Man, I need to be doing this more regularly in order to keep on top of all the things. I know that one of the things I wanted to say was about social media, by which I mean Instagram. I had taken a few photos of favorite passages out of Eve's Hollywood, and I posted them as IG stories. There's this one person I've been trying to impress, lately, so by-and-large those photos were for them. But even still, even if it's to show everyone who follows me, it felt too cheap, and I took them down. I think it was in Maggie Nelson's Argonauts where she talks about talking with her partner about language. Her partner thinks that language denatures things, always. Every time. That you can't write something, express something in words, without cheapening it. I can see what they're saying, although I'm not sure that I agree. Maybe good writing, the best writing, can capture something of the real thing without cheapening it. But of course, writing does simplify, distill, flatten. Or it tends to, at least. But how much more does social media do that? Or am I just being a snob? Maybe social media is an art form. Why wouldn't it be? It's just new and democratic, so it doesn't feel elevated. Does art have to be elevated? Anyway, going under the assumption that Instagram cheapens and flattens the experiences it represents, what should I put on it? Back up. Cheapens, flattens, but also, of course, highlights. It puts out into the public sphere something I want to represent. To call attention to. To have people associate with me. Anyway, what I decided was that really good moments, things that really matter, are best held in close to the vest. As soon as they're represented on my IG page or stories, they become something I'm showing off? I'm representing. They become not the real thing and upstage the real thing (in my brain at least). But there's plenty of stuff that otherwise goes overlooked -- like a bunch of pennies on the ground or a palm frond in front of a microsoft-blue sky -- that posting on IG can actually elevate a bit. Or maybe at least highlight. While also telling everyone on there, Hey look, I look at things.
MLog time.
**SPOILERS**
THE BROOD
1979
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Written by: David Cronenberg
Watched: 2/7/22
Frank is concerned when he goes to visit the mountain psychiatric institute where his wife is receiving treatment. He watches a demonstration where Hal, the psychiatrist, role plays as a patient’s father, telling him to go through the rage. The patient’s skin breaks out in boils, a physical representation of the festering going on inside of him. It seems to bring him release. Frank takes his daughter home – she stays at the institute one weekend a month in order to see her mother – and finds that she has bruises on her back. It looks like the mother has beaten her. Frank is stonewalled when he tries to figure out what happened. He doesn’t want to send him daughter back to the institute, but he doesn’t have the legal right to keep her away. He plans on suing the institute and starts trying to talk to people who have received treatment there in the past. His daughter goes to stay with his wife’s mother, a woman his wife wouldn’t let her see as we learn that she used to beat Frank’s wife (Nola) as a child. While the daughter, Candice, is at her grandmother’s house, a small figure breaks in and murders the grandmother. Frank meets a man who believes his treatment at the institute caused his thyroid cancer, which is a huge exterior tumor on his neck. Hal has a session with Nola where he pretends to be her father. Shortly afterwards, Nola’s real father is murdered by one of the small figures. Hal, realizing something’s going on, sends home all the patients except for Nola. Frank has Candice’s school teacher over for dinner one night. Candice misses having a mother-figure around. Nola calls that house while Frank is out, and the school teacher answers. Nola is enraged. A later day at school, two “children” show up in class and murder the school teacher. They also take Candice. Oh, earlier, one of these “children” dies – sort of runs out of gas – and doctors are able to examine it. Very deformed, the weirdest thing about the child is that it has no belly button. Anyway, one of the needier patients contacts Frank and tells him that Nola has all these children at the institute. Frank goes up there, to find Candice. Hal explains that the children are all a product of Nola’s rage. They’re docile as long as Nola’s docile. They kill when Nola’s angry. Candice is with these children, and if Nola gets angry they’ll kill her. Frank goes in to talk to Nola, trying to keep her calm. Nola reveals that she has this exterior egg sack thing, and she gives bloody birth to a rage baby right in front of him. (When the baby is out she licks it with her tongue like an animal.) Frank can’t hide his disgust, and Nola notices. She flies into a rage, right when Hal has Candice in his arms and is trying to remove her from the children’s dormitory. The children kill Hal and are about to kill Candice, when Frank kills Nola. The children drop.
Whew, that summary went on for a while. It feels like a fairly straightforward movie, so I’m surprised there’s so much to say, summary-wise. I liked this movie but didn’t love it. Samantha Egger who plays Nola did a wonderful job in that reveal scene. She looked transcendent and insane. Wikipedia talks about how Cronenberg wrote this after his acrimonious divorce and custody battle. It might be why Frank comes across to me as a little flat. He loves his daughter. He wants to protect her. He’s long suffering under his wife, who married him for his sanity, he says, hoping it would rub off on her. You could see how someone in a custody battle would think he alone is the sane one. That he has all the sanity and rationality. Unfortunately, it makes for a slightly dull character. I like how the movie plays so hard into emotions – emotions are the whole thing, really, the whole horror – while also having creepy children that are going around killing people. The horror here is maybe a lack of control. Frank can’t protect his daughter. Nola and the other patients can’t control their emotions. We reach adulthood in this soupy primal world with little impotent brains recommending rationality. Meanwhile our emotions and our bodies (which include our brains, really) conspire against us. We’re at the mercy of one another and people are popping off all over the place.
Rating: ★★★
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