The argument that it was the man’s devotion:
He took the pictures because she asked. Years ago at his bachelor party his (older, happily married) brother handed him an article from the Journal of Social Scientific Conclusions proving, statistically, that marital happiness is associated with uxorial wish fulfillment, Pearson coefficient of .87, and so he went in with his eyes open.
His brother confessed drunkenly, tearfully, in the parking lot outside the strip club, that doing what his wife said was the key to his own marital happiness, which the man always remembered as moving.
The argument that it was the man’s passive aggression masquerading as devotion:
That story about his devotion is complete bullshit, in (at least) one of two ways: One, he knew that he was a terrible photographer, and had in fact been reverse humblebragging about this for years because it allowed him to evade his responsibilities; and two, he rather obviously could have made a good faith effort to take more and better pictures without devolving like he did, if he was in fact truly devoted.
The argument that it was the man’s inability to let things go and handle failure:
Sure, maybe he started in earnest and came from a good place. He bought a new camera and spent evenings in the week before they left for Vacare practicing with landscape versus portrait, auto flash versus natural, the red eye remover. He practiced in different kinds of light. okay, he was sincere. But when she looked like an alien in the first batch everyone started to get nervous and he failed to adjust. His thought was that she had told him to take pictures, and by god he was going to take pictures. He even thought that he was maybe doing the right thing, maybe, because maybe she was just trying to make him feel better by telling him that everything was okay when the puss on her face screamed the opposite. But he must have been wrong because then he ended up like a football team that always blows the lead because it can’t make the halftime adjustments. And of course then it must be said that, despite the circumstances, despite everything, the man would have appreciated this metaphor.
The argument that the argument for the man’s passive aggression misunderstands the fundamental nature of devotion, i.e., love:
Love is devotion and devotion love. They are synonyms. We therefore ought not to be surprised when an ancillary devotion undertaken in the name of love takes on a destructive quality. Think about how stalking works.
The argument that it was the woman’s classic inability to be satisfied with her partner as he was, that she was hellbent on improving him, and that this is a form externalized self-loathing:
Actually this one is pretty self-explanatory.
The argument that it was the woman’s vanity:
You’d think that this is about seeing and being seen, that the woman wanted to be in more pictures, to see herself in pictures and show them to other people, especially on the internet, to strangers. That is not primarily what this argument is about, though. No, it isn’t about the pictures themselves, which were nothing more than pictures, for she is a sophisticated woman. No, she wanted something much more primitive and real, some tangible evidence of his devotion and redundant love. Something physical. And because of her family of origin (photographs were to her childhood what mirrors are to monkeys in science experiments) photography was the natural venue. Only, she never realized that this wasn’t universal, that the only pictures his family had hanging were taken by professionals, first at school and then at weddings. This possibility would never have occurred to her, and it had never occurred to anyone living, ever, that this is something that should be discussed at premarital counseling, whether with a clergyman or headshrink or whomever.
The argument that it was her insecurity:
When she first told him (although she would characterize it in later official proceedings as a “request”) to take more pictures, she did so with a unitary psyche. She had consulted with her closest friend, Caroline, who has beautiful red hair but is not otherwise particularly attractive (overweight, heavily perfumed, etc., while the woman herself is adjudged fairly exceptional) and confirmed that her request was completely reasonable. In fact, Caroline argued, it would be unreasonable not to make the request, since this would be giving in to an essentially anti-feminist instinct, that her needs, wants, and desires ought for some reason to take a back seat to his. This—and here Caroline tapped four times on the Starbucks table between them—she could not do. The woman found this argument wholly convincing.
But, then, when his first efforts so disappointed her, she wondered if she wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill, and if this wasn’t some kind of fatal weakness in the whole species. She was, she realized, more unhappy than she was when he wasn’t taking any pictures, because of the disappointment admixed to desire. But then she remembered what Caroline had said and realized that this feeling, this unhappiness, was also an anti-feminist feeling, and to give it voice would be to undo all the hard work that had been done, not just by the generations before (although they were important) but by she, herself, to come to a place where she felt completely comfortable claiming what she wanted, needed, and deserved.
But then she thought she might be being a bitch and impulsively tried to take it all back on the fourth night after several margaritas, tried to tell him that it was okay if he didn’t take any more pictures, but by then things had gone too far.
The argument that society is to blame:
The internet has fetishized visual culture to an extreme ill-fitted to evolved conceptions of human interaction. The image now trumps the held hand, the dirty chat reproductive intercourse, social networking the place where everybody knows your name. The wreckage in this case is collateral damage.
The argument that the vacations themselves are the problem:
In a transglobal society, violence and narcissism replace rational discourse … no, wait, it’s that Vacare, both symbolically and actually, represents a liminal space in which the removal of the struggle to survive induces a neurosis the physical form of which we call Restless Leg Syndrome. Shorn of their very reason for having been born, to procure food for themselves and their offspring (no one is sure if they had children, there were rumors of a graduate school adoption), by the sumptuous buffets of that island resort, included in the per diem cost, the mind roams. It is bound to settle on the trivial, since that is all that is left when one has consumed so much Kalua Pig and Mai Tai that movement and coherence are all but impossible. The effect is of rolling cookie dough with a bulldozer, a metaphor that I don’t think has to be explained.
The argument that the island resort is to blame, and so this was all just bad luck:
The settings and risings of the sun into the water and behind the cliffs are so spectacular that the impulse in Vacare to use the rising or setting sun as a backdrop is essentially irresistible. And yet there is hardly any setting more complex and fraught with danger, particularly for the novice photographer. It was all but inevitable that his pictures would come out poorly, and that this would frustrate him, and that his frustrated determination would alienate her. If they had gone to one of the big cities back East to visit museums and eat innovative Japanese-Pashtun fusion cuisine, which they discussed, none of this would have happened.
The question of whether there is a lesson to be learned:
Can the causal analysis of events be separated from its moral implications? Here, reasonable scholars disagree. The argument that an appropriate causal analysis is necessary to an understanding of the future changes in behavior necessary to avoid a repeat situation is intuitive and well understood. Others, following Hume, maintain that the causal analysis is irrelevant, for no fact about the world could compel any particular moral conclusion. This argument, while not intuitive, has a long history, and is also well understood.
But is there a middle ground, whereby we don’t need a definitive answer to the causal question to arrive at a moral judgment?
The argument that there is a middle ground whereby we don’t need a definitive answer to the causal question in order to arrive at a moral judgment:
The argument that no definitive causal analysis is possible is also well established, although also not intuitive, and also follows Hume. Indeed, following Hume (and we all follow Hume, I mean Jesus Christ he’s been dead for, what, at least a decade?), it is not possible to know anything. It does not follow, however, that a moral argument cannot be made. The woman did what she wanted and made a request; the man did what he wanted and attempted to honor it; and yet they landed in a place that neither of them wanted. The moral question then becomes, “Where in the middle could the path have been diverted?” There are five possibilities:
The woman could have been less demanding. She could have restrained her criticism of her husband’s over-exposed efforts, in most of which one could not see her face. She could have appreciated the effort and given him a kiss on the cheek or elsewhere and told him how much she appreciated his efforts. This would not have precluded her requesting that he keep trying.
The man could have taken his failure … well, like a man. He could have laughed (never say how much it hurts, anything, ever) and made a self-deprecating remark and kept trying. He also could have been more honest and told her that the effort was damaging to his self-esteem, and that he would only keep trying if his self-esteem were not important to her, although this is often anathema. The one thing he most definitely should not have done was become obsessed with taking more and more pictures until he became proficient, or got at least one goddamn picture good enough to put her face on the stupid internet.
In retrospect, honesty would not have been taking it like a man. Being honest would not have been the moral thing to do.
When the man failed to take his failure like a man and became obsessed, the woman could have looked deep within her soul and asked herself whether this was something worth fighting for. It would have been okay if it were and fine if it weren’t. Her problem was that she pretended that it wasn’t while secretly feeling that it was. Hume did not have a name for this, but it is bad.
When the woman failed to look deep within her soul and ask herself the deepest and most serious questions that a person can ask, the man could have said, like, whoa, and taken a step back. He could have taken a step back and surveyed the situation and bought her flowers and told her how much he loved her. Buying her flowers would most definitely have been the moral thing to do.
And, finally, when the man failed to give her flowers she could have given him sex. Giving someone sex, no one can doubt, not even Hume, is always an extremely moral thing to do. They could have used alcohol to facilitate this process.
Scientific conclusions:
People ought to take fewer pictures, unless they are of animals in funny hats; strip clubs, even at a bachelor party, are kind of passe, dude; correlation does not prove causation; passive aggression is incredibly hard to pin down, and can always be characterized as something else, rendering it rhetorically useless as a concept; all loving relationships are legally indistinguishable from felony stalking; it’s super hard being a woman, even if you are a hot chick, and “friends” like Caroline don’t help; feminism is the new word that dare not speak its name; there is no distinction between politics and gangsterism; island resorts are a bore, and you’re better off in one of the big cities back East; David Hume; have sex with anyone, everyone, whenever you can; and no one can ever say what causes anything, ever.
B.D. Fischer has published fiction, poetry, and drama in places like Glint, Literary Lunes, Poetry Quarterly, and Ayris. He is also a contributor at the politics and culture blog Public (dis)Interest and the self-explanatory AlcoholReviews.com. His novel Slowly But Thoroughly is forthcoming from Strange Days Press and he can be reached at ThreeStrangeThings.com.
