just another Zero to Hero . . .

Zero from Zealous Creative on Vimeo.

This is a short film by director Christopher Zekelos, an Australian, which has a tasteful visual landscape and style, and is marvelously put together--as visuals go. The story details a social outcast who, it turns out, [spoilers] is just an artist, and can make awesome babies,with two heads, at that. It has won awards at various festivals, and you can see why. (further reading: go here and here ). As far as animation goes, I have to agree: it's pretty great.

However, as much as this is your typical rags to, well, fame and acclaim story, it does so in a peculiar way that doesn't sit well with me. And here's why.

First, there's the premise that all people have an ascribed value at birth--it is a value you are born with, can't change, everyone knows exactly what it is from the outset, and it sets the course of your whole life. The story uses this to create the constant feeling of "No, but that's not how things work--when will he break the mould?!?" on the tip of every conscientious Western citizen's mind throughout the whole film. The shortoftheweek.com review notes that this is a Huxleyan reference to a controlled society that no one really wants a part of. The problem is, the film doesn't defame that kind of society in any way. Rather it upholds it, saying that's the way things are, so that sometimes we have awesome conjoined twins of infinity that can save the world. The zeros are still zeros, but their spawn is amazing--the necessary epilogue is that the child, Infinity, (if it survives its first trimester) goes on to hate his own parents and lock them up in the basement of his pan-dimensional castle so people will get off his case about coming from such a lowly origin. The film states that the only thing society had wrong is that the zeros shouldn't reproduce: they're still not good for anything else (or maybe, it's saying, if they only had a chance, they could, but I think that's a stretch, too). I mean, sure the guy is an artist, which is an unfortunate (albeit humble) way for the writer/director/whoever made that call to tip their hat to themselves (or if you look at it another way, mourn their low position in society). There is still no call for equality or seeing the value in everyone. The ascribed value still stands true. It's so far from reality in that way that it's cheezy, and hard to actually relate to.

Second, there's the problem of everyone who has numeric value--and thereby social value (the argument follows that this value is actually understood in reverse in our society: social value defines numeric value, whereby "she's a ten" is a valid phrase)--is made of pink yarn, whereas only zeros have mixed-color yarn. WHOA, right?! I mean even at my middle-of-nowhere college, we have a handful of Asians and Africans, and even a few Latinos (ethnically speaking). So what the film implies, whether it was trying to or not, is that the only fitting place in society for mixed-race people is among the outcast. Actually, the outcast class is entirely mixed-race. Clearly, they were born to pink people--they're the only other people we see, and zeros are forbidden from reproducing, so that conclusion follows naturally--but don't belong among them. Further, besides discolored twine, they are also unevenly wound. In a sense, they are physically deformed, like many socially outcast in the past and present. We can pride ourselves today for not throwing these babies down the well, in the way of the Spartans (maybe it was off the cliff, I don't remember). And many parents will struggle through life and social pressure to keep, care for and love their children who don't fit societies scientific standards of normality. But if one looks closely, one can always find value in a child with Asperger's Syndrome or with a debilitating handicap. They have a brilliant mind, or a huge heart or something.

Now I could go on, but I think my main point is that I don't believe there is such a thing as a Zero, or that there could be. The problem is, there will always be the "low man on the totem pole", but I'd have to argue, reluctantly, he is on the totem pole. Everyone has value, everyone plays a part in society, in humanity.

I think it stems from my belief that God loves everyone, and wants everyone to be in the body of the Church, of which Christ is the head. Paul writes many ways that the Church is like a body with many parts, and that everyone has a unique role in making the body work--no matter what. I quote 1 Corinthians 12: 14-26 [ESV].

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

This follows of course, as a part of my educational philosophy, that every student deserves fair treatment in the classroom and the educational system. If I may return to the film, in the classroom scene, it is not obvious that the teacher deliberately puts the zero student down--she is taken advantage of by the whole class. However, it does stand that she is telling them that zeros are the least valuable members of society, and have no privileges. Thus even the lowest of the valued must look to someone below them who they can scream at (like in Barney Stinson's chain of screaming [halfway down, starts with "Barney tells Marshall that the moral of the story is . . ."]). And thus bullying, etc. Further, the teacher believes her whole class, and the isolated student has no chance to stand up for himself. What's implied is that student already has a history of misdemeanors or at least of being punished, and the teacher doesn't think twice about who might have done it. Frankly that's bad practise on the teacher's part, but she dug her own hole. That system breeds brats and outcasts, and is what the modern system should try to avoid with classification, labeling, etc.

In short, the film tried to point out hope, but in doing so only managed to construct a flawed view of society. In the least, one can hope that the creators intended to illustrate a dystopia in which the only chance for a failed man to do anything of worth is through his offspring or whatever. Maybe I just disagree with them too hard. Maybe I'm missing the point. I know that it's no how things are or should be, is all. It's not the world I know.