Posts tagged with "social commentary"

the lost art of giving a fuck

There’s an inter­lude between the first and sec­ond acts of The Hustler that begins when Fast Eddie los­es all his mon­ey to Minnesota Fats and, as a pro­fes­sion­al con­man with no fixed address, he’s forced to store his belong­ings in a lock­er at the bus sta­tion. He meets Sarah there, then moves in with her after a brief courtship1.

Charlie, his old shark­ing part­ner, final­ly man­ages to find him at her house and is eager to hit the road again, but Eddie remains focused sole­ly on earn­ing enough to face Minnesota Fats one more time. Eddie needs to prove he’s a win­ner, both to the world and to him­self. That’s why there’s noth­ing that can be said to con­vince him to change his mind, and when he finds out Charlie was hold­ing out on him dur­ing the last run — even though it was for Eddie’s sake, even though he had absolute­ly no right to the cut that right­ful­ly belonged to Charlie — Eddie quick­ly becomes enraged, think­ing he could have beat Fats with the remain­ing juice.

“Lay down and die by your­self”, Eddie says, “Don’t take me with you.”

“Just like that?”, Charlie repeats in dis­be­lief after a brief pause.

“Yeah, just like that!” Eddie spits the words with­out any hes­i­ta­tion.

Sarah crying in The Hustler

Unable to help but over­hear, a sin­gle tear rolls down Sarah’s cheek. After hav­ing recent­ly met both men, she could­n’t have enough con­text to under­stand all the his­to­ry they’ve been through. But that does­n’t mat­ter. No one needs to explain to her how hurt­ful those words are. She has no stakes in the sit­u­a­tion; only empa­thy and sad­ness.

It was a moment that made me real­ize how rare it is to expe­ri­ence expres­sions of emo­tion like that nowa­days. Aside from a few instances of peo­ple cry­ing dur­ing a movie2, it’s hard to recall the last time some­one shed a tear due to a tragedy that did­n’t affect them­selves in some way, direct­ly or not.

Vulnerability, ten­der­ness, or com­pas­sion have increas­ing­ly been viewed as weak­ness­ness, while rage and greed are glo­ri­fied and worn like badges of pas­sion. I can’t help but won­der how much the Marvel fran­chise — which has come to define cin­e­ma for an entire gen­er­a­tion — has con­tributed to this by under­cut­ting scenes that fea­ture any poignan­cy with some kind of humour to make them more palat­able (and, hence, prof­itable), at the cost of true emo­tion­al impact. Perhaps SNRIs are to blame as well; most peo­ple I know are on an anti-depres­sant of some kind, the pur­pose of which was described to me by my psy­chi­a­trist as “putting one’s feel­ings in a cast“3.

That’s why I’ve been mak­ing a con­scious effort to con­nect with those with kind hearts and gen­tle souls. People who react with com­pas­sion instead of indif­fer­ence when I’m in dis­tress. People who aren’t afraid to say it back when I end a cor­re­spon­dence with “Love Jeff”. People whose ini­tial instinct upon find­ing out that they’ve hurt me is to seek for­give­ness and under­stand­ing instead of turn­ing defen­sive and angry.

It’s an approach to being social that’s left me increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed from the world, but also giv­en me an even deep­er appre­ci­a­tion for who’ve remained in my life.

  1. And if Eddie was played by any­one oth­er than a young Paul Newman, I’d like­ly con­sid­er this an immer­sion break­ing detail. [↩]
  2. Shawn dur­ing this scene in Interstellar, me from this scene in The Artist. [↩]
  3. More than once, Heather has told me she’d be cry­ing if it was­n’t for her meds after I did some­thing thought­ful for her. [↩]

the last blogger

I only knew Dooce through her infamy as the first per­son to suf­fer real-life con­se­quences for things she wrote online. It’s hard for me to be inter­est­ed in the life of any­one I don’t know per­son­al­ly (excep­tions made for peo­ple I feel inspired by or am crush­ing on), and the hand­ful of times in twen­ty years that I was curi­ous enough to vis­it her web­site, I was met with some enter­tain­ing writ­ing about mar­riage and moth­er­hood that I could­n’t give a fuck about.

The last time would have been a few years ago; I tend to check up on a few blog­gers every so often when I’m won­der­ing how the land­scape has evolved1. As one of the few who were pop­u­lar enough to make a liv­ing off the wit­ty rev­e­la­tions of per­son­al details, she eas­i­ly made the list. That’s why it was so dis­con­cert­ing to find that some months there was a sin­gle post, and the post was a list of spon­sored links to things peo­ple could buy. It was espe­cial­ly strange to find her dis­cussing diges­tive issues while a giant ban­ner would fight for my atten­tion under­neath: “And for any­one who may be expe­ri­enc­ing what I am, ButcherBox is run­ning a spe­cial pro­mo­tion through the end of the month where new mem­bers receive ground beef in every box for the life­time of their sub­scrip­tion.”

How much of her writ­ing was gen­uine? How do I trust the words of a per­son who seems to be cap­i­tal­iz­ing on her mis­for­tune?

Perhaps that’s why I was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly moved when I found out she com­mit­ted sui­cide two months ago. It felt like I nev­er knew who she tru­ly was beneath the curse words and prod­ucts being hawked. I also have a hard time empathiz­ing with any­one who would describe preg­nan­cy as an “end­less trove of con­tent”. For me, that kind of mind­set reeked too much of melo­dra­ma, which I find dis­taste­ful enough to avoid in real life.

It glads my heart when I stum­ble across anoth­er online diary nowa­days. A gen­uine one, of course, not updates from a com­pa­ny or a cook­ing blog that’s stuffed with pho­tos to pad the time some­one stays on the page before the recipe is found. No one enter­tains the same audi­ence as they used to, and I much pre­fer that to the kind of inter­ac­tive “con­fes­sion­al” Dooce had, or the social media influ­encers of today.

I’m remind­ed of how for­tu­nate I am to still have this lit­tle cor­ner of the web to express myself, a place where I’m not behold­en to any read­ers for a source of income. So often I find myself too bro­ken to get out of bed, too strung out to pur­sue my projects, too busy to find 15 min­utes to work on a lick. And dur­ing the stretch­es of time when I’m recov­er­ing and there’s noth­ing note­wor­thy to talk about, I’m relieved I don’t have to man­u­fac­ture expe­ri­ences to keep any­one’s atten­tion. I still get mail ask­ing if there are any spots for adver­tis­ing or avail­abil­i­ty for spon­sored posts, and they all get prompt­ly get filed away in the trash.

  1. Also a good way for me to keep abreast on the lat­est web tech­nolo­gies. [↩]

the purge

In the last few years, I’ve gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of con­fi­dence in my actions and deci­sions, espe­cial­ly when it comes to rela­tion­ships. It took a lot of grow­ing, and two things helped most:

  1. hav­ing a bet­ter under­stand­ing of oth­er peo­ple’s expe­ri­ences in gen­er­al (i.e. I need­ed to gain more empa­thy)
  2. sur­viv­ing enough crises that con­flicts or dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions — or even my own feel­ings — were no longer debil­i­tat­ing­ly scary

Even though I’m more com­fort­able with my social behav­iour, I still strug­gle with lone­li­ness. Being more social­ly capa­ble means I can pur­sue rela­tion­ships more pur­pose­ful­ly and with­out regrets; it does­n’t mean my world is imme­di­ate­ly filled with lov­ing, stim­u­lat­ing peo­ple and needs are sud­den­ly being met.

Continue read­ing “the purge”…

it's complicated

At the very least, theirs was a friend­ship of unusu­al ardor.

Terms like “acquain­tance”, “friend”, and “lover” tend to denote defined roles. This makes for con­ve­nient social con­structs, where we have an idea of the nature of the rela­tion­ship, even when not direct­ly involved. Responsibilities of one group — care, affec­tion, respect, com­mit­ment, trust, will to coop­er­ate — don’t often over­lap with anoth­er. When they do, terms like “work wife” or “friend with ben­e­fits” might be used; re-char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of pre­vi­ous terms for a lack of bet­ter ones1.

It took me longer than I’d like to admit before I real­ized how rarely rela­tion­ships can be so neat­ly labelled. Not every “friend” con­sid­ers it an hon­our to be trust­ed with the spare set of house keys (and would I real­ly con­sid­er them a friend if they’re not to be relied on in an emer­gency?). Not every roman­tic part­ner is inter­est­ed in exclu­siv­i­ty or com­mit­ment. Not every sex­u­al encounter goes as far as pen­e­tra­tion, or even con­tact (which is why it’s pos­si­ble to have an affair of the heart).

Suffering the loss of many impor­tant peo­ple has also taught me that rela­tion­ships often evolve, as we grow and cir­cum­stances change. Whether it was due to some break­ing point or sim­ply the pas­sage of time, most of my sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships have come and gone. Now I can’t help but tread care­ful­ly when I’m about to invest my emo­tions in some­one, whether that means pri­or­i­tiz­ing them in my life, open­ing up with my secrets, or let­ting myself like them; that’s when I’m as scared of being hurt as I am of los­ing them.

  1. I’ve seen “meta­mour” defined as a per­son who’s in an inti­mate (roman­tic or sex­u­al) rela­tion­ship with an inti­mate part­ner of yours, but I like to use it as a catchall for any­one who falls between cat­e­gories. Perhaps if English was a rich­er lan­guage, there’d be less ostra­ciza­tion of uncon­ven­tion­al arrange­ments or needs. [↩]