JULY 11 — This is a socio-philosophical look at the character which flagships the entire Ice Age movie franchise: Scrat. He’s the dude forever chasing his acorn around the world (quite literally). But Scrat isn’t merely a fancy addendum/opening act to the movie. He’s the show’s paradox which betrays the puzzle of human life.

Senseless yet needful

Scrat’s role in the movie is both contingent yet necessary i.e. the movie doesn’t need him and it relies entirely on him. It’s like Mathematics. 2 x 2 = 4 doesn’t have to be true (the universe doesn’t need a numerical system), on one hand but, on the other, it absolutely and unshakeably is enshrined as logical fact.

Likewise, Scrat has no relation to the main cast of characters but without him the movie cannot "move.” If Scrat didn’t exist, the daily subsistence for Manny, Sid et al would both a) continue as normal and b) cease to matter.

Scrat is Life. This world doesn’t have to be, some even say it’s an amazing fluke-shot. Yet the profundity of the unnecessity of life requires the fact that we live, breathe and think. The idea of non-existence absolutely demands the prerequisite of existence. To even imagine nothingness presupposes something-ness.

Scrat is the crucial piece of balderdash we need to orient our world. He’s that itty-bitty slice of Chaos on which Order depends.

Insert Scrat into Ice Age and the movie comes into being. Remove Scrat and Ice Age disintegrates. He’s like sex. Wild, passionate, "irrational” and traumatic — practically everything the modern world repudiates, at least officially.

But sans sexuality? We’re goners. Sans that crazy meaningless pointless urge to simply grind and thrust ourselves at the world? We would be but stones.

Perhaps that’s why religion — especially of the fundamentalist sort — feels the urgent need to police the erotic. To them, Ice Age must be orderly, coherent, "obedient” and practical. Scrat represents the blasphemous out-of-control-ness that must be stopped and condemned.

Scrat is at the beginning of the movie and the end — he’s the Alpha and Omega. He’s the frame which makes anything possible. You could say that Scrat simply is — he has no true reason for being there other than being the reason for everything else. Scrat’s behaviour, in fact, makes us wonder if Reason (or our favourite political jingle, "Rational Dialogue”) matters all that much. Again, the movie doesn’t proceed along the systematic paths of rationality and logic, but only the completely clueless would deny there is something happening which makes sense.

Scrat doesn’t make sense. And yet without him, nothing else would.

Loss: The fuel of life?

Scrat, most importantly, is Desire. In every scene he chases the acorn. The acorn is his special object, it’s what he lives for — or what lives through him. The acorn is his enigma, his infinity point, the horizon which he can never reach.

Or, wait — maybe it’s not the acorn which matters to Scrat. It’s losing the acorn that he truly yearns for. Scrat is about loss, about reaching for loss even as we believe we’re recovering it. Scrat is about the drive to find, to take hold, to reach out — for what, exactly? Nothing. 

Again, Scrat doesn’t want the acorn — he wants to keep wanting it. We long for nothing other than the act of longing.

It’s like guns in America. Why do we need guns?! To protect ourselves against those dangerous bastards with guns! Yeah! God bless the 2nd Amendment!

Or like hot bods. Why is the female breast so attractive to males? Why do women love looking at guys’ butts (or whatever they look at — how would I know, right? (see Note 1) What’s up with such fascination? What is it about milk-secreting and fat-containing organs which become such insatiable magnets for desire? The answer provided by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is that boobs embody the objet petit a i.e. that impossible object which both promises to, but never can (in principle), deliver the ultimate Edenic fullness sought by humankind.

It is not that the boob and butt themselves are ”paradise” — it is that "paradise” itself has (albeit temporarily and fleetingly) taken up residence in the (usually clothed) body part, especially in those belonging to an attractive person. Thus, desire spurs us on to pursue and grab hold of that oh-so-special item i.e. like Scrat, we keep chasing the acorn.

Ironically, as most people realise, getting "what we want”, far from fulfilling our desire, simply transfers it to another person or another object. The butterflies in the stomach rot away and we have to chase the acorn again. Ad infinitum.

So Scrat and his acorn represents losing something or living as if we’ve lost something. Perhaps this is why the modern shopper shops like there’s no tomorrow or even today. Consumption is an eternal frustration NOT because there too many products to buy, but because Scrat-like man loves consuming the infinity of nothingness. We’re like alcoholics who want to drink the universe.

Products, even useless ones, are like words. Just like there is no final word at the "end” of language, there can be no final product to satisfy our all-consuming longing. The acorn is like that perfect phrase which melts away the moment you find it. And you need to find another.

How was the movie itself? Simon Pegg’s voice characterization of Buck aside, I thought Collision Course was the worst of the lot. I probably won’t watch the next instalment. Then again, maybe I won’t be able to help myself wanting to?

Note 1: I’m obviously referring to heterosexuality here but the astute reader can easily apply this analogy across all sexual orientations.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.