81. SHALL WE JUST BLOODLANDS IT? - The Existentialist Freedom To Say No
A few months ago there was a new drama on the BBC called Bloodlands. It starred James Nesbit, who I like as an actor, and was set in post-Troubles Northern Ireland which, being Irish, also fascinates me. I love a good thriller, which Bloodlands was, and also quite like occasionally getting involved with what is sometimes called “event viewing” – shows designed to be watched as they are broadcast and discussed at length across workplaces – or social media – the next day. I am still currently catching up on sleep thanks to a recent obsession with Channel Four’s The Circle, and am gripped every Sunday at nine by the BBC’s Line of Duty in its epic final season. Bloodlands was exactly the sort of thing I would watch and so it was no surprise when it started that I did exactly that. And even less of a surprise that I absolutely loved it, as did my wife who watched it with me. For several weeks we had a lovely Sunday ritual – David Attenborough’s fascinating new series Life in Colour (great for philosophy of perception by the way), then The Great Pottery Throwdown on Channel Four followed by Bloodlands.
It was only a four-part series, and for the first three weeks that Sunday ritual was diligently observed. On the final Sunday of the series, we talked eagerly that morning about what would happen in that evening’s finale.
And then I said something crazy: “but what if we don’t watch it?”
“Do you not like it?” asked my wife, confused.
“No – I really like it,” I said, “but it just struck me how funny it would be to have committed ourselves to this series for three weeks only to not watch the last episode and ever find out what happened. You’d tell people – oh yeah, Bloodlands, we watched the first three episodes of that. They’d ask – did you not like it? And we’d say – no, we loved it. We just chose not to finish it.”
“Brilliant,” laughed my wife (one of the many reasons why I love her). “Let’s do it.”
And so, for no good reason at all, we chose never to finish the show and watched something else that night. I don’t even remember what.
The decision was truly liberating, and a great example of existential freedom. We had no reason to stop watching Bloodlands but we also, importantly, had no reason to watch it. There is a lot of talk in today’s binge-watching culture of streaming “obsessions” (I even used it myself a few paragraphs ago about The Circle) and discussions about the latest television masterpiece can often make it seem as if not being a fan of a certain show means that you are missing out on something crucial to the cultural moment. But it’s only entertainment. If you never see Breaking Bad, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or any other cultural touchstone then your life is no less worth living than the lives of those of us who have. And the idea that you are obliged to complete something just because you have started it is as much a fallacy of bad faith as living a Sartrean life of inauthenticity, pretending you have no choice but to be a waiter. There is always a choice. We are radically free to watch, or not watch, whatever television programmes we want.
But this is about more than entertainment. It is about a way of living. The obligation to finish Bloodlands could be an obligation to do anything. Note – we did not stop watching Bloodlands because we didn’t like it. This isn’t the same sort of liberation which comes from putting down a bad book without feeling compelled to read to the end (although the freedom to do so is the same). This is the radical liberation of remembering you don’t have to do anything at all – good things as well as bad. I don’t have to call my friend back. I don’t have to stay in touch with my family. I don’t have to go to work today. That I want to is excellent. In fact it makes my doing each of these things all the more special because, as the Bloodlands example reminds us, I really don’t have to and could always choose not to do them at any moment. It is just as much bad faith to do something you want to by pretending it to be an obligation rather than a choice as it is to do something you don’t want to do and claim there is no alternative. We are always, according to existentialism, free to choose differently.
That is not to deny the consequences of such radically free choosing. When we chose not to finish Bloodlands we knew this would mean never knowing what happened in Bloodlands and having an eternal question mark at the end of the story we enjoyed three quarters of. If I chose not to call back my friend, keep in touch with my family, or go to work, I can expect to lose friends, family and jobs. But the point is – the choice remains my own, no matter how many oppressive external factors seem to be compelling me towards one option rather than another.
Since our decision to not finish Bloodlands, the show has become a symbolic affirmation of our radical freedom to choose and a way of acknowledging that we are wilfully choosing what we are doing. “Shall we just Bloodlands it” is now a common refrain around the house. Night two of Wrestlemania; the last song on a record we are listening to; the final chapters of the audiobook we are listening to on car drives together; a lateral flow test for COVID 19; our very lives… And the laughter that comes from each suggestion affirms the existential joy that we are happy with our decisions and current commitments; aware that while they are just that – commitments which we could freely choose to be otherwise - they have survived the scrutiny of such radical autonomy and are thus things we truly want to be doing.
This morning I woke up tired after a bad night’s sleep. I had to be in early to administer my Year 11s in their first end of year assessment which will determine part of their final GCSE grade. I’ve taught them for two years and they have worked so hard to get to this point.
“Shall I Bloodlands it?” I asked my wife, groggily. “Just call in and quit and leave the profession forever? No reason – just not feeling it this morning.”
We laughed, and I rolled out of bed and started making breakfast.
Author: DaN McKee
My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE