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devnny · 5 years

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CHAPTER SIX.

JTRM — THE “R” STANDS FOR RECOVERING!

PREVIOUSLY.

is it really chapter six already. good lord. this one is PRETTY ZESTY. devi is big mad.... or is she??? [dramatic music]

Dear Diary,

WHAT JOY!

I met with Devi again tonight, and she still wants to mentor me! Forget all my previous musings about drinking rat poison or slamming an iron maiden door on myself.

I can hardly wait for the rest of this night and tomorrow’s day to pass so it will be night again and I can go over!! I will be a better student now, with no stabbing to be had, I swear it.

Johnny’s hand shook as he wrote, his bones rattling with excitement that what he scrawled on his diary’s pages was really true and not some lovely illusion his brain thought up to deal with immense emotional pain. He was almost salivating in manic joy – Devi was so un-enraged! Her screaming and threats of violence the last time he was in her apartment were so scary, and he had expected the same treatment tonight, BUT NO! She was angry but she was forgiving! Well, to an extent. SO EXCITING!

“You see, Johnny?” Meat kept his voice as kind as he could. “Giving in to your feelings isn’t so bad.”

Johnny paid him an annoyed pout before returning to his gleeful wandering about the house. He had nothing to do with his energy besides move – or maybe he should draw? Devi would be pleased with that!

“You must agree with me this time.”

“HUSH! You will not ruin this for me.” Johnny spoke as he gathered up the pens and pencils he had splayed across the floor several nights ago. He plucked them up like flowers into his hand, shuffling along the floor with his knees bent.

“I’m not trying to ruin anything for you, Johnny boy!” The ceramic grinned. “I told you, I’m trying to help you! And look, expressing your feelings made that Devi girl happy, didn’t it?”

Johnny stood, his bushel of art supplies tucked to his chest, and thought over Meat’s statement.

“Hmm.” He looked off. Meat’s smile didn’t waver.

“It was that heartfelt-ness that moved her. She’s happy with you.”

Johnny scoffed, though his heart quickened at the concept of Devi being ‘happy’ with him.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, meaty-guy. Devi isn’t happy-happy, she’s just not on the verge of bludgeoning me! I will have to do much more than apologize if I want to make her… happy.”

“You’re right! Why not go out and buy her some candies. Write her a poem, perhaps?” Meat suggested. Johnny brushed him off again.

“NO, no, none of your stupid interjecting.” He brought up his double palmful of pens and pencils. “Drawing will make her more pleased than food and words.”

Meat sucked in a sigh, irritated, but made no attempt to argue.

THE FOLLOWING DAY:

“No, it went… surprisingly well, actually.” Devi spoke into her headset as she whisked the bristles of her brush inside a jar.

“OH?” Tenna’s voice pitched from the headphones.

“Yeah, he blabbered on about how he’s stupid and completely reliant on instinct, as far as his attacks go, anyway. He reacts without thought when he feels victimized, and regrets it, wants to control it, blah blah blah…” Devi tapered off, deciding to not bring up whatever his deal was with her eyes and how he loves them, or, whatever that was. Tenna hummed a high note.

“That’s good, but also kinda, a problem, isn’t it?” She asked.

“Not a problem I’m not willing to handle.” Devi replied, tabbing her paintbrush across her canvas. Tenna tsss’d at her.

“You’re okay to deal with… potentially life-threatening attacks?”

“I had to be when I started this stupid venture; knowing the cause of it is at least something to work with. Besides,” Her mouth pulled up into a smile. “I have an idea of how to work it out of him.”

“That sounds rather ominous.” Tenna said, and Devi cackled back.

“He needs exposure.” She spoke confidently. “If he learns how to process little bits of cruelty properly, he can learn to bite his metaphorical tongue until controlling his outbursts is easy.”

Tenna made a face over the phone.

“You’re just going to be mean to him until he gets used to it??”

“Exactly. And then maybe I’ll be nice after.”

“DOESN’T THAT SEEM… KINDA DANGEROUS?” Tenna tried to reason with her. “That’s like poking at a rabid dog with a big stick!! That’s like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull!”

“He doesn’t scare me.” Devi punctuated the sentence with a harsh dot on her canvas. “And he better know better than to piss me off at this point.”

“He doesn’t know SHIT.”

Devi laughed at that.

“I’m just going to be critiquing him harder instead of being so gentle about it. Why am I coddling his low self-esteem, anyway? He needs to hear it, and he needs to get used to it.” She assured her friend. “It’s not like I’m just going to be rude to him from the minute he gets here and bully him until he leaves.”

“Oh…” Tenna frowned. “Well, I guess that’s a little better, but still… you should be careful with him.”

“He’s had his chance for me being careful and nice.” She bit out. “Anyway, I need to work on this before Johnny shows up, so I’ll talk to you later I guess.”

“HEE-HEE. You know, one thing I like about this Nny guy is that you talk to me more now that he’s around to bug you.” Tenna grinned cheekily at the phone, as if Devi could see.

“You called me.”

“But you answered!” Tenna chimed, and Devi shook her head.

“Bye, Ten.”

6:00PM (SHARP!):

Johnny knocked on the door, proud of the promptness of his arrival. He had a large rolled paper and his pencil bag tucked under his other arm, and he bounced on his heels impatiently as he waited for Devi to answer. His shoulders cocked back when he heard the locks undoing, and the smile he wore pushed out wide.

“Hi!” He greeted her excitedly as the door opened, and Devi stared at him with a confused, open-mouth half-smile.

“Hey, Nny.” She knew he was glad to be closer to her good graces than not, but he seemed like he might burst with excitement just standing there.

“I drew while I was away!” Johnny declared eagerly, jutting the paper tube toward her with his free hand. Devi looked down to it in surprise before taking it from him gingerly.

“Oh,” She hesitated. “—good, good.”

She waited a beat, wondering why he was just standing there expectantly, before realizing that she was blocking the doorway and turned to the side to allow him in. Johnny quickly entered, immediately making his way to his ‘spot’ at the coffee table. He sat on the floor and hurriedly emptied the contents of his bag onto the table, sorting the materials of his workspace across its surface without hesitation. Devi watched him with some surprise – she had never seen him so eager to start one of their little sessions. She chalked it up to his misguided idea that she had ‘forgiven’ him, and closed the door.

As she plopped down onto the couch, Johnny perked up, hopeful that she would be pleased with the drawings he offered. Devi unfurled the paper, and raised her eyebrows at the unexpected attempts at realism. This reaction only served to kindle Johnny’s excitement further.

“I only had some garbage things to use as models, but the shadows were very difficult.” He commented as he watched her eyes wander over the page.

Devi couldn’t say she wasn’t impressed with his efforts. It was more like something out of a preteen’s art class, but it was a big jump from stick figures, that was for sure. And his subjects certainly were garbage; a crushed can, a tissue wad, empty cups, bent silverware – but you could tell that’s what they were supposed to be, at least! Some of the light sources were wrong, but his hard, erratic lines had an amount of personality to them that she liked.

A breath sucked in between her teeth. This was such an improvement, she would feel awful to hit him with some rough criticism right off the bat. Ugh, damn her bleeding heart.

“These are…” The lump in her throat fell, unable to squash his enthusiasm. “—great, Nny. Really great.”

Johnny’s eyes glimmered back at her, his smile barely able to keep hold on his face while he absorbed her praise, his jaw instead wanting to hang open. He hinged it shut again after a moment, bringing a grin back up with him as he swallowed. He wanted to scream his elation at the top of his lungs and barrage Devi with insistent ‘thank you’s, but managed to keep the words trapped wafting around in his chest like a bubble.

“Thank you.” He exhaled, eyes on the table.

Devi inched back further on the couch, second-guessing her decision to praise him. She knew that’s what he wanted to hear, and maybe it was a bad idea to give him what he wanted so soon. Or maybe she was spiteful, and it rubbed her wrong to reward him regardless. Could be either. She had no time to dwell on it, and tapped the table with her knuckle to garner his attention.

“I’ll be expecting even more from you now, Nny.” She told him, somewhere between approval and a warning. The nervous smile he held made Devi feel a little better about her small act of kindness.

SOME TIME LATER:

Part of her felt badly every time Johnny’s eyes fell as she critiqued his work, but the other part of her felt absolute, pure, vindictive satisfaction every time she got the chance to. She felt like an evil middle school art teacher, holding the poor self-esteem of the nasty little student that continuously misbehaved in class, tight in her unforgiving claws. He looked so disappointed – whether it was in his efforts, or that she didn’t readily applaud him, she didn’t know – but Devi would remind herself, and him, that you don’t improve by being lied to with sweet words.

But then she would throw him a compliment about the lining on something, or the perspective on this, or the dialogue here, and that was enough to keep his engine chugging along.

In her now very limited free time, she would brag to Tenna that her plan was working rather well. At a point, as the weeks wore on, Johnny had come to expect the harsh comments from her and would brace himself accordingly. Devi felt some pride each time she saw his jaw tighten; a subtle physical indication that he was holding something back, holding something in. The evidence that he could, in fact, control himself in any small increment, was promising.

So she tried harsher words – words that would warm her own face as they passed from her brain out of her mouth. “Ugly” or “stupid”; words that should never go hand-in-hand with mentorship. Aloof interest in his completed projects, asking him cruel questions, like if he truly felt this was “completed”, or if he bothered to try at all.

It was very dangerous. Johnny argued the first few times, aggressive in his own defense, but would shortly quiet himself – very good, Devi thought. That anger being there was the point in all of this. If he made no show of it, there was no indication he was making any improvement in his emotional discipline, and she didn’t want him to be taking her verbal lashings without a fight simply because he respected her. As though his brain digested the vile things she spewed at him without any alarm bells or security measures, because it was her, and she got a free pass.

Tonight was the night she planned to go completely overboard. A ridiculous amount of bitchiness for a multipage comic that certainly didn’t deserve the cruelty she was going to bestow upon it, but would be the necessary martyr, the ever-important climax to this reckless ploy of hers. She informed Tenna that there would indeed be yelling, on her part, this evening, and to please not involve the police. Tenna was free to intervene with the cops, or a big can of mace, if she heard any screams of terror afterward, though.

Johnny had brought the finished comic pages with him, and was none too enthused about handing them over to her. Devi’s heart pounded as she prepared herself for the overly-aggressive response she had been rehearsing in her head for days, and she had prayed to the unmerciful theater-goth gods that she had the salt to maintain her malicious act without even a shake or crack in her voice. And, to like, any other deities, that might want to provide her with a little divine protection from Johnny should he want to lash out physically. That would be nice.

And it was quite a performance; false insult at what he presented her with, biting words about his lack of effort in just about everything, despite knowing well that the pages she just shoved back into his arms where some of his best to date. It pained Devi, a little, to do this to him – to any artist, for that matter. Johnny looked so confused and upset as she yelled at him that he wasn’t taking this seriously, but she forced herself to shut down his counterarguments with even louder shouting. With one more heinous act against him, she slapped the papers out of his hands and onto the floor. Johnny stared at her, pupils narrow as slits, in disbelief.

But still no murder came.

Devi let herself catch her breath with slow, quiet huffs, and feigned a cool head.

“Well?” She asked once she felt like she wouldn’t pant the words out. “Pick them up.”

It was so belittling, so degrading. She could tell from his trembling eyes that the blatant disrespect of it hit its mark, and jumped far down his gullet, twisting and burning up his innards unforgivingly. Devi herself might have stabbed someone for giving her or her art the same treatment. Her body tensed a moment, waiting, listening to Johnny’s heavy breathing, and watching his slender frame twitch and shiver under the weight of his desire for egocentric vengeance.

Devi’s lips parted in surprise when his legs buckled, and he bent slowly onto his knees to pick up the pages scattered between them.

Nothing could have stopped the giant grin that cracked across her face.

As Johnny plucked the last paper from its resting spot, Devi squatted down so she was eyelevel with him, her elbows balanced on her knees. His fingers flinched from her sudden proximity, and the page fell from his grasp, leaving it to be snatched up by Devi. She took a moment to appreciate the panels that had been so neatly inked onto its surface, before lifting her gaze above the paper and to its creator. Johnny’s wide eyes stared at the ground, franticly concentrating on the carpet instead of the woman in front of him. Devi’s smile persisted.

“I bet you’ve killed me a hundred times in your head tonight.” Her voice had a smirk in it. The comment made Johnny flinch again, and he flickered his eyes up to her for only a moment before looking away again, willing himself not to acknowledge such a thing.

“There’s no way you haven’t.” Devi said confidently. “It’s too easy for you.”

Johnny’s mouth bent into a miserable scowl, and he lowered his head further so she wouldn’t see. He was sure that she was mocking him again, this time for how pitiful the restraint on his murderous tendencies was. It wasn’t like he wanted to have those kinds of thoughts about her!

“You could have… I don’t know.” She fanned the page while she thought. “Grabbed me, twisted my arm, broke something… stabbed me, obviously.”

Devi heard the stack of papers in Johnny’s hands crinkle under his tightening grasp, and reminded herself that he could still attack her right now, if he wanted to. She waited a moment, glancing at the rattling movement of bunched stationary from her view above his head, and let her smile perk up again when the shaking stopped. Unbelievable. She’d end this quickly, to be compassionate for once.

“But you know what Johnny?” Her tone was very smug, and Johnny’s lips quivered a bit, knowing she was asking him to respond, to be a part of this conversation. She was so foolish! He was purposefully keeping out of this altercation for her own safety – could she not see that?

Still, he couldn’t deny Devi anything she asked of him at this point. With an unsettling sigh, he urged himself to raise his head to meet her stare. She looked so carelessly arrogant, it was unlike her. He would have carved a face like that right off of anyone else.

“What?” He snapped. Best to keep it short. Devi smiled fully again.

“You didn’t.”

The tension in Johnny’s face fell slack suddenly, and he searched her expression for any kind of hint at what a statement like that from her could mean. It couldn’t be so simple when it was from an angry Devi, but his mind was unable to get ahold of any deeper insult, or allusion to an action previous. He thought for a few seconds, debating what kind of cruel comment that could be – he didn’t? Yes, obviously he didn’t, but what did that have to do with anything, he wondered.

A soft blink brought with it a cool blanket of clarity. He… didn’t. What a strangely obvious, but vastly important note to make. Despite all of her viciousness, all her degrading criticisms, and even some level of physical aggression, he had made no move to strike back. Johnny was dumbfounded a moment longer, and Devi took the opportunity to reach forward and take the remaining pages of his comic from his hands. She stood, taking Johnny’s attention upward with her for a moment, before his eyes dropped to the ground again and scoured the floor while he thought.

She had been testing him! It was so clear to him now! It had been so easy to believe that Devi was just spiteful and unsatisfied with him, he didn’t even stop to consider any other motivations behind her sudden hostile behavior at all. But most importantly; he had passed. Unwittingly, he had passed the intensive test of his will – which he assumed was likely the point, not knowing what she was attempting to do and all.

With the rug pulled out from under him, Johnny had only felt confused at first, but now had a blossoming feeling of accomplishment spreading throughout his chest cavity. An unsure smile sprung up onto his mouth. He moved to join Devi in standing, and felt comfortable, for the first time in weeks, meeting her eyes so casually. She was skimming over his drawings, but looked up to him as he stood.

“If I’m being honest, you’re doing really good, Nny.” She huffed a laugh. “Like, really, really good. I’m all proud and shit.”

That accomplished feeling Johnny had felt a moment ago erupted fully, worming through every nook and cranny of his torso and out to his extremities. Devi was proud of his efforts! She was happy with him, really genuinely happy this time! His uneven smile widened into a clean crescent shape, and Devi laughed at his exhilaration from her comment.

“Screw drawing tonight.” She spoke again, and tossed the pages onto her living room table. “I think I owe you dinner.”

Johnny’s brows rose in surprise.

“What?” He gasped.

“I feel… kinda bad for being so harsh on you.” Devi looked around, not wanting to dwell on it. “And you’ve been diligent and whatnot in your projects so, fuck it, let’s go get noodles. My treat.”

Johnny only stared at her unblinkingly as he attempted to digest his good fortune; praise, smiles, laughter, “proud”, “treat”? All such unfamiliar actions and words – but not unwelcome!

“Uh—sure!” He gleamed. “Yes!”

Devi laughed again, feeling light and airy after bogging herself down with rigorous, exaggerated anger. She threw her coat on as she headed out the door, with Johnny following enthusiastically behind.

NEXT.

#jtrm #jthm #mine #devnny #now we really moving on #now its time for fun shit!!!!!!!!#chapter

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decolonizingmyfeels · 6 years

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LET'S TALK ABOUT THE GENDER COMMENTARY IN MOTHER!

There's been criticism abound for Requiem for a Dream/ Black Swan director, Darren Aronofsky's latest emotional roller coaster, but the vast majority of it is founded upon a refusal (or inability - who knows?) to note even a snippet of the allegory to be found in it. Were I to have taken this movie literally I'm sure I'd have been similarly frustrated, if not downright annoyed, by the subsequent apparent lack of coherent plot and sudden, drastic, unexplained crescendos and denouements in its pace. Without acknowledging the metaphor rooted in this dizzying presentation however, these criticisms, I feel, hold little relevance to the movie and my intent here is not to exhaust them any further.

The critique I do find interesting, however, is Dahlia Grossman-Heinze's at Bitch magazine, due to the sheer irony of what I had, until then, taken to be an explicitly and objectively feminist film being completely slandered by a feminist magazine, for feminist reasons. I had even assumed Mother!'s feminism played a part in its dismal reception, disgruntling the overwhelmingly white male demographic of powerful movie critics with its rare lack of regard for placing their priorities at the forefront.

Grossman-Heinze, on the other hand, argues she "didn’t need another pop culture artifact about the innate selflessness and nurturing qualities of women as they give and give and give until everything, including their hearts, have been taken from them;" and I’m suddenly wondering why more critics didn't hail this film as prime jerk-off material. Grossman Heinze is as sick as the rest of us of being forced to watch the white male's idealized conception of femininity dote on her man and take the bludgeoning for his mistakes. But I think such a vision of this film in particular fails to recognize femininity, specifically the western social and cultural conception of it, as a concrete entity able to be critiqued and metaphor'd; it instead assumes that to personify this conception is to claim it is a real one representative of actual persons. I personally felt Aronofsky is no more claiming Mother represents actual women than he is claiming that the 'Poet' represents an actual God. Mother!, to me, was a picking apart of a mythos, being of course the western Biblical story and its imagery. The story he is telling is someone else's story, not his, and these are not his characters or archetypes. It was not his fetish to put Mother through this torture. He is simply taking the already written story western culture has told itself for centuries and flipping it on its head. He makes Mother a caricature intentionally, asking - if Christianity's 'ideal feminine and mother' truly existed as she's been described to us, what would her story be? How are we treating her and how would she feel about it? The overwhelming majority of the film is shot as literally as possible from her point of view, from above her shoulder, or in close-up inspection of her face and emotional expression. This in itself is vastly different from the tropes Grossman-Heinze is referring to. What Aronofsky is doing is the equivalent of retelling the biblical parable through the perspective of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother, and in trying to recall the last time we saw anything of the sort, we realize just how radical Mother! is as a film, especially one that so sneakily found its way into standard theatres. He is framing for us our own imagery of womanhood, the one we ourselves constructed and have romanticized for so long, while we also spit on everything she supposedly cares about, considering her always an accessory rather than a full-fledged character with an experience of her own.

I understand the apprehension against just another male saviour complex in the case of Aronofsky: yet another man thinking he has anything to say about the plight of women or what to do about it. But it's a fine line to draw between checking that privilege, and tabooing men away from having their own experience of feminism. It can be difficult to draw the line between keeping feminist dialogue centered around women, and from designating the responsibility of it entirely onto women. The latter would only be a continuation of thrusting society's emotional labor onto women's shoulders, expecting them to be our saviors from patriarchal ruin by curating themselves into a new ideal. Yes, we are tired of the old narrative that expects women to prioritize doting commitment and motherhood above all else, but it does not make sense to reject that stereotype by rejecting motherhood and commitment as concepts. We have to make sure we are distinguishing clearly between expectations of women, and actual women, because it is the former, not the latter, that is problematic here. And yes, it is nice to witness women in media taking control of their bodies, and their work, and denouncing those who mistreat her - it is a woman's story that, for centuries, we've not been allowed to see, at least not in a positive light. But Mother's story is also a woman's story, and to deny hers for the sake of feminism is contrary to all that feminism is trying to accomplish. To do so comes dangerously close to declaring there is a 'right type' of woman to portray on screen. Even if not Grossman-Heinze's intent, I think it an important idea to address, for it’s not as if it’s rare to find people within the feminist movement rejecting ideals of womanhood simply by staking their flag in a new one. If it is not okay to depict quiet, docile, mother-oriented women in the media, we aren't liberating women to be themselves, but only perpetuating our connotations of femininity, as we imagine it now, as undesirable. Feminism can't only be about proving that women can be 'one of the guys' too. It can't just be about freeing people from adhering to gender expectations, but also about refusing to think of traditionally feminine traits as inherently shameful, weaker, or undesirable, for those women and men and others outside the binary who do happen to embody them (which is in some degree, all of us).

In regards to the romantic relationship between Lawrence and Aronofsky outside of the film, it doesn't feel appropriate to me to play it as evidence of Aronofsky's inherent martyring of women. To assume anything about the power dynamics at play between them, and implying Lawrence's only role within the relationship is as 'muse' to her man, is to deny Lawrence agency and her own vision of this film as an artistic piece, just as it does to assume that embodying femininity is only the result of having had it forced upon us (read: it is so abhorrent, who would want it otherwise?).

And I can't take seriously a claim that stories about the subjugation and exploitation of femininity are “old hat” and unhelpful to women when, in a possibly narcissistic argument that I'll stand by anyhow, I myself spent days after watching this film reluctantly acknowledging how much I emotionally identified with Mother and with having had my body, investments, and creations shat on by patriarchal values. I was eventually forced to reconcile with the places in which I still allow these things to happen in my life despite all my feminist ranting and literature. It was reaffirming to see a protagonist with whom to identify with over the struggle of knowing when and how to hold boundaries without denouncing the 'femininities' of nurture and patience, especially when so often given only dismissive disrespect, at best, in return. Patriarchy isn't going to end simply by teaching women to embrace masculinity. We must also be willing to have an honest relationship with how we, as a social entity, treat femininity, and that is what this movie is trying to establish.

Jennifer Lawrence did express frustration that Aronofsky refused to be up-front about what this film had in store for us while instead selling it as another, mostly inconsequential, fun-time Amityville-esque horror that would pass through our systems easily some relaxed Friday night, only to leave us choking trying to swallow it down the wrong tube. She knows that in planting false expectations and not warning us of the allegory, we were more likely to miss it, and thus Aronofsky ensured the bombed ratings and criticism that might not have been quite so poisonous otherwise. But as he giggles in the background of the interview, I feel comfortably certain that ratings are not his priority here. He recognized that in disclosing the intent of Mother!, he would have attracted only a self-selective audience already interested in having the dialogue he's starting, rendering the film less impactful and frankly, less entertaining as a cultural phenomenon. Critics claim "we get the message; I sympathize with what he's trying to say. But did he really have to cannibalize a baby?" rather than admitting bluntly '"Did he really have to say we cannibalize babies? Did he really have to ruin the memory of my communion? Did he really have to be so harsh?" Whether he did is, of course, debatable. It could even be argued as a debate about the merits of femininity vs. masculinity, gentle patience vs. blunt force. But regardless of the answer, the method was certainly intentional, and in Aronofsky's history, nothing new. His body of work pretty blatantly reveals a conviction that emotional horror and intense discomfort is the way to hit home with an audience, or is, at least, the fun he gets out of directing.

He leaves us at the finish of the movie with the face of a new woman whose innocent concern juxtaposes the doomed fate we know comes her way, having been forced to witness the Poet's insistence that the cycle must repeat itself, that he has no choice, that his fans have no choice, and that the only one who does is the woman who can choose to surrender the only thing she has left. Aronofsky gives us a new face whose treatment we can again allow to befall her, knowing full well its cruelty, or for whom we can look back upon our own mythos as a lesson in what we could change for the future. He asks if we can dare let go of attachment to our idea of womanhood and instead see actual, real life women, with wishes and needs that may not cater to our own.

#feminism #feminist #femininity #gender #movie review #horror movies #darren aronofsky #film review #jennifer lawrence #mother movie #writers #writing #social justice #movies #patriarchy

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