Something most people don’t know about me is that I am asexual. It’s also timely that I’m publishing this because it’s Asexual Awareness Week from October 20-26th this year. An asexual person is someone who experiences little to no sexual attraction. In high school, I didn’t really know much about asexuality. I didn’t know about it really until the summer before entering college. I took a pre-college seminar on Western classics at a local university, and one evening, in my dorm, I was talking with these two other participants (I will name them Morgan and Jade to protect their privacy) and Jade said she was asexual. She said that she had told a guy at her high school about being asexual and he made fun of her and joked that she was a plant.
“I can kind of relate,” I said. “Guys ask me out on dates and I just wouldn’t be interested.”
“You would be aromantic,” Morgan and Jade told me.
I didn’t think much about it after that. Honestly, I didn’t even think my asexuality was an issue. I walked around the world thinking it was perfectly normal to not want sex or think about sex. In ninth grade I joined my high school’s GSA club (back then, we called it Gay-Straight Alliance, but I did more research and found out that it’s actually called Gender & Sexuality Alliance. Which I think is better because it’s much more inclusive) and I didn’t think I was doing anything out of the ordinary. I just really loved being part of GSA. The people around me were dating and talking about sex, but it just totally went over my head. I assumed I just wasn’t ready yet or was just a late bloomer, but then I got to college, and I still didn’t experience this intrinsic desire to have sex with anyone. In my freshman year of college, I found out that a student ran an asexuality awareness club on campus, and I was pretty interested (this was before I started realizing I was probably asexual) but I didn’t think much of it. Then I went to someone’s dorm room and saw a flag hanging on her wall. It had four stripes: one purple, one black, one grey and the other white. I asked her about it because I only knew about the rainbow LGBT flag.
“Oh, yeah, I’m asexual.”
“What does ‘asexual’ mean?”
“An asexual is someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction,” she told me.
We ended up talking more about it. And then the next year, I started to wonder if I was really just default straight or if I was another orientation altogether. In high school, I assumed I was straight, then I thought, Wait I care a lot about the LGBT community and get offended when people make homophobic comments. Maybe I’m not straight. Maybe I’m bisexual. Of course, knowing what I know now, there are plenty of straight people who are allies of the LGBTQ+ community. In my sophomore year of college, I started learning about asexuality and in the fall of 2013, I found a site called AVEN (the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network.) However, back then I didn’t know a lot of other asexual people of color other than some bloggers on the Internet and on the AVEN forum. And then I went to my first Asexuality Awareness club meeting in my junior year of college (2015) and because I was so hyperaware of my Blackness, I wondered, Wait, do I belong in the asexual community? Can I be Black and asexual? I had really terrible low self-esteem already, so dealing with this internal conflict, wrestling with my asexuality and Blackness, made me feel pretty awful about myself. I also didn’t know any asexual people in the faith community I was in, so again, I thought, Maybe I’m default straight again. Then I listened to a podcast I really love, and the person being interviewed mentioned she is asexual, and I thought, Wow, I’m not alone. I went to a Buddhist conference for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and allies, and after chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo a lot I realized that I could fully embrace myself as I was. I could be my authentic self. I didn’t have to change my sexual orientation for someone else. I could fully embrace being ace. Recently, I started reading a book by Angela Chen called Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Even though I couldn’t relate to every single ace person’s experience in the book, especially since I’ve never had sex, I found it really affirming because there still isn’t a ton of information about asexuality. These past few weeks I’ve been scrounging the Internet, looking for someone to bestow upon me the asexuality label, to tell me whether I deserved to call myself asexual or not. However, after seeing therapy and doing a lot of self-reflection and my own research, I’m learning that it’s ok for me to be ace, and if I choose another sexual orientation down the line or have sex at some point, it doesn’t invalidate my experiences as an asexual person. Honestly, it’s still a journey of accepting myself, but I’m going to still work through this journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance in the best way I can.
And with that, I’m going to eat some hypothetical cake since I don’t have any slices at the moment in my fridge. I did have some vegan cake last week, though, and it was DELISH.
Last week, I finished a movie called Fancy Dance. I really loved the Indigenous actress, Lily Gladstone, in the film Killers of the Flower Moon, so when I saw the trailer for this movie, which you can find on Apple TV, I was so excited. In Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily plays a woman named Mollie Burkhart, who in real life was married to a white man named Ernest Burkhart. Ernest and his uncle plotted the murders of several wealthy Indigenous people who live in Osage County in Oklahoma. Ernest is a chauffeur for Mollie, and he falls in love with her. They marry and have a child together. But Mollie finds out that members of her family and members of the Osage Nation are being murdered at alarming rates in the most gruesome disturbing ways, and Ernest also poisons her under the guise that she needs insulin shots for her diabetes. I had to pause the film a few times because I didn’t know about the Osage Murders and hadn’t read the book Killers of the Flower Moon beforehand, so the film was really harrowing to watch, and each time I saw an Indigenous person get brutally murdered in the film, I would start crying. I finally was able to finish the film, but it stuck with me for a very long time, and thinking about the movie still gives me goosebumps, as it was intended to do because watching intergenerational racial trauma on screen depicted in the most realistic way is never easy to stomach, especially if your high school history textbooks never went into depth about this dark part of American history.
On Tuesday of last week, it was Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and I wanted to watch a movie that had Indigenous actors in it. Even though Killers of the Flower Moon blew me away, I don’t have the stomach to watch it again unfortunately, so that’s why I was really glad to have heard about Fancy Dance. The trailer was amazing, and thankfully I was able to watch it on Apple TV. Honestly, after watching the movie, it reminds me that we need more Indigenous voices in Hollywood. Lily Gladstone is going to pave the way for many more Indigenous actors and actresses to produce and star in movies where Indigenous people’s experiences are represented authentically and accurately. I haven’t seen a lot of movies with representation of LGBTQ+ Indigenous people, so it was actually really cool that Jax (Lily Gladstone’s character) was able to be her queer self in Fancy Dance. There is a scene where she goes to a strip club and meets with one of the strippers who works there named Sapphire, and Sapphire and her make love with each other. Lily Gladstone in real life identifies as queer and goes by she/ they pronouns. She explained in an article on Salon that in a lot of Native languages they don’t have gendered pronouns, and while growing up on a Blackfeet reservation people were more accepting of gender fluidity than outside of the community. I don’t know a lot about the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people of Indigenous tribes, but as someone who is part of the LGBTQIA+ community and loves anything LGBTQIA+, reading this article about Lily’s pronouns was very affirming. Growing up, I didn’t know a lot of other queer people of color until I got to college, and I also didn’t know much about the LGBTQIA+ terminology and diverse sexual orientations and genders until I got to college, which was, for the most part, an affirming environment for LGBTQIA+ people (I only say “most part” because I only know my own experience. I can’t speak for the experiences of other queer students of color who attended the college.)
It was an incredible film, and Lily Gladstone was also one of the producers of the film. She plays the protagonist in the movie, named Jax. Jax is searching for her missing sister, Tawi, and because her sister is missing, Jax is letting her niece, Roki, stay with her until they find Tawi. Roki wants to participate in the upcoming powwow to honor her mother, who participated in the powwow. However, child protective services barges into Jax’s house and takes Roki away because Tawi is gone and did drugs when Roki was staying with her, and they don’t think Jax is a suitable guardian for Roki. Roki ends up staying with her grandfather, Frank, and her step-grandmother, and she doesn’t enjoy it. One night at dinner, Jax asks if she can take Roki to the powwow in Oklahoma City, but Frank and his wife don’t want her to do that because they don’t want to get in trouble with child protective services. However, Jax sneaks out and has Roki come with her so they can travel to the powwow together. JJ, who is Jax’s brother, is trying to help Jax find her missing sister, but Frank and his wife have issued a search warrant to find Roki. When Roki goes into a gas station to get some snacks, she sees on the TV screen her and Jax’s face, and the reporters accusing Jax of kidnapping Roki. Roki and Jax continue to travel to the powwow, doing their best to stay undercover.
I think one of the most painful scenes of the film was when Roki overhears Jax telling JJ that Roki’s mom isn’t going to be at the powwow. Roki thinks that her mother is going to be at the powwow, but JJ ends up searching for Tawi and one evening finds Tawi’s corpse in a lake. While they are traveling to the powwow, Roki stops to go into the gas station, and the cashier recognizes her from the photos on the TV showing Roki and Jax. Earlier in the movie, Roki takes a lady’s purse, which has a gun in it, and in the scene where the cashier recognizes her and is about to call the cops, she aims the gun at the cashier, threatening to shoot him if he calls the police on her and Jax. Jax is outside, wondering why Roki is taking so long, when suddenly she hears a loud gunshot from inside the gas station store. She rushes into the store and finds Roki holding the shotgun and shaking with the impact after she fired the gun, and the cashier face down in a pool of blood. Jax calls 911 to send the paramedics over (Roki had shot the man in the shoulder) and Jax and Roki both run through the cornfields to escape the police. When Jax tells Roki to come with her, Roki stays behind. When Jax asks her why she doesn’t want to come with her, Roki tells her that she overheard Jax telling JJ that Tawi (Roki’s mom) wasn’t going to be at the powwow, and it really hurt that Jax lied to her because up until then, Roki placed all of her trust in Jax. Now that she knows the truth, she feels she cannot trust Jax anymore and runs away towards the oncoming police sirens.
There are some rare moments of shared tender joy between Roki and Jax in the film. Roki gets her first period (she calls it her first moon) and not having any menstrual products, Jax cuts up one of the diapers in the lady’s bag and has Roki use it as a sanitary pad. They celebrate by going to a diner, and Jax lets Roki order whatever she wants. Roki orders strawberry pancakes, crepes, waffles and other breakfast dishes, and enjoys them. When Roki and Jax are leaving, a cop interrogates them about their whereabouts and has Roki come into his police car to ask her a few questions. I seriously thought that they were going to get caught, but Roki gives an anonymous name, and the police looks her up in the system and says that Roki and Jax are cleared and can go. While they are driving, Roki admits to Jax that her menstrual blood accidentally stained the seat of the policeman’s car, and they both laugh about it.
**This is a total digression, but I remember when I got my period at 13; I wasn’t super excited. Instead, I was pretty moody. I don’t even know how I could have vegan chocolate cake on my period that day, because normally if I eat desserts or consume sugar on my period, I get terrible menstrual cramps. It’s a bummer but until I go see a gynecologist about any underlying causes of period pain, I need to be mindful of how much sugar I eat on my period. I often take it for granted that I have a period now that I’m much older, but after reflecting on the scene where Roki gets her period, I remember how significant my first period was, not just for me but for my family. I was becoming a young woman, and my body was going through these new changes. I wasn’t just throwing up when I got the flu. I was throwing up whenever I was on my period because my cramps were so bad, and I would often need to miss school, work or my SGI Buddhist activities because I was in such terrible pain. I remember when I watched this ad from Hello Flo, and this teen girl is jealous because all her friends were getting their periods and she hadn’t yet. The girl puts ruby-red nail polish on a sanitary pad and shows it to her friends to prove she got her period. The mom finds the pad and even though she knows that the daughter is lying about being on her period, she plays along with it and tells the daughter she is throwing her a “first moon party” that celebrates her first period. The daughter is embarrassed when her grandpa and other people start to arrive to the first moon party, and the mom invents games for people like “Pin the Pad on the Period” and has period themed foods, like a period-red fondue fountain where people can dip their marshmallows in period-red fondue. The daughter tells her mom to stop it, but the mom shows her daughter that she got her a period starter kit and lets her daughter know that she knew about her putting nail polish on the sanitary pad. It’s a cute commercial, and it actually made me appreciate having a period. Even though it’s not fun and it’s painful, as I learn more about periods and reproductive health, I think it’s pretty cool that my body has this interesting function. Whether I’m going to have babies or not, I don’t know, but I’m just going to let my body do its thing for the time being until I hit menopause. **
A few days ago: my mom, dad and I were supposed to have a dentist appointment, but I was trying to help Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey find a bottle of white wine for an upcoming event (if you haven’t seen Downton Abbey, Thomas Barrow is one of the characters in the show who works on the staff at the estate. He is played by an actor named Robert James-Collier.) I said I would help Thomas, and we went up different floors to find the wine. I hadn’t told my dad I was helping Thomas Barrow find the wine. Finally, Thomas found a bottle of wine after we searched for it for a long time.
“Thank goodness,” I said. “Wait, where did you find the wine?”
“The wine cellar is on floor 2 in room 1,” he said.
“Thank you! Can we stay in touch?”
“Sure!”
I wrote my name down on a napkin, but it was barely legible, so I wrote it down with a pen. After thinking about the dream, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in touch with Thomas Barrow or with the actor who played him. I think in the dream, I wanted to stay in touch with Thomas Barrow.
Then my mom, dad and I got to the dentist’s office, and we were waiting for the dentist to arrive, but I had time to kill, and I promised a friend I would come to they’s baby shower (I use the pronouns they because the friend in my dream uses “they/ them” pronouns.) When I arrived, the baby shower was a small gathering with three or so of they’s friends, and they were far along in their pregnancy. Their friends were touching their belly because the fetus was kicking a lot, and so I got super excited.
“Ooh, can I feel it kicking, too?!?” I squealed.
“Yeah!” the friend said, letting me touch they’s belly. I placed a hand on they’s belly, and the fetus was kicking like crazy, and I went, “Oh my gosh, that is so cool.” The shower was in an empty art classroom, and my dad was parked outside. I told the friend I had to leave because I had a dentist appointment, and they understood, so I hugged they and left.
Then I was in a college dorm with some friends, and the actor Elliot Page was in the dorm. I wanted to stay in touch with him, so we exchanged numbers.
“I really love your memoir, Pageboy!” I gushed.
“Thank you,” Elliot said, giving me a bashful look.
“Stay in touch!” we told each other, and we said our good-byes.
Then in my dorm room, I found these two creepy-looking Chucky dolls (I haven’t seen the movies, and I don’t plan too because as a kid I often got scared every time I encountered a Chucky poster at Blockbuster or at the movie theater. They still scare the living shit out of me. I was at the library, and I saw some DVD copies of the recent Child’s Play remake, and it gave me the shivers because it looked really creepy. No offense to any fans of Child’s Play out there.) I really didn’t want to keep them, so I asked my parents if I could give them away.
“No! You have to sell them on eBay so you can make some money.” (*in real life, I told my parents about the dream, and they told me they would have never made me even go near Chucky and told me that they don’t even like that Chucky stuff because it’s scary.)
“I know a girl who would want them, though.”
I had gone up to the next floor because there was a bleach blonde girl who was really into horror movies and heavy metal and alternative music, and I know she would have loved the Chucky dolls. But my parents told me I needed to make money from selling the dolls, so I kept them in my closet and turned them face-down so that I wouldn’t have to look at them. Then there was apparently a fire in one of the dorms, and so my mom had me check on one of my dorm neighbors to see if she was okay. She was an older woman, and when I asked her if she was ok, she said she was fine. My parents also told me they were going to get vegan ice cream from this ice cream store called Van Leeuwen, but because I was too busy, they went without me. I was pretty sad and felt bad for being too busy. (Side note: if you haven’t tried Van Leeuwen’s vegan ice cream, it is PURE DELICIOUSNESS.)
When I was 13, I took a spring break trip to Washington, D.C. for a extracurricular program. While eating lunch with these two boys, I heard them talking about this movie called Little Miss Sunshine. I hadn’t seen the movie, and frankly my parents weren’t going to take me, a 12-year-old, to see any R-rated movies anytime soon (then again, I’m sure there were plenty of 12-year-olds watching R-rated movies at the school I went to.) But I decided to rent it from the library because I had always been curious about it. The late Alan Arkin, who plays one of the characters in Little Miss Sunshine, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from the movie since I only saw the trailer a while ago, but it was really good. It also has Paul Dano in it, and Paul is one of my favorite actors. He plays a character in Little Miss Sunshine named Dwayne, who has jet-black hair and has taken a vow of silence until he is admitted into pilot school. He loves philosophy and reads works by a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. He also is very cynical in his outlook on life and hates being around his family (although he does love his little sister, Olive, who is played by Abigail Breslin). Olive is a spunky girl who wants to participate in a beauty pageant for Little Miss Sunshine. However, her dad is a super-ambitious guy with really high standards who can’t tolerate failure, so he tells her that they will only take her to the pageant if she is positive that she will win the pageant. Her dad, Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker trying to promote this class about becoming successful, yet the irony is that he is not successful in getting the class to sell well and he falls short of his expectations. His wife, Sheryl (Toni Collette), is just doing her best to keep the family together while also making sure that her brother, Frank (Steve Carrell) doesn’t try to commit suicide again after a serious attempt on his life. Frank is gay and a scholar of the French author Marcel Proust, and he attempted suicide because his ex-boyfriend fell in love with someone else who was also a scholar of Proust, and this left Frank feeling like shit. I kind of resonated with what Frank went through because I fell in love with someone who was in a relationship with someone else, and when this person got engaged, I felt my life had no meaning left, so I had to really rebuild my self-esteem after experiencing that painful heartbreak over not being with someone who I thought I really loved.
The family also lives with their foul-mouthed grandfather, Erwin (Alan Arkin), who got evicted from a retirement home after snorting heroin. When I was sitting with those two boys (one of them was named Seth and he was from New Mexico) and they were laughing about the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, at first, I had no idea what the fuck they were talking about, but then after watching the movie, I was like, “Ohhhh I can see why people really loved the grandfather’s part (and why Alan Arkin won an Oscar for his role).” The grandfather says what he wants and does what he wants and doesn’t care about the consequences. He encourages Olive to enter the pageant because he sees it’s something she really wants to do, and unlike Olive’s dad, he doesn’t care whether she wins or loses, he just wants her to try and have fun, so he prepares her for the pageant. He is pretty homophobic, though, and constantly makes digs at Frank’s sexuality. Edwin also loves reading pornographic magazines, and has Frank go into a convenience store to get pornographic magazines.
One key theme of the movie is failure and being true to oneself. Early on in the movie, there is a scene in which Olive and her family go to a diner on the way to the beauty pageant, and Olive orders ice cream and is super excited to have the ice cream. But her dad explains to her that ice cream will make her gain weight and that if she were a true winner, she would work on losing weight. I was pretty hurt when he made this comment about her, especially since she’s a young girl and is forming her self-image. But I love the part when Olive’s ice cream arrives, and Edwin, Frank and Dwayne joke that if Olive won’t eat the ice cream, they will, and as they start eating the ice cream, Edwin looks at Olive as if to say, Ignore your dad. Eat your ice cream. Finally, Olive can’t take it anymore, and she tells them to not eat all of it. She finally eats her ice cream with delight, and her dad looks disappointed and frustrated that Olive didn’t want to do as he said. I also really love the scene when Edwin (Olive’s grandfather) is helping Olive with her dance routine, and she admits to him that she is worried about winning the pageant and whether she is pretty enough. Edwin tells her to just focus on doing her best, and that the worst she can do is not try. I really like this message because from the limited knowledge I have about children’s beauty pageants, it seems like parents can put a lot of pressure on young girls to fit a certain weight and image. Little Miss Sunshine came out in 2006, waaaay before Instagram and TikTok were around, so I can’t imagine how Olive would feel about herself if she was on social media. I read this book a long time ago called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and in the book, he talks about the impacts of social media and excessive phone use on girls’ mental health and self-esteem. There is one part in the book where he shares a story about an 11-year-old girl who saw all her peers getting Instagram, and even though she was under the minimum age to sign up for an account, she did so anyway, and as she continued to use the site, Instagram’s algorithm bombarded her with all these images of thin women and misleading information about these unhealthy diets, and she began to feel really terrible about herself and her body. Haidt reprinted a drawing she did of her being on her phone and word bubbles with all these nasty things she said about herself and had people say to her encircling her. The girl in the picture is crying as she is absorbing all of these harmful messages that tell her she is ugly, fat, and worthless. I think that’s why I appreciate watching Little Miss Sunshine because the movie shows how, even though Olive struggled with her self-confidence after seeing the other girls perform at the pageant, she ended up doing her own thing and staying true to herself.
The talent show scene was the best part of the movie because there is a pivotal moment where Frank and Dwayne tell Sheryl that Olive shouldn’t go onstage to do her act because everyone will laugh at her, and they don’t want Olive to feel bad about herself. When he first arrives at the competition, Dwayne sees the young contestants walk by with their makeup and dresses and he and Frank have to leave to get some fresh air because they think that the pageant is fake and superficial. Sheryl, however, says that they need to let Olive be herself while on stage, especially because her grandfather, who died on the way to the pageant, would have wanted Olive to have fun and do her best rather than drop out at the last minute because she was worried about not winning. When she gets on stage, Olive dances to “Super Freak,” by Rick James, which unnerves the audience. Parents start to leave the auditorium, offended by Olive’s dance routine, which involves a lot of gyrating (I’m pretty sure her grandfather made up the routine) and the lady who runs the pageant tries to kick Olive off the stage, but then Olive’s dad joins her on stage, and then Dwayne, Frank and Sheryl join her in dancing, too. Most of the audience members leave because they are taken aback, but I found it kind of ironic that they found her performance too suggestive because for most of the pageant, these adults are having these little girls wear suggestive costumes and put on a lot of makeup so that they look older than they are. I honestly wonder if the girls who competed against Olive actually had healthy self-esteem, because it’s not easy to be yourself when it seems everyone else around you act more confident than they actually are. I know as a young girl I would often compare myself to my peers and it really took a hit to my self-worth. I think that’s why chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist mantra I chant every day) helped me when I was growing up because instead of comparing myself too much to my peers, I needed to build confidence from within myself. Even as a 30-year-old I still struggle with self-confidence, but I am getting better at recognizing when I struggle with self-doubt or imposter syndrome.
Disclaimer: This film has strong graphic sexual content and gory scenes, and I describe them in great detail in this post.
A few weeks ago, I decided to watch the movie Poor Things. My mom had checked it out at the library, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to sit through it due to the explicit content. I don’t watch a lot of movies with sex scenes, to be honest, and I am squeamish about gore, and the film’s MPAA rating is R for gore, disturbing images and graphic nudity. But when the trailer was released last year, I was pretty excited. I really like the other films from director Yorgos Lanthimos, who directed films like The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite. His most recent one is Kinds of Kindness, but I haven’t seen that one yet. I went ahead and watched the movie because I was curious what all the buzz was about. Also, I read an article that said Emily Stone (I read a few months ago that she prefers to go by her birth name, Emily, instead of Emma) had to actually eat a bunch of custard tarts for her role in the film, because her character, Bella Baxter, eats a bunch of pastries and gets sick afterwards. In reality, Emily really did feel sick after eating all those pastries. I’m sure I would, too. Even if they gave me vegan custard tarts, I would still only eat a couple. Eating too much sugar causes inflammation in my eyes, so I can’t eat a lot of sugar unfortunately. I thought I had to close my eyes during the scene where Bella vomits because I have emetophobia, a fear of vomiting, so I don’t watch a lot of movies with vomit scenes. But it wasn’t that bad, to be honest, and I knew the scene was coming because I had read for any triggers on DoestheDogDie.com.
The parts that freaked me out the most were the scenes where Dr. Godwin Baxter had to perform surgeries. I am squeamish about blood, even though I work in a field where I have to read about (oftentimes) horrific car accidents and look at (sometimes) graphic photos of people’s injuries. But what I think helped me was knowing that these people were actors and that these were all props that looked very realistic. I couldn’t watch the scene where Bella stabs that one corpse’s eyes, though. Bella has a really interesting view on life. Honestly, she made me think a little about Eve from the movie Life Size. Totally different story lines (and wayyyy different MPAA ratings) but like Eve, Bella is navigating life as a human being who has to start from scratch. Eve is a doll who turns into a human after a girl, trying to bring her mom back to life, ends up bringing the doll to life instead of her mom. Eve goes out into the world thinking everything is so bright and colorful, but she also sees the less joyful parts of human life, like people tossing garbage on the street, a lady wearing a real fur coat who gets offended when Eve tells her that “she should love animals and not wear them” and negative grumpy coworkers. In Poor Things, there is one scene where Bella is on a ship, and they pass through a place where people are living in poverty and people are dying. Bella cries and tells a fellow passenger, Harry, that they need to go and save those people. Harry is indifferent to the people’s suffering, however, and tells her that there’s no point in helping them. Bella decides to take Duncan’s money and gives it to a couple of crew members on the ship so they can give it to the people who are suffering, but of course, the crew members are lying when they promise to give the money to the poor. They’re like, “Oh, wow, this girl just gave us money! We can spend it however we want! Forget those poor suffering people!” It upsets Duncan when he finds out and he erupts in a rage, with Bella crying and not understanding why he is so upset.
The scene where Bella learns to masturbate reminded me of The Color Purple. In my sophomore year of college, we read The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and there is a scene where a character named Celie, who is a survivor of sexual abuse, meets a woman named Shug Avery. Shug is confident in her sexuality, and she teaches Celie how to masturbate. Bella explores her own body and discovers that she can give herself sexual pleasure, and to be perfectly honest it’s something I really resonated with. I’m going to get rather personal here (and if you think it’s gross, honestly, it’s okay. It is pretty uncomfortable and gross.) I enjoyed masturbation many times in my 20s. In college, I was really struggling with depression and exploring my sexuality felt like freedom, it felt like independence. I was also navigating my asexuality at the time and learning how to embrace not feeling sexual attraction to people. I discovered that my body was MAD powerful, and I literally began to love myself. However, when I read The Color Purple and read about Celie masturbating, I felt uncomfortable, probably because masturbation is an uncomfortable topic for many folks to bring up. When I watched Poor Things, I found myself again tensing up when I saw Bella masturbating, but I guess it’s because there is so much taboo and stigma around talking about or showing people masturbating on cinema. I don’t see a lot of people doing themselves onscreen, I mostly see partnered sex in movie sex scenes. In Poor Things, after Bella gives away Duncan’s gambling money to the crew members on the ship, she and Duncan end up penniless, and when they get to Paris, Bella meets a lady who owns a brothel and invites her to become a sex worker to make money. I admit, the scenes where Bella does sex work made me pretty uncomfortable, especially because the scenes show little to no emotion. The scenes where Bella has to have sex with her clients caused quite a bit of controversy because Bella has the brain of a baby, so she can’t technically provide consent even though she has the body of an adult. I haven’t read enough about the controversy to talk about it, but I thought it was an interesting thing to notice about the movie. Bella ends up making a lot of money from doing sex work, but Duncan wants her to stop because it’s ruining their relationship, and he wants control of her. But Bella is starting to realize her autonomy and that she doesn’t need to depend on Duncan for everything anymore.
There is another scene that stuck with me, and that was the scene where Bella is reading a book on the deck of the ship, and Duncan throws the book overboard. Duncan is very controlling and doesn’t want Bella to learn how to read because he wants her to still remain a naive child who doesn’t know anything other than how to adhere to these rigid norms that society expected for women to follow. Duncan throws the book overboard, but the old lady that Bella befriended on the ship gives her another book to read. Duncan is furious that the lady did this, and he throws that book overboard. If I was in Bella’s position, I would have thrown a fit if Duncan threw my book overboard. I would be upset because what else am I going to do on a ship to pass the time? I love reading and it keeps me entertained and also helps me with my critical thinking skills and writing, so I would be really sad if I was sitting on that lounge chair and Duncan was getting all angry with me about reading a book.
I’m fading and getting tired, but I will write more tomorrow. I’m still marinating some of my thoughts about the movie.
This past weekend I watched the movie School Daze, which was directed by filmmaker Spike Lee. I was curious about it because a few years ago, at the Academy Awards, Lil’ Rel Howery picked certain actors to guess film music trivia, and he asked Glenn Close if she recognized a tune from Spike Lee’s movie, School Daze. She knew what tune it was, and the minute “Da Butt” by EU played, she got up there and shook that fine behind of hers and looked like she was having the time of her life. It was really funny and also just really cool that she got up there and danced to “Da Butt.” So, I was curious about the movie. My dad had seen a lot of Spike Lee joints (movies that Spike Lee directed), and we were talking about School Daze. School Daze came out before I was born, so I didn’t get a chance to see it early on, but I finally decided that I want to catch up on all the movies I didn’t see as a kid.
One part of the film I really love is the scenes with step dancing. The film takes place at a historically Black college between different Greek fraternities and sororities. I remember seeing a step team perform at my high school one time, and the dancers on the team were on FIRE. It was so epic to watch, and each time they stepped and hollered, I really wanted to get up and dance. There is also an episode on the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae where J and CeCe attend a Halloween party at the office they work at, and instead they find that the new boss (and J’s nemesis) Nina is planning to hold them hostage, and Nina leads a team of Black female step dancers called Gamma Ray. I didn’t know if it was supposed to be funny at first, but I saw the scenes in School Daze where the fraternities are dancing and chanting “Gamma” over and over again, and so I figured there was a connection between Awkward Black Girl and this scene in the movie, and sure enough, the Halloween episode of ABG was adapted from the movie School Daze.
The movie also addresses the issue of colorism. Colorism is a huge issue in African American communities, and I didn’t know much about it until I started taking African American Studies classes in college. Colorism is “discrimination based on skin color within the same racial or ethnic group” and it dates back to slavery, where lighter-skinned Black people were treated differently than darker-skinned Black people were. There is a belief that lighter skin enables people to gain greater access than darker skin. I don’t really know how I fit into the colorism debate, because I am Black, but people have also told me I look like different ethnicities. In the movie, the female sororities are divided by skin color, and in a musical number they argue over whether lighter skinned Black girls’ hair is more socially acceptable than darker-skinned Black girls’ hair. I remember watching this documentary by the actor Chris Rock several years ago called Good Hair, and in the movie, Rock explores the significance of hairstyles in the Black community and what is considered to be socially acceptable or attractive hair both within the Black community and outside the Black community. There have been many instances where Black people have had to cut off their dreadlocks or have faced discrimination in the workplace due to their natural hairstyles. I remember growing up and sometimes my teachers (most of them white) would ask if they could touch my hair, which I would either keep in an Afro or style in braids. I understand they were curious, but after learning more about racial discrimination and microaggressions in college, I don’t look back on those moments with much fondness. It’s interesting, though, because some of the other Black girls in my school would comment “You should straighten your hair.” In sixth grade, another Black girl in my gym class looked at my braids, which often got fuzzy, and said, “Hmmm…you should straighten your hair.” Another young Black girl in my sophomore year of high school told me, “I think if you straighten your hair, it will look pretty.” I’m not against straightening my hair, but to be honest, I like my curls.
The film was directed in the 1980s and attitudes towards women, especially Black women, were more outdated (not saying sexism doesn’t exist anymore, because it totally does.) There is one scene where the fraternity members make fun of Spike Lee’s character, Half Pint, for being a virgin, and the leader of the fraternity tells Half Pint that he needs to lose his virginity to a girl in order to be accepted into the fraternity. Even though he doesn’t want to, Half Pint goes along with it because he would become an outcast if he said no, and he really wants to pledge with this fraternity. The frat brothers end up hooking him up with one of the popular girls, and she doesn’t want to have sex with Half Pint, but the men coerce her into doing it. (At this point, I wasn’t sure if it was right to even call this scene consensual sex because the girl didn’t want to have sex, and she felt humiliated afterwards.) We have more discussions about date rape and consent, I think because we have more communication channels through which people can share this information about these very important topics. I didn’t understand the difference between sex and rape until I got on Facebook in 2017 during the #MeToo movement on social media, and I saw a post that said that “Rape is not sex. It’s rape.” I at times would conflate the two, not understanding that rape isn’t consensual. But after reading this post, I decided to educate myself and become more aware.
Honestly, my life would feel empty without music. I love to listen to music every day. When I pick up my musical instrument (I play the cello) I always enjoy it because I just love bowing the different notes and hearing how each note and line combines to create a beautiful piece. I love classical music, but I also love to listen to music of various other genres (except heavy metal. I’m not a huge fan of it unfortunately.)
A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Red Rocket. I watched the trailer, and it looked interesting, especially because it played one of my favorite songs, “Bye, Bye, Bye” by NSYNC. I really love Sean Baker’s movies. I loved The Florida Project and Tangerine, so I was looking forward to seeing this one. It’s a black or dark comedy, so it will make you pretty uncomfortable watching it, but I tend to gravitate towards dark comedies a lot of the time. I don’t consider myself a cynic or anything, but somehow, I gravitate towards dark comedy probably because it gives insight into human nature and the less favorable aspects of human nature. Not everyone is a nice person and not everyone is going to change for the better. I really love Sean Baker’s films, too, because they shed light on marginalized communities that don’t get a lot of great representation, such as trans sex workers in Tangerine and low-income communities that live near Walt Disney World in The Florida Project. I haven’t seen a lot of movies that have empowering representations of female sex workers other than Zola (directed by Janizca Bravo), and I didn’t grow up watching a lot of movies that presented an empowering portrayal of trans people, or even a lot of movies that had trans actresses playing the main characters. The only other movie I saw that shows any empathy or compassion for trans characters is A Fantastic Woman, which came out in 2017 and stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress and singer from Chile.
I also haven’t seen many films that shed light on the lives of sex workers in general, or ones that feature them as the protagonists, other than Zola and Tangerine. Red Rocket was really intriguing to watch, because the main character is a retired adult film actor whose wife also worked in the adult film industry. Mikey Saber, who worked in the adult film industry for two decades, comes back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas to try and make a comeback in his career. I don’t know why he left Los Angeles, which is where he worked in the adult film industry, but it was apparently something really not great that motivated him to leave the city and go back home. When he comes back home, he expects everyone to celebrate him coming back, saying “I’ve missed you!” He wants people to think he is still a glamorous actor, but instead he gets the total opposite. His neighbors and friends ask him, “What are you doing back in Texas?” and aren’t glad to see him, and his estranged wife, Lexi, and his mother-in-law, Lil, are especially not happy to see him come back. Mikey asks if he can move back in with them, but Lil and Lexi don’t want to put up with him anymore. He continues to beg Lexi to let him move back in with them, and finally she gives in, under the condition that he contribute to the rent and help around the house. For some reason, I resonated with Mikey’s story a bit, mainly the fact that he came back to his hometown expecting everyone to treat him like he was famous, but instead it was the opposite. I’ve never worked as a sex worker or in the adult entertainment industry, so I don’t know what it’s like, but I could kind of relate to him coming back with this huge ego. After graduating from this elite liberal arts college on the East Coast, I thought I was entitled to have any job I wanted because of my degree. But honestly, it was so hard to find a job, and it was a total blow to my ego. I wanted a job where I could directly use my philosophy degree, but the only other option was to go to graduate school and as much as I wanted to go, I was super burned out after undergrad and needed time to recuperate, especially because I had some really bad mental health issues. That, too, was really hard because I couldn’t deal with having depression. Every day I struggled to get out of bed and feel motivated to do anything. I auditioned for an orchestra in my hometown and when I got called for the substitute cellist list, I was pretty elated and thought that I should be treated like royalty because I got on the substitute list. But then my dad asked me to vacuum the living room, and I threw a huge bratty tantrum because I thought, They should be celebrating me right now! Why the hell are they asking me, of all people, to do chores? Looking back, I didn’t have a very healthy sense of self, and so much of my self-worth was wrapped up in these past achievements and this music career. I thought about my past experiences with overcoming my ego when I saw how Mikey would go up to people in his hometown and expect them to recognize him and his work, but only a few people liked what he did. Most of the people he runs into don’t know about his work, and so he has to keep shoving it in their faces that he was an adult film star for several years and that he has a very famous account with all the videos and movies he starred in. I wanted to be a successful cellist, but looking back I placed so much of my self-esteem on whether or not I won auditions or whether or not people liked me. At some point, though, I realized that doing that wasn’t healthy and that I needed to develop more self-worth so that I wouldn’t think that I was a loser just because I didn’t play with a famous orchestra.
I think that’s why he falls in love with this 17-year-old girl named Strawberry. Honestly, I really didn’t know how to feel about her and Mikey’s relationship. I know that technically she was of consenting age according to Texas law, but I feel like he was partly using his relationship with Strawberry as an escape from his problems with the people around him. Mikey constantly disrespects the people around him, and he talks down to Lexi and Lil, even walking around naked and grossing Lil out. Strawberry and Lonnie (who knows about Mikey’s work) are the only two people who put up with Mikey’s bullshit throughout the movie. Mikey has Lonnie take an exit at the last minute while driving, and Lonnie swerves and causes a serious pileup accident. Even though Mikey and Lonnie escape, Mikey has Lonnie accept the blame even though Mikey was responsible for telling him to take the exit. Lonnie accepts it, but Mikey doesn’t tell anyone that he was also responsible for causing the accident. Mikey is only focused on running away with Strawberry and having her become an adult film star like him. The ending of the film creeped me out a lot. Overall, it was a really interesting film.
Red Rocket. 2021. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and pervasive language.
A few days ago, I wanted to watch a movie after coming home from my World Peace Prayer meeting at the Buddhist Center. I turned on Oppenheimer and tried to finish, but my heart was beating out of my chest while watching because it was just getting really intense and disturbing (then again, it’s about the man who commissioned the atomic bomb that killed a bunch of innocent civilians, so of course it’s going to be intense and disturbing.) It’s definitely an important film to watch, but it’s kind of like my experience with watching Killers of the Flower Moon. I had to watch that movie in bite sized pieces because it was pretty disturbing, and each time I tried to get through the three-hour movie I broke down crying because I hadn’t really studied about the Osage murders, so seeing Ernest Burkhart and his uncle commit these horrific crimes against the Osage Nation was pretty, well, horrifying.
So, I decided to take a break from Oppenheimer and watch something else (I will come back to it, just need a break for a bit.) While driving around the city last year I saw bulletin boards for a movie called No Hard Feelings, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman. I don’t normally watch sex comedies (I thought it had to do with my asexuality, but I’m sure there are a lot of asexual people who watch porn and sexual content, so I can only speak from my own experience as an asexual person), so this was kind of new movie territory for me, but it’s actually a pretty sweet film. It takes place in Montauk, New York, and Jennifer Lawrence plays a 32-year-old woman named Maddie whose life isn’t working out. She works as an Uber driver and a waitress but is barely getting by financially. She doesn’t have a lot of close romantic relationships and also, she is going to get evicted from her home (and lose her car) due to the rising cost of living in Montauk. Lucky for her, Maddie finds an advertisement by a wealthy couple who needs a woman to date and have sex with their 19-year-old son, Percy, who is socially awkward and a virgin. Maddie comes over to their very affluent home, struggling to get up the steps in her roller skates (since her car got repossessed, she has to go everywhere in roller skates,) and has an initial interview with Percy’s parents, Laird and Alison. Laird and Alison explain to Maddie that they want their son to learn how to socialize, date and have sex before he goes to Princeton University so that he comes out of his shell and doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb in college. At first, Maddie tries to flirt and be sexually attractive to him, but Percy doesn’t really want to have sex right away, he just wants someone to hang out with. Through their relationship, the two of them learn a lot about each other. Maddie realizes that she was in a lot of these relationships where she wasn’t emotionally available to the men she was with, and so these exes would come back in her life and tell her how much she hurt them. Percy realizes that he doesn’t need to change himself to fit in as a college student, and he can be himself. Maddie also realizes that she can be herself in her relationship with Percy. They end up developing a really sweet romance and friendship together.
There were a few scenes that I remember from the film that stuck out to me. One scene was when Perry and Maddie are at a nice restaurant eating out on their date, and Perry plays the piano for everyone. Earlier in the movie, Percy and Maddie are at a bar and they hear the song “Maneater” by Hall and Oates. Later, in the scene where they are on their date, Perry opens up to Maddie about how he plays music, and Maddie tells him she wants to hear him playing. Perry is reluctant at first, but then he gives in and ends up singing a beautiful rendition of “Maneater.” Maddie is smitten and mesmerized, and so is everyone in the restaurant. Maddie tells him how incredible his performance is, but then Natalie, a girl that Percy goes to high school with, comes up to him and the two of them hug. Maddie is wondering, Who on Earth is this Natalie girl? The girl and Percy gush about how they are both going to Princeton next year, and Maddie becomes jealous. She tries to interrupt the conversation and get the girl away from Percy, but Percy ends up getting angry with Maddie for reacting like that, and they end up riding home in silence. Percy also overhears that Maddie only came by because his parents wanted her to hook up with him, and he feels crushed and thinks that Maddie didn’t genuinely love him. While at breakfast with his parents and Maddie, he drinks a lot of wine and calls them out for what they did and with his friend, who he works with at the animal shelter, he proceeds to destroy Maddie’s new car. He ends up feeling terrible about it later and he and Maddie have a huge argument, and she leaves. They end up making up, though, and Maddie also experiences a new life change and decides to move to California. She and Percy share a bittersweet farewell, but she drives him to the airport.
I really love Jennifer Lawrence in this role. I normally have seen her in drama films like The Hunger Games and American Hustle, but she was really good in this movie. I first saw the trailer and thought the film would be too silly for me, but it was actually a really touching story. Of course, this film sparked a lot of necessary discussion around age-gap relationships because Maddie is much older than Percy, and that’s a fair discussion to have because it is an uncomfortable subject. But also, I know a lot of age-gap relationships in real life (not personally, but I know celebrities who are in relationships with significant age-gaps), and honestly, I don’t really know what side to take on this subject. I was reading on Buzzfeed about how the filmmakers and cast addressed the huge age-gap between Maddie and Percy, and one of the cast members noted that the film also says a lot about helicopter parenting, because Percy’s parents were very protective of him and they feared that he wouldn’t survive college if he didn’t know how to hook up or socialize, so instead of giving Percy space to figure all this stuff out on his own in college, they tried to control and intervene, so they set him up with Maddie. However, Percy still didn’t want to rush into anything, and in the end Percy’s parents eventually just had to trust that their son was going to be okay and that sometimes he was going to have to make his own decisions and figure stuff out on his own. I’m not a parent, so I can’t imagine how hard it is for them to watch their son grow up and leave, but it must be hard. I remember when I went off to college, I was super excited, but then I was really homesick and stressed. But thankfully while I was away, I had my local Buddhist community and often went to meetings and to chant with other members. I didn’t really want to go to parties, and I wasn’t really interested in dating, so going to Buddhist meetings was one of the ways I had fun. Even though I still asked my parents for advice while away from home, I often would try to figure stuff out on my own. Of course, in college there were some things that I shouldn’t have tried to do on my own, like battling clinical depression and not telling anyone. But the experiences of having a roommate, having a campus job and being responsible for your decisions (i.e. should I go to work or call in sick? Should I eat vegan chocolate sheet cake at every meal or eat it sparingly? Should I drink Sleepy Time tea before class or wait until it’s my bedtime to drink it? Should I spend all the disposable income from my campus dishwasher job on snacks from CVS or save it to pay off my imminent student loans? Spoiler: I waited until after college to do the latter. I loved my snacks) really taught me about resilience and emotional maturity. Making my own decisions while away from my parents was challenging, but at this time I ended up making friends in my own unique way. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to make friends in college, especially as an introvert, but I ended up meeting a lot of people and making connections with people in my own unique way. I didn’t have a Facebook account during my first three years of college, but most people didn’t mind that I didn’t have an account, and we still saw each other on campus. It was a little lonely missing out on inside jokes and people’s posts on their Facebook walls, but I think looking back, I still managed to make a lot of genuine connections with people at my college. I think chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist chant I do) gave me the courage to be myself, and of course there were times in college where I struggled to feel like I was doing college the “right way” and comparing my social life with that of my peers, but as I continued my Buddhist practice, I began to connect with people in a very natural way and I even got to tell them about my Buddhist practice. That was a tangent from talking about the movie, but I just thought of my own experience with being in college when I saw Percy leaving for Princeton.
Some time ago (I cannot remember when) I watched the trailer for a movie called American Honey. I really love A24 distributed films, so I immediately gravitated towards this one because it was an A24 film. And not just because it was an A24 film, but because the trailer was just really good, so I wanted to watch it. And honestly, I wasn’t disappointed in the least. This was a really good movie. It definitely wasn’t an easy film to sit through, but as I watch these heavy-hitting drama movies and independent films, I have come to appreciate that movies can stir a whole range of emotional experiences in us, and they should. This film was a really moving and raw portrayal of young people trying to survive in a harsh world.
The movie starts out with a young woman named Star dumpster-diving with two kids whose stepmother, Misty, doesn’t want custody of them, and she fishes out a chicken breast from the dumpster and gives it to the boy so they can bring it home. Star has a really rough life at home. Her stepfather is sexually abusive, and her mother died when she was really young of an overdose. She goes to a bar where the kids’ mother is dancing, and she tries to give the kids to her, but the mom wants nothing to do with the kids. Star goes to K Mart one day to run some errands, and she sees a group of teenagers running around and dancing to “We Found Love” by Rihanna. One of the young people in the group, named Jake, looks at Star and is attracted to her, and they share a mutual chemistry. The employees kick the kids out of the store, and Jake approaches her and tells her that she should come join them in their mag crew, where they go door-to-door selling magazines and other stuff. Star at first isn’t sure about Jake, but he comes off as this charming guy, so they fall in love. However, Star has to deal with the leader of the mag crew, Krystal, who hates Star for falling in love with Jake. Krystal does whatever she can to keep Jake away from Star, and things get tense when Jake tells Star that they can’t have a romantic relationship because Krystal thinks it’s “bad for business.”
Star has this interesting insight into life that kind of sets her apart from the other teens in the group. While she does play around with them and go along with them, she also retains a lot of her sensitivity, especially when she is around animals. Even though the film is pretty deep, it has its tender moments. While whooping and dancing around the campfire with everyone else, Jake gives Star a small turtle, and Star gently puts the turtle in the water and watches it swim away. There is also a scene where Star is sitting in an open field and a grizzly bear just casually comes up to her and says hi before going on its merry way. In another scene, Star sees a bee in the house that everyone is staying at and instead of killing it, she catches it in a glass jar and releases it outside so it can be among the flowers. It was these little scenes that I needed to take time to appreciate, because for most of the movie Star is just out here trying to survive.
I thought one scene in the film was particularly powerful and shows Star’s sensitivity. As they go door to door, the teens in the mag crew have to make up stories about their lives so that people who answer the door will have pity on them and buy the magazines from them. They start off going into wealthy neighborhoods, but then later on in the film Krystal drives them into a poor neighborhood and has them try to get the people in the neighborhood to buy magazines. Star knocks on the door of one house, and instead of an adult answering the door, a little boy wearing a Pikachu costume opens the door and a little girl wearing an Iron Maiden shirt invite her in. A third kid is holding a cat. Star looks around and finds that the TV is blaring Wendy Williams’s show, but the parents are nowhere to be found. When Star asks where their mom is, the boy says she is sleeping, and when Star asks where their dad is, he says that their dad is in Omaha, Nebraska, so he can’t take care of the kids. Star has this moment where she’s like, Wait, Krystal drove me here to get money from these people? These kids are struggling, I don’t think I can do this. The mom comes out of her room and lays down on the couch in front of the TV, not even looking at Star or any of the kids. Star sees a meth pipe on the table and realizes that the mom is a meth addict. Star asks for something to drink, and the kids open the fridge. There is almost nothing to eat or drink in the fridge, other than a liter of Mountain Dew. Star ends up going to the grocery store and buying the family a bunch of groceries. Even though she was struggling herself, Star was able to have that compassion for the kids because her own mother died of a meth overdose. It just reminded me of how in Buddhism, we go through challenges so that we can encourage others who might be going through similar challenges. I haven’t grown up in poverty or with parents who have struggled with addiction, but the film really showed me how poverty is very real, and people are really out here in America trying to get by paycheck to paycheck. To be honest, as I was watching the film, all I could think was, Wow, I really can’t fathom what these people in the film have to go through to survive.
Another thing the movie made me think about was the importance of having big dreams and aspirations. Star and the other teens are dropped off at a gas station where they find a bunch of men driving these big 18-wheeler trucks, and they promote the magazine subscriptions to them. The first guy Star asks isn’t interested and walks away, but the second guy actually gives her a ride in his 18-wheeler and they have a genuine conversation about their lives. The driver tells Star about his wife and that his daughter got married recently, and then he asks Star what her dreams are. Star tells him that no one has asked her what her dreams are before, and she tells the man that she wants her own place to live and to have a family. She later asks Jake the same question, and he tells her the exact same thing: no one has asked him what his dreams are. He tells her in private that he wants his own place in the woods and shows her all the money and treasures he has stolen from the houses of the people they sell magazines to. Star asks him how stealing these things is a dream of his, and he tells her that he is going to use these treasures to buy the thing that he wants eventually (i.e. his own place.) I just reflected on this scene where the man asks Star about her dreams, because in this book I’m reading called Discussions on Youth by the late educator and philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, Mr. Ikeda talks about how young people should have big dreams and can use the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to bring out their unlimited inherent potential to achieve those dreams. Growing up, a lot of adults in my SGI Buddhist community would encourage me to have big dreams, so when at thirteen I told people at my Buddhist meetings that I wanted to play at Carnegie Hall in New York City one day, many people encouraged me to go for the dream and not give up. I often take it for granted that I have this Buddhist community where people encourage each other to not give up when achieving their dreams and that they can chant about what dreams and goals they want to accomplish. Watching this movie showed me that many young people are told that their dreams are impossible to achieve, and they aren’t around people who encourage them to have dreams and goals for the future. I really want to share more about the Buddhism I practice with other young people so that they can feel encouraged to bring forth the confidence to go for their dreams. I also want to recommend people read Discussions on Youth, whether you’re Buddhist or practice another religion/ no religion. It has given me a lot of hope over the years and has encouraged me to keep striving for those dreams that I think are impossible, like becoming a writer and a musician. I still battle my own doubts and insecurities about being a good enough creative, but chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo helps me challenge those insecurities head-on so that I don’t let perfectionism, or my inner critic, keep me from taking action towards accomplish my goals and dreams. And at the end of the day, what my Buddhist practice has taught me is that it’s not just about reveling in my own success, but about encouraging others to achieve their dreams, too.
This movie reminded me of some other movies I have seen. There was this movie I saw called The Florida Project and it was directed by Sean Baker, who is a really good filmmaker, if you haven’t seen his movies. I have only seen Tangerine and The Florida Project, but I want to see his other films because he is a really good director. The Florida Project is about three kids who are all friends with each other and who all live in a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, which is near Walt Disney World. I had this idea of Walt Disney World being this magical place, but this movie showed me that income inequality is still a reality even in the most seemingly magical places. The people who stay in the budget motel are all struggling to make ends meet, and one of the main characters in the film, Halley, loses her job as a stripper and has to find other ways to make money, relying on her friend Ashley, who works at a diner, for food. Halley’s daughter, Moonee, is oblivious to the struggles that the adults go through, and she and the other kids do stuff like steal ice cream and set an abandoned house on fire. Halley and Ashley’s friendship goes down the deep end when Ashley finds out that Halley has resumed sex work and is bringing clients into her motel room, and she threatens to tell on her. Halley beats her friend up and when her and Moonee go to the diner where Ashley works, Halley gets upset when Ashley refuses to give her free food anymore. Finally Ashley caves and reluctantly serves Halley and Moonee breakfast. When Ashley finds out that her son, Scooty, was involved in setting the house on fire, she tells him that what he did was really bad and explains what the consequences of his actions are. Halley, however, doesn’t really care what Moonee does. She is struggling to survive and the antics her daughter gets into is the last thing on her mind. Like American Honey, this movie is a very sobering portrayal of poverty in America, and there is no savior character who comes to save the characters who are struggling to make ends meet. These movies give a realistic picture of class and income inequality.
I also really love the acting in American Honey. I saw Riley Keough in this movie called Zola (like American Honey and The Florida Project, it is an A24 movie) and she was really good in her role as Stefani. If you haven’t seen Zola, it’s a movie based on a real Twitter thread that A’Ziah “Zola” King posted about how she worked as a stripper in Detroit and met another young woman who was also a stripper, and how this young woman, named Stefani (in the Twitter thread, the girl’s name is Jessica) coerces Zola into going on a trip with her, Stefani’s boyfriend Derrek, and her pimp X, but the trip ends up being a sex trafficking operation. At first, Zola is thrilled to have a sisterly bond with Stefani, and when they are all in the car at the beginning of the film, they are all rapping to “Hannah Montana” by Migos and having a fun time. However, as the trip draws on, Zola starts to have a gut feeling that this trip isn’t going to be a fun time. Stefani, who is white but talks in a “blaccent,” talks in a degrading way about how this Black woman was “up in her face” and Zola is visibly uncomfortable. Zola ends up having to take stripping gigs that don’t compensate her fairly, and also Stefani’s pimp, X, is intimidating and threatens Zola, Stefani and Derrek throughout the trip if they don’t do as he says. It’s interesting how in American Honey, Riley Keough plays a character who is running the magazine crew and is in charge of getting the money everyone makes. Her character, Krystal, has a very scary power and wields it against Star, threatening to kick her off the team if she continues to pursue Jake. In Zola, however, Colman Domingo’s character is the main guy who everyone is scared of, and Riley Keough’s character, Stefani, has to submit to everything he tells her to do. In one scene, Zola helps Stefani make more money from her clients after she finds out that X was having Stefani charge clients a low rate. When X finds out that Zola was helping Stefani, he is upset and when Stefani gently asks him if she can have some of the money she made, X withholds the money from her, telling her she should be even grateful she has food in her belly. Stefani is left feeling powerless and Zola is left feeling angry.
The music in American Honey was incredible. I love hip-hop and the soundtrack had a lot of great songs. I was curious about the significance of the movie’s title, and in one of the scenes in the film, the teens in the van play “American Honey,” a song by a group I love named Lady A (they used to be called Lady Antebellum, but they changed the name in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement because “Antebellum” is reminiscent of the South’s racist past. Of course, racism isn’t a thing of the past in the South. It’s still very much alive.) To be honest, it was a little uncomfortable at first hearing the white characters use the N-word when singing to the rap songs and even calling each other the N-word. But it’s not something that’s new to me. Growing up in the South, I often heard white kids say the N-word in jest and even call me the N-word at times. I often heard kids of all races saying the N-word as a joke. In Tangerine, the white characters, Chester and Dinah, use the N-word around the Black women in the film, and they call an Armenian cab driver the N-word, but their use of the N-word doesn’t go mentioned or anything. I remember one time I was in the car with a bunch of my friends (I was the only Black person in the car) and “Holy Grail” by Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z came on. I and the friends started off having a grand old time singing to Justin Timberlake’s intro, but there is a verse where Jay-Z uses the N-word over and over again, and my friends sung along without censoring the word, giggling as they said it, like “Oh my gosh, this word is so fun to say!” I was uncomfortable, but I was afraid that I would come off as being overly sensitive if I told them that I wasn’t ok with hearing them use the word, so I looked out the window in silence, pretending to not care. One of the girls in the car asked if I was ok, and I told her I was fine. I’ve moved on since then, but I just wanted to mention it because I thought of that moment as I was watching the movie.
Ok, I’m pretty tired, so I’m going to wrap it up and just end things right here. I’ll probably have more thoughts about the movie that I want to share over the course of the week, but I’m going to take a break. In short, if you haven’t seen American Honey, it’s a really good movie.
American Honey. 2016. Written and directed by Andrea Arnold. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout, drug/ alcohol abuse– all involving teens.
The Arts Are Life 