A Tangled Skein of Hot-Pink Yarn: Arrival

     As I sit untangling an epic tangle of hot-pink yarn purchased with the overly optimistic (delusional) intention of knitting it into a hat or two, I can’t help but think of the new movie Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It might be surprising to link knitting—well, to be more precise, untangling a gigantic knot—with a sci-fi movie about aliens visiting earth, particularly when that movie stars a professor of linguistics (played by Amy Adams). Shouldn’t I be singing the praises of a film that uses the phrase “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” in an utterly serious way, that might even be considered a promotional video for the Humanities, without dragging my failed knitting project into it? Well, sure: like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), with which Arrival shares the aspiration to philosophy, we have three main characters, each of whom represents a branch of knowledge: Colonel Weber, played by Forest Whitaker, represents the Military-Intelligence community (or the State); Dr. Ian Donnelly, played by Jeremy Renner, represents Science (specifically, theoretical physics, but he seems to have a strong background in cryptography along with every other branch of science and technology); and finally, our hero, Dr. Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, represents the Humanities (more specifically, linguistics—that is, historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and of course near-native fluency in several languages). When the Colonel barges into Professor Banks’s office and offers her the chance of a lifetime, recalling what a great job she did with that Farsi translation, then walks out when she tells him that the odd clicks and hums on his recording of the aliens can’t be deciphered without face-to-face communication, she guesses which academic he’ll approach next (“at Berkeley”) and poses a riddle: “Ask him for the Sanskrit word for ‘war’ and its translation.” Sure enough, the Colonel’s back the next day in a helicopter, explaining that professor So-and-So from Berkeley said the word meant “disagreement” in English. Prof. Banks’s rejoinder: “A desire for more cattle.” Humanities 1: Military Intelligence: 0. (Whether the translation is accurate is of course beside the point, and anyway, anyone who hasn’t studied a language in depth is surely going to be confused by the idea of translating the word for “war” back into English—um, isn’t it “war”?—without an explanation of what such a question could mean. The point is: Prof. Banks rocks. (See some discussion of the movie’s linguistics theme here and here)) And then in the helicopter, when Dr. Donnelly is blathering on about possible implications for science of the given situation, Prof. Banks looks him in the eye and says drily, “Well, we have to communicate with them, first.” Ha! Humanities 1: Hard Science: 0!

     But can a Hollywood film sustain this kind of inside baseball for long? In Stalker, the Writer, the Professor (the scientist), and the Stalker (the guide) spend most of the film walking in the “Zone” and talking. Arrival can’t afford to linger past the gorgeous first forty minutes (as Anthony Lane points out in his November 14, 2016 review in the New Yorker, and must proceed, first, to unravel and then reknit an entertaining geopolitical parable, and second, to propose a new understanding of time. Do you see where my tangled hot-pink yarn comes in? At the risk of ruining the movie for you—not to mention your suspense about my knitting project, I will say: untangling the horrific mess of yarn involved working both forwards and backwards.

     But there’s more to this as well. In the U.S., where buying finished clothing is far cheaper than making it at home, knitting is a hobby, an activity that has long been associated with progressive women’s community. As I untangle the wool, I chat with family members; we turn on our old turntable and listen to old Yes records (really). I email a friend to ask what kind of needles to get and how many stitches to cast on and watch YouTube videos reminding me what my grandma taught me long ago. (I get a little choked up as I watch a young woman teaching me how to knit on circular needles.) I become part of a virtual community of women that stretches through time and space. There’s something wonderful about this, but it’s also strange. Is the impetus towards traditional women’s crafts a reaction to the recent resurgence of the Locker Room’s male space? Arrival makes a similar gesture: the three branches of knowledge-power in the film in fact can be condensed down to two essential ways of understanding the world, male and female. Again, without spoiling things, suffice to say that the Military-Intelligence branch will remain resolutely male, while Science will waver, and of course the Female branch, through its close connection to Intuition and Dark Magic (or, whatever, a different concept of Time) will save the world. And have a baby. See what I mean? It’s a tangled skein of hot-pink yarn if I ever saw one.


Submitted by Elizabeth Papazian