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‘Emily the Criminal’; or, On the normalisation of crime
John Patton Ford’s thriller is a tense depiction of survival in a morally bankrupt world
American philosopher and Nobel peace prize winner Jane Addams (1860–1935) once quipped that “the essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself”. Her words are traditionally used to illustrate the innate hypocrisy of humans, highlighting what is perhaps our defining Achilles heel. Today however, during what we might call the age of the ego — in which the ceaseless pursuit of the hyper-consumerist self takes centre stage — the compunction in her words feels somewhat redundant. Reappropriated, Addams’s aphorism could be understood, ironically, to reveal the opposite; we know the extent of our hypocrisy, shrugging off any guilt arising from our fast-living habits with millennial/gen Z “awks, I know…” detachedness.
It’s this very prioritisation of the self which has come to define modern living. Every minute of every day is, or could be, assigned at least productive and at best economic value. Hence the near beatific resonance of the term “productivity” and its cognates, both professionally and privately, with the plethora of self-improvement and productivity apps rammed down the throats of Instagram users a case in point.
