I've said it before and I'll say it again and probably again later, and again after that: I really, really, don’t like upsetting movies. Or shows. Or art. I don’t want to look at violence, rape scenes, gruesome injuries, humiliation, or anything else like this. I don’t understand watching movies like this. I am bringing this up because a few nights ago I watched the first half of The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover (or something like that), which is supposed to be an Excellent Film. I’m not sure I know what an Excellent Film is. If upsetting = excellent then I guess this movie is great. It opens with a man being violently stripped naked and smeared in dog poop. He is later hosed off in a chair while he cries. Oh but the costumes are by Jean Paul Gautier!! Fabulous! The people’s outfits change colors with the rooms! Neat! There’s a whole poop-food-sex thing that is probably profound! Doesn’t the waste and decadence wonderfully juxtapose the filth and violence!? Romantic nudity surrounded by dead ducks! Bleh meh no who cares. (Helen Mirren is magical, though, that’s indisputable.)
Anyway man alive I’ve got enough to think about just trying to live in the world without “entertaining” myself with distressing imagery. You know that movie Kids? I saw the first 5 minutes and had to leave the room. I will never see Boys Don’t Cry, or The Sopranos, or the Godfather movies, or anything else like that. I’m still trying to purge my mind of other upsetting movies I’ve seen because they are supposedly Excellent Films. Deerhunter. Carrie. Pulp Fiction. It’s too much. No thanks.
So here is the problem with this problem: my inability to withstand even artistic portrayals of oppression and violence and subjugation doesn’t bode well for my ability to stand up against actual oppression and violence and subjugation. It actually sort of points out to me how little negativity I can handle, and how useless to the world this makes me. I don’t volunteer, I don’t give anyone free legal services (which I should probably do), I don’t have any statistics about Darfur ready to go for anyone who wants to listen, and I look away from the homeless on the street. I am like this because it is too upsetting, too hard to actively work against it. Plus, talk about taking a Dixie cup to the ocean – start bailing! Futile. I once gave some change to a man who knocked on my car window in Troy and he said “thank god there’s still good people in the world.” I hated him for saying that. And I put that hate right on top of my impatience and pity. You think giving you change makes me good? That NOT giving you change would be bad? Or do you think that I need to be congratulated in some way by you for my act of change-giving? I gave him change out of a desire to avoid him freaking out on my car and scaring me or attacking me. I gave him change out of a vague fear of his potential violence. I gave him change because I am a judgmental coward who does everything she can to shrink and hide from human suffering and just wants to protect herself from a desperate, and therefore in my mind, potentially volatile person. Also because I had change.
Sometimes in yoga a teacher will say how we’re doing the best thing we can do for the world by practicing yoga. That our effort, and dedication of our yoga practice to peace, and the very time spent doing yoga is helping the world on some vibrational level. Is this crap? I’m not sure. Sounds kind of like crap. I would love to believe this, though. I would definitely feel great if I believed that doing yoga is the best thing I can do for the world, even better than moving rubble in Haiti or canvassing for Greenpeace or protesting for equal rights. I don’t even write to my congressperson. No worries, you do yoga, keep up the good work! Call the Nobel committee! What I know is that I feel better when I do yoga. I feel less upset. I feel less bothered by my own petty grievances. But can I feel better about how horribly people suffer around the world because I do yoga? What does the teacher mean by this? That doing yoga is better than starting Planned Parenthood? Better than inoculating orphans?
I would like to be of service to actual causes, but this is only because I know it is The Right Thing to Do, and I would really like to Do the Right Thing. But it’s not because I really want to, and that’s because it’s too hard. How do I do this if I can’t handle the stress and negativity, if I can’t even look it in the face, if I can’t even look at its representation by artists?
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