eptember is National Suicide Prevention Month, and although public awareness heightens this time of the year, preventative measures must be a lifelong endeavor. Showcasing stories that enliven individuals’ day-to-day lives through movies is an accessible resource that can address the current mental health crisis of meaning.
Winner of 2023’s Academy Award for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once, draws attention to the crisis of meaning—defined as a growing existential state where people are “judg[ing] their lives as frustratingly empty and pointless” by clinical psychologist Dr. Bernadette Vötter. The physical manifestation of despair is evident: the most recent U.S. statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies over 140,000 deaths from excessive alcohol use in 2019, 91,799 deaths from drug overdoses in 2020, and 48,183 deaths from suicide in 2021. Together, the CDC refers to these three causes of mortality as “deaths of despair,” and their rates are increasing.
The despair tightening its grip on society needs to be addressed by tackling the crisis of meaning problem. The movie Everything Everywhere All at Once confronts this crisis in two significant ways. Firstly, the movie provides an example of characters making peace with the crisis of meaning and, secondly, it invites viewers to reflect on their own engagement with spirituality and religion as a means of resisting despair.
In the film, Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American immigrant, experiences what her life could have been if she had decided to stay in China instead of moving to America. Evelyn’s despair is revealed in flashbacks of marital problems and fights with her daughter Joy, exacerbated by her mundane reality of doing laundry and taxes. Evelyn’s journey into the multiverse is filled with explorations on the nature of life and the universe in the infinite possibilities she can access. The more time that Evelyn spends in the multiverse, the more she realizes that if everything is possible then no underlying meaning of life and the universe exists. Though nihilistic, this deduction is an example of spiritual and religious engagement because Evelyn is thinking deeply about her place in life and the universe. But rather than succumbing to the despair that typically comes with nihilism, Evelyn chooses to “cherish these few specks of time” that do make sense within a life and universe that decidedly does not make sense. By doing so, her struggles, triumphs, and transcendence of existential questions shift Evelyn’s mindset from despair to joy. Evelyn’s mental growth was due to making peace with her crisis of meaning problem which gives the audience hope that despair is avoidable.
Everything Everywhere All at Once also offers the audience a call to action in the form of motivating introspection regarding how spirituality and religion are embedded in everyday life. Through the identification of spiritual and religious forms, the audience can recognize that these forms may resist despair by animating individuals’ lives without necessarily being part of religious institutions.
In the beginning, a “lucky cat” figurine, derived from Japanese religious folklore, invites us into Evelyn’s spiritual world. Legends from the Edo Period (1603-1868) hold that the cat of a local abbot, Maneki Neko, saved a regional ruler from a lightning bolt. The ruler made Maneki Neko a patron of the empire, and people have been praying to lucky cat figurines for good fortune ever since. Additionally, the analogy between her mind and the leaking clay pot in Evelyn’s multiverse journey references wisdom from the Hindu Scripture Srimad Bhagavatam that illustrates the importance of taking care of your mind. Also representing Hinduism (and Buddhism), the ‘third eye’ placement on Evelyn’s forehead is a nod to transcendence after much deliberation. Later in the film, Evelyn is dragged into the eerie matte-white Bagel Sanctuary wearing a Persepolis-inspired brown veil and chador typically worn by Muslim women—representing a location where existential questions can be examined. The rest of the characters in this scene appear in white clerical robes that look like Jewish kittels. Throughout the film, the dichotomous symbolism between the googly eyes and “everything bagel” is an homage to the Yin and is a philosophical concept closely associated with the spiritual and religious traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. Looking at the movie with Yin and Yang in mind, the dark can be found in the light of the googly eyes, and the light can be found in the dark of the bagel.
These instantiations of origin stories, proverbial wisdom, transcendent sanctuaries, and beliefs demonstrate that spiritual and religious engagement in daily life can be theistic, nontheistic, and everything in between. They attest to the ways that people have made and understood meaning in their lives. By identifying spiritual and religious forms present in Everything Everywhere All at Once, viewers can recognize that spirituality and religion are “everywhere all at once” even if we are not looking for them—suggesting that there is a correlation between a person’s degree of spiritual and religious engagement and their mental health.
Arguably, more engagement with existential questions equates to better mental health, while less engagement implies the opposite. This National Suicide Prevention Month, individuals can attempt to resist despair by utilizing movies, and thus opportunities for spiritual and religious engagement, to reflect upon their wellbeing.
a global affairs media network
Confronting the Crisis of Meaning
Image courtesy of Gavin Allanwood via Unsplash.
October 13, 2023
There is a growing crisis of meaning among global publics, an existential state where people feel their lives to be frustratingly empty and pointless. Society must tackle this crisis, and introspection on our relationships with spirituality and religion could be key, writes Kianna Mahony.
S
eptember is National Suicide Prevention Month, and although public awareness heightens this time of the year, preventative measures must be a lifelong endeavor. Showcasing stories that enliven individuals’ day-to-day lives through movies is an accessible resource that can address the current mental health crisis of meaning.
Winner of 2023’s Academy Award for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once, draws attention to the crisis of meaning—defined as a growing existential state where people are “judg[ing] their lives as frustratingly empty and pointless” by clinical psychologist Dr. Bernadette Vötter. The physical manifestation of despair is evident: the most recent U.S. statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies over 140,000 deaths from excessive alcohol use in 2019, 91,799 deaths from drug overdoses in 2020, and 48,183 deaths from suicide in 2021. Together, the CDC refers to these three causes of mortality as “deaths of despair,” and their rates are increasing.
The despair tightening its grip on society needs to be addressed by tackling the crisis of meaning problem. The movie Everything Everywhere All at Once confronts this crisis in two significant ways. Firstly, the movie provides an example of characters making peace with the crisis of meaning and, secondly, it invites viewers to reflect on their own engagement with spirituality and religion as a means of resisting despair.
In the film, Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American immigrant, experiences what her life could have been if she had decided to stay in China instead of moving to America. Evelyn’s despair is revealed in flashbacks of marital problems and fights with her daughter Joy, exacerbated by her mundane reality of doing laundry and taxes. Evelyn’s journey into the multiverse is filled with explorations on the nature of life and the universe in the infinite possibilities she can access. The more time that Evelyn spends in the multiverse, the more she realizes that if everything is possible then no underlying meaning of life and the universe exists. Though nihilistic, this deduction is an example of spiritual and religious engagement because Evelyn is thinking deeply about her place in life and the universe. But rather than succumbing to the despair that typically comes with nihilism, Evelyn chooses to “cherish these few specks of time” that do make sense within a life and universe that decidedly does not make sense. By doing so, her struggles, triumphs, and transcendence of existential questions shift Evelyn’s mindset from despair to joy. Evelyn’s mental growth was due to making peace with her crisis of meaning problem which gives the audience hope that despair is avoidable.
Everything Everywhere All at Once also offers the audience a call to action in the form of motivating introspection regarding how spirituality and religion are embedded in everyday life. Through the identification of spiritual and religious forms, the audience can recognize that these forms may resist despair by animating individuals’ lives without necessarily being part of religious institutions.
In the beginning, a “lucky cat” figurine, derived from Japanese religious folklore, invites us into Evelyn’s spiritual world. Legends from the Edo Period (1603-1868) hold that the cat of a local abbot, Maneki Neko, saved a regional ruler from a lightning bolt. The ruler made Maneki Neko a patron of the empire, and people have been praying to lucky cat figurines for good fortune ever since. Additionally, the analogy between her mind and the leaking clay pot in Evelyn’s multiverse journey references wisdom from the Hindu Scripture Srimad Bhagavatam that illustrates the importance of taking care of your mind. Also representing Hinduism (and Buddhism), the ‘third eye’ placement on Evelyn’s forehead is a nod to transcendence after much deliberation. Later in the film, Evelyn is dragged into the eerie matte-white Bagel Sanctuary wearing a Persepolis-inspired brown veil and chador typically worn by Muslim women—representing a location where existential questions can be examined. The rest of the characters in this scene appear in white clerical robes that look like Jewish kittels. Throughout the film, the dichotomous symbolism between the googly eyes and “everything bagel” is an homage to the Yin and is a philosophical concept closely associated with the spiritual and religious traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. Looking at the movie with Yin and Yang in mind, the dark can be found in the light of the googly eyes, and the light can be found in the dark of the bagel.
These instantiations of origin stories, proverbial wisdom, transcendent sanctuaries, and beliefs demonstrate that spiritual and religious engagement in daily life can be theistic, nontheistic, and everything in between. They attest to the ways that people have made and understood meaning in their lives. By identifying spiritual and religious forms present in Everything Everywhere All at Once, viewers can recognize that spirituality and religion are “everywhere all at once” even if we are not looking for them—suggesting that there is a correlation between a person’s degree of spiritual and religious engagement and their mental health.
Arguably, more engagement with existential questions equates to better mental health, while less engagement implies the opposite. This National Suicide Prevention Month, individuals can attempt to resist despair by utilizing movies, and thus opportunities for spiritual and religious engagement, to reflect upon their wellbeing.
