I have had a headache for the better part of a month. I sit at my desk all day, listening to my ears ring, screen split in half—one side a spreadsheet (what kind of spreadsheet? who knows!), the other a video I’ll forget about as soon as I get up. I can’t hear it very well. The ringing is too loud.
(In the car I play music so loud I can’t hear anything. I feel like I need to apologize to my speakers for the amount of screeching Mars Volta I’ve forced through them.)
I injured my back toward the end of October. How? I don’t know the answer to that. I was sitting at my desk, screen split in half—one side a Google form, the other…a spreadsheet, my iPad on top of the speaker by my monitor, playing a video I forgot about as soon as I got up. I turned my chair a little and heard a crunch. I was mostly out of commission until I woke up on Wednesday, suddenly and inexplicably pain free.
Wednesday. The Day Before, I joked that I was going to get so high I wouldn’t remember to pick up my phone, then maybe go to bed by 8pm. I did that, but even then the bad news was creeping over the horizon. I woke up at midnight and remembered to pick up my phone.
I saw it coming. I think a lot of people did, and I think a lot of the people who saw it coming were so violently in denial that they’re lashing out in away I did not see coming. The ~idpol lib~ meltdown on social media has been…one of the most disgusting, vile things I think I’ve ever witnessed. They’ve become (have always been) the thing they’ve been fearmongering about. It is okay, apparently, to call ICE on your neighbors if you’re wearing blue when you pick up the phone. It is okay to wish miscarriages and sepsis on women who maybe did not vote for your current favorite pantsuit and Converse girl boss. We’re going to tear each other to pieces while we destroy the world. The worst of us have chosen barbarism, clearly, and they’re going to drag everyone to hell with them.
(Of course this is not to say that I’m okay with the newly (re-)emboldened conservative nutjobs. I expect the worst from them, and I live in West Virginia so I’m also uncomfortably familiar with them. Their racism and xenophobia and misogyny is not at all new to me.)
Everything’s great!
(I’m kidding.)
There are so many other things—so much other noise. Dorothy Allison, chronic imaginary victimization, entire Appalachian towns swallowed up by mud and poisoned water.
Those are sentences for another day. Or…for never. That’s more likely.
Here’s something else instead:
I don’t really watch movies anymore. Actually, that might be a half-lie. I definitely “watch” “movies.” I can’t say I absorb the Lifetime garbage I use as background static sometimes. I’m sure someone is stabbing someone, someone else has bad trigger discipline, some other stereotypical nightmare wife is stalking their ex’s new partner. I don’t care and it doesn’t matter.
I don’t subscribe to any streaming services or have access to reliable internet, so I really only get a chance to cross stuff off my “to watch” list if I’m dog-sitting for someone who wastes their money on Netflix or Prime or whatever. I don’t think I would’ve remembered I wanted to watch Monkey Man if the home screen hadn’t offered it to me.
My first thought was something along the lines of “yeah I could go for some flashy bloody catharsis right now” (oops) (it was The Day After). Apparently that’s all I’d gleaned from the trailer I saw earlier this year (tbh…that was enough). If I’d looked into it I would’ve made a point of seeing it sooner. I might’ve dragged myself to a theater in Columbus, even, like I used to do when I was sure a movie I was desperate to see was too political or too queer or too not-white for the only theater left within an hour of my house. (I almost did that for National Anthem but I chickened out and still haven’t seen it.)
Anyway: the point is that I had no idea what I was getting into. Yes, it was cathartic to see right wing cultists get what was coming to them, and again—coupled with the fact that it looked good, that would’ve been enough. However! I don’t know the last time a movie ticked essentially every single box for me. Politics? Folklore and mythology? Location-as-character? Aggressively moody lighting? Useful plotholes? Minimal expository bullshit?An ending that is very much not tied up with a pretty little bow?
Hello?
Hello?????
I’ve read some reviews that have made me laugh a little, because it is stunning how much some folks need to be spoon-fed. Of course most Americans aren’t familiar with the nuances of Indian politics. I’m not either! I only know what I know because I retained information from exactly one class I took 10 years ago and recently stumbled upon a used bookstore in South Carolina that was for some reason full of political fiction by Indian writers. It explains itself, though! Everything you need to understand for the sake of the story is there, within the narrative onscreen, and it’s right on the surface! And Google is free! Grow up!
Thank you, universe, for allowing me to stumble blindly into that on that particular day.
Okay. I started this post because I was waiting for my laundry to finish so I could go to bed and couldn’t think of anything better to do. My single pair of jeans (ha!) is clean now, so I’m done. You’re welcome!