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A FEMININE DARKNESS REBORN: REVIEW OF MOTHER! by Christina Antonovskaya

(Warning: spoilers)

We were looking for the room at Champagne Centre for the appointment, and I found a pin on the ground that has “I feel it all” written on it and an image of a woman smoking printed on it. I took it and put it in the left pocket of my pea coat and will probably keep it there. This quote resonates with me and also with the themes of the script and film.

Impurity, more exact, the myth of pureness is depicted through Mother’s character with physiology, vicarious causation of surroundings, and the creator of Mother himself, as when Woman subtly hints that she is young enough to be his daughter. Mother has no choice but to be directly affected, as she is the house and the house is her, and whatever happens to one also happens to the other. She becomes “tainted” as the disciples enter. Meanwhile, Man and Woman both contribute as Man/mankind is literally dying and Woman is menacing with her unruly behaviour and minimal appreciation of consequences.

Labour of care and emotions as compassion

Even though Mother is selfless, this emotional labour is not necessarily reciprocated, and instead is diminished by the human desires associated with selfishness and money. Mother is unable to really relate to the motifs of the Sons at the level of resentment they feel towards each other due to problems caused by these same weaknesses of human nature. Yet, it still pains her to watch what happens. Mother is humane, but not really a human like them or us.

Nobody else is as connected to the house as she is, and while there are moments that lead up to immense pain and suffering, she is not at fault for it. Mother, much like real mothers and women do, committed to sacrifices and experienced significant loss.

The current climate

Current events within the year proved hubris of our need to invade the natural environment for our own purposes; government allowance of creating more infrastructure and development of oil and gas rigs and excavation, digging into the earth, minimizing nature’s resources more and more, and scientific “progress” that has questionable or uncertain consequences. Biblical allegories as warnings, or else history will repeat itself, and now it is us having to face it if we don’t pay attention.

Reference is made to Mother also as the subservient role of housewives, girlfriends, or any woman that finds herself in this situation today at the expense of men and others that are dependent on them. The “m” is lowercase. The earth and humans are in a directly codependent relationship in reality, and it is just as portrayed by Aronofsky that at some points, it actually is that destructive and unnerving, although within the context of the script it seems as though it was taken a step too far.

When the house, or earth, suffers, we all suffer vicariously through what nature has to endure, and this is a negative feedback loop that is difficult to break. Not until complete chaos and death, does that cycle break, and after even the child of Mother dies also. In the midst of the destruction and war in their house, the symbolic notion of the tower being built and things taking shape, reflective of society’s structuralism, and that it has taken its place there even under such dire circumstances.

What remains, and always will, is the spirit of womanhood, or particularly motherhood, as a seemingly pure crystalloid energy that is able to withstand all of the damages. While this is empowering, it still feels fiction-based, and sidelined from feminism that is relatable or current. Mother had indeed been killed, mercilessly, not just suffered “an assault” as Lawrence stated, and for no cause but reprise or rebirth into a new beginning. Again, this is at the expense of Him, undeniably the main man and mastermind behind all that has happened in the first place.

The story begins with Him being almost indifferent and struggling to find purpose of himself, as a writer, husband, and himself, almost as if to suggest that of course, being Him, this isn’t necessary for Him. However, tables turn by the end, and the one in full command of Mother and her fate is Him, as power dynamics are consistently evident to not be on Mother’s side, everything from who they welcome into their home to if they have sex or not. It is even difficult for Him to deny his disciples what they wanted, and then to make them leave Him and Mother alone as their force violated Mother, their home, and even turned on each other, as allegorical to the backlash of human destruction as creation.

Ogling the piece as an entity apart from the film almost feels like looking at a secret process. This could be of my cherished experiences with original scripts; this one and the Alice in Wonderland (1983 playwright’s edition, one of my best possessions and was attained mysteriously). It brings something to the reader much different from a viewing experience. This was a glimpse into Aronofsky’s honest stream of consciousness, or as close as we will get to it. Photos from the scenes are embedded in the screenplay, including some of the most grueling moments. Surrounded by destruction, these characters all exude their own livelihood and creation. Even though the film is focused on Mother’s perspective, the story is just as much about her as it is about Him. The rebirth is equally theirs, as they both are forced to start anew.

Hollywood, CA, Paramount Guilds, 2017 Paramount Pictures Corporation.  Screenplay by Darren Aronofsky.

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FOREIGNER by Rachel Laverdiere

When the cockroach and I lock eyes, I’m almost relieved. You’ve half convinced me that I’m neurotic. You say I imagine the scrutiny of the old ajumas at the outdoor markets, the side-eyed stares on the train to Kimje, the personalized attack by the orangutan at the Taegu Zoo. Yet, I’ve caught these glossy black orbs peering at me from above the window overlooking the hall. A hand’s-breadth from the closed classroom door. My only means of escape. I twist the pinching wedding bands your mother had made for me when we came back to Korea to exhibit our newborn son. She’d tried to convince me that her son and grandson belonged in this country, with her. It didn’t seem to matter where I belonged. 

At last, I have proof that I’m being watched, but I hardly feel vindicated. 

Your metred baritone penetrates the wall between our classrooms. The machine-gun clatter of children’s laughter and then a lull. Soon, the hall will fill with the youngest yuchiwon kids. If I don’t make my move now, I’ll have to wait for “Jake-teacher” to settle his next kindergarten class. I ease my chair away from the half-finished reports. I keep my eyes on the giant cockroach while I edge toward the door. 

Once I make it into the hallway, your voice booms. I glance into the window, watch the kids smother you. Black ants on honey. When I rap at the windowpane, the furrow dividing your angular brow crosses concern with annoyance. I raise my eyebrows and mime helplessness. This cannot wait.  

You brush off the children and line them up at the door. Soon, they screech toward the office to meet the piano teacher. 

Rather than explain, which would likely lead you to dismiss the cockroach as another over-dramatization and judgement of Korea, I say, “Just come. Please.” You glance at your watch but follow.

 

Entering my classroom, I point out the intruder, still perched near the ceiling. You glance at your watch again, sigh and remove your polished shoe and climb atop a student desk. Thwack! As your shoe smacks the wall, the cockroach soars across the room and lands on my desk. You topple to the ground, your shoeless hand protecting your face.

I choke back my laughter but cannot conceal my grin as this tragedy becomes comedy. 

“It’s a foreigner!” You spit the bitter words before you crush the cockroach between your shoe and my reports.  

My smirk melts from my lips. Twisting my wedding bands, I ask, “But how can you tell?” 

“Native cockroaches don’t fly.” You force your foot into its shoe and yank the shoelaces so hard I’m surprised they don’t snap. Your gaze hooks into mine, and you add, “Foreigners can’t be trusted to stay put.”

The heat of your words stings my cheeks. The door thuds behind you. 

As I scrub cockroach remains from my reports, I picture the hefty white envelope at the bottom of my teaching bag. It’s stacked with enough won to pay back my student loans. Almost enough to get our son and I settled back in Canada. I set my teeth, determined to leave before I, too, am squashed.

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DESPERATELY SEEKING ARISTOTLE’S FRIENDSHIP OF VIRTUE by Chris Kelso

Let’s argue that reality is plural: the solipsistic loneliness of individual perception becomes our first hurdle. We try to get over that by sharing some kind of rudimentary interior with others—where common goals and grammars can unite and define us as joint proprietors of a greater cognitive space. So how do you deal with people not liking you? What strategies can you call upon when you reach out for connection only to find an opposing electrical charge exerting its repulsive force against you? It seems strange to imagine that in the age of social-media anyone would reject this idea of a cognitive space of mutual connection, but it’s harder to attain than you might think. Well, it’s harder for me at least.

It sounds cynical but sometimes, no matter how many ways you attack this complex endeavour with reasoning there is simply no way in. Some people just don’t want to share an interior with you. In truth, most people don’t. Which means that even if reality is plural, our experience of it is doomed to be paradoxically solitary and singular. Knowing that truth doesn’t make the problem any easier to live with. So, is this just the end of friendship for Chris Kelso? The optimist in me says ‘no’. The other voices say ‘mmm, well…maybe’. 

When you write books about critter-states, child murderers and psychosexual trauma, it might seem like other people’s opinions aren’t all that important to you in the first place. But that’s not true. I write to exorcise my sadness and put some distance between my day-to-day self and those grim fascinations. Writing is to be a friend of wisdom. The books are rarely ever an expression of how I feel or what I enjoy. In fact, I have yearned after stable conventions since I was a young boy. Sure (at my lowest ebb, when I felt it had eluded me) I battled against conventional structures, but always in the secret hope that it would eventually come to me of its own accord. Like a jilted lover hell-bent on retribution. An arsenal of mind-games and denial at my disposal. But I want(ed) friendship. I always wanted a good job and the status that brought. I wanted a place in society. Self-fucking-actualisation. And Maslow was right when he outlined his tenets in the hierarchy of needs (although having critical ‘needs’ will make you inherently ‘needy’, and this is also unattractive). I want to believe in goodness and an afterlife. I want to believe in romance and meaningful connection. Alas, this is the loneliest I have ever felt. All these conventions continue to allude me and I need to make peace with another harsh truth: my own undesirable status as a fundamentally needy soul navigating the morgue of human indifference. Losing the optimist soul. Accepting the void. 

And that’s what this is, I suppose—this, right here. I’m trying to articulate something so I can connect with someone out there in the great collective abyss. Shine a light on it all. But dark matter only consumes; it neither reflects nor absorbs the light. Only eats it. 

Aristotle defined friendship as reciprocated goodwill. 

‘In poverty as well as in other misfortunes, people suppose that friends are their only refuge.’ 

Goodwill certainly seems to be in abundance on a superficial level, but does it have genuine truth or is it some kind of trivial social camouflage? If it did then surely connection would be simpler and would occur on a more regular basis. I’m also aware that the materiality of our reality conditions the connection of everything with everything else. I know we are cosmically bound, like the milling atoms of a crystal—interdependent particles oscillating together in the quest for structural integrity. And as I step into a new profession with demanding and stressful challenges, friendships become more important, yet somehow less accidental and more intentional, albeit still fate-pending. Friendship becomes about utility, survival. The kind where there is no real reciprocal affection. Two cold bodies clutching hold of each other in a superficial embrace as they spiral into apathy together. These are usually temporary relationships and these are where I find myself dwelling of late. And usually it’s me who needs more. I often try to break this shallow barrier with sincere acts and a giving nature. Because I need the friendship of virtue in my life. Unfortunately, no one has the patience required. My ‘needs’ appear ‘needy’. And my overtures of friendship deflect off chitinous eyes and ears. My gifts of connection pass through transparent hands and crash hopelessly to the floor. 

I am lucky to have love in my life. I have a fiancé who connects with me. She represents the world of reciprocity that I craved. But what of fraternity? That’s been a different story entirely. But so what? An optimist resides inside my heart, muted but present. I’ll just have to wrestle with undesirable status until the black soup of dark matter takes me beneath its well. B.R Yeager once told me that ‘humanity sees the void as a vacuum/an absence only because we aren’t tuned to perceive what resides there, and as conscious entities we put consciousness on a pedestal.’ So, this struggle to elevate consciousness through connection and shared experience is perhaps folly. Dying alone doesn’t frighten Yeager because, as he says, ‘I imagine my consciousness will just disappear, become other energy, scatter, etc. I won’t be aware of it or its ramifications, and that’s strangely comforting.’ 

Maybe there will be something beyond. In the dark matter we can’t see. A new world of simple connection and reciprocity. But that’s the optimist talking…

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