The famous list of life events in Ecclesiastes 3 assumes an audience ready to supply appropriate situations for each pair. Of course, applying the maxim For everything there is a season proves much easier in some circumstances than in others. Most would place the “time to mourn” (v. 4) squarely amid loss. Surely the “time to mend” (v. 7) follows that playground mishap which tears a favorite jacket.
The “time to uproot” (v. 2), however, shifts according to genus, species, and climate. Marriage counselors know never to prescribe hard and fast rules for the “time to embrace” (v. 5) or “time to be silent” (v. 7). When conflict migrates from the bedroom to the battlefield, the consequences of claiming a “time for war” (v. 8) grow even more dire. One might hope that those who take seriously the call to love their enemies (Matt. 5:44) would seek opportunities to declare a “time for peace” (Ecc. 3:8)—but world events suggest consensus on such matters will remain elusive this side of eternity.
And what of “a time to laugh” (v. 4)? This may be the slipperiest fish of all. It’s not hard to find someone ready to justify laughter in every one of the situations mentioned by the poet. Joyful laughter that follows the pangs of birth (v. 2)? Check. Laughter in the face of death (v. 2)? Look no further than the Irish wake. And, if my ballroom lessons with my wife are at all typical, laughter most definitely belongs on the dance floor (v. 4).
The Unexpected Parenting Comfort of Ecclesiastes
Harder to stomach are those who chuckle at others’ pain—who gleefully hate (v. 8), kill with a smile (v. 3), and guffaw as others weep (v. 4). Not surprisingly, our increasing willingness to publicly laugh in the face of suffering has infiltrated our storytelling. I suggested that the time for mourning is self-evident, but the stories we tell and sell suggest this isn’t quite right.
I blame it on the bard.
Shakespeare wrote a few “problem” plays, including Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well—stage dramas that mix silliness with catastrophe, resisting the neat classification of a straight-up tragedy like King Lear or the uproarious comedy of a Much Ado About Nothing. Though such a mishmash confused the playwright’s contemporaries more than it entertained them, these plays have since become critical darlings. Today, many a modern pundit delights in genre mash-ups that require effort to interpret, thematically incongruous puzzles.
Enter the work of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, whose filmography has won wide acclaim for decades. Five years ago, Parasite became the first film not in the English language to win best picture.
Like others uncomfortable with economic or political systems that place the livelihoods of thousands in the hands of the few, I appreciate Joon-ho’s determination to target abuses of power. He typically opens a tale by positioning working-class citizens against corrupt institutions whose greed and cruelty are painted in large, parodic strokes.
In Snowpiercer (2013), an emotionally detached, flamboyantly dressed elite governs the survivors of an apocalypse with cold malice punctuated by violent cruelty. Maintaining order involves doling out bare subsistence, regularly appropriating children, and maiming any resisters. The Mirando Corporation of Okja (2017) genetically engineers sentient “super pigs” as smart as they are tasty, then ignores the fraternal ties they’ve developed with human caregivers in the name of profit.
The line between villain and hero blurs in other films where Joon-ho’s narrative sleight of hand gambles with his viewer’s sympathies. Instead of setting up virtuous innocents victimized by the system, the writer-director sometimes inserts us into the lives of incompetent criminal layabouts, then demands that we reconsider our initial distaste.
The more realistic the film, the harder this is to do. The inept detectives attempting to track down a serial rapist and killer in Memories of Murder (2003) torture wrongly arrested detainees. A single parent in Mother (2010) burns evidence and kills to protect her guilty child. Parasite (2019) asks us to cheer for a hard-up family that lies, steals, and fatally attacks both working-class and wealthy individuals who get in its way.
Many viewers praise Joon-ho’s tonal complexity as an accurate representation of our absurd existence. Life does not have easy answers. Injustice has no neat solutions.
Though I accept that sin does compromise our ability to see clearly and act rightly, I also believe that our halting efforts matter (James 2:26). I understand the temptation to release responsibility for the world’s problems, but Jesus keeps calling me back to the struggle (Matt. 5:6–16). If my definition of truth extends beyond mere apprehension of what is to encompass a particular vision of what should be, my reaction to suffering should be inflected by concepts like justice and honor (Phil. 4:8).
Inserting comic relief into stories about class struggle, stories that involve assault and murder, can beg a viewer to dismiss real-world injustice as the inevitable product of an absurd existence. It can discourage us from fighting oppression, the product of a broken but ultimately redeemable world. These films ask us to laugh hysterically rather than mourn. Ultimately, they are an attack on hope.
This pessimistic outlook is nowhere clearer than in Mickey 17, which, at a glance, initially resembles another, much earlier Joon-ho film, The Host (2006). In both films, self-absorbed scientists refuse to weigh the likely harm of their actions—in The Host by dumping chemicals into the Han River (a ravenous monster results) and in Mickey 17 by creating a machine that can “reprint” a person from a digitally stored template of mind and body each time they die. The doctors and politicians of The Host treat those who survive contact with the monster as their own personal guinea pigs. So do the doctors and politicians who experiment on each new clone of Mickey Barnes.
The key difference between these intentionally preposterous films lies in where the laughter they provoke takes us. In The Host, the family members who seek to recover a kidnapped young girl from the monster ultimately overcome their status as losers—a label Joon-ho has applied in interviews—by risking their lives in heroic fashion. The sharp laughter which riddled The Host’s first half dissolves into sorrow for the heroes who don’t make it and gratefulness that love holds together the survivors.
There is no time to either mourn or love in Mickey 17. The comedy underpinning Mickey’s many deaths, the romantic partner whose inner life we never discover, and the comical threats over which this new “loser” (as he’s described in the film) continually trips defy any effort to care what happens to him.
To this unrelentingly goofy ride, Joon-ho adds a heavy-handed critique of religion absent from his prior films, a critique that burdens Christians with a host of negative stereotypes. The politician determined to create his own “planet of purity” far from Earth scatters biblical language casually throughout his public orations, confuses the corporation he leads with a church, institutes a moratorium on intimacy during space travel to limit caloric intake, and calls cloning being “born again.”
Laugh, the film tells us, at scientific hubris and political corruption, but also at every attempt to make things better—at efforts to “plant” (Ecc. 3:2), “search” (v. 6), “build” (v. 3), or “heal” (v. 3). Human inquiry and effort cannot forestall a death which apparently retains its horror even after 16 trial runs, so the only thing left is to laugh.
When confronted with suffering, I prefer to weep—and then do my best to love.
Paul Marchbanks is a professor of English at California Polytechnic State University. His YouTube channel is “Digging in the Dirt.”
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