New Yorker fiction: Alison Bechdel

[asakiyume]

Alison Bechdel, "Gradual Impact"
[+, w/reservations]

This was both fiction and in cartoon format. I'd never read anything by her before, though the ninja girl had read, or at least dipped into, Fun Home, and told me about it (a little). I found it thought-provoking, with, as its title suggests, a gradual (and building) impact.

It's the story of a romance that the narrator resists, without understanding why, until other party, Tamar, asks, "Is it because I'm beautiful?" The narrator denies it, but later reflects,

But of course I was uncomfortable with her beauty, her flawless skin, along with her calm good humor, [which] left me nothing to latch on to.

This got me thinking about how relationships always involve inequalities, and about the barriers that differences in ease (privilege, if you like) can present.

People like the narrator need to be able to share problems; it can't be all one-sided (i.e., it's not enough that Tamar be willing to engage with the narrator's problems; the narrator needs Tamar to have, and be able to share, problems too), whereas people like Tamar can't share problems in a way that people like the narrator recognize as problem-sharing. So, yeah, not a good match.

I was at first hugely put off by the prominence of My Dinner with Andre, a film I despise. But whatever--it's key for the characters, and really, it could be any film.

ETA: On second thought, it couldn't be any film, but it could have been some other intellectual, talk-y film, and not necessarily My Dinner with Andre.

Let the record please reflect that I really dislike My Dinner with Andre

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting insight into relationships. Creating a give and take, particularly for something like problem-sharing, can be so difficult - if person A dumps too many problems on person B right at the start, B may never share any problems because A clearly has so much on her plate already (and also is possibly not going to be helpful, given that she can't deal with her own problems...)

But if neither A nor B shares their problems, then there's no way to create an emotionally supportive relationship - or at least, that particular kind of emotionally supportive relationship.

So what is so terrible about My Dinner with Andre? I've never seen it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Well, first I have to confess that I only saw it once (which probably goes without saying, since I disliked it so much), and that was when I was in high school, but I disliked it because the two friends seemed so representative of positions, rather than real people, and because I found Andre's hippy-spiritual encounters in the woods ridiculous and stupid, and I disliked either of the possibilities presented at that point: namely, that we were supposed to see him as ridiculous (which struck me as pointless and an easy set-up), or that we were supposed to admire him--which I didn't. And I didn't buy the "I" character as a foil/alternative. I didn't like him either!

Maaaaaaybe I would have been more charitable if I'd seen it at a different point in my life. But we'll never know.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Thanks-- I was going to ask.

I too have seen the movie only once. I didn't loathe it, but I remain mystified that a lot of people evidently found it life-changing or something. . I thought it was a snooze. I also thought it was set up to be a walkover for the Wallace Shawn narrator, My then-husband, who had his little issues with identity and public evaluation of image, thought angrily that the Shawn character was being written off as a bore compared to his Exotic Friend.

I wonder, now that I think of it again, whether the movie appealed to people who don't have many conversations, and think that's how a really good one goes?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I liked it but it wasn't life-changing. I've known a lot of people like Andre, and I knew a fair amount of the background of his hippie forest theatricals, so I found that part interesting in the way that I find many people fascinating for one lengthy conversation every five years; they'd be insufferable if I had to be around them all the time.

I actually did identify a bit with Shawn's admiring/exasperated monologue at the end, where he says it's all very well to be enlightened in the woods but the rest of us have to get up and go to work. But Shawn obviously got a kick out getting the second-hand experience of the wacky woods enlightenment, especially since even if he had gone to the woods, he clearly would have thought it was uncomfortable and ridiculous rather than transformative; he only got to experience the way in which it was wonderful for anyone because it was translated through Andre. I thought it was a nice salute to the often-sneered at figure of the armchair traveler.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I agree about every bit of your reading. :)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a nice salute to the often-sneered at figure of the armchair traveler.

Yes. A long long time ago, but I remember Shawn enjoying himself. He got to be the knot in the balloon.

Nine

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I guess he did at that!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You really have known a lot of people like Andre! In your *particular* case, you've known such extreme Andres that Andre can't seem at all parodic or extreme--you've known people who were way more extreme in that direction. I guess to me both people felt like caricatures of their stances, oversimplifications.

I like your impression, that Shawn is actually enjoying participating in the experience at the level of remove of hearing his friend describe it. That's a much more charitable and affirmative way of looking at it than I managed. And I really do like what you say about the armchair traveler! It **is** often sneered at, and yet it shouldn't be.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the theater I went to see it in. It was small and indie and served fresh popcorn. And I went with a girl from my high school who I only got to know that last year of high school, who was really nice and cool-seeming, and it was one of my first hints that my withdrawal and self-protective aloofness had maybe cut me off from interesting people.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your thoughts and rachelmanija make me wonder (by train of thought; not by anything either of you is saying directly) about whether reaction to the movie in part has to do with the degree to which you feel implicated by, or invited into (??) the characters. I felt that I was being asked to choose one of the two, and I disliked them both and didn't want to identify with either. In fact, thinking of it now, I don't think I *was* being asked to choose; I think I was supposed to take a much less partisan approach!

And I did find it boring. About two-thirds of the way through I started eyeing their plates to see how much was on them, and worrying about whether they were going to have dessert.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

My then-husband certainly felt that he was offered a choice of that sort.

Maybe it's largely a movie for White Boys. So many are.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That sounds so irritating. I hate it when characters seem like representatives of positions rather than people; I always wonder why the creator didn't just go ahead and write the manifesto that so clearly boils in their soul.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think for people the film works for, they're not types; they're more real seeming. But even as a teen, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I've seen this debate before: adventurous but self-indulgent exploration versus quotidian grounded life.

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

You're right about the problem-sharing dynamic, and I think it goes even further than that: sometimes there's a mismatch even when you have the same problems, and share them equitably, because you have those problems for different reasons, and one or both parties find that dissatisfying.

[sovay]

Let the record please reflect that I really dislike My Dinner with Andre

May I ask? I haven't seen it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The short answer is I found it pretentious and self-satisfied. The longer answer is in my answer to osprey_archer, up above.

[core-opsis.livejournal.com]

I have attempted to see it three times, all three times with someone who LOVED it, and I never could see why. All I remember about it was that it was incredibly boring, and, in a dark theater, I couldn't stay awake, and upon awakening (at the various places I woke up), I couldn't tell that I missed anything.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It felt stale to me--I guess I had hyperintellectual parents and I had heard those sorts of conversations before, but with, it seemed to me, more nuance.

[core-opsis.livejournal.com]

I think the thrill for the folks I was with WAS the intellectualness of it, but still.....those are the sorts of conversations that are interesting to participate in (though I have zero recollection of what they were about), but not necessarily listen to.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen My Dinner with Andre, but I have read Fun Home, which I liked very much, and Are You My Mother?, which I found heavy going. Also Dykes to Watch Out For, which is unlike any of the above.

So thanks for the tip-off - I thought this worked completely as a short story: it's good to see that Bechdel in thinky mode doesn't *have* to be as tied up in knots as she is in Are You My Mother?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I thought it was amazingly good as a short story! It was beautifully constructed; everything worked together. You say Bechdel in thinky mode, but is she sometimes *not* in thinky mode?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Well, Dykes to Watch Out For goes from four-panel jokey strips to soap opera of some depth - but character-driven rather than self-analyical.

Perhaps that would have been a better word. If you could reduce the quantities of psychoanalysis and self-obsession, I would have fewer problems with Are You My Mother?: but there'd be a whole lot less book!

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

Please say more about your dislike of My Dinner with Andre, which surely was overhyped and yet vaguely interesting for someone like me, being into theater. I didn't get it all. Something about Le Petit Prince being subversive?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I don't recall about Le Petit Prince--it was decades ago that I saw it, and so it's more my reaction than the actual details of the movie itself that I remember. I really didn't like either character, and I thought that the points of view they were expressing sounded too easy, too facile--like if you were to have a stereotypical Bostonian and he was all Pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd and Red Sox and references to the Kennedys and bad driving. I liked what rachelmanija said, though; it's a good corrective. And honestly, if I'd seen it at a different time of life I might have been less caustic and dismissive.

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

People like the narrator need to be able to share problems; it can't be all one-sided (i.e., it's not enough that Tamar be willing to engage with the narrator's problems; the narrator needs Tamar to have, and be able to share, problems too), whereas people like Tamar can't share problems in a way that people like the narrator recognize as problem-sharing.

This is a very apt, concise description of a friendship I had in college that broke down right at the end. The disparity in areas of ease, as you put it, became a constant source of friction. And no matter what I did to try to mitigate that, I was ultimately unsuccessful, because the friction was based on inherent and barely-mutable personal characteristics. (Tamar could take action to make herself less beautiful and thus increase the narrator's comfort, but should she? Almost certainly no.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Even if Tamar were to somehow uglify herself, I think it would never work, because she's acting out of choice, which won't be perceived by the narrator as the same as actions--or states of being--that come from necessity (i.e., "You were born beautiful but made yourself ugly; I, on the other hand, have always been ugly--which is a totally different state of affairs.")

I think when one party decides, like the narrator, that there's an insurmountable barrier, then things are doomed--unless somehow the situation, or Tamar, changes to her liking, or the narrator comes to the conclusion that she was wrong.