Desiring Machine

I recently stumbled across a gallery of mugshots of famous people published by the Chicago Tribune.

What immediately caught my eye was a photo of Mickey Rourke, brought in on driving under the influence charges. While I have no sympathy for anyone driving while intoxicated, I do find myself compelled by his enigmatic smile.

It betrays an inner peace. Or perhaps he is just “really, really high”. Who knows. But I do think it is a face of a person in control, master of their immediate domain. As a visual contrast take this photo of Kumari Fulbright, a former beauty queen, brought in on kidnaping charges and assaulting her boyfriend with a handgun.

Now obviously I do not know the precise and specific details of either situation, so I am left to read the photos for any additional meaning. And apart from the apparent nihilism of life what I do read is a deep chasm of difference. In the former we have an image of a man who conveys confidence, in the latter we have the visual of an apparently deeply disturbed individual. As a psychological portrait I don’t know which image of Fulbright I find more disturbing. The deeply troubled and traumatized girl on the left who obviously is under duress, or the gun toting soon to be trainwreck on the right. And I find myself moved to an emotion of pity and simultaneous urge to keep that kind of force away at arms length. As for Mickey Rourke I have always held a certain inexplicable contempt but nonetheless grudging respect for. This is in no small part due to his over the top portrayal in the film Barfly, based on Charles Bukowski’s work. Despite Mickey Rourke’s performance, it was one of the most memorable movies I have ever seen.

So what kind of conclusion does any of this lead to? None really, only a logical nihilism that looking at any photo must provide. Only affect. I am not there, I am not that which I see. A photograph is a hollow kind of being, into which we pour our own meaning. But I am lead to conclusions nonetheless. I am lead to a thought about the fragility of life, and the tenuous psychological fabric that either holds us together or tears us apart. In the two photos I find a most remarkable contrast, I don’t think there could be more opposite responses to having one’s mug shot taken. In one we find life in the other death. One conveys a spirit of affirmation, the other a spirit of total destruction and sense of panic as one confronts the void. Both serve as a model of how one can conduct one’s life and the emotions we may lay bare when we face consequences of our conduct. But the story is universal. Our life is our life and we may some day be held to account for our action. And in that moment we will have a choice. A fleeting moment before the camera or the gaze of others in which we can try to explain who and what we are and what belies our inner nature. And in this moment we can either affirm or negate. Will you greet it with an enigmatic smile or a spectacle of trauma? Strength or weakness? Hope or doubt? For how we make that choice is the key to our redemption. Our life is our life, and what we make of it is ours. We can confront it with an inner laughter or despair. The rest is truly meaningless. Because it is only in our choice that redemption comes forth.

Of course Charles Bukowski put it a little more poetically: