Men In Black

After maybe ten or fifteen years, I recently watched Men in Black (MIB) again. It was interesting. In The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Zizek says,

"If something gets too traumatic, too violent, even too filled with enjoyment, it shatters the coordinates of our reality. We have to fictionalise it. The first key to horror films is to say, “Let’s imagine the same story but without the horror element.” This gives us, I think, the background."

MIB is not really a horror movie. But it has this something, which is too traumatic, exotic and excessive an element, in it: the aliens. The weird looking aliens, who have come to the earth and made some kind of a pact with the scientists and authorities and are living along with humans on the earth.  By and large, they are nice "people" but occasionally, they can go wrong. Which is why there is a secret investigative department (of MIB) to investigate alien criminal activity on the earth. Nobody other than those with the MIB (and possibly a few scientists and those in the government) is aware of the aliens' presence and activities on the earth. In case someone sees the aliens or comes in contact with them, the MIB uses some kind of neuralyzers on them and thus they immediately forget what they have seen or experienced. Tommy Lee Jones works as an MIB agent, and Will Smith is a police officer, who has no clue about the aliens and their presence on the earth, and whom Jones tries to and later succeeds to recruit to his department, eventually to replace Jones' own position. Jones wants to retire. While retiring, the MIB agents use neuralyzers on themselves to forget their career and everything about the presence of aliens on the earth. Jones wants to retire because, he says, he has seen enough of vulgar things and wants to lead a normal life for the rest of his life. He wants to forget what he has seen and done during his career as an MIB agent. What he actually dreams of is that he can simply forget his boring career, unburden himself of his responsibilities and memories, go back to his actual life and have a reunion with the woman he loved once. 

Alien Adjusting The Human Body It Intruded

If we remove the seemingly excessive narrative about the aliens from this story, what we get is the story of a secret agent, who has been doing all the dirty work for those in power. He is self-disgusted and bored of his own job and career. He believes that his boredom is not because of his job but because of some kind of sacrifice he made for the benefit of humanity. He does not know that he actually hates his job. That is why he cannot simply resign and go without handing over his responsibilities to a new recruit. He believes what he does is very important for the society and even without his presence, the society and his job should go on without troubles. Though he is old, the woman he left before is young in his imagination, and he truly believes he will have a happy reunion with her. One can immediately see through his illusion! Anyway, to really see if he had a happy reunion with his woman, I will have to watch MIB2. By reading the short summary on MIB2, it appears that Jones' character was not left free for himself and to lead his whatever life, but called back again to be an MIB agent to fulfil his social responsibilities. 

Neuralizer

There is actually a point in the movie when Jones' thoughts are revealed to the audience. When Will Smith was called for the tests before he can join MIB, he did not know why precisely he was there. While he questions the examiner, the examiner in turn asks another candidate something like "Why exactly he was present there." The candidate stands in attention almost with the naivete of a school boy and replies that because he was the best of the best or some bull shit like that. Smith immediately laughs this off and says the kid does not even know what he is saying. Jones is also such a kid, who believes in the greatness of the MIB work. But Jones also secretly knows that it is all just bull shit. We can read it in the faint smile that Jones gives as he secretly observes Smith replying to the examiner. Smith knows the other candidate's belief is an illusion, but is still curious about MIB and would want to join. He knows the futility but denies it. In simple terms, he is a pervert who despite knowing an illusion as illusion, nonetheless, denies it is an illusion and wants to affirm it as his true belief. Perhaps, that is why Jones recruited him. Smith grooms to be a good agent, who, instead of dreaming a woman outside MIB, finds a woman and her makes her join MIB and starts screwing her. After all, perverts always prove to be fighters par excellence for the [whatever] cause they believe in!

Perhaps, a job in this capitalist world is psychically experienced as so traumatic and violent that, even though it brings money and means and enjoyments with it, one cannot imagine a happy, peaceful life without inventing some sort of weird narratives, e.g., about aliens, to justify his/her taking up the job. By imagining ones job as a social responsibility, one believes one can avoid any feelings of guilt, but in fact another kind of guilt follows for the rest of the life.