The Fly

  Back in 1986, I had become something of a science fiction fan, at the encouragement of a librarian in my junior high school who introduced me to the books of Robert A. Heinlein. I seem to remember that time period (1986-1987) to be exciting times, mainly because I used to buy these magazines called Analog and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction at the corner magazine store for, like, 2 or 3 dollars (magazines aren't that cheap nowadays). There was one particular movie that was popular back then, David Cronenberg's The Fly, that had an impact on me, as well as a little-known song by Bryan Ferry called "Help Me" that was part of that soundtrack. 

    The story of The Fly is essentially about a scientist who becomes (in a drunken stupor) part of his own experiment, by putting himself in a teleporter that synthesizes different molecules into something enhanced. What he doesn't realize is that a fly had entered the same teleporter as himself, so parts of the fly's DNA become fused with his. This is sadly a love story as well, and the leading lady of this movie has to watch his slow deterioration into a monstrous fly without a conscience. To me, this movie comes closest to being a Kafka-style science fiction movie. It had both elements of pathos and horror combined.

  I think of this story as the horror of becoming dependent on someone else for help even when the helping person is horrified of who the other has become. Yes, this is certainly a metaphor for ageing and death, but I also think there is a deeper metaphor for how we contain irreconcilable opposites within us, and are afraid of transforming into something darker than our "best" or "most favored" parts. This is the dilemma of being both a witness to something horrific as well as being consumed by it at the same time.

In Buddhism, we probably have to go through all the forms of suffering to reach enlightenment. The hardest is to realize that we are prisoners to our own bodies when we are ill--yet to know that from a practice perspective, we are really not bound to the body at all.