Ourselves

Oh, our modern world. I feel that today’s world of technology and convenience makes it increasingly difficult to find a real connection with another person. This is embodied in the film “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” directed by Miranda July. It is about, as quoted from my Netflix envelope:

“Christine (Miranda July) is a cab driver and artist who leads a solitary life. Richard (John Hawkes) is a recently divorced father who’s waiting for great things to happen in his life. When his path crosses with Christine’s, he’s both entranced and panic-stricken.”

But Christine and Richard are but nodes in a network of lonely and slightly strange and often eccentric people floating through the human experience. The film eventually connects all of its characters but does so only after they have maneuvered around the obstacles of modern life.

“Me and You and Everyone We Know” takes place in a lazy, generic suburb, a landscape against which the struggle of humans to connect to one another takes place. This homogenous setting made me realize that individuality makes connection difficult. It is difficult to communicate and to relate. But despite that fact, we are social creatures; the want to be our selves does not overshadow the want to find another person. Or perhaps the want to be another person. Our loneliness and our longing is what leads us to the uniformity.

As Laurence Rickels says on page 69 of The Vampire Lectures, “Want has that double sense in English of lacking something and wanting it.” He goes on to say, “…there is something wanting-wanted-right at the heart, the start, of their relationship. And so with this opening of the three-way freeway, you discover yourself always wanting-lacking but also desiring.”

This quote is crystallized, I feel, in the characters of “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and their relationships with one another. Every character is experiencing longing of some kind for human contact and connection. In the movie, Richard is separated from his wife and his children are dealing with the lose of their family in their own way. Robby, Richard’s six-year-old son, ends up stumbling into an online relationship (under the pseudonym “NightWarrior”) with an older woman, Nancy, in which his childhood innocence is taken for an extremely sexual ride. (For example, at one point Nancy types Are you touching yourself? And NightWarrior looks down at fingertips touching on edge of desk and says Yes.) They arrange a meeting, in which Nancy’s want for a connection is very apparent on her face. When she eventually realizes that “NightrWarrior” is Robby, the little boy next to her, her face softens and she kisses him once. And then leaves. Peter, Richard’s oldest son, is “sexually initiated” by two girls who meanwhile are flirting with an older man who tapes suggestive and racy messages to them on the inside of his window. The character of ten-year-old Sylvie saves up her money to buy household items that she puts in her trousseau. She explains that the items are for her husband and for her daughter. The films characters in the film are old, young, black, white, male and female but they are all grappling with relationships in their own ways (some are odd, some are funny and some are creepy.)

The question now becomes, how do we define ourselves? How do we connect and grow and create our own human experiences? On page 69 of The Vampire Lectures Rickels writes, “You identify yourself by name, signature, and phone number; there is always going to be some part of yourself that represents or substitutes for you, some detachable part of yourself that can stand in for you being identical with yourself.” And this is amplified in the digital growing world in which we live. We have email address, IM, Facebook pages, games in which we create characters of ourselves, and the movie Avatar. We constantly are changing the medium in which we present ourselves, each one utilized to sell a certain part of ourselves. NightWarrior (set up by the teenaged Peter) is an example of this. He is showing his sexual side, something he cannot do under the name of “Peter.” Instead he creates an alternate version of himself, one in which he can do as he pleases from the safety of his bedroom, a place where no one will discover him. We are increasingly becoming an isolated culture, so afraid to expose ourselves and yet, we are so desperate to connect. Its almost like Voldemort and his horcruxes. We are writing ourselves into existence.

But is this a form of narcissism? Rickels brings up this point on page 68 on which he writes, “I guess narcissism for many of us is a kind of forbidden but ultimately upbeat self-relation.” Instead of remaining in our purest form, we have reverted into ourselves, in a sense. Closing out others, creating selfish and self-centered characters. We constantly are changing our image; IM names, status updates, plurks, and blogs. Creating alternate realities. Why is this? I think it is because of two reasons; the first of which is our want to please others out of loneliness and the second is the fact that we do not want to live as who we have become. The character of Richard feels this disappointment in himself. He says “I don't want to have to do this living. I just walk around. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it.” His character longs for something more then what his modern life has lead him to; a mediocre job as a shoe sales man, separated from his wife, living in a shitty apartment, kids who barely talk to him. But how can he achieve this? How do we break out of the mundane existence that so many find themselves in? How can we experience a return of the self? Can we ever? Do we want to? How do we deal with the skeletons in our closets?

I fell that the characters in “Me and You and Everyone We Know” are representing the emotional development of people living in this digital world. We see the transition from sexual innocence, youthful curiosity, middle-aged disconnection and finally death. But where is the fulfillment? The characters only scramble towards it clumsily. Is this what the human experience has become? A scramble? A battle against loneliness? A battle against ourselves? To find ourselves?

X is for Xerxes devoured by mice.

I recently re-found my copy of The Gashlycrumb Tinies. I love Edward Gorey.

Strangeness becomes common

“The Intruder” is a short piece written by Jean-Luc Nancy in which he addresses his heart transplant and he questions the idea to what degree his heart was his own. In my last Though Experiment I discussed both my stutter and my epilepsy. I feel that Nancy harbored many of the same feelings in regards to his heart as I do towards my brain. Of course, if Nancy did not receive a transplant, he would have died. I will not die because of my speech or my seizures, but if they were to disappear I would have a very different life. In my Thought Experiment, I asked myself if I would want my stutter and epilepsy to be gone, and I found myself feeling like I would miss it. I feel like both are a part of me. Nancy feels similar, he says throughout the piece, “I become a stranger to myself.” In his case he lost his heart, an organ so associated with love, passion, personality, and self, leaving him to question what it means to survive and to live.

One of the things that perhaps hit me the most was his quote, "our real enemies are within us: the old viruses, long-time intruders, always dozing away in the shadow of immunity." I think that this statement is very true. We are always our own worst enemies. We have skeletons in our closets. And it led me to wonder if people really want to live as who they are.

What I found very interesting in “The Intruder” that I did not completely address in my piece, was this idea that “our increasing numerous peers, at the dawn of a mutation.” Years ago there was not transplants like the one that saved Nancy and there were no drugs that control seizures. People who had medical conditions often died and often died young. But now, both medication and surgery are possible and very accessible and heavily utilized. As Nancy suggests, in just a few years even more will be possible. I was intrigued by Nancy statement “humanity has ensured that the vow of survival and immortality is one of the elements of the general programme of control and possession of nature.” Our culture has sworn to prevent death, but as Uncle Pete says “with great power comes great responsibility.” Now questions like whose life do we save?

We have come so far in the fields of medicine and technology but have we gone too far? We, humans that is, are becoming so poweful and thus we have become "intruders" to ourselves and to the natural "circle of life." How do we keep ourselves in check? Because it is like Nancy says, “He becomes the one who denatures and remakes nature, who recreates the creation, extracting it from nothingness and perhaps ultimately consigning it to nothingness. He is capable of originating and ending.”

I wanted to be Dorothy.

The Olympic Games are happening! Yes! I love the Olympics! Michelle Kwan was my idol during the 1998 Olympics. I went right out and joined the local ice skating club. I made my premiere as a munchkin in the spring production of “The Wizard of Oz on Ice.” It was pretty epic. The 2010 Olympic men’s figure skating short program in Vancouver is on tonight, and I have to wonder, why is there still so much drama within the sport?

Of course with all professional sports, and nonprofessional sports for that matter, there is drama. Drugs, conspiracy, obsession, and paranoia are rampant. But it seems that ice-skating takes the cake. Yevgeny Plushenko, the reigning gold medal winner from Torino, is the center of the recent scandal. He has suggested that judges can prop up skaters with the new scoring system, just as in the old 6-point system, by inflating their “component” scores. This added to the suspicion by some that exaggerated artistic marks were given to Plushenko at recent championships. And this lead to further suspicions by the Russians and French that Americans and Canadians were conspiring against European skaters. Russians were also upset because Americans and Canadians had produced a training video for judges that featured Plushenko and contained harsh critiques of his 2006 Olympic performance. And now pair this with American Johnny Weir’s love of fox fur and PETA’s rage. Gah! The drama of men's skating!

What does all of this controversy and mistrust mean? The world is getting smaller and smaller and geopolitical lines are becoming fainter and fainter. Europeans are criticizing Europeans, American’s criticizing American’s, Russians are coaching Australians, Chinese are coaching the Bulgarians, and the Japanese are cheering on the French. The cold war is over. So, I am curious, why, despite this crossover, is there still animosity?

Granted, the Olympics are such an amazing event that brings together the world. And you can’t help but smile when you see the coverage from Canada, and I was tearing up when Alexandre Bilodeau carved his way into Canadian history when he became the first Canadian to win a gold medal on Canadian soil. I am not saying that the negative hue is prevalent throughout the Olympics, but still, coverage of those aspects somehow makes the events happening off of the slopes and ice more engaging then what is happening off of them. Why is this the case? Is it our world’s constant connectivness? The ability to see the best with just a click of the button? Is it the fact that athletes, though equipment, technology and training, are doing increasingly better and constantly breaking records? Do we need more then phenomenal athletics to keep our attention? Or is it the simple primal human need to be the best? The commitment of nations have the very best players? To impress the world?

Russia has been the long time leader in men’s, women’s, and pair’s skating. Perhaps this is because until the fall of the Soviet Union, government funding was actually being used to fund the sport and because of the use of sports as propaganda in the communist state. But even though Russia’s Plushenko is at the top, the American Evan Lysacek is right on his tail. And for the first time in many years, the Russians did not win gold in pairs skating. Is this because the fall of communism and thus the fall of the money? Is it because the rinks built in the Soviet Union are now transformed into commercial zones? Or is it because the quality of life in Russian currently leaves few families able to afford to send their children to ice skating lessons? Is it because Russian coaches left to places where they are guaranteed to be paid? Once again, the geopolitical lines are blurring. With Russia no longer clear wins, other countries have a bigger chance of winning. It adds geography to the sport.

That is the beauty of the Olympics. The games open up the world to us. They show people; the similarities, the interests, the difference, the culture, the support. So I am saddened by the fact that networks like NBC are describing athletes like Shawn White fondly as not wanting only to win but wanting to dominate. And what was their reasoning behind the eerie profile of Plushenko that made him look cold and cruel? I understand competition. I understand the want, the need to win. But when is that drive too much? When does the need to dominated become a demon, eating away at moves towards unity, friendship, and inspiration? I also understand the importance of honesty and fairness, and I wish that it could established in a reasonable way and be upheld without excessive criticism or elaborate schemes to circumnavigate the rules.

As a child who stayed up until two a.m. to watch the biathlon, I only hope that the spirit of the Olympic games stays true and is embodied by the athletes, coaches, judges, and fans. I feel that with an increasingly homogeneous and globalized yet violent world we need just this.

Mr. Bebe is frightening!

I recently watched “4 months, 3 weeks an 2 Days,” the Christian Mangiu film about a college student, Otilia, who helps her friend, Gabita, obtain an abortion. The film takes place in Ceausescu’s Romania during the 1980’s, a component of the story that is seen on both the scenery and the characters, where abortions are frequent, illegal and many times fatal. (The exact opposite of what they should be in my opinion: rare, safe, and legal.) Mangiu follows Otilia’s journey through shady alleys and with even shadier characters without music, judgment, contrived monologues or other camera tactics used by the box office hits. So what we, the views, get is a hauntingly exact portrayal of Otilia’s world. Not just the action, but the consciousness as well.

I once heard someone describe babies as parasitic; eating and extracting nutrients from their mothers. And it is a long running and universal joke that children are parasitic because they spend their parents’ money, live in their parents’ house for free, and eat whatever they please. So I wonder, did Gabita view her unborn baby as a parasite that drained her freedom, her nutrients, and her honor? Is that why she decided to have an abortion? Or did she view her baby as a parasite but saw herself as the unable host; unmarried, young, poor, living under a totalitarian regime and unemployed? Was it her inability to provide that led her to her ultimate decision?

In the film we learn that Gabita did not plan to get pregnant and in my view it is almost that fact that classifies the fetus as a parasite more so then the fact that it literally lives off of her. What makes it a parasite is that it interrupted Gabita’s life. I am very positive that no woman who was gladly and voluntarily pregnant would view her condition as a parasitic one. Her pregnancy was planned. It is what her life called for, what she wanted. She was the perfect host, a willing host. Gabita’s life plan for herself did not call for a child.

Babies. Older parents living with their children. Illegal immigrants. Unions. Social Security recipients. Welfare recipients. Spouses. Children. Democrats. All of these groups of people can/are viewed as parasites. I am curious, since when has taking care of someone become a burden? When did a dependant become a parasite? Is there a line between the two? Where is that line? I think once again that what defines a relationship as “parasitic” or not is, for many people, their willingness to be in that relationship and their power over the situation. Right-wingers have been classifying many of the policies backed by the Democrats as parasitic. I small anecdote on this point:

My boyfriend is from the small town of Eatonville, Washington. It is a logging town. Enough said. His stepfather, Mooch, is a lumberjack (literally) and lives out of town. When I went to visit for the first time, he introduced his cat as “Demo.” I asked about the origin of the name and was told that the cat had come around begging for “free food” the year before and was christened Democat (Demo for short) precisely because of this. I guess all Democrats want free food. Or something like that. (Just to clarify, the people of Eatonville are unbelievably friendly and kind and Mooch loves Demo very much!)

Conservatives tend to view unions, welfare, social security, other social policy programs as parasitic because they do exactly what parasites do; benefit by deriving nutrients (taxes) at the host’s (tax payers) expense. But, I feel that all people benefit from many of the policies that are funded by tax dollars, either indirectly or directly. And just a shout out, not every one can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps especially when they don’t have boots in the first place. I feel that by accepting government help should not label someone as a parasite. Or as a Democrat.

Taxes also are mandatory and not completely representative of individual people. This fact once again shows that it is the level of involvement that makes something a parasite. We don’t have a direct say in how our money is being spent when we pay taxes, so resulting programs are parasitic upon us. We have a say in what charities and organizations we donate to, so resulting actions are non-parasitic.

What defines something as parasitic? It is the way in which it comes into our lives. It is the way that it affects our world, our actions, and our consciousness. When we want a change in one or more of these things we embrace the event that does so. But when we are the unwilling host to an occurrence that sends us off of our intended path, like unplanned pregnancy, the event transforms into a parasite.

This American Life: Enemy Camp

This is an episode from This American Life from Chicago Public Radio. In Act Two of the program Ira Glass talks to Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex, about how parasites live inside of us without us knowing. Also, at the end of the clip is also the quintessential parasite song, "I Live Off You" by X-Ray Spex.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=985