Being Human and… Being Human
The moral case for understanding how you can be trapped by your own humanity.
Where do you draw the line between a monster and a human being?
Most human beings have done at least one bad thing in their lives. The really unfortunate people do something truly terrible. But does that make them a monster? When it comes right down to it, remorse is where people often draw the line. People who feel remorse or at least look as though they feel remorse are generally not considered monsters. It’s never entirely clear where that line is though.
How much remorse someone should express can affect the way people feel about a person who did a terrible thing. If you don’t express enough remorse, people don’t think you really mean it. If you express too much remorse, that can turn people away as well. They don’t want to be constantly hit with a never ending amount of remorse. If you’re expressing too much remorse, you can end up making people believe that you’re using your remorse to try and hurt people.
For some, that’s even more monstrous than someone who doesn’t show any remorse at all. To know that your remorse affects people’s perception and use it against them. You might think that people who feel remorse would not use it to their advantage, because it would just increase your own remorse. But there are those who will do it, or at the very least appear to have remorse in order to get sympathy from other people. In large part because it’s such a powerful thing that draws others in. So it’s not all that easy to know who is a monster and who is a good person.
Being Human is very much about where the line is between a monster and a human being. Mitchell, George and Annie, as played brilliantly by Aidan Turner, Russell Tovey and Lenora Crichlow are by all accounts monsters in the traditional sense of the word. A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost are drawn to the more monstrous aspects of who they are at their core by the nature of what they are. Part of them craves the death and destruction their supernatural sides can cause. Yet at the same time they crave the ordinary parts of a regular human life. They don’t want to look in the mirror and see only an uncaring monster looking back at them. More than anything they want to see a human being.
Together they are committed to the idea of living like humans. Suppressing the horrific consequences of what they are to whatever extent they can and at least trying to appear on the outside like they don’t want what they obviously want. Especially given the fact that there are those around them who fully embrace their monstrous nature, but for less than positive reasons. The vampires and other monsters around them don’t feel the remorse Mitchell, Annie and George do.
The contradictions they face are endless, and it’s one of the most fascinating parts of… being human.
Do yourself a favour and explore the tragedy of being human by checking out Being Human as soon as you can.
You can find the original UK version of Being Human on ITV Play in the UK, on DVD elsewhere and the US remake version too on Amazon.