tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6917594142091456604.post-85394512511435421672007-09-06T17:47:00.001-07:002007-09-06T17:47:55.896-07:00In this most recent installment of Jason Bourne’s search for self through a confused and thoroughly globalized world, we are finally given an answer to his three movie long question. Actually there are two questions. First, the overdramatically delivered “who am I?” of the original film, and second, “who did this to me?” more so of the middle offering.<br />This seems a good point to over-analyze, and over-generalize.<br />Bourne, as we know him, is a killer and an evil-doer, ordered to carry out the wishes of a faceless and nameless imperialist force. It is a force unconcerned with morality or justice, but simply focused on the preservation of its own agenda, whatever that might be. And as its tool, Bourne gets to globe trot, and hide in rich politician’s hotel closets, giving us the action packed assassinations we love to watch.<br /> So here’s the over-generalization: the condition of the modern individual in our globalized world is also one of a killer and evil-doer (there is a little action hero in all of us). We are constantly being sent messages by a faceless agenda to engage in practices that harm innocents. To burn up fossil fuels and drink Coca Cola, to support an economy and a society that works toward some mysterious ideology only known by “freedom” or other equally meaningless and misdirecting terms.<br />Here is where Bourne’s Ultimatum illuminates an essential tension. It is true that we ourselves are doing all of these horrible things around the planet, but we simultaneously feel that our identity is essentially something different, something more innocent and humane. Moreover, aren’t we victims of some greater culture industry built to brainwash the masses, that has “done this to us?” At least Adorno would agree. And so there lies a split in our personal identity, our actions as a member of a nefarious society and our moral view of ourselves, the later of which must look for some Other to blame.<br />Thus, when Bourne finally gets an answer to the second question he gets an answer to both. He was the one who found the program and agreed to be a part of it. It was of his own volition and free will that he became a killer. So who he was before, the original un-brainwashed core was just as evil if not more so than who he currently is.<br />Perhaps we can draw this out further and say that even if we go hide out in the third world or race stolen cars across Europe, Bourne answers that it is our true selves that decided to be part of this “program” in the first place. And neither Treadstone, Blackbriar, Bush, nor the Culture Industry itself can ever wholly absolve us of our daily sins.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6917594142091456604-8539451251143542167?l=everettk.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Everett Kramerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030354063194542930noreply@blogger.com2