What We Talk About When We Talk About “Theme”

As I was working on a recent post about the great sci-fi and fantasy movies of 1982, I re-read the Wikipedia page on one of those films, Conan the Barbarian. It’s a great movie (despite the fact that it’s really just a raunchy, gory, over-the-top B-movie with an A-movie budget), and I loved it when it came out, as did millions of others. It was, in fact, a culturally significant film, in its own way, and the Wiki page reflects this. A lot of passionate, obviously smart people have contributed to the page over the years. (Wikipedia is, imho, the single greatest triumph of the internet, but that’s a subject for another post.) 

As such, the page inevitably includes a rather insightful section called “Themes,” in which people have enumerated the topics that the film explores—or at least seems concerned with. These include “The Riddle of Steel,” “Death,” “Wagnerian Opera,” “Individualism,” and “Sex.”

I’m sorry, but “Sex” is not a theme of this movie nor any other. Neither, for that matter, is “Death.” It’s a topic, surely, perhaps even a motif. (Note that I’m using the word “motif” in its strictest, compositional sense, as it is referenced in musicology.) But it’s not a theme.

Yeah, I know. I’m being a bit of an English-major-snob on this one. A word-Nazi. But bear with me, please. If you’re a person who really tries to appreciate literature, either on the page or on film, then the distinction between theme and motif is important. It’s even more important if you’re a fiction writer who struggles to create books that have some meaning and not mere entertainment that is purely disposable. Not that there is anything wrong with fiction that is mere entertainment—entertainment is great—but let’s not kid ourselves that it’s the pinnacle that people should aim for.

The film’s Wiki page comes much closer to the idea of a real theme when it discusses “The Riddle of Steel” (although it completely mischaracterizes and misinterprets the real matter at hand). As anyone who has seen the movie knows, The Riddle of Steel is a connundrum—not so much a riddle as a philosophical question—that Conan believes god will ask him when he dies. The question goes something like this: “Which is stronger? The sword, or the hand that wields it?” Or, put another way, “Technology? Or willpower?” “Brute force, or the power of conviction?”

It’s actually a pretty deep question, especially when one considers the fact that film’s original script writer, Oliver Stone (who later went on to direct a few films, too) is a veteran of the Vietnam War, which surely represented one of the greatest struggles of all time between technology, on the American side, versus sheer determination and courage on the North Vietnamese side. (Please don’t write to me and tell me that determination and courage were displayed on both sides of that tragic war. I realize this, and I am over-simplifying the conflict for the sake of argument.)

This posing of a philosophical and moral question, which the hero of the film (and, thus, the viewer) struggles to answer is, to my mind, the real definition of a theme. Perhaps the supreme example of this is Raymond Carver’s classic short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” in which three couples—all in late middle-age, all jaded—discuss the definition of “love” over hard-drinks. It’s a great story, not just because it captures the individual voice and attitude of each character, but also because all of the characters seem to be genuinely struggling with something—a matter of real import that, each one senses, will reveal something about their own lives. As one might expect, each character has their own story to tell about the subject, beginning with this one from a woman named Terri.

Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terry said, “He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, “I love you, I love you, you bitch.” He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things.” Terri looked around the table. “What do you do with love like that.”

She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She like necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.

“My god, don’t be silly. That’s not love and you know it,” Mel said. “I don’t know what you’d call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love.”

The story continues around the table, with each character telling their own story about the general subject of “love.” In Carver’s supremely able hands, each of these stories is shocking, yet rings true. Completely, brutally true. Some of them are also funny as hell, in a gallows-humor sort of way. One of the greatest things about the story, though, is the way it never gives us a definitive answer to the question it asks. To the contrary, the story raises even more questions—deeper meta-questions that the characters, themselves, are unaware of but which we, as readers, are. Is there a single definition for love? Is that question even meaningful? Does love even exist, really, in the cosmic sense? Does it matter?

In the same way, Conan the Barbarian presents its hero with several possible answers to its central thematic question. The first is given by Conan’s father (played by the great character actor William Smith) in the opening scene, where he tells the young Conan that the one thing he can ever depend on. “Not men. Not women. Not beasts. This,” he says, gesturing to a sword he has just made. Of course, he is not talking about that particular sword, or even swords in general. He is, we sense, talking about all the intangible things for which the sword is a symbol—discipline, training, courage. The martial ideal. 

Later in the film, the villainous Thulsa Doom presents Conan with another answer. In that famous (and surprisingly shocking, even now) scene when he beckons one of his followers to literally jump off a cliff, he suggests that control over the human mind—through dogma, religion, and all the other tools of tyrants—is far more powerful than strength of arms, either literal or metaphorical.

So, which of these answers does Conan accept. Neither! In fact, his tale seems to suggest a third answer, one which is never articulated—never explicitly told—to either Conan or the viewer, but is rather born out by the action of the narrative. The answer, simply, is love. It’s Conan’s love for his murdered parents that sustains him through the ordeal of slavery and drives his desire for revenge. He loves his friend, Subotai, after rescuing him from death, and he comes to love Valeria even though she is, initially, a rival. Later, it’s Valeria’s love of Conan (along with some help from Subotai) that saves his life after they rescue him from the Tree of Woe. And it’s Conan’s grief over the death of Valeria that causes him to go on his final (foolhardy) confrontation with Thulsa Doom, where he uses his father’s broken sword (note the symbolism, there; steel really isn’t that strong, after all) to behead the man.

I think it is important to note that even in a “silly” genre movie like Conan the Barbarian—a friggin sword-and-sandal movie, for Pete’s sake—good writing can add a level of thematic resonance to any work of fiction. That is, it can turn a potentially crappy movie into a good movie, and a good movie into a great movie. It’s this complexity that separates the vast majority of films (and books, for that matter) from the few we remember years later—that tiny minority that we deem “classics” after the fact.

Another thing to consider is how Conan the Barbarian, like Carver’s short story, doesn’t fully answer its own thematic question. At least, not completely. The ending is ambiguous. Yes, Conan kills the bad guy, and (we are told) ends up a king himself, but he “sits on his throne with a troubled brow.” In others, the verdict is still out on what the real answer to The Riddle of Steel is, after all.This kind of ambiguity is, of course, a hallmark of all good fiction. We, as viewers and readers, don’t get a definitive answer—mainly because the kinds of questions that good fiction asks are, ultimately, unanswerable in any objective sense. They are always about choices. Priorities. Does honor matter more, or friendship? Revenge, or love?