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Abstract
If you meet yourself today, will you like yourself? What will you say concerning yourself? That seems to be the question Ducan Jones, wants us to ask ourselves in his science fiction movie, the Moon. In this work, critical and mind bugling deductions have been made, starting from Sams departure trip to the moon to perform an assignment on behalf of his employers, to the resultant effect of loneliness on his life. The paper focuses on the personality crisis he experienced, and how it relates to the lives we live today in our places of work, and the accompanying effects of such in our personal and co-operate lives.
Introduction
I still remember vividly, how back in the days my mom will tell me I need to remember the poems in my textbook. After school hours, I will spend hours reciting the poems to enable me to recall a good number of lines to impress my teacher in school. Its been a few years now, and I hardly remember up to the third line of all that I crammed. It is funny, that I still remember movies I watched ten to fifteen years ago. The songs in the movies stick, all at my fingertips. The way we relate to virtual images is magical.
In life sometimes, the difficulties we experience make us low in spirit; efforts at getting back to our usual selves often prove abortive. It is hard to explain, how other methods though not solutions to our problems ease our pains in life, such as the power and impact of movies in our lives. Movies are made to entertain us, and in other instances educate our minds, but some other movies take us deeper than we intend, causing us to reflect deeply on who we are. With the coming of science fiction movies, there is no end to how far movies are carrying us, in our sitting rooms, we are transported to imaginary locations, projected into the far future, and at times taken back to times we can only imagine. Some people have issues with movies, they tend to question their addictive nature as being detrimental, most especially to the children; they claim that movies disconnect the children from having a touch with the real world, which affects their behaviors. Despite the arguments raised, movies are and will remain a vital impact in our lives, causing us to reflect on our personal and make amends.
Deductions from the Movie
The Moon, a movie by Ducan Jones, is a science fiction movie every employee or potential employee should watch. Created in 2009, the movie stars an employee Sam Bell who was sent to the moon on a three-year assignment, where an automated process put in place will harvest helium-3, and Sam will collect the harvested helium and send it to earth, with him Gerty, a robot and his only companion. Sams situation, speaks volumes of the fate of most employees today. Oftentimes in life, we find ourselves in situations not because we so much want things to be the way they are, but simply because the necessities of life place such demands on us. Using Sam Bells assignment as our point of reference, you will agree with me that ordinarily, no one will love to leave his or her family for such a long period, for an assignment from a company in which he or she works, without the assurance of a break to see the family. The desire to put food on ones table sends many today into jobs that place such demands on employees. If Sam had an option to negotiate his terms, he would have negotiated a better deal for himself; Sams case is similar to the fate of many in offices today. Many people dress up in the morning and go to work, on arriving, they are presented with a letter of transfer, without being consulted. Their location of work at any point in time is determined by the employer, and in instances like that, it is either you comply or leave the job, in which case other clones like yourself are waiting for such an opportunity to take over as we will later see.
An instance of Work-Life Conflict 1
While performing his duty on the moon, Sam had challenges communicating with his wife, who now was pregnant. The failure of the satellite massaging system made it difficult for him to reach his family. Resulting in work-life conflict, and it is a problem as recounted in research work in Canada, that
Work to family interference is a real problem for one in four Canadians working for larger employers: One in four Canadians report that their work responsibilities interfere with their ability to fulfill their responsibilities at home. Almost 40% of Canadians report moderate levels of interference. The proportion of the Canadian workforce with high levels of work to family interference has not changed over the past decade (The Canadian Business and Economic Roundtable on mental Health 14).
The helium-3 Sam Bell was monitoring its collection, and sending it to earth was used in the production of clean fusion energy for usage. Ducan Joness work might look like a science fiction movie produced for entertainment, but what the movie portrays is our daily experience in life if critically analyzed. In our organizations of work, we provide essential services that are of use not just to the organization with which we work, but to humanity in general. While we do all these, our personal lives suffer, we hardly have time for ourselves, and because of the limitations in our workplace we hardly attend to the things that matter most to us, our families (Hoobler, Wayne and Lemmon 25)
An instance of work Life Conflict 2
One striking event occurred on-site, barely two weeks after his return to earth, he saw a girl while hallucinating. Ducan has a knack for good storytelling, it all starts by being seen briefly even in real-life situations, before we find ourselves deeply in unwanted behaviors, for example, chasing women. Before the challenge of Sam communicating with his wife, there was no instance of him hallucinating about a girl, in life loneliness drives us into a lot of things ordinarily we wouldnt have been involved in, we stay on our own with no company, except for our jobs, and toys like our television sets, laptops, and often time our cell phones. In the movie, Ducan referred to his companion as a robot, when we get tired of the robots in our lives, we start to wonder in thought see little pictures that distract our attention, and in most cases lead to bigger conflicts in life. It is important to note that the change of environment alone was enough to result in stress, and subsequently the life crisis he experienced. This is reflected in a work by Cuddy and his colleagues that, change is upsetting because we are leaving a part of our selves behind. Any change involves a loss of the knowna giving up of a reality that has given meaning to our lives. We are also afraid we wont get the things we want after the change is made. No wonder changes are resisted (Cuddy, Fisk, and Glick 24).
After Sams Incident with the girl, then came the crashing after he saw a figure on one of his routine trips to the harvested canisters. Before his challenge of communicating with his wife all was well, when the challenge came he saw a girl, then further crisis arose. In our workplace, these are common occurrences, for Sam, when he started having challenges desperation stepped in. In desperation to move out of his immediate environment, he had to destroy a pipe so that Gerty will let him loose to explore. At this instance, he met a figure that looked like him, and it was him, standing before him. This is a pure case of a personality crisis, in life we live normally, but when a certain situation arises we begin to show or act our other side. At times we go very deep when the cheeps get down; we then tend to ask ourselves if we are truly the ones acting the way we are acting. As it is stated in the words of Ducan Jones, in an interview that,
If you met yourself, would you like yourself? Will you only see your faults or only the good things? If you can tell whether or not you are a decent person, then its worth asking the question. We dont have the opportunity of seeing ourselves as others see us, and yet we are our harshest critics . (Ducan 1)
To Ducan Jones, that is the massage in the movie. When Sam Bell met the other him, what he saw, was injured figured fighting death. That was a point of reflection in his life. When we reflect on who we are, how do we react to what we see? In his case, the healthy him pitied the dying Sam and made arrangements for the sick Sam to be sent to planet earth. While this was been done, they were made to understand that rescue was on the way. What the healthy Sam resolved was that he will send the sick Sam to earth as quickly as possible, the reason being that if the rescue meets the two of them they will be killed. Ducan is sending a simple but profound message across that, in our work lives, when we encounter challenges with our personalities and its effects our productivity, while we are trying our best to reconcile ourselves with our true personality, organizations with which we work start viewing us as liabilities and not assets any longer. In situations like this, the faster we do something about our condition the better for us (Williams 56).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it will be worth noting that, two things this work and the movie have done for us is that, Ducan Jones has Entertained us, and the reflection on his movie has made us think more closely about who we are. Are we satisfied with who we are? Can we tell who we are? Our ability to recognize the fact that things are not going well, and that we need to make amends is important. When Sam saw his second self, he knew the fact that something was wrong with who he was. Identifying the fact that all is not well is a step in the right direction. But most importantly, choosing careers that allow us time with our families is what we need most. It helps us put our lives in check, and prevents the occurrence of so many things in our life. When we fail to do this, we are laying a foundation for our future unhappiness. In Sams case, at the end of the movie, he could not give himself a warm handshake, expressing the degree to which he was displeased with himself.
Works Cited
Cuddy, Amy, Fiske, Susan. & Glick, Peter. When professionals become mothers, warmth doesnt cut the ice . Journal of Social Issues, 60, 4, (2004): 701-718.print.
Canadian Business and Economic roundtable on mental Health.The unheralded Business Crisis in Canada: Depression at work.2002.Print.
Ducan, Jone, interviewed By Kimberly Gadette. The Man and The Moon .Indie Movies on line, 2011.
Hoobler, Jenny, Wayne, Sandy. & Lemmon , Grace. Bosses perception of family-work conflict and womens promotability: Glad ceiling effects. Academy of Management Journal, 52, 5,(2009): 939957.Print.
Science Fiction Movies . The Moon.Writ. Ducan, Jones and Nathan, Parker.Dir. Ducan, Jones. Sony Pictures Classic, 2009.DVD.
Williams, Joan. Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press ,2000.Print.
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