The Gift in Stranger than Fiction, pt. 1

Introduction

“This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch. Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words. And his wristwatch said even less.”  These are the opening words to the movie Stranger than Fiction, staring Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Emma Thompson.  This will be the first of two posts attempting to analyze this recent movie in light of the philosophical and theological notion of 'the gift'.  The two main lenses through which I will be looking will be Jacques Derrida (mainly Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992]) and John Milbank ("Can a Gift Be Given?: Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic", Modern Theology 11 [January 1995]: 119-161).  The goal is to creatively analyze this movie first through Derrida's aporetic phenomenology, which is heavily indebted to Heidegger's later thoughts in On Time and Being; and second, to analyze this film through a Milbankian lens focused on gift exchange in light of the gift of Creation, and primarily through the gift of Christ himself contemplated with Mary's "yes" to the Spirit in view. 

What follows assumes some knowledge of the plot of the movie, and so therefore may include spoilers.  With that said, if you have not yet seen this  movie, and would rather not have aspects of this storied revealed until you know the full story, get yourself to a rental store and then come back to this post.  If you do not mind either way, then I invite you read on.  [A further note: while I have removed the footnotes below, if you would like the references, I have a much fuller version of this essay that I may send upon request.]

The main scene of the movie that I will be considering takes place after Harold Crick, and IRS agent, has spent a long and frustrating day auditing Miss Ana Pascal's tax records for the previous year.    Working in a bakery with the office upstairs and the bakery downstairs, Harold descends into the main floor looking weary and slightly disheveled.  The scene unfolds as follows:

Harold: Well, good night.

Miss Pascal: Want a cookie?

H: Oh, no.

MP: Oh, come on: they’re warm and gooey and fresh out of the oven.

H: No, I don’t like cookies.

MP: You don’t like cookies? What’s wrong with you? Everybody likes cookies.

H: No, I know.

MP: After a really awful, no-good day, didn’t your mama ever make you milk and cookies?

H: No, my mother didn’t bake. The only cookies I ever had were store-bought.

MP: Okay. Sit down.

H: No, I’m –

MP: -- no, sit down. Now, eat a cookie.

H: I really can’t.

MP: Mr. Crick, it was a really awful day. I know: I made sure of it. So pick up the cookie, dip it in the milk, and eat it. 

[Harold follows her instructions, and a look of elation comes over his face as he eats the cookie, followed by a relieved sigh] 

H: Wow, that’s a really, really good cookie. When did you decide to become a baker?

MP: In college.

H: Oh, like a cooking college?

MP: I went to Harvard Law, actually.

H: Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed it was –

MP: -- no, no it’s fine, I didn’t finish.

H: Something happen?

MP: No, I was barely accepted. I mean, really: barely. The only reason they let me come was because of my essay: how I was going to make the world a better place with my degree. And anyway, we would have to participate in these study sessions – my classmates and I, sometimes all night long – and I would bake, so no one would go hungry while we worked. Sometimes I would bake all afternoon in the kitchen in the dorm and I would bring my little treats to the study groups and people loved them. I made oatmeal cookies, peanut butter bars, dark chocolate macadamia nut wedges—everyone would eat and stay happy, study harder and do better on the tests and then more and more people started coming to the study groups and I would bring more snacks and I was always looking for better and better recipes until soon it was ricotta cheese and apricot croissants and mocha bars with an almond glaze and lemon chiffon cake with zesty peach icing. And at the end of the semester, I had 27 study partners, 8 Mead journals filled with recipes and a ‘D’ average. So I dropped out. I just figured that if I were going to make the world a better place I would do it with cookies. …you like them?

H: I do.

MP: I’m glad.

H: Thank you for forcing me to eat them.

MP: You’re welcome.

H: I should go. Thank you, for the cookies.

MP: Why don’t you take them home?

H: Oh, no--

MP: --Oh, Come on.

H: No, Really, please.

MP: No, really please.

H: No, really please –

MP: -- I want you to.

H: I would like to, but I can’t.

MP: You can’t?

H: No, no, I mean, ‘cause see, it constitutes ‘a gift.’ Actually, I shouldn’t have even had those other ones, so…

MP: Well, okay, I’m not going to tell anyone.

H: Well, I know, but if you did.

MP: Well I’m not going to –

H: --I know, but if you did.

MP: You think I’m going to call the --

H: --no, I’ll purchase them. I’m happy to purchase them. How’s that? Then there are no issues. [She walks away, dumbstruck.] What?

MP: No.

H: Please?

MP: Go home.

H: It’s not a big deal.

MP: Go home.

H: Okay. Did you…? You baked those cookies for me, didn’t you? [she gives a look of silent affirmation] You were just trying to be nice and I totally blew it. This may sound like gibberish to you, but, uh … I think I’m in a tragedy.

The analysis commences below the cut.

Derrida and the Madness of Economic Reason: the gift, ‘if there is any’

In Derrida’s Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, he traces the problematic of the gift along ‘aneconomic’ lines. The reason this is so is because any offering and receiving of the gift necessarily travels along a circular economy of exchange, which for Derrida, concomitantly and paradoxically annuls the gift. Therefore, the gift “must keep a relation of foreignness to the circle” of economy and must be kept away from “the malaise of being measured.”  Furthermore, the concept of time is necessarily involved both as the duration that transpires during the giving and receiving of the gift, but also within the circular conception of time itself which is implicated in the circulation of economic exchange (Heidegger calls this conception of time ‘vulgar’). Instead, Derrida argues, “There would be a gift only at the instant when the paradoxical instant (in the sense in which Kierkegaard says of the paradoxical instant of decision that it is madness) tears time apart. In this sense one would never have the time of a gift.” In other words, the gift, “if there is any,” would have to arrive at a tangent to time itself.

Yet, Derrida does not argue for the gift along tangential lines (or any other geometry), but considers that the gift must be argued as the impossibility which gives itself: “These conditions of possibility of the gift (that some ‘one’ gives some ‘thing’ to some ‘one other’) designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift.  And already we could translate this into other terms: these conditions of possibility define or produce the annulment, the annihilation, the destruction of the gift.” “For there to be a gift,” Derrida continues, “there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt.”  These modes of return and exchange are inevitable for Derrida, so the only way for the gift to disallow the possibility of indebtedness is for the donee to “not recognize the gift as gift. If he recognizes it as gift, if the gift appears to him as such, if the present is present to him as present, this simple recognition suffices to annul the gift.”  The gift must not even be perceived, let alone identified as a gift, which would also be its destruction.

This double bind of the gift—“for there to be gift, it is necessary that the gift not even appear, that it not be perceived or received as gift”—is dealt with by an injunction of absolute and instantaneous forgetfulness. Gift and forgetfulness become the conditions for each other, much like Heidegger’s discussion of Being and time in On Time and Being.

From the very beginning of the above exchange between Harold and Miss Pascal to its closure, I would argue that for Derrida, the gift was never given. Miss Pascal offers Harold the simplest of ordinary pastries: the cookie. Yet, it is immediately denied, in typical too-polite fashion. Not only is the cookie offered, but it is presented in its most desirable form, for those who have a history of being on the receiving-end of a batch of cookies: “warm and gooey and fresh out of the oven.” We discover that unlike most people, Harold’s mother never gave him the gift of being a mother who bakes, let alone a mother who baked cookies, resorting to the store-bought variety. What is more, Harold moves from turning down the cookies based on taste (“I don’t like cookies”) to one of necessity (“I really can’t”), as if he were obligated somehow against receiving them due to a prior obligation such as a diet or condition as diabetes. What we discover is a kind of originary ‘no’ which disallows Harold from ever accepting the gift of a cookie.

A litany of “no’s” follows from the time Miss Pascal offers Harold a cookie to the time he resigns himself to finally accept her offering: “Oh, no”; “No, I don’t like cookies”; “No, I know”; “No, my mother didn’t bake….”; “No, I’m–”; “I really can[not].” Six “no’s” precede the command to eat the cookie, to which Harold later says, “Thank you for forcing me to eat them [emphasis mine],” affirming a perceived lack of freedom involved in the gift. There is no simple “thank you” which stands alone in pure gratitude, but only a “thank you” for being ‘forced’ to eat them, despite the fact that the act of dipping the cookie in the milk followed by its consumption was not coerced but engaged in freely.  Yet, Harold still feels as if he is forced, even though the opposite is apparent. Has the gift yet arrived? The next exchange, according to Derrida’s reading of the gift, is telling.

Miss Pascal asks Harold, “Why don’t you take [the cookies] home?” Immediately, he again protests, “Oh, no—” and at Miss Pascal’s prodding, he insistently repeats, “No, really, please.” And then, Harold invokes prior necessity: “I can’t.”  When Miss Pascal retorts, “You can’t?” Harold declares that the cookie “constitutes ‘a gift.’”  He identifies the gift as gift. For Derrida, this simple identification immediately destroys the gift. “At the limit,” remarks Derrida, “the gift as gift ought not appear as gift: either to the donee or to the donor. It cannot be gift as gift except by not being present as gift.”  Thus, when Harold identifies the cookie, that it “constitutes ‘a gift,’” we see the gift destroyed, bound to a violent economy of exchange.

Harold is bound to a protocol which destroys the gift in two blows: first, by forming him into a system of exchange where everything must be kept track of for the sake of auditing—he cannot accept a gift because it constitutes that which he is not allowed to receive as dictated by his position as a senior IRS agent; and second, he is bound to that which proclaims the gift ‘a gift’ such that this obvious tautology is something that he cannot receive: because it is precisely a gift it is exactly that which constitutes what Harold cannot have. The arrival, the event—the truth of the gift—thus signals its non-truth.

Does Derrida then say that there is no gift? No: Derrida has said he is misunderstood on this score:

"The gift, I would claim, I would argue, as such cannot be known; as soon as you know it, you destroy it. So the gift as such is impossible. I insist on the ‘as such.’ . . . I never said that there is no gift. No. I said exactly the opposite. What are the conditions for us to say there is a gift, if we cannot determine it theoretically, phenomenologically? It is through the experience of the impossibility; that its possibility is possible as impossible."

Defined as such, the gift of the cookies given to Harold is destroyed. The event which has made the giving of the gift possible in impossibility stays, at the limit, in utter impossibility as in this scene Harold destroys the gift; he never lets it arrive.

“Actually, I shouldn’t have even had those other [cookies], so …” continues Harold. Not only is the currently-offered gift of the cookies refuted—destroyed—and named as ‘gift’, but Harold also annuls the cookies for which he has already enjoyed and offered his (‘forced’) gratitude. History itself, history of the gift, is further annulled. If there ever was any gift, then we know see that Harold has precluded its very possibility (which is to be distinguished from the impossible aporia which makes the gift possible for Derrida). Harold’s “so...”, his trailing off in giving the unnamed reason for why he should have never had the cookies in the first place, signals his fear of the future, just as Miss Pascal assures him that she is “not going to tell anyone.” If she were going to tell anyone—but she is not—if she were “going to call the—” ... who is she going to call?

Harold must therefore contain the gift by making it reasonable, removing any further aspect of surprise and making the gift calculable.  He is a “man of infinite numbers, endless calculations,” after all: “no, I’ll purchase them. I’m happy to purchase them.  How’s that? Then there are no issues.” The present, the past, and also the future is now annulled from any possible (impossibility) of the gift. By offering to purchase the cookies, Harold has subsumed the gift within an economy of exchange.  At this point, the past, present and future possibility of the gift has been destroyed; time is now ‘once again’ circular, vulgar.

Implications of the (Im)possibility of the Gift

As I have argued above, it would seem like what transpires between Harold and Miss Pascal would confirm Derrida's aporetic phenomenology; if there is any pure gift in Stranger than Fiction, it seems very likely impossible.  Its own logic seems to continue to refute itself in the movie.  Now, there are other sections of the movie that are worth analysis, but for the sake of brevity for this post, I will end it here and conclude with some brief observations and implications of Derrida's analysis.

Derrida is very astute at analyzing the indebtedness and economic violence that is often perpetuated in gift exchange.  Theologically, I would argue that his observation makes for a very good description of the fallenness of humanity, even when it tries its best to give gifts.  Some of us do not know how to receive; some of us would rather not receive gifts in all its various forms.  Peter, on the night before Jesus was betrayed, did not want to initially receive Christ's gift of having his feet washed.  Some people even use the giving of gifts in a coercive way to gain the benefits of status or respect.  Or sometimes, we just give gifts to make up for the fact that we often have problem receiving gifts at all; after all, we are told "it is better to give than receive." 

Left out of the above discussion is any mention of Derrida's The Gift of Death, let alone any of Jean-Luc Marion's own thought and conversations with Derrida on this subject.  For now, this is intentional for the sake of focus and scope.  However, on Wednesday, I will be addressing John Milbank's distinctly theological look at the gift which addresses Derrida, Heidegger, Marion (although I will leave out some of the stuff on Marion for length).

What do you all think?  How helpful is Derrida's analysis of the gift? In what ways is it helpful?  In what ways is it not helpful?

Comments

[Geoff Holsclaw]

eric,
this is an outstanding post. I loved this movie...very witty and full of theological themes. I'm very must looking forward to the second part where you deal with Milbank.

I think you are right to say that Derrida offers a very astute analysis of fallen man in his relationships (but of course saying this is making a theological evaluation, bringing in terms like "the fall" of which Derrida probably does not hold to). Certainly there is the danger of the manipulation of gifts, of social and pyscological indebtedness which can cripple relationships or cause outright abuse. But that question that has to be asked, which I'm sure you will on Wednesday, is whether this abuse of the gift (the impossibility to recognize, give, or receive a gift) is constitutive of human relations or a contingent situation?

[Eric Lee]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks man. I was glad I had the chance to write this paper, as I had these ideas bouncing around in my head for a few months after watching the movie before really knowing how to make them congeal.

For now, I will say that it may be very important to note Derrida's "as such" regarding the gift. I have to wonder if, as such this is all there is regarding the gift. One of Marion's critiques (from the skimming I have had time to do) of Derrida is that he points out that Derrida sees the gift as he does because it is a phenomenologically 'reduced' gift. And of course, it is rather clear that Derrida stays on this level in his brilliant analysis of the "Counterfeit Money" passage.

I'm wondering if this "as such" also names this "fallenness" that Derrida would probably not recognize per se, but from a Christian standpoint, it very well seems to be that this is the case.

Derrida wants us to forget the gift instantly as soon as it is given, and indicates that it is only truly time that one can give as the gift... and of course, I have also left out some of my musings above about how Harold's wristwatch, introduced as one of the central characters of the movie by Karen Eiffel's narration, displays some very interesting conjunctures with Derrida's analysis of time.

I guess it just seems like an odd gift to receive and give if one must forget about it. If the gift can't appear as a gift to the donee or donor, as I quoted above, how do we really know that anything at all is a gift? I can understand how this would wrack anybody's brain!

Yes, I hope to get to the necessity/contingency of this matter with Milbank tomorrow.

Thanks for your thoughts, Geoff.

Peace,

Eric

[Geoff Holsclaw]

darn it. I knew I shouldn't check the comments before doing my French lesson. Now it's not going to get done.

anyway.
Yes, I think the "as such" of Derrida's phenomenology is important, negating an understanding of creation and fall. The way you put it made me think of Zizioulas.

"Idolatry, i.e. turning created existence into an ultimate point of reference, is the form that the fall takes, but what lies behind it is the fact that man refuses to refer created being to with God. In other words, viewed from the point of view of ontology, the fall consists in the refusal to make being dependent on communion, in a rupture between truth and communion. This rupture between being and communion results automatically in the truth of being acquiring priority over the truth of communion" (Being As Communion, 102).

This distinction that Zizioulas makes between the truth of being having priority over the truth of communion, which is the FALL, is what Derrida enters into in his "as such" of the gift. The phenomelogical "as such" of Derrida is a question of truth as epistemology separated from communion, which is why he can't get to the relational aspects of the 'gift' but must view it "as such", in its being separated from any communion.

[Scott Bader-Saye]

Hi Eric,

I really like this post and would be interested in the "fuller version" if you would be willing to send it. I teach theology at the University of Scranton and, among other things, teach a class called "Parables in Pop Culture" in which I discuss films that have a parabolic quality. I am also interested in the philosophical/theological questions surrounding gift - so you've struck two chords with me! Thanks for the post.

Thanks,
Scott

[Eric Lee]

Scott,

Thanks for reading and for the comment. I'll hook you up.

Peace,

Eric

[Sterling Koch]

I just want to say 'thanks' for this post. That scene is frequently passed over in other discussions about the movie in lieu of conversations about free will, etc. As I watched the film, though, I had this sense that the scene was central in very important in itself. I'm afraid I'm a but under-read on Derrida, but your tie in between the two was very appropriate and an excellent read. Thank you so much!

[Sterling Koch]

Sorry - the above post should read "...central AND very important...", and "...I'm a BIT under-read..." (I was attempted to write while tracking my 16-month old son, which is never a good idea)