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205 deterMInIsM, free WILL, and MoraL resPonsIbILIty In aLIas Vishal Garg The medium of motion picture serves a wide variety of purposes in contemporary society. We might watch a movie as a diversion or turn on the TV to relax at the end of a long day. Nightly news, documentaries, and historical and biographical shows help us gain information about the world around us. Television and movies can be used as a bonding mechanism; one of the things we have in common with people all over the world is that many of us have seen the same TV shows and movies, and we can use such common interests to start conversations. Another purpose of motion picture is to teach us. A quick trip to the video store reveals that we can use our television to learn how to cook better, play the guitar, and improve our homes. We can use our television to learn in other ways, too. Specifically, we can use it to learn about ourselves. It is this purpose of television, as a tool for self-improvement, that is the driving force behind this chapter.1 Motion picture is often used as a storytelling medium, and as such, it exposes us to characters and situations we never would have seen otherwise . As Lady Bird Johnson said, “Art is the window to man’s soul; without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world.” As we get to know the characters in a movie, we start to ask questions about them: we wonder about their motivations, their goals, and their decisions. We might make moral judgments about their personal character and their actions. We may put ourselves into their shoes and ask, What would I have done in the same situation? It is this question (and the answers we give) that helps us to learn about ourselves, and, ideally, enables us to use television as a tool for self-improvement.2 Readers who have watched Alias (and I expect that most readers have) 206 Vishal Garg might have asked themselves this question several times. The reader may have asked questions like, Would I have had Sydney Bristow’s courage to take down SD-6 after they killed my fiancé? Could I resist the kinds of temptation that corrupted the moral compasses of Irina Derevko and Arvin Sloane in their search for power? and Would I have sought vengeance like Jack Bristow if I discovered that somebody had tried to kill my daughter? It is by our answers to these questions that we learn about ourselves. We hope that we could show Sydney’s courage, defy temptation, and resist Jack’s bloodlust. But when we ask ourselves these questions honestly, we may discover that we are not as virtuous as we might wish to be. This realization , for some of us, may be a first step toward moral self-improvement. Thus it seems that we can use Alias as a tool to learn about ourselves and to improve our own character. However, there are challenges to our ability to use the show for the purpose of self-improvement. Specifically, our attempt to use it as such assumes that the question What would I have done in the same situation? is one that makes sense. That is, in asking the question we assume that we actually could have acted in ways different than the characters acted. The question is only worth asking if the Alias universe is not deterministic and if the characters in it have free will.3 Rambaldi’s Prophecies Unfortunately, given the role that prophecy plays in the show, it seems that the Alias reality is deterministic and its inhabitants do not have free will. Specifically, the prophetic fifteenth-century polymath Milo Rambaldi made several prophecies, nearly all of which proved true over the course of the show’s five seasons. The problem here is that the accuracy of Rambaldi’s prophecies challenges the possibility that the characters could have acted in ways other than the ways they did, because many of their actions brought his prophecies to fruition. If the metaphysics of the Alias universe are such that the future had already been completely determined when Rambaldi wrote his prophecies (in which case Rambaldi merely recognized the inevitable future and wrote down what would happen), then the Alias universe is deterministic. If the characters could not have acted other than how they did, then perhaps they did not have free will. If this...

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