authenticity as revenge
Previously filled with a terror I can only describe as physiological, I’d backed out of a speaking engagement with my spouse at Missouri State. Still, I ended up piping up during an unfilled 40 minutes, in a seminar classroom comprised mainly of broadcast journalism students. I declined to take the floor, instead twisting in my chair to address the room from the front row corner desk. Authenticity was my brand, I warned them. Where had I gone wrong, I wondered aloud to them. I talked about the importance of finding validation from within, of cultivating ‘existential courage’ now, because when push comes to shove you don’t want to be rebuilding your sense of Self in your 30s and 40s.
“People are going to try to drive you out of your chosen field,” I told them. “In fact, the more valuable your work, the harder they may push. You'll feel like it's about you, but it isn't. You have to have the self-knowledge that what you’re doing is meaningful, and you need to be working on that now.” Or thereabouts.
Phantom of the Paradise (1974), a movie about a dude whose rock-opera libretto was commodified and desecrated
I guess I really only wanted to say that you should be leery of commodifying yourself even as you strive to find a viable audience for your work. Or maybe to be leery of your own desire for accolades or validation because that is inevitably a path to ruin. (Ted hunched over the MacBook and hurried to add a slide with my face and contact info on it. "I am notoriously hard to get in touch with," I sighed to the room.)
Ever since Missouri I have been in a post-viral flare—falling asleep on every surface of the house for a few hours at a time—but I did manage to watch three movies after Halloween, all three body horror (accidental). First I watched Phantom of the Paradise (1974), with Jessica Harper. Then I watched Perpetrator (2023), a parable about gendered conflict. Last, I watched The Substance (2024), which can currently be streamed or purchased exclusively from Mubi.
Perpetrator (2023), a coming-of-age revenge movie
I’ve been doing Internal Family Systems therapy over the past however-long—the goal of which is to divide yourself into ‘parts’, see and hear and witness each part, and ultimately reintegrate them unto the Self—and, because of astrology and whatnot, I’ve also been thinking a lot about my Lilith sign and about Jungian ‘shadow archetypes’ in general.
Last week I told my therapist that I originally started writing as a little kid because I wanted to “hold the mirror up, just like ‘here’s what you look like.’ But at some point I guess I was made to feel like that was vindictive.” I paused. “But how is that vindictive? I’m not writing just to ‘get my side out.’ That would be vindictive.” All three body horror movies I just watched were inadvertently about the wolves inside us, and maybe also about seeking revenge—although, again, how can showing up authentically and ‘spilling your guts’ (so to speak) be taken as an act of revenge??
The Substance (2024), a movie about feeling unlovable
I’ve not seen Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 movie (called Revenge), nor do I know much about her, but The Substance genuinely feels like a hostile reaction to Barbie (2023), as if Margot Robbie’s Barbie were in the midst of saying “I want to be part of the people who make meaning, not the thing that's made” and a howling bog witch suddenly ran onscreen and throat-punched her.
During the last few minutes of The Substance I blurted at the screen “you must be a writer!” which my spouse answered with a little shriek and a guffaw. In L.A. people will say to me you must be a writer because I don't look like an actor. I actually love this?? It isn't always backhanded, and for me there’s a certain underlying respect there, an “obviously you don’t need to look Consumable for your job.” Nope, I don’t, and focusing on it would only distract me. Sixteen years ago I was diagnosed with agoraphobia because I did not want to be looked at. Now I try to look like myself—albeit a version whose clothing has been lint-rolled, dangling threads clipped from my hems—and I am trying to remember the pleasure of dressing for my own gaze.
Sometimes I find myself looking at conventionally beautiful women who try and smiling in appreciation: what must she do for a living? Something public-facing. I feel at home on the West Coast because a lot of the rest of the U.S. uses trying to be attractive (among other things) as a class marker, which is hellish. In L.A. it feels like it's just another job, optional, in a universe of possible jobs. It's more complicated than that, I guess. I'm too tired; I need to conserve my energy.
A couple years ago or so, a server at a hotel, a willowy stranger, asked me to sneak away with her and film her runway walk for her for an audition. We had to be fast and conspiratorial since this was against hotel rules, and I was so fucking delighted to be the one that could be trusted.