Doctor Strange, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Death

Doctor Strange, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Death November 5, 2016

 Danse Macabre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Danse Macabre [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,

from whom no living man can escape.  – St. Francis of Assisi

Doctor Strange.

Strange as it might seem, Doctor Strange is one of my favorite comic books from my youth. I loved stories with magic, mystery, and the supernatural. D.C.’s House of Mystery and Swamp Thing, and Marvel’s Doctor Strange were my early staples. When both House of Mystery and Doctor Strange were cancelled, I would eventually find myself reading X-Men, Captain America, Spider-Man, Batman, and Groo. But the intrigue of House of Mystery and Doctor Strange would remain with me, with Doctor Strange being one of those comic book heroes whose stories would inspire me, in part, in the creation of my own fictional hero, Montague Chillingham. [1]

I have seen the old televised Doctor Strange movie, and thought parts of it were quite good, and it could have worked as a nice pilot for a series, but I also understood how poor the whole of it was and why nothing more came of it. When I heard Marvel was planning to eventually do a Doctor Strange movie, I knew they could get it right this time. I was somewhat disappointed at the choice of the lead, not because I do not like Benedict Cumberbatch but because I felt others would have served the role better.  I knew he could do the part well, and so it was not much of a concern. When they cast the Ancient One, like many others, I entirely disagreed with their choice – and I still do, not because Tilda Swinton is a bad actress, but because it radically changes the character for no good reason (as well as the problem of Whitewashing an Asian character).

Nonetheless, this is not meant to be a review of the film. Several people have provided their own views. As for myself, I thought it is good,  but not as great as it could have been. There were things I wished would have happened by the end which did not, thereby weakening the potential of the film and the tragedy of the end. They needed to have the conflict between Doctor Strange and Mordo more evidence to Strange himself, and I think they should have had Strange receive more direct indication of his destiny by the Ancient  One.  Nonetheless, the film is as expected with a Marvel origin story. It is entertaining, but at least for me, the greatness of Doctor Strange was not fully explored, and so the movie, as good as it was, suffered from my own expectations. But , it is also true, that the concerns I have are minor in relation to the film itself and are more personal because of my previous experience with the character than what the average viewer would have had with him.

What this is – is an exploration of one of the movie’s two significant themes. The first, which connects the second, is the error of humanity trying to dictate to the universe its own rules and order to nature because nature transcends what humans are capable of understanding and controlling. When we try to impose order, we create disorder, and with that disorder, suffering. Mordo in the film represents what could happen with someone with good intentions whose desire to maintain control through law and order finds out the rules they thought they knew were wrong. He then creates a new mindset, a new set of rules, a new law and order which he is willing to defend with extreme prejudice.

By Prishank Thapa [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Prishank Thapa [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The second theme is that of life and death, knowing when it is appropriate to preserve life and when it is time to let life go and accept death. Doctor Strange, as a great physician, learned how to preserve life, to bring people back from the point of death itself, but even then, those he brought back were those who were capable of having life restored without any artificial means being used to prolong life once it is restored. That is, he knew how to help the body heal, to determine when death was not necessary, and so when he could save someone’s life so that they could have a life worth living.

The key is that life, when it is able to be meaningful and capable of being preserved, is worth saving.

But there are those who think life should be preserved by any means necessary, and the prolonging of temporal life is what is important, even if it means an increase in suffering through a meaningless existence. In the film, the main villain, Kaecilius, desires to have temporal immortality, and he has found that it is possible through the aid of Dormammu and the powers of the “dark dimension.”  Life, his life and those of his followers, could be preserved, but the cost is great – giving up the earth to Dormammu, and, as Doctor Strange came to realize, it would also come with great cost to themselves. They might be made immortal, but the life they had would be artificial, prolonged pain and suffering without any relief. They would preserve life, material life, at the expense of the spirit.

Kaecilius, however, knew something that Doctor Strange, Mordo and others would have to learn: the Ancient One was indeed Ancient, had lived thousands of years, but he discovered the means by  which she found  to preserve her life. She was drawing upon the power of the “dark dimension.”  This made her a hypocrite according to Kaecilius. And in a way, she is correct, but his answer, to embrace that which she fought against, clearly was not the answer. We are not told exactly how she extended her life, but we did see some of the cost which came as a result of her doing so. We see that it had in part, affected her;  though she has fought the darkness, it still found ways to come out thanks to what she had done. While she might have had good reason and tried the best of means to extend her life, and it was more natural than not allowing it to be on the side of the good, the evil still tainted her and so she still had to face the consequences of her actions. She still feared death. Yes, in a way, she had already accepted it; but she also had experienced a vision of when she would die, and she knew it would come, though it would seem she tried to stop it as long as she could. She did not want to face it. Since Doctor Strange was with her at the moment, it is likely she knew he would be there. Perhaps, more than what she told Mordo, this is why she first tried to cast Doctor Strange aside and not teach him: she knew his entrance into her life meant her death was coming sooner than later. She had to accept it was time to let go, but because she had kept her existence for so long, she was still too attached to her life, and so almost had the world suffer by not leaving behind Doctor Strange as her heir apparent. There is good in the preservation of life, but even with good motives, playing with life and death can still end up causing harm.

What we must do is learn to accept that when it is time, we should embrace death in order to have a good death. This is not to say that we should kill ourselves, that we should accept the annihilation of life through euthanasia when life continues naturally; but it means we must embrace death as the true end of our temporal life, that our life indeed has an end and in that end, who and what we are can be determined. Selfish artificial preservation of life creates pain and suffering and can be as wrong as the premature killing of someone who should not yet die (all forms of homicide). Accepting death as a part of life becomes a strength so long as it is not the nihilistic embrace of death. The proper acceptance of death is accepting life when death is understood as the last part of life. When we try to oppose nature and try to put the last moments of life in a kind of temporal loop, a suspended animation, we oppose life itself because we reject the order of nature which includes death.

Doctor Strange, the Doctor who had the miraculous ability to bring people back to full life when he was a surgeon, would have to learn to accept death itself. He did not want to fight. He did not think the fight was his. But he was called to it – the mission came to him. Like many called to be priests in the ancient world, he tried to flee from his vocation, but all around him the calling came to him, and in the end, it is when he was able to embrace death itself that he was able to save life and affirm his calling. He had to embrace death as a good, as a part of what it means to be pro-life; he had to accept his own limitation and that if his own death could save the world, he should give up his life and fulfilling his calling.  And so he embraced death – again and again and again and again – until the powers of darkness saw it was trapped by the final power of true life. Death conquered the darkness, and prevented the creation of hell on earth. In learning how to stop worrying about the fight, about trying to control life and death, and learning to love the value and meaning of death, Doctor Strange was able to save the world.  Death is a part of life; we cannot have life without death, nor death without life. We can’t embrace one without accepting the other. Focusing and embracing only one leads to an extremism which corrupts those who follow such a partial embrace of life and death. Only by thanking God for sister death and embracing death when the time has come for death does life truly get affirmed. [2]


 

[1] H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Williams and Conan Doyle had more direct influence in the creation of my fictional hero, I can see, after the fact, how Doctor Strange has also always been there in the background. One day, I hope to properly edit all my stories and publish them.

[2] Theologically speaking, it is because we are made for transcendence, for eternal life, not just temporal life, that makes death invaluable; prolonging of temporal existence is not eternal life, but its cruel shadow, as Tolkien demonstrated through the creation of the Ring Wraiths in The Lord of the Rings.

 

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