Hey guys,
Happy Holidays!
Sharing an essay I wrote on ‘dark arts’ a while back. Hope you enjoy it. This newsletter will be off Sunday December 22 and Sunday January 2. See y’all in the new year. Stay safe and take care of yourselves this holiday season :)
Every time I sit down to watch a “dark” movie, I feel the urge to shut my computer and stop watching altogether.
Often, actually, I do just that – Clockwork Orange, Room, Black Swan – I’ve stopped all of these movies mid-viewing. I even have trouble watching shows like Breaking Bad and Ozark.
This is not something I like to admit about myself.
Growing up my parents loved to take my sister and I to the movies. Childhood for me can be evoked by the smell of overpriced buttery popcorn and the sound of candy wrappers in an echoey theater. Of course, when we were young, we saw kids’ movies, which were never dark or disturbing – Toy Story, The Power Puff movies, Legally Blonde.
But even as I got older, we’d always choose to watch something light, happy, fun. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but I distinctly remember my parents both harping on the fact that they didn’t like to watch anything ‘disturbing.’
When I started engaging with heavier literature and art, my parents didn’t want to hear it –“we’re reading As I Lay Dying in school.” My eyes bright. “Oh god … so depressing,” was the most I ever got. I couldn’t understand why they refused to engage, and, in a sense, I resented it.
In a 1965 article titled “Monsters Are Good for My Children,” the author Terri Pinckard argued that it is healthy and necessary for parents to show their kids films that portray the anxieties of the times. The world then was trembling with angst after a gun man had assassinated the president and race riots persisted in the South.
Like many, my parent’s approach to teaching me about the injustices of the world was to shield me from them for as long as possible.
Now, we are living in a time that will be remembered as unprecedently bleak – police brutality rages across America, a pandemic continues to kill, and climate change worsens.
As the pandemic took hold in the late months of spring, the movie Contagion climbed to the twelfth most popular film on iTunes. I could not seem to figure it out. I would rather slit my eyes out than sit through a fable of an unstoppable virus when so many of us are falling ill.
Why do people choose to steep themselves in horror and darkness when the world itself is crumbling and burning? … Is it to face their fears head on? Is it to find connection with other peoples’ stories? Is it somehow about control?
Childhood psychologists have written that children who go through trauma are often drawn to horror movies. Watching a trauma on screen gives these children back a certain amount of control – they can turn the volume up or down, sit close or far away, even leave the theater if they really want to.
In real life, we cannot leave the theater.
We cannot escape the fact that Black men are dying in the streets for no reason or that fires are threatening our future livelihood or that our healthcare system is failing. But we can confront these things.
This year my mother passed away and then the pandemic hit, and often the world feels unbearably bleak. It is so easy to become self-centered as a means of survival when the world feels like its collapsing in on you, but we only begin to see outside of ourselves when we confront the problems of the world head on rather than burying ourselves deeper in delusion.
I’m not saying there is never a time for steeping yourself in comedies and romantic dramas – excreting the grief and pain and replenishing yourself with hope and laughter is good medicine.
But sitting through movies like Ava Duvernay’s When They See Us or even Charlie Kaufman’s latest, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, can give us something greater than temporary refuge.
The motive behind any creative endeavor is to make us feel – not always good or happy or warm -- but to make us sit with emotions that we wouldn’t necessarily choose to confront.
The fact of the matter is that the darkness in the world right now is all-consuming. It is impossible to keep it all outside of the frame.
But it is often only when we are forced to grapple with these intense emotions on the screen that we can begin to really contemplate our own stances and privileges and deeper thoughts.
Like most of our rawest feelings and fears, it is only by feeding them, talking about them, seeing them in others, that we can connect, leave them behind, and build something better.
Trader Hoes –
Mini ginger bread cookies with fudge icing – What a delectable holiday treat! I’ve been having these for dessert with some ginger tea to get into the holiday spirit and they do the trick! They are sweet with a slight spice and they look so cute!!
Ashwagandha Tea – This tea is so yummy. I recommend it to everyone. It has a subtle lemon and berry flavor with the calming benefits of ashwagandha
Cranberry Goat Chèvre – this cheese log slappppss. Sweet on the outside, creamy and savory on the inside. Fire goat cheese. Serve it with some crackers for a holiday party appetizer and it is sure to be a hit.
Media Recs –
This section, Damned If You don’t, by Emma Green on last weekend’s This American Life. It’s a heart-wrenching story on a woman’s struggle with religion and abortion rights.
My article this week in BUST Magazine on Shiv’s female power in HBO’s Succession
The new Spiderman movie!!! As Morgan said, “who needs therapy when we have this movie.” Best movie experience I have ever had. Enough said. Go see it!
Sending joy and love over the holidays <3,
Bex