My Soul? How Much?

Hacks. I certainly feel like one sometimes, but that’s not what this post is about. No, the hit TV show with Jean Smart (who is from Seattle by the way) playing Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder playing Ava Daniels. As usual, I’m late to the party (even, though, actual parties I’m unfashionably punctual) of the hit TV shows until someone says, “Have you seen [insert show]; you’ve got to see [insert show].” So, I began watching Hacks in April.

I bring this up because there was a particular episode wherein Ava Daniels is a bit disgusted when hearing a particular comedy club owner from the early seventies would make his female comics sit on his lap to get their paycheck and Ava reproaches Deborah asking her, and I paraphrase, “why she didn’t do anything about it”.

This, of course, got my wheels spinning in my own mind and loads of questions surfaced. My initial reaction to Ava was indignation because how could she, being 25 years old or so living the life she has lived thus far, have any idea what it must have been like for Deborah who was trying to make it as a comic as a female in a world that didn’t have much of that, in a world wherein men, quite a few men, didn’t think a woman could be funny, in a world that was/is highly sexist and unsavory for many women, especially attractive ones who wanted something so bad that they would be willing to “almost” do anything to get it.

Then, I calmed down a bit. First, I thought, that was a completely normal response to hearing an injustice such as some comedy club owner sexually harassing his comics, and Ava was instinctually indignant herself. As she should be. But, I like to think that now, being older, I can try and put myself in the shoes of someone else and wonder about their experience and maybe wonder what I would truly do if I were presented that same situation in that same time.

That’s the ticket though. We can’t experience the same experience of someone else at any given time can we? I can say “I would have done this or that”, but in reality, I can no sooner say I would do something or think something or feel something than anything else. How we perceive ourselves reacting unfortunately is rarely the reality of our lives.

I asked myself, “how far would I go to get the things I want in this life”? Basically, at what point would I sell my soul. I think, and this is my opinion, at some price, a human would sell their soul for something that they truly want. BUT, one has to truly want something right? If my whole ambition in life is to work a lame job, eat terrible food and watch terrible news in the evening to get pissed at the world, there really isn’t much of a soul to sell. But real desire? Let the bidding begin.

People say there’s always a price that someone will accept to break their moral code. It doesn’t have to be money. Deborah Vance sitting on a disgusting man’s lap to collect her paycheck and work as a female comic, her life’s ambition, is a big price to pay in retrospect, but who’s to say that they wouldn’t do the same IF they, too, wanted to be a female comic in a world (at that time) that was sexist, mysogynistic, etc?

How much or how little of one’s soul is for sale only really only be determined when presented with actual circumstances in the real world.

That’s why I can’t judge a person per se. I can judge scenarios. I can judge events. But to judge individual’s reactions, decisions to particular events, that’s a much, much more difficult job. I don’t want it.

I’d love to hear any thoughts/opinions on the subject. Leave a message below if you desire. Email me at timrossmcdonald@gmail.com.