正在学习

Everything Everywhere All at Once: Multiverse, IRS, Family, and False Humanism

THE TAMING OF MULTIVERSES

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022) is what The New York Times called “a swirl of genre anarchy” with elements of surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, and animation. It simultaneously works as a tender mother/daughter story of acceptance, an exploration of the pressures of not living up to parental expectations, an existential study on whether anything matters, a reminder to be kinder to others, and a love story about reigniting the spark in a marriage that has seemingly run its course. As Alex Abad-Santos wrote:

The funny thing about that is that this movie is impossible to explain. No amount of description—alternate timelines, jumps, existential crises, moms, hot dog fingers, butt plugs, etc.—could ever accurately describe what’s happening at any given moment during this maximalist fantasia.71

But is the movie really so anarchic? It follows Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a laundromat owner who’s miserable with her life. She is stuck in a dead-end job and a crumbling marriage to a simple-minded but sweet husband, Waymond. Evelyn also has difficulty acknowledging her daughter Joy’s girlfriend. When Evelyn’s father visits for the holidays, she attempts to hide Joy’s sexuality, assuming he’ll disapprove. Simultaneously, Evelyn and Waymond face a tax audit from a surly IRS agent. During her audit, Evelyn taps into parallel versions of herself across universes, and in doing so, she witnesses how her life could have been if she never married Waymond: she has hot dogs for hands, she’s a big rock, she’s a top chef, a famous singer, a karate star actor. Evelyn learns that she is the only one who can save the multiverse from a mysterious and spectacularly dressed figure who appears dead set on destroying the world. This figure is revealed to be Joy’s nihilist alter ego, Jobu Tupaki, who has channeled her pain into a burning desire to implode the multiverse with a black hole of an everything bagel.

Two things are clear from this short description: Evelyn’s tension with Joy is the emotional axis of the film, and most of the action takes place in an IRS building. The IRS is, for small business owners like Evelyn, a traumatic social agency that calls the shots and determines their fate. The superego-evil of this agency is embodied by Deirdre Beaubeirdre (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), who interrogates and harasses Evelyn about her tax reports—the tautological weirdness of her name is itself significant. During the long interrogation, Evelyn often dozes off, and then alternate realities are shown—a clear signal that we are not really dealing with actual multiple realities. The “real action” takes place in the IRS office, and the “alternate realities” are simply her dreams and fantasies. At the film’s end, we return to the IRS room reality, and a triple reconciliation between Joy and her father, Joy with Evelyn, and Joy with Deirdre.

So why would the destruction of multiverses (intended by Jobu) be a catastrophe? The answer is simple: because our reality needs fantasized and virtual supplements to maintain itself and function properly. Imagine the same film as a simple realist narrative without the jumps into alternate realities—just the “real” story of Evelyn and her family caught up in problems with the IRS, parents, children, and divorce. It would not just be boring, but the triple reconciliation at the end would have been unconvincing. This reconciliation could only take place through the mediation of fantasized alternate realities.

So far so good, we might say. But what disfigures the subversive edge of the film is the false humanist ending: the Leibnizian insight that, in spite of all troubles, we live in the best of possible worlds. Dialectical as it may appear, the answer to the question of the meaning of life—that it acquires meaning only after we fully admit its meaninglessness—that the film proposes is false. Why? Here is a quote that summarizes the predominant reading of the film:

练习题

According to the passage, which description best captures why Everything Everywhere All at Once is called a “swirl of genre anarchy” while still having recognizable thematic concerns?

A. It rejects narrative structure entirely and focuses only on visual spectacle.

B. It mixes surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts, and animation while also exploring family, marriage, existential meaning, and kindness.

C. It is primarily a realist family drama with only minor references to alternate timelines.

D. It uses genre elements only to parody tax law and small-business bureaucracy.

In the author’s reading, what does Deirdre Beaubeirdre primarily embody in the film?

A. The comic innocence of fantasy worlds outside everyday institutions.

B. The superego-evil of the IRS as a traumatic social agency that interrogates and harasses Evelyn.

C. Evelyn’s hidden desire to abandon her family and become a movie star.

D. Joy’s nihilist alter ego, who wants to destroy the multiverse.

How does the passage interpret Evelyn’s access to parallel versions of herself?

A. As proof that the film’s primary reality is a literal scientific multiverse.

B. As a legal strategy Evelyn uses to win the IRS audit.

C. As dreams and fantasies that supplement the IRS-room reality rather than literal alternate realities.

D. As hallucinations caused only by Joy’s everything bagel.

Which claims are made or strongly implied by the passage about the film’s central structure and resolution?

A. Evelyn’s tension with Joy is the emotional axis of the film.

B. Most of the film’s action takes place in an IRS building.

C. Jobu Tupaki is revealed to be Joy’s nihilist alter ego.

D. The ending includes reconciliations involving Joy, Evelyn, Joy’s father, and Deirdre.

E. The film’s genre multiplicity prevents it from having any family-centered themes.

Which statements accurately reflect the author’s critique of the film’s ending and its use of fantasy?

A. The author argues that reality needs fantasized and virtual supplements to function properly.

B. The author claims the final reconciliation would be less convincing in a purely realist version of the story.

C. The author criticizes the ending as a false humanist one, linked to the idea that this is the best of possible worlds.

D. The author fully endorses the film’s answer that life gains meaning once we admit its meaninglessness.

E. The author says the alternate realities are unnecessary distractions from the real IRS plot.

The passage argues that the alternate realities in Everything Everywhere All at Once should be treated as literal, objectively existing universes rather than as Evelyn’s dreams and fantasies.

In the passage, the IRS setting is not merely background; it is presented as a central space where Evelyn is subjected to a traumatic social agency embodied by Deirdre Beaubeirdre.

Jobu Tupaki channels Joy’s pain into a desire to implode the multiverse with a black hole of an ___.

Why does the author argue that the film’s final reconciliation could not convincingly occur in a simple realist version of the story?

Compare the role of fantasy in this passage’s reading of Everything Everywhere All at Once with the prior idea that daily rituals can function as obsessive defenses against enjoyment.

Which interpretation best connects the role of alternate realities in Everything Everywhere All at Once with the earlier idea that transformation may require giving up symbolic and fantasmatic identities?

A. The alternate realities are literal scientific worlds, so Evelyn’s transformation depends on proving that the multiverse objectively exists.

B. The alternate realities function as fantasies that mediate Evelyn’s family reconciliation, but the critique suggests the ending stops short of a more radical shedding of symbolic and fantasmatic identity.

C. The alternate realities are irrelevant distractions from the IRS audit, just as symbolic identity is irrelevant to ethical transformation.

D. The alternate realities show that Evelyn can simply choose the most successful version of herself and abandon her family obligations.

Select all statements that correctly integrate the chapter’s reading of Everything Everywhere All at Once with prior claims about ethical consistency and cheap optimism.

A. The critique of the film’s false humanist ending resembles the earlier warning that a remake should not replace ethical consistency with cheap optimism.

B. The final triple reconciliation is presented as mediated by fantasized alternate realities rather than by a simple realist plot alone.

C. Jobu Tupaki’s wish to implode the multiverse is praised as ethically consistent in the same way Julian’s final act in The Menu is praised.

D. The film’s ending is criticized because it moves toward the comforting claim that, despite troubles, we live in the best of possible worlds.

E. The IRS setting is irrelevant because the section insists that all action happens only in literal outer space.

In the section’s interpretation, the IRS audit in Everything Everywhere All at Once works like a merely external plot device, whereas the earlier discussion of ritual and social identity treated repetitive structures as psychologically insignificant.

The section argues that Evelyn’s alternate realities are not actual multiple realities but dreams and fantasies, showing that reality needs fantasized and virtual ___ in order to function.

登录后解锁笔记、知识点解析、AI 问答

立即登录