To have seen what I have seen, see what I see

Last week I went to the movies.  Ten years ago, that statement would not have been out of character.  Indeed, it would have been as commonplace as me saying I went to get coffee.  This year, well, I can count the number of times I’ve been to the movies on one hand.

But the movie I saw on Monday was important to me.  Important beyond saying I went to the movies and I thought the cinematography was amazing (which it was) or Chiwetel Ejiofor captivated me (he did) or that Brad Pitt was meh (yeah, meh).  It was… is… a trigger, a catalyst, a reason to think and think and think and think.

The rumor mill and press spin say that movie is intense.  It is.  There is no way to sugarcoat that.  But I would argue it isn’t the graphic detail with which we see a whipping or a rape or the degradation of the human spirit (truly the smaller moments of cruelty are the most horrific to me), it’s the fact this film is going to make you feel icky.  Because it happened.

I am eager to finally have friends or colleagues who see it with whom I can discuss the film and the subject.  To not only talk about the beauty of the water images or the haunting of those non-verbal close ups of Ejiofor, but to really have a dialogue about our history.

I fear, though, that for the most part, this is as deep as a dialogue will get.  I have heard more than a fair share of friends and family say they won’t see it.  They can’t.  It’s too much.

Okay.  Maybe.

Last night I turned on the latest Star Trek movie.  Actually, I started it Friday but I got distracted.  It’s been sitting on my DVD player for about three weeks now.  My slowest Netflix turnover since I gave back my last disc of Homeland.  I had it on last night, but just couldn’t get into it.  Maybe we could argue those same tools of cinematography, script, acting, blah blah blah… but I just… had no interest in a story of mass destruction (however fantastic).  I moved in and out of the room, washing dishes, putting away a book, odd movements that really didn’t allow me to connect to the story.  But then I sat and tried to focus on the scene where some great spaceship destroys buildings.  And rather than concern myself with the story and how the hero would get the villain or if the other hero would survive (really, was that even a question), I thought that is awful.  All that damage to a city.  All that PTSD.  The dead in the tops of those skyscrapers.  The politicians who would exploit the tragedy.  The money it was going to cost a city to rebuild.  The children who lost parents.  The spouses who lost their partner.  It made me feel very icky.

Wow, Jessie.  Get a life.  Or an imagination, right?  It’s just fantasy.  It didn’t really happen.  Those characters didn’t even have names, never mind faces.  Why stress over them so much you don’t even realize how we got to the end?  It’s just a movie.

I know.  And mostly I don’t watch those movies any longer.  I just have a weakness for the actor playing the villain… but that is apparently a weakness of understanding what I’m getting myself into with these films.

Wait a minute.  Don’t you love Dr. Who?  Yeah… although the waning of that is subject for another blog.  But I do have these thoughts every time there is a Dalek attack of mass destruction.  Especially when now we only have the white bread heroes to root for.

Then… how can I sit through that whipping scene with clear focus and a dry eye?  How can I not just sit through it, but think about the movie and look up interviews and read the book and listen to the music and crave the day it actually opens in a theater closer to where I live so I can see it again?  Is that not a double standard… especially because it really happened to real people?  And how can I wish that upon anyone else?  Does that suggest some sort of macabre element to my soul?  Or just a complete lack of empathy to what people don’t want to see?

No.  Because this movie is about something larger.  It is about survival.  It is about the human spirit enduring… and a small element of humanity helping.  It is about the darker nature of ourselves that allow it.  A permissiveness that I think comes from not knowing and choosing not to see the icky.

Because once you see it, you can’t not see it.  I won’t ever be able to enjoy Gone with the Wind again.  I also… really letting myself wrap my head around the cruelty of humanity then… and now… find it difficult to watch the fantasy without thinking about that.  I do believe it can be through fiction that we understand the reality.  I think some fiction does that extraordinarily well… which is why I can stomach Homeland (with heart palpitations).  But I also think that a lot of fiction just glosses over… or worse yet… glorifies destruction of human life, a city, society.  It trivializes it and diminishes the consequence because it is pretend.  Like a video game.  But looking at history… well, I can’t run away from it.  I have to think about it.

But that is me.  I realize that I see the world shaped by my own history.  And that may or may not actually have anything to do with what is.  I also write fiction.  So I don’t intend to fully deride it.  I just find myself talking to a blog about this movie no one else I know has seen… yet.  

I hope you do.  See 12 Years a Slave. I hope, honestly, it shakes you as it has shook me.  And then let’s grab a cup of coffee and talk about it.  Ache… and hope as a consequence.