Do I expect my life to follow the beats of a conventionally "empowering" story? No, not personally. But I know others expect me to see my life that way, as "empowered" rather than as "victimhood" – as if it were so obvious which is which! And enough of these others are my "moral creditors" for their expectations to matter, no matter what my own are. I end up feeling obligated to frame my life as some conventionally "empowering" story even though I don't believe in that framing myself.
I've been on a somewhat-improbable-but-still-common-enough journey (especially for women) of discovering that my "psychosomatic" symptoms weren't, but corresponded to an easily-measured (once you knew what to look for) and hard-to-fake physical oddity. This journey overlapped with my becoming a mom, and has been made rougher, for the foreseeable future, by childbearing. Nothing has left me feeling as disempowered as my experience of motherhood has, or more on the hook to my "moral creditors" – who now include innocent children! My children are a gift, I know, but I experience them, not as gift, but as crushing, soul-sucking moral *debt*.
"The world owes you neither life, nor cure, nor sympathy; nor flattery that you're irreplaceable; nonetheless, you owe the world," still seems a common-enough sentiment (or at least fear) among the conscientious, one that striking a girlboss pose of "we don't owe you" does nothing to stop. Indebtedness to "moral creditors" can destroy gratitude, since pressure to collect on the world's "debt" (what it seems like the world promised you) so that you can pay off your own debts leaves no space to appreciate anything as a gift. No wonder Christianity pairs forgiveness with gratitude.
Stories of empowerment are stories of overcoming. Overcoming *what*? Few people can honestly tell a story of overcoming benign human limits in order to achieve some exceptional success. Most of us don't have exceptional success, and must resign ourselves to telling stories of overcoming specific obstacles. But, if the obstacles are really obstacles, the story of overcoming them starts out as a story of *suffering* from them – of being "victimized" by them.
What turns pathetic "victimhood" narratives into inspiring "overcoming" narratives is "enough" success at overcoming. But who decides what enough is? An "overcomer" whose story of overcoming fails to impress the audience as adequate has "only" told that audience a "victimhood" narrative.
That resonates “soul-sucking moral debt”. I wish we could be more honest within the church about the truths we know and believe (or know we should believe), and how we actually feel, or experience. Sometimes feelings never follow. I may never overcome depression, loneliness, anxiety, . . . but that doesn’t make my hopes or future hope (belief) unreal.
Exactly! This: “Sometimes feelings never follow.” In our hyper-emotional age, this sounds like sacrilege, or even something from a language we don’t know exists. I think of Job 19, where Job has lost nearly everything, and his friends have begun faulting him for his losses. He makes his great confession of the resurrection: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (25-27a). No talk about how he feels--only what WILL happen because of what God has promised will happen. Then, and only then, does Job reference his feelings: “My heart faints within me!” (27b). And even that says more about God then it does about Job. Our certainty is predicated upon our eternal God, the Alpha and the Omega, who always does what He says.
This is thoughtful. Linking forgiveness and gratitude, and being loved by God and selfless service--these are counterpoints to typical individualistic (and often capitalistic) stories of empowerment. Bright Valley of Love by Edna Hong is a beautiful story of Gunther, a disabled man who lives in a community in Germany after WWI and through WWII. I’m a Lutheran, so I love the Lutheran theology and hymnody that suffuse Gunther’s experience. But it certainly falls into the category of an “overcoming” story that doesn’t have a typical fairy tale ending. He lives his life with suffering and limitations and with the hope of heaven--all at the same time.
Lately I've been thinking about the question of whether there are truly modern fables -- ones that are completely new, as opposed to retellings of the same ancient tales as Jungian wisdom would have it -- and one candidate that occurred to me is Rocky. If you're under 50 it seems like that story (underdog gets a shot at a big match, loses but feels like a winner anyway) has been around forever and has been told a million times, but as far as I can tell, it was not told on screen before 1976. It's not really about worldly vs. spiritual victories as you're describing here, but it does play on the tension between the world's love of winners and the world's love of rooting for the underdog. It was a pretty bold move to show the underdog not winning, and indeed Stallone couldn't really sustain it in subsequent films (though personally it amuses me to imagine a sequel where Rocky just gets married, finds a better job, and retells the story of his big fight in bars for the rest of his life).
I recently revisited the Disney movie *Cool Runnings* about the first Jamaican bobsled team, and realized that behind all the funny and inspiring moments, the story is basically a story of defeat. In fact, the defeat itself is framed as a way of demonstrating (and securing) ultimate victory in the things that truly matter -- dignity and self-respect as well as earning the respect of the doubters.
The movie does a masterful job of taking us on that journey. So masterful, in fact, that it’s easy to forget how countercultural its message is, or how difficult it is to recognize those moments in our own lives. That’s probably its superpower :)
My own story of trying to find help for chronic illness in the face of dismissive and/or clueless healthcare professionals is often hard to share with anyone bcs it’s so different from what we believe about How It Works to go to doctors (often even in the face of our own less-than-helpful experiences) and How It Works to go to doctors with a mystery illness.
Listeners get so lost in the shock (and sometimes denial) of the Way Things Are for me on a regular basis that they struggle to see the bigger story of being led by a breadcrumb trail to find the things that help me manage.
I’m sharing my story with the women’s Sunday School class at my church in a few weeks, and I’m hoping *Cool Runnings* will help me provide a clearer framework for helping people listen to a story they normally see only as depressing. (And no denying my story has been rough and discouraging to live! But that’s not its sum total. It’s more than that.)
Stories where the victory clashes with our expectations of what triumph means - Jane Eyre gets such a victory.
She gets married to a man she loves, but the man she marries has almost been destroyed by his past life and transgressions.
He has been maimed, lost most of his eyesight, his house is in ruins.
I think this raises an interesting point regarding the question the sort of triumph people expect in different historical or cultural settings.
Charlotte Bronte wasn't fluffy at all in her thinking, she'd lost a mother, lost a sister, and saw her brother go down the slopes of alcoholism. She knew very well what women's expectations were: husbands with little regard to their personal needs, a lot of pregnancies, poverty, sickness. Wasn't it Harriet Beecher Stowe who once wrote that all her female friends and family weren't entirely healthy? Charlotte Bronte must have been able to make similar observations. For her, a real-life Rochester would have been quite the catch.
My grandmother, who was born seven decades after Charlotte Bronte's death, told me a lot about her youth as the seventh child of small farmers. She didn't spell it out, but it was very clear that in her world, triumph meant finding a husband that wouldn't beat you and owning a farm large enough for all your children to remain there until they were adults. A great career would be getting more then eight years of schooling and being allowed to become a seamstress instead of unskilled farm or industrial labour.
For her, too, Rochester would have been quite the catch, arm or no arm.
"Have you sometimes expected your own life to follow the beats of a conventionally “empowering” story? What effect did those expectations have?"
The birth of my daughter. This was during COVID lockdown. The holistic, hippie, crunchy moms I knew meant well but did not prepare me.... at all... for what happened to me. It was all about maximizing your birth experience, feeling your womanhood, cherishing the moment.
The (carefully selected, holistic, female) OB moved across the country on my due date and didn't tell me; I found out I was going to be dropped as a patient from Facebook mommy groups. The replacement OB, a man (I specifically was hoping for a woman) then told me if I didn't have an immediate C-section my baby would be too big to come out naturally and I'd regret it. She was 8lb 3oz at birth and I am 5'7". Needless to say, she was not too big. I requested my medical records and that's literally the indication. "Big baby."
Then a lactation consultant in the hospital told me women with wide set breasts often fail to breastfeed, but if I couldn't do it now, my mammary glands would "turn off like lightbulbs." She told me to pump and supplement with formula. I got mastitis from it. I was afraid of starving my baby with my broken breasts, the pediatrician intimidated me even more, and breastfeeding was really, really hard since I could not even hold her without assistance after the completely unnecessary surgery. I was loopy from pain meds for 3 days. I finally found a mom-lead pumping group on Facebook after 6 weeks of low production and pumping/formula; tried their tips; more than TRIPLED my production to the point. where formula was not needed; and realized the consultant had lied to my face. 6 weeks I could have been learning to breastfeed my baby - gone.
I had been so deeply naive and credulous. I believed medical professionals would follow evidence based practice guidelines (they didn't). I believed they cared about me as a patient and saw me as a human being (they didn't). I thought talking to mom-friends and my own aunts would prepare me (it didn't; they just told me I was overthinking things and to "get over" what happened). I thought choosing a nontraditional OB would protect me (it didn't.) I thought birth would be a powerful and self-actualizing process (it wasn't). Now, I've learned to be less credulous. I've learned not to trust those in power. I am a pretty liberal Christian who has always "trusted science/authorities". Not anymore.
I've been watching Fleishman is in Trouble on Hulu and my goodness, the definition of a story with a different approach to catharsis. The powerful mom girl boss is that way because of her birth trauma. It's a compensatory mechanism. She's not just a feminist heroine; she's suffering deeply. I related so much to her story and I really appreciated the show's subtle approach to womanhood. There are no heroes in the show.
Ugh ugh ugh! I'm so sorry for how badly you were treated. It's all awful, but I feel like this is the most inexplicably awful one: Then a lactation consultant in the hospital told me women with wide set breasts often fail to breastfeed.
You... you bring the baby to the breast. They don't need to be able to reach both at once. What on earth was that lactation consultant _thinking_?!?
I know there is a condition called IGT. I couldn't figure out if she was diagnosing me with it or thought I could have it, because she left the room after saying this to me. In the end I didn't actually have a supply issue.....I had a demand issue because I kept using formula. It's almost funny, but it's still sad. I did complain to the hospital but no one ever got back to me.
I really think all this was a collateral damage from COVID. Burned-out, cynical care from providers who were over it. I have a friend who tested positive for COVID and they put her through an elaborate song and dance of taking the baby, giving her the baby, quarantining her WITH the baby, and taking the baby again. Once you've had this kind of experience you realize how many women have suffered this kind of thing in silence. It's ironically given me a deeper bond with her and others with a similar story! I was an adult woman on paper before this. - late 20s, job, husband, etc. But I still thought like a little girl about some things. In this way, it was a blessing.
Rom coms! 'Set it Up' from 2018 is a quintessential example. Love wins, corporate success driven dude winds up finding happiness in love and being a temp. A bit of the opposite of the trope of successful city woman moves to small town and falls for the handyman (which is also great).
Also, The Hobbit. As the last sentences go, "'You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all! 'Thank goodness! ' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar.” Ah, to be oneself in the big wide world :)
More in line with what you were asking for: Dark Waters about PFOA poisoning and American Factory (documentary) hit the right sad tones even in sort of victory.
Leah, your parenthetical about Six cracked me up :-D When I was trying to explain Six to a friend I described it as "Renaissance Hamilton but with Spice Girls." No disrespect to Hamilton or Six! I love them both, but they both require the willing suspension of disbelief, as do all musicals I suppose.
The first story that came to mind for your first question is Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, though I'm not sure the princess's choice at the end of the movie is supposed to be either victory or catharsis. I do remember being surprised at the ending when I saw it for the first time nearly 20 years ago, and I think it would ring even more discordantly now.
I absolutely LOVED Tár, but I was also once a teenage cellist obsessed with Leonard Bernstein, Galadriel, and Mahler, so. Probably not the most “objective” of viewers, lol.
I've for a long time claimed that Les Miserables (the novel, at least - I've never watched either musical nor movie) has a happy ending despite the main character death.
And I also claim, similarly, that Buzzati's Desert of Tatars ends in a technical happy ending despite the external circumstances of the main character looking particularly sad and pathetic (he dies alone in an hotel room after having dedicated all his life to prepare for a war he ended up too old to fight).
I’ve read the novel and I love the musical and I definitely agree it’s a happy ending. It’s bittersweet, because Cosette is weeping to lose him, but we can see Valjean’s peace and the welcome he receives from the spirit of Fantine.
Yes! I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment of Les Mis. And now that you mention it, there’s multiple kinds of upside down victory within the story, all throughout. Starting with the priest who allows himself to be robbed in order to redeem Valjean’s soul.
When I was a first-year teacher, I was astounded that my students were not sure what to make of the priest. I didn’t know how yet to help frame it for them either back then. Their confusion definitely reflects how totally upside down his choice was!
As for stories that take a different approach to catharsis or victory than we’re accustomed to seeing, I recommend Christopher Beha’s “What Happened to Sophie Wilder.” Beha uses two different narrative styles, in alternating chapters, to depict a character who, on the brink of worldly, grrrl power success, experiences an authentic religious conversion that upends her (and our?) notions of success and failure. I can’t talk about the ending without spoiling a powerful experience for those who haven’t read it, but I will say that Beha manages to take a different approach to catharsis/victory and to comment on the tension between worldly and otherworldly expectations.
Scorsese's version of Endo's "Silence" comes to mind. The ending is extremely ambiguous, and refuses to tell us what to think about Rodrigues' choices.
Also "The Peanut Butter Falcon." In the context of the film, Eleanor's decision to go with Zak and Tyler to Florida is a victory for her, but in the eyes of a watching world, I can imagine her actions to be a step down, a "bad career move."
Im thinking of the movie "leona." It definitely did not cram in the girl power ending we were hoping for and, instead forced the watcher to consider the protagonist embedded in community. She makes moves fir her autonomy, but not at the expense of her religious community. It was hard to watch at times, but felt truer than a "true love takes all" arch
You ask: Have you sometimes expected your own life to follow the beats of a conventionally “empowering” story? What effect did those expectations have?
My thoughts: It all depends on whether we met those expectations or not. If we met them, congratulations are in order. But the question remains, are we happy with the results? If we didn't meet them, how do we feel about not measuring up? Can we be happy, nonetheless?
It's interesting to think about The VVitch this way because of how it was interpreted as a girl power story by some people. The Vox review, for instance, claims that Eggers is "careful to leave us with the thought that the witches might be seen as evil mostly because they stand for feminine power" (to fill in some context for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, this is referring to a witch who unambiguously murders a baby in the first ten minutes or so). So I'd be curious to know if The Northman also got that kind of reading from critics, and if not what made the difference.
"As alluded to before, The Northman posits a pagan rendition of the legend that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It makes for an interesting counterpart to the play. Hamlet is similarly urged to vengeance, but plagued by doubts. Is his vengeance justified? Is he being misled by a deceitful spirit? How can he, fallible and fleshly, live up to being the scourge of his uncle’s corrupt court? These questions never trouble Amleth. The contrast shows how much of Hamlet’s trouble and Hamlet’s interest come from a Christian milieu. As Kenneth Colston observed in “Hamlet the Confessor,” the play is full of mangled rites and rituals that point to a spiritual unease reflecting the turbulent Reformation, especially the loss of sacramental confession. Are the old pagan rites of vengeance all that's left when priestly absolution is no more?"
I watched the ending last night and I'm still wrestling with it. On the one hand Joel's rescue of Ellie is a loss to the world of the possibility of a cure. On the other hand, it's so over the top violent (in a world that is over the top violent, granted) that I am torn about how I feel about Joel as savior. I know one can argue that if he'd left anyone behind there was always a possibility they would hunt her down, they wouldn't rest until they found her. But the way they end the story it feels like there's no real hope for the world. Was the story of the prepper and his lover (can't remember their names) a microcosm of the whole: all that's left is to live the best life possible now, but give up all hope for a legacy or for the future, all one can do is live in the now and choose how to die? It is such a bleak world and there is so little good, so little hope. Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure if it's a victory that feels like a loss or a loss that feels like a victory.
well said. It's a DEEPLY ambivalent ending. But I still see hope in the fact that we KNOW Ellie would have decided to stay and in Joel's (yes twisted, but still real) love for her, in a world where he'd long since given up on love?
I like this framing: "What can’t be overemphasized here is Joel’s lack of care, lack of hope, lack of desire to shepherd Ellie. Joel’s a zombie, but Ellie—though scarred—is not."
I really like this reading. Especially as Leah says the part about Joel's lack of care and hope and desire to shepherd Ellie.
One thing that has been haunting me through the show is the lack of young children, of new babies. We see teens like Ellie and we see Sam, whose young life is cut short. But we don't really see families with kids. Most people are older, most communities don't seem to have very many children. The best picture we have of a family life that seems to have some hope is in Jackson, and there we get Maria and Tommy and Maria's announced pregnancy. If love doesn't lead people to having children and raising a new generation, then the zombies might as well have won.
I think the ending of LOTR is genius: in spite of the victory, the scars are too deep to go back to the status quo ante, the losses too great, the world will never be entirely put to rights.
I am currently reading "The Long Silence", a book about the aftermath of WWI in Britain 1918 to 1920, and this is very much the feeling that the book evokes. As this is also a period of time that Tolkien lived through, I've always thought it was on his mind when he wrote the ending.
>Burdens represent the physical and emotional tolls of your adventure. You begin the game with a few unnamed Burdens, and seek to give names to them by telling stories. (Moments of danger and difficulty can lay on more burdens.) Once given a name like "a broken promise" or "a fallen comrade's cloak-pin," a Burden can be faced and cleared. The tone of your epilogue upon reaching home will be determined by how many named and unnamed Burdens you have left.
Do I expect my life to follow the beats of a conventionally "empowering" story? No, not personally. But I know others expect me to see my life that way, as "empowered" rather than as "victimhood" – as if it were so obvious which is which! And enough of these others are my "moral creditors" for their expectations to matter, no matter what my own are. I end up feeling obligated to frame my life as some conventionally "empowering" story even though I don't believe in that framing myself.
I've been on a somewhat-improbable-but-still-common-enough journey (especially for women) of discovering that my "psychosomatic" symptoms weren't, but corresponded to an easily-measured (once you knew what to look for) and hard-to-fake physical oddity. This journey overlapped with my becoming a mom, and has been made rougher, for the foreseeable future, by childbearing. Nothing has left me feeling as disempowered as my experience of motherhood has, or more on the hook to my "moral creditors" – who now include innocent children! My children are a gift, I know, but I experience them, not as gift, but as crushing, soul-sucking moral *debt*.
"The world owes you neither life, nor cure, nor sympathy; nor flattery that you're irreplaceable; nonetheless, you owe the world," still seems a common-enough sentiment (or at least fear) among the conscientious, one that striking a girlboss pose of "we don't owe you" does nothing to stop. Indebtedness to "moral creditors" can destroy gratitude, since pressure to collect on the world's "debt" (what it seems like the world promised you) so that you can pay off your own debts leaves no space to appreciate anything as a gift. No wonder Christianity pairs forgiveness with gratitude.
Stories of empowerment are stories of overcoming. Overcoming *what*? Few people can honestly tell a story of overcoming benign human limits in order to achieve some exceptional success. Most of us don't have exceptional success, and must resign ourselves to telling stories of overcoming specific obstacles. But, if the obstacles are really obstacles, the story of overcoming them starts out as a story of *suffering* from them – of being "victimized" by them.
What turns pathetic "victimhood" narratives into inspiring "overcoming" narratives is "enough" success at overcoming. But who decides what enough is? An "overcomer" whose story of overcoming fails to impress the audience as adequate has "only" told that audience a "victimhood" narrative.
That resonates “soul-sucking moral debt”. I wish we could be more honest within the church about the truths we know and believe (or know we should believe), and how we actually feel, or experience. Sometimes feelings never follow. I may never overcome depression, loneliness, anxiety, . . . but that doesn’t make my hopes or future hope (belief) unreal.
Exactly! This: “Sometimes feelings never follow.” In our hyper-emotional age, this sounds like sacrilege, or even something from a language we don’t know exists. I think of Job 19, where Job has lost nearly everything, and his friends have begun faulting him for his losses. He makes his great confession of the resurrection: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (25-27a). No talk about how he feels--only what WILL happen because of what God has promised will happen. Then, and only then, does Job reference his feelings: “My heart faints within me!” (27b). And even that says more about God then it does about Job. Our certainty is predicated upon our eternal God, the Alpha and the Omega, who always does what He says.
This is thoughtful. Linking forgiveness and gratitude, and being loved by God and selfless service--these are counterpoints to typical individualistic (and often capitalistic) stories of empowerment. Bright Valley of Love by Edna Hong is a beautiful story of Gunther, a disabled man who lives in a community in Germany after WWI and through WWII. I’m a Lutheran, so I love the Lutheran theology and hymnody that suffuse Gunther’s experience. But it certainly falls into the category of an “overcoming” story that doesn’t have a typical fairy tale ending. He lives his life with suffering and limitations and with the hope of heaven--all at the same time.
Lately I've been thinking about the question of whether there are truly modern fables -- ones that are completely new, as opposed to retellings of the same ancient tales as Jungian wisdom would have it -- and one candidate that occurred to me is Rocky. If you're under 50 it seems like that story (underdog gets a shot at a big match, loses but feels like a winner anyway) has been around forever and has been told a million times, but as far as I can tell, it was not told on screen before 1976. It's not really about worldly vs. spiritual victories as you're describing here, but it does play on the tension between the world's love of winners and the world's love of rooting for the underdog. It was a pretty bold move to show the underdog not winning, and indeed Stallone couldn't really sustain it in subsequent films (though personally it amuses me to imagine a sequel where Rocky just gets married, finds a better job, and retells the story of his big fight in bars for the rest of his life).
I recently revisited the Disney movie *Cool Runnings* about the first Jamaican bobsled team, and realized that behind all the funny and inspiring moments, the story is basically a story of defeat. In fact, the defeat itself is framed as a way of demonstrating (and securing) ultimate victory in the things that truly matter -- dignity and self-respect as well as earning the respect of the doubters.
The movie does a masterful job of taking us on that journey. So masterful, in fact, that it’s easy to forget how countercultural its message is, or how difficult it is to recognize those moments in our own lives. That’s probably its superpower :)
My own story of trying to find help for chronic illness in the face of dismissive and/or clueless healthcare professionals is often hard to share with anyone bcs it’s so different from what we believe about How It Works to go to doctors (often even in the face of our own less-than-helpful experiences) and How It Works to go to doctors with a mystery illness.
Listeners get so lost in the shock (and sometimes denial) of the Way Things Are for me on a regular basis that they struggle to see the bigger story of being led by a breadcrumb trail to find the things that help me manage.
I’m sharing my story with the women’s Sunday School class at my church in a few weeks, and I’m hoping *Cool Runnings* will help me provide a clearer framework for helping people listen to a story they normally see only as depressing. (And no denying my story has been rough and discouraging to live! But that’s not its sum total. It’s more than that.)
Stories where the victory clashes with our expectations of what triumph means - Jane Eyre gets such a victory.
She gets married to a man she loves, but the man she marries has almost been destroyed by his past life and transgressions.
He has been maimed, lost most of his eyesight, his house is in ruins.
I think this raises an interesting point regarding the question the sort of triumph people expect in different historical or cultural settings.
Charlotte Bronte wasn't fluffy at all in her thinking, she'd lost a mother, lost a sister, and saw her brother go down the slopes of alcoholism. She knew very well what women's expectations were: husbands with little regard to their personal needs, a lot of pregnancies, poverty, sickness. Wasn't it Harriet Beecher Stowe who once wrote that all her female friends and family weren't entirely healthy? Charlotte Bronte must have been able to make similar observations. For her, a real-life Rochester would have been quite the catch.
My grandmother, who was born seven decades after Charlotte Bronte's death, told me a lot about her youth as the seventh child of small farmers. She didn't spell it out, but it was very clear that in her world, triumph meant finding a husband that wouldn't beat you and owning a farm large enough for all your children to remain there until they were adults. A great career would be getting more then eight years of schooling and being allowed to become a seamstress instead of unskilled farm or industrial labour.
For her, too, Rochester would have been quite the catch, arm or no arm.
"Have you sometimes expected your own life to follow the beats of a conventionally “empowering” story? What effect did those expectations have?"
The birth of my daughter. This was during COVID lockdown. The holistic, hippie, crunchy moms I knew meant well but did not prepare me.... at all... for what happened to me. It was all about maximizing your birth experience, feeling your womanhood, cherishing the moment.
The (carefully selected, holistic, female) OB moved across the country on my due date and didn't tell me; I found out I was going to be dropped as a patient from Facebook mommy groups. The replacement OB, a man (I specifically was hoping for a woman) then told me if I didn't have an immediate C-section my baby would be too big to come out naturally and I'd regret it. She was 8lb 3oz at birth and I am 5'7". Needless to say, she was not too big. I requested my medical records and that's literally the indication. "Big baby."
Then a lactation consultant in the hospital told me women with wide set breasts often fail to breastfeed, but if I couldn't do it now, my mammary glands would "turn off like lightbulbs." She told me to pump and supplement with formula. I got mastitis from it. I was afraid of starving my baby with my broken breasts, the pediatrician intimidated me even more, and breastfeeding was really, really hard since I could not even hold her without assistance after the completely unnecessary surgery. I was loopy from pain meds for 3 days. I finally found a mom-lead pumping group on Facebook after 6 weeks of low production and pumping/formula; tried their tips; more than TRIPLED my production to the point. where formula was not needed; and realized the consultant had lied to my face. 6 weeks I could have been learning to breastfeed my baby - gone.
I had been so deeply naive and credulous. I believed medical professionals would follow evidence based practice guidelines (they didn't). I believed they cared about me as a patient and saw me as a human being (they didn't). I thought talking to mom-friends and my own aunts would prepare me (it didn't; they just told me I was overthinking things and to "get over" what happened). I thought choosing a nontraditional OB would protect me (it didn't.) I thought birth would be a powerful and self-actualizing process (it wasn't). Now, I've learned to be less credulous. I've learned not to trust those in power. I am a pretty liberal Christian who has always "trusted science/authorities". Not anymore.
I've been watching Fleishman is in Trouble on Hulu and my goodness, the definition of a story with a different approach to catharsis. The powerful mom girl boss is that way because of her birth trauma. It's a compensatory mechanism. She's not just a feminist heroine; she's suffering deeply. I related so much to her story and I really appreciated the show's subtle approach to womanhood. There are no heroes in the show.
Ugh ugh ugh! I'm so sorry for how badly you were treated. It's all awful, but I feel like this is the most inexplicably awful one: Then a lactation consultant in the hospital told me women with wide set breasts often fail to breastfeed.
You... you bring the baby to the breast. They don't need to be able to reach both at once. What on earth was that lactation consultant _thinking_?!?
I know there is a condition called IGT. I couldn't figure out if she was diagnosing me with it or thought I could have it, because she left the room after saying this to me. In the end I didn't actually have a supply issue.....I had a demand issue because I kept using formula. It's almost funny, but it's still sad. I did complain to the hospital but no one ever got back to me.
I really think all this was a collateral damage from COVID. Burned-out, cynical care from providers who were over it. I have a friend who tested positive for COVID and they put her through an elaborate song and dance of taking the baby, giving her the baby, quarantining her WITH the baby, and taking the baby again. Once you've had this kind of experience you realize how many women have suffered this kind of thing in silence. It's ironically given me a deeper bond with her and others with a similar story! I was an adult woman on paper before this. - late 20s, job, husband, etc. But I still thought like a little girl about some things. In this way, it was a blessing.
Rom coms! 'Set it Up' from 2018 is a quintessential example. Love wins, corporate success driven dude winds up finding happiness in love and being a temp. A bit of the opposite of the trope of successful city woman moves to small town and falls for the handyman (which is also great).
Also, The Hobbit. As the last sentences go, "'You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all! 'Thank goodness! ' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar.” Ah, to be oneself in the big wide world :)
I thought Set it Up was delightful
More in line with what you were asking for: Dark Waters about PFOA poisoning and American Factory (documentary) hit the right sad tones even in sort of victory.
Leah, your parenthetical about Six cracked me up :-D When I was trying to explain Six to a friend I described it as "Renaissance Hamilton but with Spice Girls." No disrespect to Hamilton or Six! I love them both, but they both require the willing suspension of disbelief, as do all musicals I suppose.
The first story that came to mind for your first question is Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, though I'm not sure the princess's choice at the end of the movie is supposed to be either victory or catharsis. I do remember being surprised at the ending when I saw it for the first time nearly 20 years ago, and I think it would ring even more discordantly now.
I absolutely LOVED Tár, but I was also once a teenage cellist obsessed with Leonard Bernstein, Galadriel, and Mahler, so. Probably not the most “objective” of viewers, lol.
Oh wow now that I think about it “ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR” is basically the entire ethos of Lydia Tár.
I've for a long time claimed that Les Miserables (the novel, at least - I've never watched either musical nor movie) has a happy ending despite the main character death.
And I also claim, similarly, that Buzzati's Desert of Tatars ends in a technical happy ending despite the external circumstances of the main character looking particularly sad and pathetic (he dies alone in an hotel room after having dedicated all his life to prepare for a war he ended up too old to fight).
I’ve read the novel and I love the musical and I definitely agree it’s a happy ending. It’s bittersweet, because Cosette is weeping to lose him, but we can see Valjean’s peace and the welcome he receives from the spirit of Fantine.
Yes! I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment of Les Mis. And now that you mention it, there’s multiple kinds of upside down victory within the story, all throughout. Starting with the priest who allows himself to be robbed in order to redeem Valjean’s soul.
When I was a first-year teacher, I was astounded that my students were not sure what to make of the priest. I didn’t know how yet to help frame it for them either back then. Their confusion definitely reflects how totally upside down his choice was!
Caitrin Keiper has a wonderful essay on the topic here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/literature/victor-hugos-masterpiece-of-impossibility
As for stories that take a different approach to catharsis or victory than we’re accustomed to seeing, I recommend Christopher Beha’s “What Happened to Sophie Wilder.” Beha uses two different narrative styles, in alternating chapters, to depict a character who, on the brink of worldly, grrrl power success, experiences an authentic religious conversion that upends her (and our?) notions of success and failure. I can’t talk about the ending without spoiling a powerful experience for those who haven’t read it, but I will say that Beha manages to take a different approach to catharsis/victory and to comment on the tension between worldly and otherworldly expectations.
Oooooh
Scorsese's version of Endo's "Silence" comes to mind. The ending is extremely ambiguous, and refuses to tell us what to think about Rodrigues' choices.
Also "The Peanut Butter Falcon." In the context of the film, Eleanor's decision to go with Zak and Tyler to Florida is a victory for her, but in the eyes of a watching world, I can imagine her actions to be a step down, a "bad career move."
Im thinking of the movie "leona." It definitely did not cram in the girl power ending we were hoping for and, instead forced the watcher to consider the protagonist embedded in community. She makes moves fir her autonomy, but not at the expense of her religious community. It was hard to watch at times, but felt truer than a "true love takes all" arch
You ask: Have you sometimes expected your own life to follow the beats of a conventionally “empowering” story? What effect did those expectations have?
My thoughts: It all depends on whether we met those expectations or not. If we met them, congratulations are in order. But the question remains, are we happy with the results? If we didn't meet them, how do we feel about not measuring up? Can we be happy, nonetheless?
These are the questions each of us must ponder.
It's interesting to think about The VVitch this way because of how it was interpreted as a girl power story by some people. The Vox review, for instance, claims that Eggers is "careful to leave us with the thought that the witches might be seen as evil mostly because they stand for feminine power" (to fill in some context for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, this is referring to a witch who unambiguously murders a baby in the first ten minutes or so). So I'd be curious to know if The Northman also got that kind of reading from critics, and if not what made the difference.
Here's my husband's review: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/05/viking-vengeance-in-the-northman
"As alluded to before, The Northman posits a pagan rendition of the legend that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It makes for an interesting counterpart to the play. Hamlet is similarly urged to vengeance, but plagued by doubts. Is his vengeance justified? Is he being misled by a deceitful spirit? How can he, fallible and fleshly, live up to being the scourge of his uncle’s corrupt court? These questions never trouble Amleth. The contrast shows how much of Hamlet’s trouble and Hamlet’s interest come from a Christian milieu. As Kenneth Colston observed in “Hamlet the Confessor,” the play is full of mangled rites and rituals that point to a spiritual unease reflecting the turbulent Reformation, especially the loss of sacramental confession. Are the old pagan rites of vengeance all that's left when priestly absolution is no more?"
Have you watched HBO's *The Last of Us*?
No, it sounds too grim and violent for me! I know the broad strokes of the plot, so I'm up to hear you expand on why it came to mind.
It is grim and violent! Also beautiful TV. The ending fits your criteria in some fascinating ways.
I watched the ending last night and I'm still wrestling with it. On the one hand Joel's rescue of Ellie is a loss to the world of the possibility of a cure. On the other hand, it's so over the top violent (in a world that is over the top violent, granted) that I am torn about how I feel about Joel as savior. I know one can argue that if he'd left anyone behind there was always a possibility they would hunt her down, they wouldn't rest until they found her. But the way they end the story it feels like there's no real hope for the world. Was the story of the prepper and his lover (can't remember their names) a microcosm of the whole: all that's left is to live the best life possible now, but give up all hope for a legacy or for the future, all one can do is live in the now and choose how to die? It is such a bleak world and there is so little good, so little hope. Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure if it's a victory that feels like a loss or a loss that feels like a victory.
well said. It's a DEEPLY ambivalent ending. But I still see hope in the fact that we KNOW Ellie would have decided to stay and in Joel's (yes twisted, but still real) love for her, in a world where he'd long since given up on love?
Planning a piece on it for my substack, probably next week.
Please come back and link when you do!
Here's my piece https://open.substack.com/pub/bethfelkerjones/p/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in?r=4yybz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I like this framing: "What can’t be overemphasized here is Joel’s lack of care, lack of hope, lack of desire to shepherd Ellie. Joel’s a zombie, but Ellie—though scarred—is not."
I really like this reading. Especially as Leah says the part about Joel's lack of care and hope and desire to shepherd Ellie.
One thing that has been haunting me through the show is the lack of young children, of new babies. We see teens like Ellie and we see Sam, whose young life is cut short. But we don't really see families with kids. Most people are older, most communities don't seem to have very many children. The best picture we have of a family life that seems to have some hope is in Jackson, and there we get Maria and Tommy and Maria's announced pregnancy. If love doesn't lead people to having children and raising a new generation, then the zombies might as well have won.
I think the ending of LOTR is genius: in spite of the victory, the scars are too deep to go back to the status quo ante, the losses too great, the world will never be entirely put to rights.
I am currently reading "The Long Silence", a book about the aftermath of WWI in Britain 1918 to 1920, and this is very much the feeling that the book evokes. As this is also a period of time that Tolkien lived through, I've always thought it was on his mind when he wrote the ending.
I think that's my cue to mention that my husband and I co-wrote an RPG inspired by the long walk home and the Scouring of the Shire elements of LotR: https://cloven-pine-games.itch.io/back-again-from-the-broken-land
>Burdens represent the physical and emotional tolls of your adventure. You begin the game with a few unnamed Burdens, and seek to give names to them by telling stories. (Moments of danger and difficulty can lay on more burdens.) Once given a name like "a broken promise" or "a fallen comrade's cloak-pin," a Burden can be faced and cleared. The tone of your epilogue upon reaching home will be determined by how many named and unnamed Burdens you have left.
Thanks, I love the idea of burdens and how to take them off by speaking about them. I've never played such a game but just bought it nevertheless. :-)