Multipass

The Fifth Element is one of my all-time favourite movies.

One thing that bothered me recently about it was the fact that Milla Jovovich’s character, Leeloo, learned the English language in a few minutes, but always had an “accent” throughout the movie. Her English was not the same as an American (or any of its sub-variants), nor was it like a Brit (or any of its sub-variants). But Leeloo, in the story, is supposedly a being who is “perfect in every way”

So why, if Leeloo is perfect in every way, does she speak English so…lousily?

And here’s the crux.

You have a body of knowledge, but you also have a culture. And when something doesn’t fit, (like what appears to be a giant plot hole in a movie,) you try to reconcile it, or explain it. It feels initially uncomfortable. You might even make fun of the problem — how silly the writers, directors, and Ms Jovovich must be to have overlooked such an OBVIOUS problem!

But only when you realize that you’ve been trapped in your culture for so long that you have lost (either permanently or temporarily) the ability to see outside of it, can you reconcile this conflict.

If Leeloo is perfect in every way, then that is the foundation of the argument, not the culture in which she has been dropped. If you start with the assumption that the culture of Future Earth is what takes precedence, then her accent cannot be reconciled. If you start with the assumption that Leeloo is already perfect, then in order to reconcile her “accent”, you have to realize that she is not the one with the accent, but that it is everyone else in the movie who has the accent. She already speaks perfect English.

For Leeloo’s accent to make sense, you have to first accept the premise that she is perfect.

The same goes with resolving knowledge conflict. What are the things you would have to believe to make things true? Or even in order to have the question of conflict? And what are the points of culture that you have so ingrained that you cannot see how it affects how you see?