'Hit Man' | A Voyage of Default “Me”

Being an urban white-collar worker, it's necessary that I live a disciplined life. I get awakened by my alarm clock at the same time every morning; I wear the same styles of clothes; I eat the same types of breakfast; and I go to the same place that exhausts my day doing the same work, day in day out. During my schooling days, I could occasionally skip classes and justify my actions as an act of adolescent rebellion. But now, I can't.

If I were to tell my boss what Jack Torrance wrote himself in The Shinning, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," he might ask me to get the hell out of his office.

I never wanted myself to become an endlessly repetitive person. I often feel I'm just playing along as a version of myself that my parents, colleagues, friends, and even I are accustomed to. Just as Gary in Hit Man uses the same textbook to teach the same lesson, I seem to be living by the same life script to play "me." The longer I live this kind of life, the more I feel that this "me" isn't real. I've become an empty shell and a predetermined image that meets others' expectations.

It's never easy for a boring person to talk about his boringness; any related attempts will be seen as unreasonable complaints. This phenomenon is absurd and unfair. Before signing that goddamned labor contract, I thought it was my ticket to a bright future. Why does it now look like a contract selling my soul?

I once loved my job; otherwise, I wouldn't feel my passion for it dissipating. I'm just not quite sure when and where things went wrong. In Hit Man, Gary's experience of navigating different identities captivated me. Maybe figuring this out will help a bit.

Many successful people advocate self-discipline, but not everyone can cultivate it through one single way. Some achieve remarkable success by completing long-term repetitive tasks, while others gain inspiration from wandering around. In most cases, the former aligns well with people's image of professionals, while the latter is often seen as idle bums, at least until they come up with a striking idea.

From a professional standpoint, my life isn't bad. As long as I'm diligent enough, I'll become more skilled and efficient in my role-playing. I'll perform better at work, and thus bring more income home. With more savings in my bank account, I'll have greater purchasing power to enjoy a richer life. This way of living by reaping what you sow makes it seem like I'm predestined to achieve happiness; as long as I press on, I'll eventually get there.

What troubles me is that people gradually regard self-discipline as an obligation over time. "Obligation" is a noble word because it implies self-sacrifice; however, when the confusion between obligation and self-discipline arises, we are stripped bare of free will until we hit the required standards of a self-disciplined individual.

This is a chronic and toxic transformation because self-discipline should be a product of humanity, not the other way around. When we submit everything in our lives to the rule of obligation, the importance of fulfilling obligations surpasses the passion that initially drives us to fulfill them. People, including ourselves, will see these seemingly established standards as a "default" that maintains the normal operation of things and subconsciously believe that changing is wrong. When we become robots that merely fulfill obligations, reasons that sound seemingly logical but are actually baseless, such as "You aren't supposed to do that" or "You aren't supposed to be like this," can quell our impulse to exact change, just like snuffing out a cigarette butt.

Unhindered growth is the nature of all life. By switching between different identities, Gary breaks free from the constraints of his original identity to redefine himself and rekindles his passion for life. For a moment, perhaps because I didn't want his story to end, I wondered if it could be made into a TV series.

In the interactions between Gary and Madison, I realized that his disguise creates new problems for him. He's actually in a highly contradictory state, similar to the Schrödinger's cat. To keep attracting Madison, Gary has to enrich Ron's life with new stories, like stuffing a plush toy with cotton. As long as his lies were not exposed, he's both Ron and Gary. However, for Madison, it's a different situation. If his lie was exposed, Ron must become one with Gary for their relationship to continue.

Love fraught with lies can never be sustained. Even though Gary's disguise stands up to reality, he'll inevitably fall into another kind of default through the repetitive act of disguising and consistently living as an empty shell. For both Gary and Madison, this means nothing but living like a zombie.

Although I like the premise of the film, I'm not satisfied with the ending arranged by its director, Richard Linklater. Madison accidentally kills her jerk-ass ex-husband Ray, and Gary works with her to kill his colleague Jasper, who threatens to expose the truth, to protect her. Ray and Jasper are indeed douchebags, but they don't deserve to die. Their deaths are designed to fulfill Gary and Madison's love, and this only accentuates the far-fetchedness of this ending. While some viewers might cheer for it, the film is no different from spiritual opium if it only satisfies the audience through phony pleasures.

However, it was precisely after I realized the absurdity of the plot that I felt a sense of liberation. The initial purpose of writing this article was to question my rigid lifestyle. Yet isn't Gary's final act also a form of rigidity? At the beginning of the film, what truly made me happy was not Gary adopting a new identity, but him breaking free from his own identity. There is a subtle but essential difference between the two. The former merely restarts an inevitably rigid event, like factory resetting your phone that's bound to become laggy with use.

If someone were to ask me what else should we do if we don't define our own identities, I frankly don't know the answer. I think the best insight this film might give us is that we should not ask such a question. Linklater likely struggled with whether to give the audience a definite answer before coming up with a forced ending. After all, it might have been more well-received if it was an open ending.

"Live" is a verb, while "me" is just a static noun. Instead of finding a stagnant identity, we should just live our lives out.