Episode Analysis: Mouse of Silver
I'm starting this series with Mouse of Silver, because to me, it's themes set the tone for the entire series. In my previous posts about the Midnight Gospel, I discussed Clancy's tendencies towards the insular. He has built a life for himself that puts distance between him and the rest of the world: He lives alone and does not have regular interactions with anyone. His main relationships are virtual, they are created by a computer, a facsimile or pastiche of stories that have been atomized, digitized, and fed into a program that can be ordered at will. His view on relationships is driven by gains and losses.
Yet at the same time, we see Clancy, by self-identification, is a spacecaster, someone who wants to be seen and heard, someone who wants to be known by others. That tension stood out to me upon first watch of the series and came full circle with the final episode Mouse of Silver. So let's talk about that.
Existing in a Social World
One running theme in this episode is that we are shaped by the interactions we have throughout our lives. In the episode, Clancy interviews his mother. Note that the audio is taken from an episode of the podcast from which The Midnight Gospel is based on, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, in which Duncan (who voices Clancy) interviews his own mother. Much of the conversation focuses on what it's like to be alive, from the moment of birth until the moment life ends.
What may have stuck with a lot of people is the relationship that Clancy has with his mother. While some interviews in other episodes have started out with fascination, boredom, or looking for content to put on his spacecast, Clancy approaches this interview with a familiarity we haven't seen much prior. And that gives us a different dynamic for the episode. All of the other times, Clancy is dropped into a situation in media res, having to come to an understanding that everyone is living their own lives and we are just interfacing with them for a brief moment. In contrast, we, the viewer, see this relationship in the middle of things. There is history between Clancy and his mother; there are many things unsaid but understood between them that we as third parties don't understand or don't even perceive. We are moving from the idea of there being a preexisting, almost static, context, to the notion of dynamic social relationships being both part of the context and a product of it.
Human beings are social creatures. We respond in ways that improve our social cohesion and social standing. Many anthropologist, social psychologists, and political philosophers have tried to explain why. One could view it as an extension of Jeremy Bentham's theory that we gravitate towards pleasure and avoid pain as much as possible. In which case, belongingness makes life easier and we should adapt to social circumstances. Or consider Thomas Hobbes's observation of life being "solitary, nasty, brutish, short" and necessitating the need to form societies to govern those impulses and make life more livable. But whether one believed human beings were inherently good or bad, we are confronted with the fact that we exist in collective.
Much of the episode then focuses on the formative nature of childhood and of context. Clancy's mother in particular discusses how even the first moments of after birth can leave a lasting impact on a person. She talked about how disorienting and life-changing it is for a child to give up some of their childhood once they become an older sibling:
"Be a big boy." A big boy or a big girl. Be unselfish. Help Mommy with this baby. Don't ask for anything. Don't wake the baby up. Try to be something that you aren't. And it changes people forever. - From Mouse of Silver, The Midnight Gospel
And yet, they argue that attributing or ascribing all we are to what circumstances shaped us feels like an incomplete or insufficient outlook for living.
Looking to the Past for Answers
Clancy's mother emphasized how important it was to look towards the past to understand why we react to things the way we do. The vivid example of an infant refusing its mother's love because of feeling slighted by a delayed response to their hunger, and lashing out instead, is so resonant.
Oftentimes these coping mechanisms are automatic. They are habitual responses to being faced with a world we have no control over. And when we talk about other people, that will always be an unknown and unpredictable variable. At the same time, there is a desire for control, just as Clancy wants to steer the narrative of the interview, just as Clancy wants to remain in his curated life, there is a human tendency towards the comfort zone. The comfort zone looks different for everyone, but everyone has a way they would like their daily life to be, something I would call a "social homeostasis." Just like biophysical regulation, we want to regulate how we think, feel, and encounter the world.
However, the world does not always respond in a way that aligns with our homeostasis, and that is what leads to the coping mechanisms that may, in fact, be self-destructive. The way that Clancy and his mother described it:
Our hearts have been closed, because we've closed them. We've defended ourselves against pain.
So much of the show focuses on balance. At the center of this episode is how we balance the past with moving forward. Clancy's mother emphasizes the importance of understanding past experiences as the root of habits in oneself that might be hurting the very person they were established to protect. Yet at the same time, she describes life as flowing like a river, and the harder we resist against it, the more hurt we become.
Life is always changing, and by virtue of that, our responses to stimuli must change as well. I agree with Clancy's mother that a lot of good work can be done by looking at where we have come from and why we are the way we are. But I also think there is a temptation to stop there and declare definitively that by that logic, we are no longer responsible for what comes next. That isn't borne out in the rest of the conversation. By looking solely at the past, there is a tendency to pathologise past experiences and focus on blame.
Clancy's mother, in that same exchange, says:
"If you don't go back and see what's real and what's not real, then you're missing your way into reality"
There is a next part, and that is finding the "way into reality."
Facing what comes next
I really appreciated that Clancy brought up the reality that life can be very difficult, that most people are just trying to survive. As I said in my first Midnight Gospel analysis, we tend to focus on ourselves because selfishness is an act of self-preservation. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking care of yourself, but where self-preservation becomes self-destruction is a fine line.
For many people, "working on yourself" seems very much like a well-to-do thing. It implies having the financial means to seek avenues like therapy or being able to afford rest when most of us don't have the privilege of stepping away from the economic engines that sustain our lives.
Clancy's mother insists otherwise; it is as simple as recognizing the present, and being present in the moment. It leads to the immensely memorable "just be here now" line from the show. I think the way the show handled it was very abstract, but if we strip away words like "meditation, projection, and energy," and call it what it is, it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps a way to think about it would be intuition or gut feel. Some days, we wake up and feel like something is off or not right. But feelings are easier to brush off than thoughts, because we think in thoughts. There's no further feeling than a feeling, only the thoughts to process it.
But oftentimes, that feeling that something is not quite right is symptomatic of something bigger. Consider a job or a relationship in which one no longer derives peace or fulfillment. That uneasiness can always be rationalized or justified away, and if we want to take action, we often have to look for a "logical" explanation for why we should change something.
Moving through the world solely on these justifications will lead back to homeostasis, because the change is scary and unknown. The urge to preserve the comfort zone we have built is powerful. It's why we have concepts like the "sunk-cost fallacy."
Being present, the way it is described in the Mouse of Silver, entails looking at each day anew. It's asking yourself the question of, if I just started this job, this relationship, this way of being today, would I want to keep doing it? It's a difficult question to answer precisely because of the baggage involved. Yet, the episode argues, "it gives you clarity."
Clarity that something needs to change.
A Social Imagining
Practically speaking, coming to the realization that something needs to be different is only half the battle. The episode does not shy away from the lived reality of poverty, illness, and death. Change is scary precisely because even if what we have isn't great, there's always a voice that says "but it could be worse."
How do we know what we should be changing into? How do we know what steps we should take? How do we know if this is even viable? All of that uncertainty is paralysing, and it's enough to keep us from leaving the comfort zone, even though, as they reference, that side of the river might be absolutely miserable.
We go back to the idea of relationships. We have one life to live; there is no "control setup" for the decisions we make. Actions have their corresponding ripple effects and we can only imagine what could have been. The episode shows us, implicitly, that we just need to widen that perspective.
We figure out what's possible because of the people who model that possibility for us. At the beginning of their conversation, Clancy tends towards trivializing heavy sentiments, making fun of his birth story and the metaphor of the infant and mother with profanities and irreverence. But his mother continues to regard him and engage with his responses with utmost sincerity. We know that how Clancy feels about sincerity and vulnerability. It's scary because it can hurt. But gradually, he comes around, and by the end, he tells his mother he loves her, without irony or sarcasm.
I would argue that comes from seeing someone in his life model vulnerability and sincerity, and seeing that it doesn't stand at odds with survival. Very literally so, considering their discussion about how living with heart open has energized so much of his mother's life post-cancer diagnosis.
This stands in contrast to a world where, with the spacecasting and video-sharing and it's own version of social media, Clancy sees a lot of people who glamourize their everyday lives. The distance between him and the extremely curated, edited, post-processed products he sees would sooner serve to discourage rather than encourage aspiring towards something more.
For me, there is a chasm of difference between glamour and finding the sacred in the mundanity of life. Glamour smooths over imperfections. It strips away at the texture of living. What Clancy's mother has done is fully embrace her reality. Some parts of that reality are rough and can scrape your skin, some of that can be changed and others cannot. But her example shows that only by taking stock of what is really there can we decide what we want to keep and what we can try to change.
----------------------------------------------------------
It feels a little surreal to be writing these analyses for a public audience again, but this episode felt so relevant to a cultural moment when we have all the trappings of connection without the friction that makes living as a collective meaningful.
If you're interested in my other Midnight Gospel posts:
Some Thoughts: The Midnight Gospel Trailer
The Midnight Gospel Analysis 01: What’s real and does it matter?
The Midnight Gospel Analysis 02: When the virtual shoe is on the real foot
I have a few more things queued up about The Midnight Gospel, and some Adventure Time things too. I'll be looking through your Asks for media recommendations that might be fun to talk about.
