Although no overtly
theological or religious material is in the film, Awake (2007), which is
different than being woke, because greed itself is the real antagonist, idolatry
can be imputed, and thus the true sordid condition of the vice can be grasped.
In in his letter to the Colossians, Paul ends his list of sins with greed, “which
is idolatry.”[1]
The easiest way to interpret this classification of greed being a case of
idolatry is to assume that the idol is money (or wealth). The idolatry of wealth
is enunciated and perhaps even personified by Gordon Gekko in the film, Wall Street (1987). No
amount of personal wealth is enough. “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,”
greed being the desire for more. Gekko delivers the line during his
speech to Teldar Paper stockholders. Left unsaid in his speech is the
tremendous toll that greed can take not only on other people, but also oneself,
for a very circumscribed, as to benefits, selfishness goes along with greed and
may even be its foundation. A greedy person would presumably think nothing of
betraying a friend if doing so would increase the person’s wealth, especially
if no future financial benefit is likely from the friend. To be sure, greed
need not be oriented to more money; a selfish person addicted to sex (i.e., in
the sense of being regularly driven to have more of it) would have no problem
betraying a even a spouse, and even demand of him or her that the addict’s
outside sex with others, even with a romantic connection, must and even should
be accepted in order to stay. Such extreme, unrepentant callousness can
apply to greed for money too, and this is evinced in Awake. The vice of
greed as ultimately self-idolatry has an evil connotation, given how much pain
and thus harm self-idolatry can easily inflict on other people. The virtue of
self-sacrifice is farther than the farthest star from such greed, and the sheer
pathos of distance between self-sacrifice out of love and self-idolatry as
greedy selfishness is palpable in the film, which arguably intimates and may even
stimulate religious sensibilities without being explicit or preachy.
The full essay is at "Awake."
1. Col. 3:5 (NIV)
