Divergent Review: Why Jeanine Is Correct In Trying To Destroy Abnegation

Abnegation, if left unchecked,will destroy the faction system.

Jeanine is absolutely correct. Any Divergent can choose Abnegation and hide safely there. Abnegation children raised in Selflessness may choose other factions to experience difference.

But why is she correct?

The Quaker Society of Friends is very close to Abnegation in clothes, demeanor, choice of food, and ideals in their way of life.

It is the Quakers who brought down slavery in the colonies and ultimately the states. They were the first Abolitionists. Beginning in Virginia in 1760. 100 years before the start of the Civil War the stones were laid as foundation to destroy slavery.

The Society of Friends have been active in every anti war movement since they arrived in North America. They were particularly influential during the Viet Nam War and the formal and informal Resistance to it.

Gandhi's non-violent resistance brought down the British Empire's control and occupation of India. His open attack on the caste system stuck a deep wedge in it. Castes were worse than factions as you were born into them and could never leave. Your caste determined your entire life, how much education you would receive, what kind of work you would be allowed to do.

Jeanine Matthews perceives all this as coming from the future and she attempts to forestall it. The divergent population, the transferring to other factions will result in the breaking down of the faction system little by little over time. It is inevitable and Jeanine sees this. She is taking what measures she thinks will avoid it however expertly she implements it, she cannot stop it.

Divergent Reveiw: Reading Beatrice/Tris Through Lacan's Mirror Stage

Beatrice at mirror in Abnegation gif

Beatrice gets her hair trimmed the second day of every third month. At that time she may look in the mirror for a minute or so. That's FOUR times a year she gets to see her image in a mirror, from the chest up.

Beatrice at Mirror at Abnegation

Beatrice entering aptitude test room sneaking a look at herself

Tori: What's with Abnegation and mirrors.
Beatrice: We reject vanity.
Tori: Yes, I know. Sit down.

Here's a clip of that scene with commentary by director 
Neil Burger

So now you have seen that she lies in the chair and looks to her left that is a mirror, seeing herself. She gets up, walks over and sees herself standing for the first time - that is 

her entire physical body for the first time, not just from her chest up for a few seconds.

She gestures by raising her right hand as her image mirrors her in the mirror.

Reading through Lacan's Mirror Stage:

This EVENT takes place at six months usually. The mother plays with her baby in front of the mirror as the baby experiences an image that also waves its arms, jiggles its legs, moves in the excitement of its image, before words, before walking, before experiencing any SELF. 

Jacques Lacan

Beatrice - and Tobias and Caleb - have never experienced the Mirror Stage in the development of the SELF - the ego.

Beatrice has experienced herself as not selfless enough for Abnegation. She doesn't fit in. She doesn't belong.

How is it possible to feel or be selfless if you don't have a self.

Caleb fakes it by assuming a false self.

Tobias constructs a self at Dauntless.

A ZEN story:

A student goes to the zen master wanting to lose his ego.

ZEN master: First bring me an ego to lose.

___________________________________________________________________

"This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject." (Lacan ECRITS)

Lacan likens the EVENT to Kohler's Aha! of the ape grasping the stick to get the banana, the beginning moment of intelligence.

The moment as GESTALT!

____________________________________________________________________________

Beatrice has just experienced herself completely in the mirror then looks to her left, where she is multiplied into infinity.

This is an EVENT!

For Beatrice it has never occurred until the Aptitude Test when she experiences the 

EVENT of the Mirror Stage,

which sheds its light on the formation of the I  the Imago that ancient term - as experienced in psychoanalysis. (p.118 Ecrits)

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

Turning to the left she sees herself multiplied into infinity and turning around again multiplied.

And there are multitudes of images of Beatrice. 
To echo the Walt Whitman quote, "I am multitudes." 
That there is no one person you are. There are changes and they can be made.

Turning around behind her to respond to the command "Choose"

Choose (Now we have had 3 Beatrices)

Beatrice says, "Tell me." She doesn't understand. Choose what as she looks at the luscious raw steak and shiny knife on the pedestal surface.
"Choose before it's too late."
And then it is too late as the growling ferocious dog comes at her and she looks at the now empty pedestal tables. She has missed her chance by refusing to choose.

But how can one choose between options if there is no SELF to do the choosing?

Now she must respond to the simulation - aptitude test - with her instincts, responding to what occurs. Trusting herself to choose now since she is alone with the situation in the simulation. Only now does she experience a self that responds instinctively, rather than complying obediently to demands.

As the multiple ferocious dogs get ready to attack multitple Beatrices, Beatrice assumes the position of satyagraha - passivity in the face of violence. At this moment all the multiples disappear and there is just one Beatrice who now responds in multiple ways to the problems in the Simulation. At this moment Beatrice experiences a SELF who chooses, and who chooses instinctively. 
In a few moments Beatrice has embraced the entire Mirror Stage.

In other words we have TWO egos (at least), if you will. Or rather an unexplainable, pre-linguistic core of a bodily and mental and emotional self that has no words to define it. Just a GESTALT. Identity is irrelevant here. And on this "self" is built the social self, our many identifications, our tweaking of it to present ourselves to our world, our presented and performative self to others.

Exiting from the simulation Tori tells her she must trust herself. The test didn't work on her, she is divergent.

She leaves the building and on the way home sees some "factionless" outside rummaging through the dumpsters. A woman is there that she looks at. For the first time Beatrice sees the Other as a person, not a nameless outcast. And the factionless woman turns, knowing that she is not only being looked at, but that Beatrice SEES her, and she feels shame, quietly walking away from her gaze.

At home she will reflect Caleb's questioning of her result in the test by inverting his question,
"What were your results?"
And Caleb smiles.
Beatrice has felt her SELF and its will to know/power
She will continue questioning at the dinner table.

The infant repeats the Mirror Stage up until 18 months and then tires of it. The chimp tires of it almost immediately as the mirror is empty.
Beatrice repeats it during dinner at home as she turns her spoon over and regards her face in the curved reflection of her spoon. 

Lacan discusses the non-verbal, pre-verbal imago as the unalterable core of the self before all social identifications are piled on top of it, obscuring it to our knowing, enabling us to forget it.
And this is where Lacan brings in the concept, that again ancient concept, of
THE DOUBLE. THE SHADOW. The reflection in the mirror

Reading through Baudrillard-LINK Beatrice will encounter her DOUBLE as Tris, when in a life threatening situation, during her fearscape. She is not alienated, as we are, from her DOUBLE, but converses with it as primitive cultures do.
This isn't real.

Returning to Lacan, the SELF in The Mirror Stage begins to repeat and to imitate others, building up with social identifications a social or second self. Beatrice after entering Dauntless begins by observing how others are running down the stairs, climbing to the platform, getting on the train, jumping off onto the roof.
Copying the others.

And then comes the moment, the EVENT for Beatrice. 

Eric: Who's it gonna be?
Beatrice: Me.

And Beatrice climbs clumsily up on the ledge, gathers her courage, and she jumps first.
Upon landing in the net, Four lifting her out and suggesting a new name, she becomes 
TRIS

She has condensed the Mirror Stage into 2 days.
She now begins the journey of building a social self in Dauntless where she will meet her Double a number of times.
First in warning in fearscapes, then in joy as she "flies" down the zipline and sees herself reflected in the windows of the buildings, 

lastly when expecting to be shot, in acquiescence, at her moment of impending death. The Double appears at the moment of Death. Her Double is silent as she looks at her reflection in a puddle of water as Narcissus did.

We have only to understand the MIRROR STAGE as an identification, in the full sense that psychoanalysis gives to the term: 

namely the transformation that takes place in the subject when s/he assumes an image   

REVIEW DIVERGENT: A Leap Into the Unknown:

Beatrice and Her Family - Abnegation Dinner

This dinner scene is that of a simple, more or less religious family quietly eating their dinner. Sort of pre-bourgeois. Not unlike eating dinner with an Amish family here in the Ozarks. Conversation is limited, and the focus is on the meal and eating, then carrying the plates to be washed.There is the Foucauldian Grid in Abnegation, The Matrix, a Dominating Discourse, a standard of Normality within the Grid of Power/Knowledge.

Agnes Martin Painting

The control in Abnegation is by repression: Inscription of the Body; censoring of words and gestures, actions of selflessness, etc. It is irreversible, accumulative, metastasis 
Foucault doesn't want to talk about repression: but what else is that slow, brutal infection of the mind through sex, whose only equivalent in the past was infection through the soul (see Nietzsche - the infection through sex is nothing anyway but the historical and mental reversal of the infection through the soul under the sign of materialist parousia!) (Baudrillard - Forget Foucault p.44)

Dauntless - First Night in Cafeteria After Dinner 

Here is Tris happy at last. For the moment.

From the constraints of Abnegation and its confinement of body/mind she jumps into Dauntless, a facsimile of ancient Sparta, with its communal life of living at the edge. Living, not surviving as she was in Abnegation. A life of inversion.

Dauntless Manifesto:

We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 

And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Dauntless never give up.

Only life pushed to the limit, to moments that escaped the system of equivalence, could render power powerless. 

Giving one's life away - a counter-gift - was the only present that couldn't be reciprocated.

Baudrillard in Forget Foucault p. 15

Tris will be more Dauntless than the Dauntless. 

Hyper-Dauntless; 

She gives the gift, following the ideology to its final consequences: 

Death

Dauntless can only respond with the counter-gift and if not then it must commit suicide. The Symbolic Order must be obeyed.

FOUR

Dauntless has given Four the gift of life. He now has an unpayable debt. The counter-gift must be repayed (not right away but it must be repayed) and it must be greater than the gift. Four's counter-gift is the destruction of Dauntless. The Death of Dauntless. 

Leading to the Death of the faction system.

He will lose Four, his identity as Four, his self, his everything that made him so exceptionally Four.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Be very careful about the life you save.

Review DIVERGENT: Deconstruction of the Script by Vanessa Taylor

Vanessa Taylor

Evan Daugherty

Disclosure: I was sent a bootlegged copy of Snow White and the Huntsman of Daugherty's sold script and it is so awful I was embarrassed for him to have written it while I was reading it. Even with Hossein Amini's doctoring of it, it was still filled with cringe worthy lines kept from the original. So I attribute the beauty of the writing in the Divergent script to Vanessa Taylor. It is intelligent, brilliantly so. 

As Foucault says, "When the writing is elegant it means that what is said is important."


Universal and Rupert fired him. (A blessing.)Five writers worked on Snow White. Rupert saved that film, made it beautiful. So much for Daugherty.

Aphoristic:Nietzsche's writing is almost completely aphoristic. It is musical and slips through your critical consciousness. The reader has no defenses. Nietzsche the great rhetorician of his time knew this full well. Ayn Rand, his disciple all her life followed his advice. Stephenie Meyer did, aware or not.

Your writing must be even more so than what you are writing about. - Nietzsche

Divergent is pared down, minimalist, no fluff. So is Dauntless.

Beatrice feels everyone is afraid to volunteer to be First Jumper. So she says, "Me."
And this is the pairing of brave/selflessness that Four will say to her later. She chooses here to be selfless which is also to be brave. And she chooses instead of holding back as she has done so far being last down the stairs, up the ladder, on the train, and jumping across the abyss. Now she will be first.

All of this is conveyed in the images and the one word "ME."

Here's Four as we first see and hear him: 

Our first look here at Four reveals his open and rather surprised face. He has witnessed a 

gift from the sky, from the Heavens miraculously appearing in the net. Like a Silkie from 

the deep. Or Dante's Beatrice: a gift from the Heavens, a Blessing.


Four: What,you were pushed?(quietly)

Beatrice: No. (all breathlessly happy)Thank 

you. (as he helps her down)

Four: What's your name?

Beatrice: B......stuttering

Four: Is it a hard one? 

Beatrice: nodding yes embarrassed

Four: You can pick a new one. But make it good. You only get to  pick once.(emphasis on 

choosing with no reversal)

Beatrice: stuttering saying Tris. My name is Tris.

Four: First jumper - Tris! Welcome to Dauntless.

So quick. The contained surprise that the first 

jumper is a girl, from Abnegation, who 

appears elated rather than frightened by her 

ordeal so far. Four is open faced, nice, 

assertive and non-threatening, non-aggressive. 

The ideal  presentation of the Butlerian 

masculine social construction of gender is performed.

Four has a beautiful face, intelligent and sensitive and sexy. But he is matter-of-fact all 

business here, gently and firmly. No provocation, just a short intimate moment.


People say that the first minutes of any encounter encompass the whole relationship in 

miniature. - ALEX by Pierre Lemaitre (p. 339)


There is quite a bit of subtext in this short and vivid scene:

1. He underestimates her sort of by alluding to the fact he thinks she was pushed.

2. He intuits her dissatisfaction with Beatrice and suggests it is possible for her to change 

her name, become a different person, become Other. He offers her a way to change her 

name with the limiting factor that it is a one shot choice with no return.

4. His welcome is warm and accepting. This is unlike Eric's immediate dislike of her (his 

frozen face) when she volunteers to be first.

5. Through Lacan, Tris rhymes with Chris, short for Christina her first friend. 


Here is Four's account of that first meeting with Beatrice/Tris in Allegiant:

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it 

and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and 

plain and in all ways unremarkable--except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had 

jumped first.

Even I didn't jump first.

Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.

Beautiful. (Allegiant p. 491)

_________________________________________

Here is Tris's account just before she dies.

I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face to face. (Allegiant p. 475)

____________________________________________

Bataille in his The Eye: Her: Which part of me did you fall in love with first? Him: Your eyes of course.

All this in 9 short sentences and the images. Now that is a screenplay folks. 

Four introduces himself to the group as their instructor and says: My name is Four.

Christina: Like the number four.
Four: Exactly like the number four.
Christina: Were one, two and three taken? 
Four: What is your name?
Christina: Christina.
Four: (stepping closer to her face, half smiling)
Four: Well Christina, the first lesson you will learn from me is to keep your mouth shut,  if you want to survive here. Do you understand?
Christina: (nodding yes) 
Four: Good. (stepping back from her)

I will interject here to make a point Baudrillard makes on seduction and provocation. Christina is provocative not seductive. Tris is seductive.

All this is said firmly, assertively, non-threatening in a way that projects that he means what he says. Four's truth - not his candor - is frightening to Christina, the others and establishes Four's character.The difference between truth and candor (ventilating) is revealed for those who want to make this connection.

The Dauntless training here is immediately demonstrated as serious. We are not going to be your friends. It is not "training lite, decaffeinated training" as Zizek might say. 

Four has been written to be performed as the new masculine. He has established a distance between his students and himself. This intensifies the transference and transgression. And the sexual eroticism.

The trainers have no intention to be buddy buddy friendly with the initiates.And this is 

appropriate in a military paradigm.

In Roth's book his relationship with them is all muddied up. Vanessa Taylor has skimmed off the fluff to reveal the essence. And this is what is contributing to the Desire of the YA female/male viewers.The character Four's Excess is perceived as Desire, reading through Lacan and Zizek. The fantasy always present in Desire evaporates when listening to his interviews. Theo James is not Four. In the case of Twilight and Rob Pattinson it did not vanish but leaked across boundaries of screen and real life.


Neil Burger's direction - in screenplay? - will have Four walk into almost every scene. His is a distinct, purposive, masculine walk that is immediately sexy and seductive rather than provocative.If he is in the scene already his face responds to the context of it.His Inscription of the Body is the new masculine: fit, sexy, sensitive, intelligent, and competent in what he has chosen to do. His flipping with the knives is masculine, the way he stands in the train when he lectures them. All on purpose.

The faces: This is the influence of Passolini on Burger. The use of the face to convey emotion, thinking, hidden feelings, vulnerability, etc. Not the way Francis Lawrence used Rob Pattinson's face as porno in Water For Elephants. This is not to say Four's face is not sexy. It is, but there is more to the image than just beauty. And Burger's use of Tris's face is incredible. That young woman has so many different faces. Her face of repose in Abnegation is completely different from her face in repose in Dauntless. The close close-ups reveal her emotions when she doesn't look pretty or beautiful but very messed up. Shai performs Tris as a girl who grew up never having looked at her face in a mirror. Shai is fearless when looking in the lens of the camera.Rob Pattinson always knows how he looks when he looks in the lens as he was a model. Now he can't unknow it. And then there are those times he doesn't give a shit. 


Primitive cultures felt that mirrors were destructive. One should know their face from the way they respond to people and the way people respond to them. 


Theo James knows and early on in the film - it was shot in sequence - I felt uncomfortableness when the camera closed in on him. Especially when he runs at the head of the initiates and is called over and says, 

"What've you got?" and we are shown the Factionless. It is quick and emphasizes his expressed masculinity - the way Four runs -  as well as showing us the Factionless in a group that appears somewhat menacing. Is it because they were once initiates who were dropped into Factionless status? The question hovers silently.

I am not finished deconstructing this script but this will do for now.

DIVERGENT: Reading Jeanine's Strategy and Tris's Radical Otherness Through Zizek

"Abnegation if left unchecked, will destroy the faction system"

Jeanine is absolutely correct in knowing that Abnegation will eventually ruin the peace based on the  faction system as it is, patterned closely on the Quakers and on Gandhi's method of Satyagraha that brought down the United Kingdom, and disrupted the Indian Caste system, where people were born into a caste (determining their entire lives) with never any chance of change. But what did the Quakers do? 

They began the resistance to slavery in 1760 in Virginia. They were active in the Resistance Movement against the Viet Nam War. Quakers believe in carrying their ideals and beliefs into action. They are not Sunday Christians. The Quakers initiated the abolition movement, destroyed slavery and the wealthy plantation system that depended on enslaved labor. It took about 100 years.The Quakers also fomented the resistance and end to the Viet Nam War. Does anyone think Abnegation cannot do this to the faction system?

Abnegation is obstructing Jeanine's plans to introduce materialism and prosperity, i.e. capitalism. They will not be complicit in fostering "capitalism" which will be less regulated, or unregulated by any moral codes of behavior.

The movie reveals many things to us without comment. We see some older people in Abnegation as the crowds move in the streets toward the Initiation Ceremony, but few if any in Dauntless. We also see older people in Amity. We slowly learn that the factionless mainly come from failed initiates, especially Dauntless. Dauntless is itself increasing the population of the factionless, increasing the problem of homeless hoards. Dauntless thus creates the factionless that they must protect the city against. Dauntless creates its own reason for being. This information comes to us in a purely visual form with the announcement of being chosen, some information that requires us to connect some dots. 

It is apparent that at one time Dauntless - and the other factions - were created by some spontaneous and authentic feelings. The factions as we see them 100 years after have become institutionalized. The factions have entered the Order of Production, ensuring irreversibility, metastasizing. What might have transpired is being changed into an Event by Jeanine.

This is what Edward Snowden warned about the NSA mass collection of information. He did not say that it was being misused BUT that at any time the administration of NSA changed, with those coming to leadership positions there, this could easily happen. That different people could decide to use the information in a different way that would compromise citizens and reveal their personal lives to their detriment.

Divergent gives us this moment in time where institutionalized factions - and we are most familiar with Dauntless - have metastasized into a totalitarian mini state and formed an alliance with Erudite.

As Baudrillard tells us through Nietzsche, when the Symbolic Order moves into the Order of Production it becomes IRREVERSIBLE. It metastasizes. This is what we see with Dauntless. New Rules. Roth's book makes this clear in Four's complaining to Tris, but if we can read through Baudrillard we need no explanation as to what's going on here. The Order has changed in Dauntless and in Erudite. Science and technology are on their way to endless complication. The Foucauldian Grid of power/knowledge is now visible.

Tris is a true revolutionary. Katniss is a figurehead and those using her are violently fighting the government. So why is Tris this radical figure? An imaginary figure Jeanine has had nightmares about is now present in her reality. 

Tris is exemplifying Zizek's prescription for breaking the system. One embraces the idealistic pronouncements and works to make them surface, to become reality, to truly be what they are. 

Dauntless Manifesto

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
• Dauntless never give up.

So here we have the ideology. You know like our own freedom, equality and justice for all.  Zizek will say to over-identify with the ideology to force it to be what it says it is or disintegrate. Tris has over-identified and continues to push it.

HOW?

First she believes it. (Roth's book pushes this point over and over. To make sure we get it.) The movie shows us Tris's face as Max gives the Manifesto in an address to the new initiates and they are lifted and carried in a ritual of solidarity. An act now empty of meaning but an act of propaganda for the initiates who are seduced. Then she begins to participate in the reality of the training which has little to do with the ideology and a lot to do with obedience and "never giving up."

Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault

Clearly only an Abnegation born and transferring to Dauntless is innocent enough to take this to their hearts. This is why they are a danger to Erudite. Tris  believes in the ideology of Dauntless that does not exist in the example of the leaders. Is this familiar to the reader?

This is what forces Tris to expose herself by becoming a PARRHESIASTES. This is the kind of behavior to expect from Abnegation. It is the kind of behavior to expect from the Quaker community, the Society of Friends. It was the kind of behavior that Gandhi displayed to bring down the United Kingdom. "That little man in the loincloth," as Churchill called him. So Jeanine is correct to fear it. Abnegation will eventually ruin her plans, obstruct them for sure. 

Jeanine opts for our present government's preference: PRE-EMPTIVE THREAT. That is, like the movie Minority Report, stop the projected violence before it happens, while it is just a small weed to be rooted out, as Mao says of capitalism. This is what our police and law enforcement are doing today. We are under surveillance to make sure we do not plan to do anything in the future that the government might object to. 

Jeanine is very modern. She is taking precautions and she is correct in doing so from her perspective.

REVIEW:Reading DIVERGENT Through Zizek and Lacan

First scene between Tris and Four

Beatrice is wrapped in the net as she comes to rest after her jump. She has an expression of happiness on her face for the first time that we see. She has faced a fear of plummeting seven stories down and is in a state of euphoria. This is what we see and what Four sees but we do not see Four seeing; only imagine his seeing. He pulls the net to allow her to sit up and he grabs and lifts her out.

Roth's account of this scene is fragmented between the action, what goes through Beatrice's mind about the name change, the dialogue between Lauren and Four and the snippets of conversation between Four and Beatrice/Tris. 

Beatrice/Tris is the first female Abnegation transfer so she is a surprise. The fact that she is first jumper is also a surprise. The screenwriting team has edited Roth's account. 

Our first look here at Four reveals his open and rather surprised face. He has witnessed a gift from the sky, from the Heavens miraculously appearing in the net. Like a Silkie from the deep. 

Four: What,you were pushed?(quietly)
Beatrice: No. (all breathlessly happy)Thank you. (as he helps her down)
Four: What's your name?
Beatrice: B......stuttering
Four: Is it a hard one? 
Beatrice: nodding yes embarrassed
Four: You can pick a new one. Make it good. You only get to  pick once.(emphasis on choosing with no reversal)
Beatrice: stuttering saying Tris. My name is Tris.
Four: First jumper - Tris! Welcome to Dauntless.

So quick. The contained surprise that the first jumper is a girl, from Abnegation, who appears elated rather than frightened by her ordeal so far. Four is open faced, nice, assertive and non-threatening, non-aggressive. 

The presentation of the ideal masculine social construction of gender is performed. Four has a beautiful face, intelligent and sensitive and sexy. But he is matter-of-fact all business here, gently and firmly. No provocation, just a short intimate moment.

People say that the first minutes of any encounter encompass the whole relationship in miniature. - ALEX by Pierre Lemaitre (p. 339)

There is quite a bit of subtext in this short and vivid scene:

1. He underestimates her sort of by alluding to the fact he thinks she was pushed.
2. He offers her a way to change her name with the limiting factor that it is a one shot choice with no return.
3. He intuits her dissatisfaction with Beatrice and suggests it is possible for her to change her name, become a different person, become Other.
4. His welcome is warm and accepting. This is unlike Eric's immediate dislike of her when she volunteers to be first.
5. Through Lacan, Tris rhymes with Chris, short for Christina her first friend. 

Here is Four's account of that first meeting with Beatrice/Tris in Allegiant:

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable--except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.

Even I didn't jump first.
Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.
Beautiful. (Allegiant p. 491)

All this in 9 short sentences and the images. Now that is a screenplay folks.
Four introduces himself to the group as their instructor and says: My name is Four.

Christina: Like the number four.
Four: Exactly like the number four.
Christina: Were one, two and three taken? 
Four: What is your name?
Christina: Christina.
Four: (stepping closer to her face, half smiling)
Four: Well Christina, the first lesson you will learn from me, if you want to survive here, keep your mouth shut. Do you understand?
Christina: (nodding yes) 
Four: Good. (stepping back from her)

All this is said firmly, assertively, non-threatening in a way that projects that he means what he says.

Later at dinner in the cafeteria Tris sits next to him because Christina has maneuvered herself away from him. They are with the transfers from other factions, the ones Four will work with.

Tris: Were you a transfer or Dauntless born?
Four: Are you kidding?(softly)
Tris: No, (smiling and flustered)
Four: (coldly) What makes you think you can talk to me?
Tris: (abashed now and slightly smiling in embarrassment) Must be because, you're so approachable.
Four: (muttering quietly) Careful.

His very un-approachableness signals approach, reading through Lacan. "Don't come near me" signals the opposite as a "floating sign" which Tris has accurately picked up.

There is more as he takes her through her fear simulations. He is puzzled by how fast she gets through them and her inability to say how she does it so well. After the water drowning sequence:

Four: How did you do that?
Tris: What?
Four: How did you break the glass?
Tris: I don't know. I just did it.
Four: (sitting down beside her) What were your test results?Your aptitude test.
Tris:  Abnegation (flustered)
Four: (continuing to look at her) I don't think so.
Tris: What?
Four:I think you're lying to me.
Tris: Why would I lie to you? 

Here is where it gets unusual. He does not accuse her, try to trap her in her lie, argue with her or threaten her. He avoids the Dominating Discourse and does not allow it to frame his thinking or his reply to her.

Four: I'm going to ask you one more time. What were your test results?
Tris: (still softly) Abnegation. 

Four gets up,  and says, "Time to go." Tris stands up and starts to walk out. (He says what he means and he means what he says.Consistent.) 

Four: Tris! Just so you know. (as she exits out the door) Dauntless never break the glass like that. 

Ancient Asian wisdom: To be sincere in the land of the insincere is dangerous.

Now we think that he has guessed the truth, that she is Divergent and no one has said a thing out loud. It is a fine, nuanced scene by both actors, subtly performed. A scene for adults I would say or for teens who are observant. The screenplay and the director have a respect for their audience that we don't often see so simply presented.( This is what makes the Divergent screenplay superior to all the others in these YA franchises. The screenplay transcends the plot.Unfortunately this screenplay team will not do Insurgent nor Allegiant nor will Neil Burger be back as director. So do not expect the same quality in the future.

Four is still puzzled. The next thing he will do on this subject is to invite her to go through his own fearscape partnering with him. 

If someone lies to you that means the truth is too dangerous for them to say. They feel threatened by you. They don't trust you. This is the meaning of the lie. This is what Four understands and by taking her into his own fearscape he offers his trust to her as a gift.
Tris: In my fear landscape? Four: No in mine. We're going to go in together.
Tris: Have you ever done this before?
Four: No.
Tris: You're going to let me see into your head? (astonished)
Four: (nonchalantly)Why wouldn't I?
Tris: I don't know. You've never told me anything about yourself and now you're going to just let me in your mind?!!!
Four: Are you afraid of that?
Tris: Aren't you?!!!
Four: No.

This is his gift of trust to her.

These early scenes establish the character of Four. This is communicated to us linguistically by unambiguous language. Assertive but not aggressive. Not especially emotionally rendered either, very matter of fact, nonchalant. He so far has been consistent. I have left out the exchanges taking place during physical training, but they are factual and low key also. 

This is a different kind of man and intimate conversation women want but have difficulty engaging in because of the man and their own preconceptions. In this setting we have a master(teacher)/student relationship that is very often emotionally and erotically charged.

Reading through Calchi-Novati: LINK

Who We Might Be

Performing the Potentialities of Otherness and Selfhood: Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga
Gabriella Calchi Novati

Abstract
In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach argues that vampires ‘can be everything we are, while at the same time, they are fearful reminders of the infinite things we are not’.

 Disagreeing with her reading, I will show that the Cullen family of vampires in the Twilight Saga tells us not who we are, but rather who we might be. Drawing primarily from the writings ofJacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, this paper aims to analyse the performance of otherness and selfhood in the Twilight Saga and the upshot of such a performance. 

In using this paper by Calchi-Novati in reading the performance of Four in Divergent, is to show a man, not as most men are, but as men might be.

Four is a Zizekian "sign from the future" that we must make space for in the words of Calvino:

Calvino:“seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

Of course Roth has begun to castrate Four in Divergent, increased  in Insurgent and finishing the job in Allegiant. Roth slops around in the psychological interpretive swamp until there's not much left of him. By the time she has finished Four is diminished and ground down into gray mediocrity. 

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.

But sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of everyday, the slow walk toward a better life.

That is the sort of bravery I must have now. (Allegiant p. 509)

Ugh.

And then the Epilogue which is pretty bad also. Hopefully the movie will not follow the book literally. But with Scummit Summit's template of "directors for hire," after the first film, rather than a director like Burger who is an artist, I think we can expect the worst.