John Doe in Seven

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY

The clip I chose is the opening scene of Se7en. This opening scene shows John Doe’s daily life. In a dim and closed room, he is exfoliating fingertips, reading books or taking notes. There are also many barbarous pictures of human and a press clipping of the word, ‘GOD.’ By seeing Doe’s daily life, this scene let audience think about what environment created such the serial killer.

“John Doe” is used as a generic name of average citizen or of people who do not want to reveal the real name. In the case of Se7en’s John Doe, he does not display a doorplate at the entrance of his apartment and often exfoliates fingertips to avoid extraction of his fingerprints. In other words, he has tried to erase all of his background which proves his existence. This shows the modern fear of anonymity and namelessness which encourages antisocial behavior. John Doe is very type who is influenced by this urbanism.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, a main character has super egoism that the geniuses have the special right to exceed a law of the world and they are permitted to kill a useless human being. This idea is created by biased sense of justice and baseless almighty which modern people who withdraw into themselves have. John Doe’s theory also sounds apparently correct opinion, however he also has such strong egocentrism and his ‘judgement’ is not ‘agape.’ When urban people dissociate themselves from others and bloat egocentrism in solitude, enthusiasm against others slowly ebbs away and they do not mind others’ pain at last. Where John Doe can manifest his inner side is just in thousands of notes. He is a symbol of not aberration but generality created in urban environment where postmodern characters appear plainly. Se7en depicts such the postmodern tendency of urban society through John Doe.