The history of humanity is a timeline of suffering, cruelty and violence. The innocent people affected by these contexts may search for meaning; may try to find an explanation as to why their loved ones keep having pain inflicted upon them by forces outside of their control. Some turn to nationalism (“we are nobly defending our country”), some turn to religion (“It’s all what God intended”). In truth, war, death, tragedy, it’s all utterly meaningless. Lies are told to you, through the media you consume or through political discourse, that soldiers are fighting for democracy, for freedom. No, they are dying and murdering for the interests of the elite, almost always. Left alive are broken humans searching for meaning where there is none. If you live relatively comfortably, you may not have realized that life is disposable under the metric determined by society’s ruling forces. When you realize the inherent lack of justification for suffering, it’s easy to lose faith in humanity, to believe true connection is impossible and that all people, at heart, are selfish husks who operate based on their egotistical needs.
Hello Girl opens with a disembodied voice claiming that people are tools who serve others’ needs. Your employer sees you for your labour, your government sees you as a statistic. Even your lover doesn’t really love you, they love the feeling that comes from your affection. True connection doesn’t exist, she claims, and the world outside of your individual perception is fake, Unreal (1998), meaningless. By the end, this character sacrifices her sense of self, as her body is literally destroyed, to become “real” and embody the image of an idol, someone known by thousands. Therefore, she only exists when someone is looking at her. Who is real, then? Her true self or her fabricated image? This story proves this way of thinking is flawed.
Ana’s existence is paradoxical. She is a switch operator, a “Hello Girl” responsible for connecting people, while occupying a job that doesn’t involve human interaction. She serves as a bridge for communication, but her time is spent alone, shut off from society. Ana lives in an abandoned workplace full of empty rooms kept purposefully locked, as she’s too afraid to witness anything that could remind her of other people. She is a spectre who can do nothing but observe a world indifferent towards her. This is reinforced by the fact that she and her sister Clara are interchangeable to the eyes of her employer, her identity is muted. She embraces her insignificance and accepts a life away from other people’s vision, perhaps as a way to escape the horrors of the reality around her. Losing Clara, her only true connection was extinguished and her sense of “real existence” was damaged. If you live alone for too long, you might start to wonder if anyone would care about you at all, which is why Ana is so surprised when Courier shows compassion and empathy towards her. Courier attempts to officialize Ana’s existence by registering her at her job, but, ultimately, achieves that by developing a relationship with her. In an universe of incomprehensible cruelty of unmanageable proportions, stability is found through love and self-realization.
Becoming real is not becoming an idol, achieving an image known by thousands. To become real, you must live with yourself, live with another person, cause change and allow yourself to be changed. It’s important to note that love is not about feeling what someone is feeling, but feeling with them. As it is articulated in The Holy Mountain: “We came in search of the secret of immortality, to be like Gods. And here we are, mere mortals. If we have not obtained immortality, at least we have obtained reality” (https://youtu.be/0dX75e9LS60?si=4kupjXfG7iESG_nS). We live in our connections and in the messages we share with the world, but being alone isn’t abandoning existence. Your individuality is what makes you human, it’s what makes these connections genuine in the first place. In an age where the constructed image is becoming more relevant than the individual essence, it’s important to remember that.