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Tuesday

Nov102009

FILM

In Which We Wonder Who Else Is Going To Love Precious

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 3:14PM

Born Into

by MEREDITH HIGHT

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

dir. Lee Daniels

109 min.

You should not go see the Tyler Perry/Oprah Winfrey-endorsed movie Precious for the novelty of seeing Mariah Carey sans makeup and Lenny Kravitz sans sunglasses and the sassy comedienne Mo'Nique stripped of any semblance of soul.

You should see Precious because it’s not just a movie about abuse or even triumph; it’s a movie about love that isn't told from the point of view of a helpless victim or a courageous survivor. It is told from the point of view of Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), who is given up on and at times wants to give up herself.

Precious is not just a victim, not just a survivor, not someone who is defined solely by her circumstances. Which yes, are bleak and relentless. But when you define anyone by what they have been born into, by what has been done to them – you are looking past who they are, stifling their spirit and denying their humanity.

Precious avoids this trite and predictable depiction by showing us who Precious is. And Precious is smart. She is funny. She is charismatic. She is strong. She is a good mother. She is loving. She is so much more than we would ever expect her to be.

She is everything she is not supposed to be, because she has been raped and abused and mistreated and kicked around in the streets. She is this person, despite the fact that the very people who are supposed to love her and care for her and protect her have taken advantage of her, in the most despicable of ways.

Oprah and the reviews keep saying what a monster Mo'Nique is in this movie, as Mary, Precious’ hateful and abusive mother. Yes, she is an evil, venomous, and selfish woman. But we see Mary, too, as a person. Someone who wants to know – who will love her? Who will take care of her?

To her detriment and certain demise, Mary never does learn what Precious learns. That you have to be able to look after and love yourself, before love can be given to you. It is Mary's weakness that allows such abuse to nearly define and consume Precious. But it is Precious’ strength, built from within but also through the love of a social worker, teacher and her classmates, that helps her to transcend her situation.

This urban family loves her through her aggression, her mistakes, her education, her triumphs, her failures, the birth of her second baby by her own father. And that is what family does, biological or not; they love you through life.

What this movie does differently is show us that Precious deserves this love. And that it’s possible for her to receive this love even though her own family has failed her so miserably. The film is all the more compelling because this love does not arrive in the form of a romantic relationship.

Throughout we witness distinctly original cinematic sequences: the dark humor and richly powerful scenes of Precious’ imaginary flights that allow her to remove herself from the present moment. The very moments when she is being beat up, forced to perform sexual acts on her own mother, or when she is being raped by her father as he says “Daddy loves you.”

When Precious arrives in the classroom and begins writing, her teacher asks her, how do you feel now?

I feel here, she says. I feel here. That is the beginning of her story.

Meredith Hight is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.

"Made for You" - OneRepublic (mp3)

"Everybody Loves Me" - OneRepublic (mp3)

"All the Right Moves" - OneRepublic (mp3)

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Monday

Sep142009

SEX

In Which Sometimes I Wish I Wasn’t a Woman

Monday, September 14, 2009 at 8:49AM

This Is The Second Sex

by MEREDITH HIGHT

I was supposed to be eating some salmon sashimi, some California rolls. Instead, I got an earful of cock.

Let me be precise.

I walked around the block to the sushi place in my neighborhood. It has been hot in Los Angeles, wildfire hot. Maybe you heard. So I just threw some clothes on, but not a bra. This alone is probably asking for trouble, because I was wearing my Reading is Sexy t-shirt. And I don’t know how it happened, but I'm a D-cup.

It didn’t used to be like this. I was a B, then a C, and now a D. I thought it was being on the pill for so long, but I went off of that a few months ago, and still – D. It is what it is, but if you ask me, it’s a little unnecessary. But an adolescent girl who is lamenting the state of her flat chest might be inspired by my story. I don’t hope that she is, I am just telling you how my thirteen year old self and Judy Blume might think.

I usually just order at the counter and take my miso soup and my edamame, and my sushi, to go. But there was a seat at the bar, so I took it. As I sat down, the sushi chef enthusiastically clinked a beer mug against a customer’s, like a Japanese Cheers, like Norm. I read the menu, I drank some water.

The waitress brought me my miso soup and I sat and listened. Two overweight lesbians sat next to me, wearing camouflage and wedding rings and bandanas. We were married before the proposition, they were telling the pair of fortysomething men next to them. The men were congratulatory, emboldened, they wanted to know more.

You can feel the loneliness at a bar sometimes, practically see the veneer of sadness that lies just beneath the convivial small, smaller, smallest of talk. The men were not wearing Ed Hardy, but they should have been. They represented a faded California, their time had passed, the tans had turned to leather, the t-shirts were too small, all of it so tired.

They said to the lesbians, can I tell you a story? Sure, they respond. One of the men lights up and begins. OK, this one time I was in Thailand. And this guy comes up to me and wants to show me his tat. He pulls down and his pants and shows me his cock. And it says, right there on the head, “No Mercy.”

Can you believe that?!

Raucous laughter amongst the men, restrained smiles amongst the lesbians.

They wanted the lesbians to come out with them later, to someone’s house. It will be sick, they said. The lesbians politely declined, they were practically an old married couple after all. They paid their check, and then the twentysomething Asian girls sitting next to me left, and there I was, a sitting duck.

I could still hear them, saying something about she seems to be enjoying her solitude, something about pussy, something about something. Worse than hearing them, I could feel them.

How was your sushi? they asked, from across the bar.

Quack.

Fine, I said. I paid the check and I left.

Just the day before, I met some friends at the beach, at Will Rogers State Park. Well, they rode their bicycles, and I drove my car. Because I can’t ride bicycles, I fall off. So I got there earlier and I laid down my towel and took off my tank top and shorts. Like I said, it has been hot, and I was wearing my green and white polka dot bikini.

A mere moment after pulling the sunscreen out of my bag, a sixtysomething man appeared. Well, hello, he said. How are you doing today? Fine. Where are you from? Texas. Oh. You like it here? Yes. Are you a single lady? Yes.

He looked something like John McCain, or Betty Draper’s aging father on Mad Men. I stopped slathering my sunscreen on and looked at his small, pale blue eyes, set against his weathered, woven face, eagerly searching me.

Well, I’d like to get you know better, he said.

No, you don’t. You just want to fuck me.

That’s not what I said. I held back my laughter and I said, no thank you, I am flattered, but I am not interested.

I walked, I fell into the neutral, welcoming ocean. I returned to my towel only to discover that I had had set up camp next to a group of presumably gay men. Or at least, they were talking about the local gay interior designers and they were not looking at me like the sixtysomething man was looking at me. “Are you still living on Dick Street?” one asked. “No, it’s too hard to live on Dick Street,” he answered.

My friends showed up. How did you know it was her? a friend asked. Because of her booty, she said. I could see it from across the beach. Plus I know she has that green and white polka dot bikini. It’s true, I have a booty, applebottoms, badunkadunk, according to the Urban Dictionary. It is what it is, and it has always been this way. Every summer, as a little girl, my mom would sigh as she tried to find a swimsuit that would cover my entire bottom.

Having boobs and a booty suggests something sometimes. The problem is, sometimes you are just a person, and you are not trying to say anything. You are just trying to live, to go about your business, to be who you are and do what you do.

Years ago, in Sacramento, I went for a run. I was just there for a summer, for work. I didn’t know the neighborhood, I didn’t know the area. It was a Saturday, probably sometime around four o clock in the afternoon. I had stopped at a busy intersection, and hit the light to cross the street. It was a long light, and I stood for a minute or two.

I happened to glance over at the car parked on the street. There was a man inside, sweating. He was wearing plastic glasses and his bare, pathetic penis was in his hand, peeking out from below his sloppy stomach. He saw me, I saw him. The light changed. I moved apartments and neighborhoods the same day, disturbed.

Someone said, well you shouldn’t go running there. In broad daylight? At a busy intersection? I need to be concerned with perverts who might be jacking off?

Sometimes I hate being a woman. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a woman.

Meredith Hight is the contributing editor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.

"Falling Over" — The Pains of Being Pure At Heart (mp3)

"103" — The Pains of Being Pure At Heart (mp3)

"Twins" — The Pains of Being Pure At Heart (mp3)

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart myspace

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Tuesday

May122009

THE PAST

In Which Life Is So Content And Complete From Where We're Sitting

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 1:14PM

Therapy

by MEREDITH HIGHT

My freshman year in high school, I worked so hard. I wanted to make all As and be pretty and be good. I wanted to be friends, make friends. I wanted to move on from middle school, start over. Be a new person, be my own person.

Everything was going OK until things started the next year, the sophomore year. I got my braces off. I got pretty. Boys were calling, and I didn’t really understand why or what they wanted. It made me feel strange, why they would call my house and want to talk to me, my mom was always in the next room.

I met geometry and chemistry. I don’t understand these subjects now, I didn’t then. All of a sudden I was getting C’s and D’s. I was supposed to be good, I was supposed to be so smart. before I was smart, now I wasn’t.

Before, being smart was the only thing I was ever really good at. reading, and knowing things, and understanding things and being smart. I couldn’t do sports all that well, or dance or gymnastics or even girl scouts. I was always bored by those things.

I just wanted to stay home and read.

But the boys kept calling and the classes kept coming and there wasn’t a plan anymore, I was just making it up as I went along, I didn’t know how to do this.

I made out with boys but I didn’t know anything about sex and I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I thought making out was bad. I was lost. my parents were worried. I read and loved books like The Bell Jar and Go Ask Alice and Life Without Friends.

In short I loved books about depressed girls who wanted to kill themselves.

After a while I went to a therapist. Depression was not then what it is now, you know, like alcoholism or anorexia. I didn’t know what depression was. I just knew I felt heavy sometimes, dead. Maybe my parents understood, I don’t know, they just wanted me to be happy. That is all good parents who love you want, is for you to be happy.

I wish I could give them this.

The therapist was in his late thirties or early forties. He was kind, but I do not think he knew what to do with me. He was a blonde redhead, balding just a little bit. He was probably attracted to me, and I made him uncomfortable.

This is not a judgment, just the truth.

I don’t say that because of how I look or anything special about me. I say that because sometimes it just comes down to man and woman and it is that simple. You can’t take it personally. The instinct, at least. It's what you do with that instinct, really, that counts.

I failed some test, geometry maybe. My geometry teacher tried so hard to help me understand, but I just couldn’t understand. He knew how much it upset me, he could tell I was trying so hard.

Sometimes in class I would fantasize that actually I was some sort of savant and I actually just grasped math on a different level than everyone else but no one understood it yet.

That was not the case.

My geometry teacher wrote me a nice note though, at the end of the year. I think I finished with a C, maybe. I knew that that combined with my ineptitude with chemistry and science meant that I would not get one of those amazing scholarships, that I would not be the overachiever I had always hoped to be. But this note meant a lot. It was so thoughtful, this note. He just wrote that he knew I tried so hard and maybe something about going easier on myself, or something.

Before all that, I was supposed to be at a pep rally or something in the gym but instead I was in the bathroom, crying. The last time I was in the bathroom at school like that I had gotten my period for the first time. My stomach had hurt all morning and then it happened and I was so confused, I didn’t understand my body, or what it was doing,

Even though I had read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

It was after the crying in the bathroom, after the test, that I was sent to this therapist. He was a nice man. but I didn’t know how to relate to him or what to say, I just mostly stared at the clock and watched the hands pass the time, like one of the depressed girls in one of those books I read did.

sylvia and tedSometimes the therapist would ask me questions, more about my behavior than my feelings, like have you been drinking alcohol? And so on. Sure I had tried it. but I didn’t understand how to do that, either really. I didn’t drink much, even then. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t have sex. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.

He had pictures of his twins on his desk. They were toddlers. I asked him about them once, and he smiled and I smiled. I liked the sight of those twins, they were blonde and they were young and they were happy. I noticed his gold wedding band. He was so vanilla. His life looked so content, so complete, from where I was sitting.

I do remember one time he asked me what was bothering me, why was I sad, and I said, because. The whole idea I had of my life, what schools I would go to, what I would accomplish, how successful I would be, how smart I was, what I could do, was over. It was all over, before it had even begun.

I was fifteen.

I had already figured out that I wasn’t going to be who I wanted to be, I said, and I was always going to be less than what I wanted to be. Plus, now I knew how hard it was for me, how sensitive I was, how easily stressed I became, how emotional, how difficult it was just for me to be me.

I was fifteen.

I can already see my whole life before me, I said. I can already see how hard it will be, I can already feel what it will be like. I know all the motions I will go through, college, work. I know what it will all feel like.

I know how hard it will be.

He did not respond.

I think he may have known I was right.