Author: The Arts Are Life

March 18, 2019

So I talked earlier in my review of the film The Lobster how I wanted to see it before watching The Favourite. Boy, am I glad I did. Like I said in the last post, Yorgos Lanthimos’ films are unconventional and it sometimes helps to watch film directors’ previous work to understand their style and their direction for their movies.

So lucky for me, I went to the library after work this Friday to check out some books, when I saw it on the Too Hot to Hold display. A copy of The Favourite. I nearly squealed loudly in the quiet of that library; I was just too goshdarn excited to contain my enthusiasm. It was here, even if I could only check it out for three days (it’s due tomorrow). And as far as I knew, for this weekend, this genius film was mine.

But something held me back from watching it, and that is the vomit scenes. I had read on Kids in Mind that the film features at least four scenes of people throwing up. I am a classic emetophobe who checks every movie’s Blood and Gore section in the parent review to see if there are any gross vomit scenes. My irrational fear of vomit onscreen (and in real life) was the sheer reason I held up my hand up to the screen the entire first thirty minutes of the film. And let me tell you, it ruined it for me, but not too much. I needed to go back anyway to really get what Queen Anne and Sarah were talking about with England’s war against the French. So I closed my eyes during the vomiting scenes (which, thankfully, I could anticipate) and frankly they weren’t that bad (for my fellow emetophobes, the first one being when Queen Anne is eating cake. Close your eyes.) I thought, since this is an absurdist film the vomiting scenes are going to be blown out of proportion, and it’s probably going to be like that dude in Monty Python who pukes in that restaurant (ain’t even gonna Google it again, and I suggest you not either). So honestly, they weren’t bad, and with that I give you my actual review of the film.

First of all, I just want to say: I have a lot of feelings about this film, mainly good ones. If you haven’t seen the film, basically it takes place in 18th century England, and while it’s based on actual people, historians continue to poke and prod at its historical accuracy. Anne is a woman who is having a hard time maintaining her dignity as a royal; she suffers from gout, she can’t keep her food down her digestive system, and she is just all-around irritable. She basically feels like she has no power anymore. Her friend Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, maintains a rather controlling relationship with Anne, and constantly tells her she’s acting childish. However, Anne also suffers great loss (she lost 17 children, each represented by her 17 pet rabbits) and feels lonely all the time. When Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Hill, comes to the Queen looking for work as a servant, she is immediately hired. At first, the Queen pays no mind to Abigail, but as the story goes on, they grow to be increasingly involved with each other. Sarah doesn’t like Abigail snooping into her friendship with Queen Anne, but after Abigail catches her and Anne making out in a private room after an elegant banquet (and subsequently tells Sarah she knows about their relationship) things get heated and Sarah and Abigail find themselves competing for the favor (and sexual attraction) of the Queen.

After seeing this film, I couldn’t help but think: what film about female companionship can I compare this to? I guess Abigail and Olive from Professor Marston and the Wonder Women were similar in the sense that they both seem impressionable and naïve but actually hold their own throughout the film and don’t take nonsense from other people. Maybe Andy Sachs from The Devil Wears Prada because Andy seems like a sad little person to Miranda Priestly and Nigel, but is actually quite determined to take Miranda’s cold and icy manner (both Olivia Colman and Meryl Streep really kill it playing women in charge). I could even think of Abigail as an 18th century Cady Heron from Mean Girls. However, none of these comparisons would be fair because The Favourite is a movie all its own. If you really want to understand why this is the case, if you have the DVD watch the 22 minute special feature where the cast and crew talk about the film and why it’s so stinking brilliant. As the cast and crew describe Yorgos’s film, this isn’t your average 18th century period film. It could have been a documentary about Anne’s life but Yorgos didn’t want that. He wanted to have fun with the film, not stick to every fact and figure. Of course, this made a lot of history buffs mad and I would argue sometimes you need to draw a fine line between taking someone’s story and then messing with it to the detriment of someone’s life (such as with Green Book. Instead of watching the film, I decided to just enjoy Don Shirley’s music because there was so much racial backlash against the film. Maybe I’ll see it someday, but for now, not going to do that).

But that’s the whole point: this isn’t supposed to be a detailed documentary about Anne’s life; we’re talking about Yorgos Lanthimos here, the man who produced a dystopian film about a world in which single people are turned into animals if they do not find a partner within 45 days. It is inevitable that he is going to make his actors do things they normally wouldn’t do, eschewing perfectionism and conventionally for messiness and originality. All of the cast members of The Favourite–Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, James Smith, Joe Alwyn, Olivia Colman–they all agree that Yorgos knows what he wants and doesn’t apologize for it. He wanted them to act without asking questions or trying to stick to classical acting technique. And that’s what made The Lobster and this film absolutely brilliant. Not to mention the fact that Yorgos says in the DVD’s special feature that he wanted to have three incredibly strong-willed complex women at the forefront of the film instead of men running the show. If you notice throughout the film, Nicholas Hoult’s, James’s, and Joe’s roles are very peripheral and don’t really hold much sway in the film, even when Robert Harley becomes the new prime minister and constantly tries to make Anne feel like she’s delusional and in the wrong. Yes, sure it was messed up that Anne wanted to continue the war rather than go with Harley’s call for a peace treaty, but the point of the film was to subvert traditional stories of women letting these men call the shots and make Harley look like the delusional baby who throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. Lanthimos wanted to show that this story is very relevant to today’s standards, even though it takes place in the 18th century, because there are a few people whose decisions can sway the trajectory of wider society. In other words, the film shows how the personal is political, and what seems like private biz can actually impact the decisions that people in power make.

I first heard about the concept “the personal is political” after taking a Black Studies course on Black female activists. In the course we read autobiographies by Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston and Angela Davis, and discussed heavily the phrase “the personal is political.” For years out of college, I find myself watching the film’s special feature and the cast talking about The Favourite’s sexual politics and I immediately thought, Oh my gosh! This film could be a whole dissertation on the personal is political! For some background info, Carol Hanisch wrote a 1969 essay titled “The Personal is Political”, in which she talks about the history of feminism and how, during her activism, both men and women in the progressive group she was a part of criticized any woman who tried to bring personal issues, such as body image or sex, into activism because they didn’t think of those issues as being on par with the struggles for women’s equal pay and other social issues. These critics said that women should basically just get over themselves and focus on the world’s problems rather than their own. Hanisch argues that issues that seem to only be about women’s personal lives actually play a pretty huge role in women’s activism because the media often tells women how they should express their sexuality and live their lives, while ignoring any resistance they have to be pigeonholed into these traditional roles.

Anne’s struggles may seem like First World Problems; she struggles with her self-image and needs Sarah and Abigail to make her feel beautiful. She has a hard time leading the country even when she has a seriously debilitating illness. And she feels unfulfilled as a queen even with all these servants and people to listen to her speeches. However, her sexual relationships with both Sarah and Abigail play a huge role in the decisions she makes for the country. She finds herself agreeing with Sarah all the time because Sarah forces her to believe the way she does, but then Anne falls in love with Abigail and suddenly she starts trusting Abigail’s political opinion and dismissing Sarah’s. Anne’s seemingly insignificant issues with her self-image really do impact how she leads the country because she closes herself away in her room instead of wanting to take full charge over the political decisions, even trying to commit suicide at one point because she’s just so sick of life. We normally think of queens as these stately people who have their stuff together and don’t let their personal lives get in the way of their reigning, but what I love about this film is that Anne doesn’t have her stuff together. She is a messy human being with thoughts and feelings, and her personal life is very much tied to her political life. And that’s how it is in real life; I could list several examples. Anne’s sexuality, bad health and bad temper shape her identity and sense of self, which is actually pretty empowering because then, as the viewer, we get to view her as an extremely well-rounded character just as we do Sarah and Abigail rather than as merely this grumpy lady who ruled England. Anne also doesn’t need a man to make her feel like an empowered woman who can hold her own; she’s got two incredibly lovely women who are also quite in love with her, and so she gets an opportunity to defy heteronormative standards that dictate the only relationship she should have is a straight one.

In one of the film’s most poignant scenes, Abigail is admiring Anne’s seventeen rabbits, and Anne tells her that each rabbit represents a child she lost. When she had kids, Anne miscarried. Her babies were stillborn and those who lived died really young. Anne’s grief takes an extremely psychological toll on her, especially when, in the last scene, Anne forces Abigail to get on her knees like she did when she was a servant and rub Anne’s leg since she is pain from the gout, and slowly, with ominous piano music playing in the background, the close-up of Abigail slowly falling apart emotionally, after realizing how little Anne actually cares for her in the end, gradually becomes overshadowed with Anne’s seventeen bunnies hopping around Anne’s room. These bunnies represent the loss and emotional overwhelming Anne feels at that crucial moment; the death of her children, her complex relationships with Anne and Abigail, her struggle for political power hit Anne at once. At first, when Melissa McCarthy came to the Oscar stage dressed in Anne’s coat with 17 bunnies on it while presenting the Oscar for Costume Design, I laughed. But after seeing this film, I have a hard time laughing at Melissa’s costume, even though I know it was played for laughs, because the context of these bunnies is dark and, to be honest, quite depressing. The so-called “personal problems” that Hanisch talks about in her essay were often viewed as just that, personal women’s issues. Hanisch says “as a movement woman, I’ve been pressured to be strong, self-less, other-oriented, sacrificing, and in general pretty much in control of my own life. To admit to the problems in my life is to be deemed weak.” (Hanisch, “The Personal is Political” (Feb. 1969)

However, losing children was a very political issue; people felt pity for Anne because she seemed to be this hopeless, childless woman who was mentally ill and delusional about everything. However, as we see in the film, even though she lost her children, she is still aware of the power she holds as a queen. We can see it from the burning jealous look she silently gives Sarah while Sarah is dancing with Masham. Anne is jealous because she actually loves Sarah not just as a friend but as a lover, and she uses her position to bark at the two of them to stop dancing so that Sarah can lead Anne back to her room and the two of them can get it on without the court spying on them. She is an 18th century version of Beyonce’s Lemonade, throwing her middle fingers up and saying “Boy, bye” to any man who tries to talk down to her, dishing out disses so fast you’d have to rewind the movie a couple of times just to feel the burn every time she says them. Heck, all the women in the film have a smart sarcastic wit that you just cannot mess with. The one scene in which the diss is at its peak epicness is when Sarah suddenly shoots at Abigail and tells her, in a cutting voice, that it’s hard to tell whether a gun is actually loaded or not and basically tells her to stay away from her and Anne. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they played “Backstabbers” by The O’Jays because there is so much backstabbing and throwing shade left and right you would think this was an 18th century version of some epic rap battle.

The only thing that bugged me about the film (and if you have 20/20 vision I’m sure you could read the lettering better than I did) was the spacing and size of the lettering in the end credits. I am not saying I absolutely hated the lettering in the end credits; I get it, the whole style of formatting for the font was supposed to be austere and dark, like the film, so they made the text white, fragmented and with various sizes and alignments of lettering when they listed the production companies and Roman-numeraled titles of the film’s multiple parts. However, when I tried to read the end credits I nearly strained my vision in just five minutes and didn’t think I would ever gain my vision again. I know it was cool to not have literally rolling credits in The Lobster, you can’t make the font all wonky, apply the same non-rolling effects, and expect people will enjoy reading it. The few things I did make out during those end credits:

• Ryan Gosling was in the special thanks portion. His was the first and only name I could make out. I thought, Wait, the Ryan Gosling? Maybe Emma Stone told him she was making this super-dope queer love story that takes place in the 18th century England and Ryan, was like, Oh cool, I’m down!
• I recognized that Elton John was singing the harpsichord version of “Skyline Pigeon” in the credits. His was also one of the few names I could make out.

However, I will say I liked how this time in the credits, instead of last time like in The Lobster, they actually admitted to ensuring that the animals in the film were being taken care of. Like The Lobster, we see animal cruelty at its finest (again, Yorgos, don’t worry I won’t call PETA on you lol): Emma Stone nearly crushing a bunny to death with her high heel, birds getting tossed into the air and shot for sport, lobsters being raced before turning into food, and ducks racing in a palace while a bunch of royals enthusiastically shout and cheer during the game in a rather exaggerated slow-mo. However, unlike The Lobster, they didn’t want to hurt these darling animals. In The Lobster, the animal cruelty is waaay more pronounced and it goes unacknowledged in the credits. I doubt PETA was knocking on his door, but I’m sure someone expressed their discomfort with harming animals to Yorgos and embraced it.

When I first saw The Favourite trailer, it was in a showing of Wonder Woman and all the trailers featured women playing strong complex characters with interesting backstories. I’m pretty sure Alita: Battle Angel and some other feministy films were the previews, but all I remember is watching the trailer for The Favourite and getting excited for it immediately after watching it. I feel so fortunate this film came out. Overall, a very brilliant film. Olivia Colman definitely deserved her Oscar for Best Leading Actress and her genuinely beautiful and sweet acceptance speech will make you laugh and cry at once.

The Favourite. 2018. Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity and language

February 24, 2020

I have been wanting to see this movie for the longest time, but never knew when I would get a chance to see it. I am really glad I watched it though, because it taught me to not give up on my dreams. The film, which is based on the late Don LaFontaine’s famous voiceover for trailers (“In a world…”), is about a voiceover coach named Carol (played by Lake Bell, who also wrote, directed and produced this film) who lives with her voice actor dad Sam, and she is struggling to find gigs. The worst part: her dad kicks her out so that his girlfriend can move in with him. He also tells her the same thing he has been telling her for years: that the industry won’t hire her because she’s a woman. So she goes to her sister Dani’s place to live and is still struggling to find work. She also has to compete with an egotistical jerk named Gustav Warner, who is competing for Carol’s work. While she is working in the studio, she is given a prompt to read for a new movie, and she soon finds out she got a couple of gigs. What she doesn’t know is that her dad and Gustav are also competing for them. She goes to a party that Gustav is throwing and ends up sleeping with Gustav because he manipulates her into thinking he likes her for her when he is just using her to advance his own agenda. Carol ends up proving to these two dudes that women are just as valuable to the industry as any man (the fact that Lake Bell produced, wrote, directed, and starred in the film proves this even further).

This film reminded me a lot of of this one episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, in which Midge meets her idol Sophie Lennon, who puts on a running caricature of an overweight poor woman from Queens named Sophie. Midge actually believes that Sophie from Queens is real, and Sophie invites her over to her house, but when she gets there she finds out that Sophie, in reality, lives a completely different life from her character. Sophie in real life sucks on lemons, is haughty, lives in a mansion, and looks down on Midge. When Midge asks her for advice and tells Sophie of her dreams of being a famous comedian, Sophie laughs at her and says in seriousness that comedy won’t take her seriously unless she is a man (she uses a coarser phrase but it doesn’t need repeating). When Sam tells Carol she won’t make it in the industry because she is a woman, I thought of this scene from Mrs. Maisel. Midge of course proves Sophie wrong (and even reveals to her audience at The Gaslight that Sophie isn’t who people think she is and is just an arrogant fraud who thinks her poo doesn’t stink).

This movie, In a World, was also inspiring to watch as a female in the music industry. Even though the industry is about voiceover acting, music still has a long way to go in how it treats women and a lot of women in the industry, such as Bebe Rexha, are taking initiative to support other women in the field since many of them, like her, have had to break down some kind of barrier to success. When women support each other women, as I have found out in my own industry, great things happen and we defy the stereotypes that women are always backstabbing each other and can’t support one another.

I also thought about the story of the dragon king’s daughter while watching this film. In The Lotus Sutra, which expounds the philosophy of Buddhism (and which is the foundation of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism), there is a story about an eight-year-old girl who is the daughter of a dragon king and she goes before an assembly of people who doubt she can attain enlightenment. But without having to change her form, she basically tells the assembly “Watch me attain Buddhahood” and does so before their eyes. This story is for everyone, but especially for girls and women because it shows that you can be yourself and still kick butt at what you do. Like the dragon king’s daughter, everyone has that courage, compassion and wisdom inside of them but it’s just a matter of bringing it out. Even though her dad thought she wouldn’t make it in the industry, Carol proved that she has a purpose for being in the field that she is in, and later we see that it’s to encourage other young women to pursue voice acting because they finally see a woman doing it and feel encouraged to go for the field. And I like Carol because she’s awkward and introverted like me, which doesn’t seem to most people like an attractive personality in a competitive extroverted business where we’re constantly around people who don’t seem genuine (probably not true about Hollywood since I’ve never worked in it, so I’m probably making a generalization). But she uses her strength to her advantage and realizes that she doesn’t have to become her egotistical dad or Gustav. While leading up to the big day of the voiceover gig they’re all competing for, Gustav trains rigorously with his housekeeper, Sam trains with his girlfriend, and Carol is sitting at home with her friend in the studio Louis (who, unlike Gustav, is a sweet guy who respects Carol and also likes her for her), and chowing down on a hamburger. She is the only one who is relaxing before the gig. Even though she wasn’t going through intensive training before the gig, she still did a great job at it.

Overall, this film was great and I honestly wouldn’t mind watching it again. And like Booksmart, the film has a cool soundtrack with a lot of great hits from Ice Cube and Tears for Fears.

In a World. 2013. Rated R for language including some sexual references.

So I had been reflecting on the movie Lovelace, and I’ve lately found it helpful to contextualize films using the Buddhism I practice as a framework for thinking about them. In the Buddhism I practice, Nichiren Buddhism, everyone’s life is respect-worthy because everyone is a Buddha, or someone with innate courage, wisdom, compassion and life force. So when thinking about all the mass shootings these past few weeks in the U.S. (and in past years, particularly 2019) I reflected and talked with people in my sangha community of practitioners, and we agreed that at the root of violence is a lack of respect for the dignity of a person’s life. So when I remembered this, I realized that Chuck disrespected Linda because he didn’t respect the inherent value of her life and moreover didn’t respect the value of his own life. If he respected her life, he wouldn’t feel the need to force her or manipulate her into doing something for the sake of boosting his profits. Reflecting on my own struggles with low self-esteem, I realized that in order to understand the violence in society I had to understand the violence in my own life, and this violence occurred in the form of negative self-talk and not seeing my own potential. By not loving myself, I couldn’t truly love other people, so it took a lot of human revolution, or inner transformation, to finally get to the place where I can appreciate my life and subsequently appreciate the lives of those around me. While self love is a struggle I know that I’m going through it in order to encourage those around me struggling with loving themselves. I can’t of course assume anything about Chuck Traynor’s life, but judging from the way he mistreated Linda he must have not been able to see the inherent worth in his own life.

In Buddhism, we believe in the Ten Worlds, which are ten states of life that each person can experience at any moment. The six lower worlds are hell, hunger, animality, anger, humanity and heaven. I reflected on the film and it made me think about the life state of animality. If these life states do not serve as impetus for improving our lives, they can be destructive, and in particular while watching Chuck abuse Linda in the film I thought about the life state of animality because when a person is in the life state of animality, they, as Nichiren Daishonin says “threaten the weak and fear the strong” (“Letter from Sado”, WND-1, 302). When people are in the world of animality, they see life as a struggle to survive and are willing to hurt other people in order to protect themselves. In reality, non human animals an exhibit qualities such as loyalty and selflessness, and play a key role in supporting human life, but human beings can exhibit baseness and cruelty that surpasses even that of animals. In the interview with Howard Dando, Linda says at the beginning that Chuck first came off as this charming man, the kind you’d want to bring to your parents, and at first they had a platonic relationship but then in retrospect Linda realized that he only came off that way because in order to experience arousal, pleasure, or fulfillment of some kind, he felt he needed to devalue other people, and Linda was one of the people he felt would give him this kind of fulfillment (as I write this, I’m not sure if it’s my period or the thoughts of a human being hurting another human being that’s making me queasy. Pretty sure it’s the latter).

There is also the world of Hell, where one feels like there’s no way out of suffering, that even life itself is a torment, and when we’re in the life state of Hell we believe that everything we encounter causes us to suffer. Whenever I have manifested the life state of Hell I rely on destructive impulses, and this has not just hurt others but hurt myself because I felt there was no way out of my despair. In Lovelace Chuck manifested the life states of hell and animality when he hurt Linda; he felt that if she left the pornography industry he would have nothing, and that he wouldn’t have anyone to control or make powerless. He wanted money and power, and believed Linda was going to make him rich and famous. He relied on abusing and coercing Linda into doing things for him to bolster his sense of self-worth, but in the long run it actually didn’t do anything to boost his self-esteem. So when she finally left the industry, and he can’t trace her or track her down, the film shows him crying and getting upset, and this shows him in the life state of Hell. He feels hopeless about life now that he is no longer in a position to take advantage of Linda. In Buddhism we also talk about fundamental darkness, which happens when we can’t see the inherent Buddha nature, or value, in our lives. Chuck felt that he had to hurt Linda because he could not see his own Buddha nature, and because he couldn’t see his own Buddha nature he couldn’t see hers.

At the beginning of the interview, Linda says that Linda Lovelace is actually not her real name, it’s a fictitious character that Chuck invented for her. This reminded me of I, Tina, Tina Turner’s autobiography, because she talks about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her manager and husband Ike, and he came up with the name Tina Turner for her even though her real name is Anna Mae Bullock. He trademarked it with his last name so that if she left him like his previous singers had, he could replace her with another “Tina Turner” (“Tina Turner, Ike and Tina Turner: Origins, 1957-1960, Wikipedia.org. ) In I, Tina, Tina describes in vivid detail the violence Ike perpetuated towards her: physical violence, psychological violence, emotional violence. When she tried many times to get her own music career going and divorce Ike, he threatened her repeatedly with violence and abusive language. Like me, Tina Turner is a Buddhist and she found that when she chanted nam-myoho-renge-kyo, even though she still got abused by Ike, she was able to tap into the innate courage and wisdom she already had within her life to address Ike’s abuse and not let it take away her sense of self. She also was able to see Ike for who he really was: someone who acted powerful and all-mighty, but really was just doing it to impress others. He didn’t value and respect Tina’s life and worth as a human being because he didn’t value and respect his own life and worth as a human being. He felt that he would lose his power and social standing if Tina asserted herself and left him, and so like Chuck Traynor in Lovelace, he was in the life states of hell and animality. Both the descriptions of Ike’s repeated abuse of Tina in I, Tina, and the depictions of Chuck’s repeated abuse of Linda in Lovelace, show how bad the life state of animality is when people let it control them. Like I said, in order to root out the destructiveness in my own life, I had to see the value of my life. I mainly accomplished it through my Buddhist practice, which helped me see my inherent worth and caused me to appreciate my life more over time. Similarly Linda found joy in her relationship to God, and He helped her heal from the trauma she experienced.

Of course, as I’m reading more and more I’m understanding that anti-pornography activism also can be dangerous, particularly to sex workers who work in porn and sex work industries that practice sexual consent. I wanted to know more about the violence done to women in the pornography industry, and I came across a report by Vice News about how some people who are anti-porn and anti-sex work espouse violent views against women and other minorities, and is trying to abolish Pornhub and the porn industry instead of addressing social justice and equal rights for sex workers. Sex workers deserve respect just like any other profession, and taking away their profession or criminalizing it would put their livelihoods in jeopardy. The problem isn’t sex, as Nicholas Kristof emphasized in his article “The Children of Pornhub”, it’s sexual abuse and a lack of respect and consent for people during sex that becomes an issue. Porn itself isn’t bad, it’s the sexual violence against people in pornography that is bad. Sex itself is not a bad thing, it’s a human function like eating, breathing and drinking water. However, when sex workers are not having their human needs for housing, fair wages, and other social goods met, that’s the issue that needs addressing. Anti-trafficking organizations in the U.S., as many human rights organizations have revealed, try to lump all porn industries and companies together and say that they’re all bad, that all they do is exploit and that these sex workers need to be rescued or saved, when in reality this anti-sex culture hurts people who make their living from sex work. As Vice points out, it’s a combination of antiquated legislation, politicians, businesses and a culture that treats all sex as if it’s a sin that hurts sex workers, not necessarily the industry as a whole. When sex workers have their humanity recognized then that would be a huge step towards a fairer society that respects each person’s inherent worth.

I had been wanting to see the film Lovelace for a rather long time, mainly because I love Amanda Seyfried. Also the trailer was really good, so I wanted to see it. The film was very deep and gave me a lot to think about, especially because I didn’t know who Linda Lovelace was until I saw the poster for Lovelace one time, and I had only heard of Inside Deep Throat, the documentary about the porn film Deep Throat, from looking the movies section of a newspaper. But the film is not so much about Deep Throat as it is about the trauma and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the man who coerced her into making the film. Chuck Traynor didn’t really love Linda; he just saw her as a way to get rich, a prop, so he sweet-talked her because he thought she was innocent and weak and couldn’t stand up for herself.

This film also taught me to be more empathetic when listening to women talk about abuse and domestic violence. When the allegations against Bill Cosby came out I asked, Wait why didn’t those women just leave him? And then my friend told me that Bill threatened to take their careers and livelihoods away from them if they said no (it wasn’t until I saw the movie Bombshell, a film based on the the sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes at Fox News, that I finally woke up). I then reflected when a friend raised a similar question (the “why don’t you just leave this extremely toxic abuse?” question) when the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein came out, and our other friend said it was because Weinstein, like Cosby, threatened these women that he would end their careers if they said no or even told others about the abuse he inflicted upon them. Same with the film Lovelace; at the beginning of the film it seems as if Linda and Chuck are having consensual sex, but later on in the film we see Chuck raping and beating Linda and then forcing her to marry him. After the film I wanted to learn more about this woman’s life so I watched some interviews she did, and in the interview Linda did with Howard Dando and she says that people asked her why she didn’t just leave Chuck when he kept abusing her, she said she tried at least three times, and each time she tried to escape him he beat her and manipulated her into staying with him. It reminds me of a song I listened to by Christina Aguilera called “Walk Away” where she talks about relationship abuse and how it is difficult to leave her abuser because the abuser makes her feel like she should be grateful to be with them, that they are the one. The abuser convinces her that it is love and not abuse, even with all the suffering the abused faces at the hands of the abuser. That’s why I need to keep educating myself by reading narratives of abuse victims, listening to their narratives, especially as someone who cannot personally relate to what Linda went through, I need to listen and be supportive.

Before her death in 2002, Linda became an anti-pornography activist later on in life, and published a memoir called Ordeal, where she discusses the abuse she suffered in the pornography industry. It reminded me a lot of this article by Nicholas Kristof I read in The New York Times back in December of 2020 called “The Children of Pornhub,” in which Kristof unveiled the issue of sexual assault in porn videos uploaded to Pornhub and other porn sites. 4/24/21 edit: even though I saw the film a month ago and started writing this review a month ago, and was going to go in depth about “The Children of Pornhub” article, I literally could not stop crying every time I thought about what those young women (and men) went through every time they had videos of them being raped uploaded to Pornhub and have everyone see it. It saddened me because many of these youth attempted suicide because of the shame and embarrassment they dealt with. Thankfully when I searched for the article, I came across a much more hopeful update that Kristof had written called “An Uplifting Update, on the Terrible World of Pornhub”, in which he talks about how governments and the Pornhub corporation itself are taking more actions towards addressing sexual assault of children in pornography videos, such as bipartisan legislation that allows for rape victims to sue porn companies profiting from videos of their assaults. Kristof also notes that Pornhub will now require people to verify their identities before they can upload videos and no longer will allow video downloads that would allow for the proliferation of illegal material. Of course, Kristof notes that it’s important to always keep questioning whether these companies will follow through, especially because people can probably use fake IDs to get around the rule on verifying one’s identity. But he says that there’s hope because young rape victims have spoken out on the companies’ exploitative practices. Kristof says, too, that we shouldn’t be just scrutinizing Pornhub’s practices but also less well-known porn sites for how they deal with matters of child exploitation.

As Kristof emphasizes, “the issue isn’t pornography but rape. It is not prudishness to feel revulsion at global companies that monetize sexual assaults on children; it’s compassion.” (Kristof) Indeed, while reading “The Children of Pornhub” article for the first time when it came out in The New York Times paper last year, I literally wanted to vomit because of the sheer amount of rape and violence done to children in these videos and the lack of strict measures on the part of porn companies to tackle the proliferation of this material. Sex done without consent isn’t truly sex anymore; it’s rape. As I’ve educated myself more on trauma and sexual abuse through reading and listening to rape victims’ experiences, I am more aware of how the issue of consent is a serious issue that always needs discussion, because if it’s not being discussed, then rape’s going to keep getting a pass in society.

On a more hopeful note, there was an update on one of the victims of this exploitation, and how, when before she wanted to end her life because of the humiliation that came with being exploited on Pornhub, she received so much love from people who wanted to help and was finally excited to go back to school and pursue her dream of being a veterinary technician. When I read the update I broke down in tears of relief and joy because I was just so happy for this young woman that she can now fully live her life instead of feeling like she had no reason to live anymore. I cried because before reading the update I had seen the interview with Linda and how she talks about how she was finally able to live her life with a caring husband and two beautiful kids after she got out of the pornography industry and Chuck’s abuse of her, and as someone who never dealt with what they went through but experienced serious depression where you feel that there’s no hope, I felt so hard for both Linda and the young lady in the article because they finally got to be human after living in a hellish world that didn’t recognize their humanity.

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say about this movie because I’m still emotionally processing it. But it’s a powerful film and it made me appreciate Amanda Seyfried’s incredible acting, as well as Linda Marciano because I didn’t know much about the issue of sexual abuse in pornography but I now know after seeing the film how serious a problem it is.

Lovelace. 2013. Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language, drug use and some domestic violence.

Written on March 4, 2019

Whew. It is late at night and the tears and snot are still dried on my face after watching A Ghost Story, a beautiful film written and directed by David Lowery. It stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as a young couple, named C and M respectively, who experience a deep loss when C dies in a car accident. C comes back to life as a ghost and remains in the house where he and M used to live when he was alive. I don’t know what it is about A24 films, but I have yet to see a film released or produced by A24 that I didn’t like. Lady Bird, Moonlight, Obvious Child, The Lobster, Room. And now, A Ghost Story, a beautiful reflective tale about how we cope with grief and memory. I’m not surprised that this indie production company has received 25 Academy Award nominations for its films and won Academy Awards for six of its films.

First and foremost, what makes the film so incredible is its lack of noises. Since it’s no longer in theaters, I suggest you watch it wearing headphones because the noises are often muffled and for the most part, there is a significant lack of dialogue, even more so than The Lobster. The film relies on a lack of noise in order to properly help us reflect on the subject matter. It may seem silly at first that Casey Affleck is walking around wearing a large white sheet, almost child-like in nature. (remember the old clichés about kids wearing white sheets on Halloween?) However, I remember C’s body lying limp on the wheel of the car after he crashes and dies, and then had to remind myself that the ghost C was looking back on his life after his death. It reminded me of The Lovely Bones, a haunting novel by Alice Sebold about a girl who is raped and murdered and watches from her personal Heaven as her friends and family struggle to cope with her death.

One example in which silence is a powerful tool for eliciting emotion from the audience is a scene in the film in which M is eating a pie that a real estate agent gave her to send condolences for C’s death in the car crash. The scene lasts for a good 5-10 minutes, but it disturbs you gradually until you’re sitting there crying with her. You see her throw the note in the trash, and then eat the pie, then gradually she furiously digs her fork into it until, five minutes in, we see her eat the pie in silence from the side and slowly she breaks down into tears while C, the ghost, just stands and watches as an invisible spirit. This was the moment when I finally broke down during the film and couldn’t stop crying afterwards. This scene, although one of many deep scenes in the movie, really hits you if you stop everything and look closely. It is an incredibly painful moment to watch her grief just shatter her slowly from inside, but the entire silence of that scene allows the viewer to really see the psychological impact that grief can have on our physical and emotional well-being. The absence of dialogue was perfect because we get to focus on M’s facial expressions and how they alone convey the frustration and pain and other indescribable emotions that she feels after C’s death.

Another scene that was extremely important to the film was when C walks into a room of the house where a bunch of random strangers are having a house party, and one of the people there gives a monologue about faith and forgetting. This person talks about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and says that yeah, sure, “we build our legacy piece by piece, and maybe the whole world remembers you, or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you’re still around after you’re gone.” The overall monologue is very dark and cynical and basically says that someone can write a book, record a song or do anything to leave their children and their children’s children for years to come, but they, like everyone else, are going to pass away someday and will no longer be able to enjoy the legacy that person left, like with Beethoven. The guy says that Beethoven passed away and people still listen to his music, but in the long run, his legacy doesn’t have any meaning in and of itself and that leaving a legacy is essentially hopeless. Basically, the guy is saying, people forget about you after you die, even when you leave a long legacy (I’m pretty sure C was the one messing with the lightbulb above the dude’s head as a way of saying “Forget? You wanna bet?”).

While it is true that humans are mortal and we won’t get to enjoy the art, books, movies and music that someone leaves behind after we ourselves die, what matters is the fact that people, when they are alive we will never forget how they made us feel, and clearly C made M feel so much even if she might not remember everything that happened during their time together. When C looks back on his past self with M, he shows both the good times and the rocky times of their marriage, and as we see with the pie eating scene and further scenes with M coping with C’s death, he made a significant impact on her.

Overall, this film requires a lot of patience. They could have made C a cartoonish ghost that says cliched lines and goes “BOOOO! I’m a ghost!” But they didn’t. In fact, they turned the ghost caricature on its head by showing how C suffers so much psychologically, mentally and spiritually when he realizes that his wife has moved on after his death, that the house no longer will be the same, that different people move in, and the whole time this happens he just wants to be seen, heard, even do things over again in his life. However, the thing that is most painful about this film is that C is a ghost and thus no one can physically see him unless he makes things move without them actually seeing him. In a haunting but very sad scene, he sees a single mom move into the house with her two kids, and he watches them have a wonderful time together eating breakfast, playing toys and celebrating Christmas. This probably makes C sad because he didn’t have any kids with M before he died, and so he opens and closes doors, but ends up scaring the kids and the mom, and because he is frustrated with not being seen, smashes all the plates and cups in their cupboard. I cried because C is trying to deal with all of these changes and it’s just really hard for him because he just wanted a normal life with M and now it’s gone. C’s silence speaks volumes in and of itself, and that’s what makes the film so unique. He finds another ghost who lives in the house next door to his, and they communicate with each other through their prolonged eye contact, and this prolonged eye contact is translated into literal subtitles, a language that only they can understand, a language of grief.

Overall, this film, like The Lobster, is a film I will never forget. I don’t think I can see it twice because I cried throughout the movie and don’t think I can take crying anymore. It just reminded me to appreciate people while they are still alive and also celebrate someone’s life and appreciate them even after they pass away. I have been to quite a few memorial services for people, and while I am sad, I appreciate the times I spent with that person. The film shows that change is constant and while it’s hard to move on, you have to do it in order to keep living. It was a tough message to swallow throughout the film, but it needed to be said. Like I said earlier, it takes a lot of patience to admire and appreciate the film because it goes against traditional ghost stories and redefines the meaning of a “ghost story.” Death is a scary topic, and no amount of cartoon ghosts is going to fix that. But the film’s reflection of death is what makes it so haunting and yet so incredibly poignant. It is emotionally hard to process, but it is definitely worth a watch.

A Ghost Story (2017). 1 hr. 32 min. Rated R for brief language and a disturbing image.