What Do We Covet?

Finished reading: Quinngali, Scissors MacGillicutty section II

It might be another couple of days before I write another review. Work is very busy and I haven't been feeling all that well. So if there's no review tomorrow, don't feel slighted. (Some of you might even celebrate! L'CHAIM!)

(* * *)

Jane has revealed to Daria what Quinn has done. Daria is obviously quite angry with the years of "brain rape". She has managed to choose a "new wardrobe", but the thousand dollar wardrobe that she has chosen is simply a variation in type and not in kind -- the materials are much more expensive, and there are superficial differences, but it's the same jacket/t-shirt/pleated skirt that Daria always wears.

Jane can only commisserate. She doesn't know why Quinn has done what she has done, but her reading of the hypnotism manuals makes it clear that even when the hypnotised subject knows he or she has been hypnotised, it makes no difference -- the structure remains and is not easy to remove. As Jane has only read to that point, Daria takes over the task of reading and hopefully undoing what Quinn has done.

Some time later, Daria shared with Jane what she has learned, with the promise that Jane will pay as much attention as she can. It turns out that according to the models of the subconscious explained by the manuscript writers, the subconscious is a completely irrational agent. It either wants things, or doesn't want them, and is not the "bedrock of the self". The subconscious has no moral nature, and cannot evaluate what it wants or what it doesn't want. It can only soak things up randomly, like a sponge.

The problem is that the giver of the commands -- Quinn -- has a subconscious that works in a like manner. Therefore, Quinn's hypnosis has nothing to do with Daria's "inner self", but with Quinn's. Quinn is repelled by the side of herself that Daria represented before she was hynotised. Quinn might tell herself that she's "punishing" Daria by making her act in the cynical, dry, fashion-ignorant manner we're used to, but the punishment is actually an attempt of Quinn's subconscious to purge itself of what repels it. Quinn wants Daria's life, and Daria's "punishment" is to absorb the life Quinn wants, to take it away.

With increasing intensity, Daria rants that Quinn's lessening of the controls -- the orders to buy slightly better clothes -- means that Quinn's subconscious has changed. Quinn is no longer repelled, and the two personalities are going to merge...!

...

Daria wakes up. She made the mistake of smiling at Trent a third time when he entered the door, and immediately thought of death. While Daria rests, Jane takes up the tast of reading what Daria has underlined.

(* * *)

At last, Part Three grabs one's attention in the same way as Part One, and then some.

The strength of Part One was that Nemo Blank established a postulate, that Daria's personality was in a sense "unnatural". In Part Three, it is established how unnatural, with some terrifying conclusions.

The plot threads that Nemo Blank established in Part One are picked up in Part Three...but just when the threads are tied off, we find that there are even more plot threads and the situation threatens to turn into one big mess. There's an old saying that "in life, when one door closes, another door opens." Scissors MacGillicutty has turned that on its ear -- "as one door opens, another door closes".

Yes, Daria finds out that she has been hypnotised -- but it doesn't help her. Even with full knowledge of what Quinn has done, Daria's own mind simply acts against her, the structures impossible to break. Furthermore, we learn about Quinn's wants and needs, and the "whys" of what Quinn has done extend beyond the convenience of removing a rival into an assault on the identities of both Daria and Quinn.

Furthermore, Quinn's "easing up" on Daria brings no promise of resolution.

"What she makes me go through is the 'unilateral suggestion to self-destruction' that Serov writes about, it's just pushed off onto me—but she made a mistake when she gave me the suggestion that I could indulge in clothes and be social again—she broke a hole in the wall she built! We're going to become what we always were now—we're going to become like each other! IT'S THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE UNDONE! THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE!"

Quinn and Daria's identities are bound together -- both have been permanently cast in the terms of Quinn's subconsciousness, which is an irrational animal that does not know what it wants, only that things repel it and don't repel it. In a sense, Quinn has simply remade Daria into the anti-Quinn, and acting in opposition to that which has been done only makes one...into...Quinn.

This is probably not the correct interpretation of events -- but so what? Scissors simply leaves more questions for the reader to ask, more interpretations to build, with no promise that any one of them is correct and no hope that a solution is easily at hand. The narrative train we're riding is going into a tunnel, and we don't know if there's a light on the other side...or another train.

All in all, a great Part II. And if you think that Nemo Blank has Scissors MacGillicutty beat on trippiness, you haven't read Part III yet.

Thus, the selection of the quote, which comes from The Silence of the Lambs:

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?
Clarice Starling: He kills women...
Hannibal Lecter: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?
Clarice Starling: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir...
Hannibal Lecter: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

Quinn has seen something in Daria. She does not covet it, however. She repudiates it. But there is no why behind it all. It is left to Quinn's subconscious, and that it something beyond the control of either Daria...or Quinn.

By the way, I've been asked more than once about the quote about Losers With Big Eyebrows. That quote is from the Futurama episode, "Time Keeps on Slippin'".

"Drugs are for losers, and hypnosis is for losers with big, weird eyebrows!"