Falling In Love is a Risky Endeavor

I was seven and my sister was eleven when Star Wars, Episode VI, Return of the Jedi aired on network television (NBC).  Our whole family had been looking forward to it and we were all going to sit down and watch it together.  We had previously watched Episode IV and Episode V, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back respectively, when they had aired on network television in previous years.

The thing about Start Wars is, I enjoyed.  And enjoying anything was dangerous in my childhood.  It was an open invitation to abuse from my sister.  I still remember her long flannel nightgown with the ruffled hem and her copper-blond hair with the frizzy tight curls of an ‘80s perm.  My own hair was platinum blonde until middle school and continued to grow in progressively darker as time went on.

I don’t remember any specifics of this – just knowing that my sister always found an excuse to quash my joy.  She could never stand to allow anyone to be happier than her.  In fact, she could never stand to allow anyone else to be happy at all, regardless of how happy she was.  Not much has changed in the past 28 years.

When I was young, sleep was my defense mechanism.  I could sleep through anything.  I slept through an extraordinary amount of domestic violence that my father enacted against my mother.  Beatings, humiliations, at least two attempts at murder.  My siblings witnessed all of these – I only saw the aftermath of the majority.  I slept soundly and deeply and nothing could rouse me until my mind and my body told me it was safe.

What I remember most from Star Wars, Episode VI is the Ewok Village.  I wanted an Ewok more than anything.  As an adult I can’t really remember what purpose they served the film and, with a hefty dose of cynicism, I suspect their sole purpose might have been a marketing ploy – one more way to sell kids on the idea of having their own piece of the wider galaxy and one more way to get parents to part with $20.00 for a toy that cost $0.20 to make.

As an adult, I’ve tried watching Star Wars at least four times.  None of my friends can believe that I didn’t fall in love with the movies growing up – just like they did!  What no one seems to realize is that being the focal point of so much abuse from my sister made falling in love with anything a risky venture.  

Every time I’ve tried to watch any of the Star Wars movies as an adult, I’ve fallen asleep within 15 minutes of hitting the “Play” button.  It does not matter how awake and full of energy and verve I was when I sat down.  The music and the opening credits and introduction of Luke Skywalker and I’m fast asleep.

D is equally as horrified by this gap in my film knowledge as every other friend I have.  This is, for him, a fatal flaw.  It’s not a deal breaker.  But it is a fatal flaw.  With the new Star Wars movie coming out next month, he’s determine to rectify what he sees as failure of in my upbringing and introduce me to Star Wars all over again and help me fall in love with Star Wars like he did and like so many of my other friends did.

And I’m trying.  I managed to stay awake through the entirety of A New Hope.  I don’t really remember much of it from that viewing two weeks ago.  It was after watching Episode IV, however, that D settled on a theory for my failure to connect with and deeply love these films: it’s the music.  So much of what makes Star Wars what it is is the soundtrack.  If I could just let myself experience the music, if I would just open myself up to it, I could find some glimmer of the love he has for it.

So, we tried.  Or rather, I tried.  We sat down the other night to watch Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back.  "Remember," he said to me, "pay attention to the music.  The music is what makes the movie."

To stay awake past the three minute mark, I paid half attention to the movie and half attention to a game on my phone.  When I ran out of lives on this “match three” game, I handed my phone to D and tried to give all my focus to the screen.  

To keep myself awake, I tried to connect the dots of what was going on on the screen.  What were the gaps, would they be filled in, how much did I remember, how much did I forget, would any of these questions be answered?  D grew frustrated with my incessant questions as I spoke over the dialogue of the movie at some critical junctures and asked me to at least hold my questions until each scene I was questioning had ended.  I tried.  I barely kept my eyes open.  

I couldn’t tell you now, 20 hours later, how it all ended.  I just don’t remember anything after the tauntaun and Yoda.  Though typing this now helps me to recall Luke’s foolish rescue venture, the trap, and his fateful final scene with Darth Vader, losing his hand, jumping to his possible death and being saved by Leia and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon.  (And I only know the name of this ship because my best friend named her car in college after it and I was humiliated publicly for not getting the reference).

I couldn’t lift my legs sufficiently after the movie to make my way to bed with any kind of ease.  Upon making reaching the summit of our staircase, I headed to the bathroom, peeled my contact lenses from my weary eyes, and brushed my teeth.  A few minutes later, I crawled into bed and fell fast asleep and deeply asleep, my body curled around D’s pillow for comfort.

When D came to bed about an hour and an half later, I did not notice.  I woke up several times in the course of the night, restless and uncomfortable.  I was surprised to find him beside me and to find that he had reclaimed his pillow in the process of making his way to bed.

What I remember most from what D calls “anxiety dreams” and I called “nighttime resurrections of my nightmarish childhood” is flashes of images.  That frizzy permed hair.  The ruffled hem of that flannel nightgown.  Pain in my body and the feeling of having my soul pillaged.

Of course I can’t connect with Star Wars.  Falling in love with anything is a dangerous affair.  Of course I don’t connect with the music.  I don’t really connect with any music.  She stole that from me, too.

But I’m learning how to fall in love again.  And this time I know that it’s safe.  So maybe there is hope for Star Wars.  But D shouldn’t hold his breath.

One Desperately Depressing Movie

I saw Les Miserables again this weekend.  I saw it over Christmas when it was first released.  Try though I did, I couldn't keep myself from crying toward the end.  The whole movie was just desperately depressing.

Certainly Fantine's character is tragic.  While Anne Hathaway's rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" is powerful, her story isn't the one that leaves me most sad.

While many will vilify Javert for the role he plays in his ever persistent hunt for Jean Valjean, I feel incredibly sorry for him.  He is a man who has spent his entire very carefully constructing an understanding of who he is.  Javert clings to his identity with a desperation born of shame at his roots.  In the end, when he commits a single act (an act of mercy no less) that is contrary to his understanding of his identity, he is unable to reconcile the two.

Javert finds himself incapable of change.  He is unwilling to accept that his actions were, in a moment, at odds with the identity he had so carefully crafted.  Without any hope of holding these two things in tension, Javert commits suicide.  How horribly sad that he should spend the whole of his life convinced he is pursuing good, only to do one truly good thing, and to be unable to reconcile an act of mercy with his understanding of what it means to be and do good.

And Jean Valjean himself, saved by an act of mercy, a priest who could have charged him with theft and returned him to prison, instead claims Valjean for God.  This priest invites Valjean into the sanctifying love of God, and calls upon him to become an honest man who serves God.

Valjean dedicates himself to doing good.  He treats people with kindness and respect.  Thinking of others before himself, he saves a man's life, though doing so may well condemn him.  He raises an orphaned child as his own.

But Valjean is constantly aware of his precarious position.  He is constantly aware that he is a single step ahead of Javert.  And while there is much singing, this is no silly dance as found in Aladdin.  Valjean hides his past from those in his employ, as he must.  He hides his past from those in society, as he must.

But until his dying day, Valjean hides his past from everyone, including his own (adopted) child.  He runs from the shame of what he once was.  He fears that should Cosette ever find out that he was once branded a thief she herself would be ashamed.

A man who dedicated his life to the service of others, who learned to love by taking into his care a vulnerable child with no one else to love her, is unknown by all who enter his life.

Pegged a criminal by Javert, his redemption is unseen.

Beloved by Cosette, he hides his past from her, and his redemption remains unseen.

Valjean dies without ever knowing the intimacy of being known completely by another person, and being found worthy, and being deeply loved.

This, to me, is the saddest part of the whole movie.  He dies in the presence of his daughter and new son-in-law, escorted to heaven in the gracious presence of Fantine.  But in so many ways, he seems so alone and unknown in his death.  I cannot think of anything more tragic.

Though I truly enjoyed the movie, it is not one I will choose to watch very often.

Tyler Durden Meets Jesus

I think that watching the movie Fight Club may have helped me to reconnect with Gospel of Mark in a positive way. I’m not sure I don’t still hate the Gospel of Mark. I’m not sure I don’t still hate the Jesus portrayed in it. I think, though, that in some way I might be less angry with the poor provisional fixes offered by the Markan Jesus to those who have experienced loss or trauma.

In Fight Club, we see a man who has lost his sense of (masculine) identity. The loss of identity in a general sense is made clear in the fact that the narrator, played by Edward Norton, is never given a name and is listed in the credits as “The Narrator.” At several points, the narrator references himself in the third person, identifying himself as specific body parts, physical responses, and emotional experiences based on an article he read.

He says, “I am Jack’s (raging bile duct), (cold sweat), (complete lack of surprise), (smirking revenge), (wasted life), (inflamed sense of rejection), (broken heart),” and he does this both in voice-over and in speaking to other characters in the film. It is also made explicit in the narrator’s comments such as, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” It is further made clear in Tyler Durden’s comment, “We are consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.”

The fact that the loss of the narrator’s identity is specifically a masculine identity comes into focus in his attending a Testicular Cancer Survivor’s Group. This understanding is further made explicit with Tyler Durden commenting, “We are a generation of men raised by women, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.”

In a community in which a large number of children are raised in single parent, female headed households, young men are not given any kind of indication of what it means to be men, of what masculinity looks like. Their only firsthand knowledge is an example of what is female and feminine.

In their striving to create a masculine identity, there is an almost total rejection of what is considered feminine and an embracing of what might be seen as opposite—made explicit in the refusal to discuss their fight club experiences outside of that setting and the use of violence as a means of creating community.

Additionally, there are comments in this film which are strongly religious, even Christian, tying it to the Gospel of Mark in ways that might not be seen unless viewed from the perspective of Mark as a paradigmatic overlay. In discussing his obsession with attending support groups, the narrator says, “Every night I died, and every night was I was born again; resurrected” and “Afterwards, we all felt saved,” in response to the weekly and then nightly fights taking place in the fight clubs.

Tyler Durden posits:

Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability, He hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need Him. Fuck damnation. Fuck redemption. We are God’s unwanted children? So be it.

I wonder if this might be the sentiment of many in first century Palestine, having watched their cities burned, their families murdered, and the religious center of Israel razed to the ground. In their desolation and attempts to recreate a sense of community from the few scraps left, did they perhaps feel as though they were God’s unwanted children?

I was surprised and disturbed by the ways in which I saw the Gospel of Mark in the movie Fight Club. The loss of identity and the willingness of a group of individuals to follow a man who lived a schizophrenic life was so close to my understanding of the loss of community experienced by first century “readers” of the Gospel of Mark, and my own reading of the disciples following Jesus.

Furthermore, there is the creation of a new identity. Tyler Durden explains his purpose as follows: “All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.” I think that this, in a lot of ways, is what Mark’s purpose was in writing this gospel—to create something, and someone in the person of Jesus, who is more, stronger, better, smarter, and fully liberated in ways in which the community was not, but wanted to be.

Ultimately, I think that Fight Club allows me access to the Gospel of Mark in ways that I did not previously have. Tyler Durden says to the narrator, “I will drag you kicking and screaming, and in the end you will thank me.” So too do I feel as though I am dragged through Mark, kicking and screaming; though with Mark, there is no end, for we are pointed, once again, to the beginning. We are told to go back to Galilee, to begin again, to be resurrected.

 “Only after disaster can we be resurrected,” Tyler says. In the aftermath of loss and trauma, we create new identities, identities that are no longer defined by, though not necessarily separate from, our former relationships (whether to people or things) which have been lost. In the face of loss and trauma our salvation is to be found in our ability to resurrect/recreate/reconstitute our own identities and understanding of ourselves.

Secretary: Advice on Rejecting Women

I watched my favorite movie the other day.

More than being my favorite movie, it is, hands down, the greatest film ever made.  It's sheer perfection on the big screen.

Secretary starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, released in 2002.  I saw it for the first time in 2004.  I was totally hooked.

I now own two copies of the DVD.

For a very good reason.  One copy got packed away during my last move and is now in some box, somewhere, toward the back of my closet, underneath several boxes of other stuff I do not use on a daily basis.  I never expected to be where I am for as long as I have been, which is why it is packed away at all.

Wanting to watch it again, and now wanting to spend a solid week pulling out boxes, opening boxes, digging through boxes, re-organizing boxes, returning boxes to the closet, and suffering from allergy induces asthma for a month, I simply bought another copy.

I hadn't watched Secretary in several years when my new copy arrived from Amazon via the USPS.  Oh, heaven's delight!

Actually, the previous occasion on which I watched Secretary was when I was in Hawaii visiting my now ex.

He had never seen the movie.  I am absolutely LOVE the film.  For a number of reasons.

But the reason about which I am writing today is this:

Secretary tells men everything they need to know about how to tell a woman he is not interested in a romantic relationship with her.

Now, this information is demonstrated in a single scene in the film which is, without a doubt, my favorite scene.  It is a scene my ex absolutely hated.

I think it's one of the best scenes in the entire film.  He thinks it's the worst.

My response when watching it:  Thank God for simple fucking honesty!

His response:  What a fucking bitch!

And here it is people:

Well, first, let me set up the background:

Lee Holloway has fallen in love.  But the man with whom she is in love, Mr. E. Edward Gray, has rejected her because of his own feelings of inadequacy and shame.  So, she continues to see the man she's been seeing casually, Peter, because he's there.

It is obvious from the get-go that Lee is not at all interested in Peter.  She lacks any enthusiasm for him at all.  She is bored and invests no time or effort in the relationship.

And Peter proposes.  Lee accepts because, "I didn't know what else to do."

Later, standing in a wedding dress Lee realizes that she can't go through with it.  Running from the house, she pauses long enough to return the engagement ring to Peter, and goes to see Edward.

In the following scene, Peter comes to see Lee at Edward's office.  This is the scene that tells you everything you need to know about telling a woman you're just not that into her.

"I don't want you."

Four simple words.  I.  Don't.  Want.  You.

It's just that simple.

Direct.

Honest.

True.

It's just that simple.

I don't want you.

That's all you have to say.  No excuses.  No explanations. 

Excuses and explanation suggest circumstances might change.  Things might be different someday.

Except, they won't.  And we all know it.

But suggesting that they might, leaves women confused at best and hopeful at worst.  In the long run, excuses and explanations only hurt women.  They don't "let a girl down easy."  They dishonor a woman.  First because they're dishonest.  And second because they suggest the someday.

Four simple words.

I don't want you.

Someone said it to me once.

I appreciated it.

I felt respected.

I felt honored.

I walked away with my dignity intact.  No questions.  No false hopes.

I don't want you.