The Tyrrany of the "One Truth"

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2010)

I never met Phil Dick, but I did correspond with him 40 years ago. This was well after he not only believed in parallel realities and truths as he had all his crazy life. He had chosen to simultaneously live in as many of them as he could reach. From these folded places, he wrote stories with woven realities.
It was important to him that Deckard could be a replicant, and be more real than those not born immaculately. And with the story on which this was based, it was essential that there be three possibilities, each as likely and "truthful" as the others. Indeed, the possibility that they ALL are is what made this writer important.
But alas, there are three people involved, among the dimmest in their respective trades. Piers Antony adapted the story. A well known science fiction writer of the time, he wrote stories for kids. Fantasy things that "made sense," instead of what is required here: real things that do not make sense, or rather make quantum sense.
No one needs to say much about how Arnie turns a picture into animated furniture. Mildly more interesting is the shape of the trainwreck that is Paul Verhoeven. He may be a charming man, and seems charming in person. He surely seems to sell tickets. But he seems obsessed with making sense of a story. Here, there is one truth; Arnie's character discovers it and triumphs as a result. Gone is the scintillating ambiguity of Dick's creation.
Verhoeven, if you don't know, at this time somehow inveigled himself into the Jesus Seminar as full, voting member! The Jesus Seminar was a response to the mess that the New Testament presents, having contradictory theology added over time to serve various agendas. The seminar attempted to use best scholarship to discover in this battleground the truth of the historical Jesus, a laudable goal. The method was to collect scholars — real scholars — and vote.
Verhoeven somehow became a voting member, his presence as a "scholar" allowing ammunition for all sorts of critics. Just take the part of the story where this man was so obsessed with finding the single truth amidst ambiguities that he pulled strings to participate, even at the cost of jeopardizing the enterprise.
He did that here as well.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.