses, reading Sigmund Freud and learning quantum physics without realising how they all reflect one’s encounter with ultimate reality.
CARPE NOCTEM 