Simple Passion

Can I just begin with what a conundrum the title is? Lets think about this critically...does "simple passion" even exist? isn't Ernaux doing the whole concept of passion a major disservice by declaring it to be simple? I mean passion is what fuels lives, and ends them. Passion is the byproduct of desire and desire is our drive for life therefore can passion be simple? Conceptually no, it cannot be because it leads us to ask where does it come from, and why can we not control being over taken by this emotional wire puller? However physically it can be simple, its a feeling, a force beyond our control and for better or for worse we're just along for the ride, and this is what Ernaux cleanly demonstrates: the power and control of passion. Ernaux does not live her life in the present like most people do, she either lives it in the distant past or in the ominous future. She states "I would start expecting his phone call again, with all the more suffering and anxiety as the date of our last meeting receded." This passage encompasses her living in the past from when she last saw A and worrying about the future in which she may never see him again. To Ernaux time passing is a nuisance, if she is with A she wants to to go slower, if she is without him she needs it to go faster; to her the past is the only life that she would like to live and the future is where she wants to live. This mirrors the time she spends with A, her relationship with this man only exists in the past tense, she can dream about the possible future with him. but in the present he's a phantom. Ernaux has a unique writing style where she includes little autobiographical asides, but why include these? Not only do they help pushing along the story or provide vital background information but I felt they were included to develop herself more in her own anecdote. The way we are introduced to Ernaux is as the first hand perspective of being the other woman, and how dreary it is. She has nothing to gain from this situation except for being pawed at by a cheating drunk who will leave her hours later and yet this manages to be the only thing she desires for. While the asides flesh out Ernaux into being an actual human and not just some lifeless formless being, they also open up the readers to the possibility of a role change in the lover beloved dynamic. The lover wants to worship the image upon a pedestal, an untouchable icon of all the perfection their heart desires while the beloved wants to maintain that image and status, so is Ernaux the beloved or is A? In a way she is both, she desires A and worships him, she accepts all of his faults freely and still longs for him endlessly. However she can also be considered the beloved, after all she is the "other women" in the relationship, the one A is cheating on his wife to worship, the one He sees as an idol fair enough to return time and time again. This leads us to another question, can the beloved desire the affections of the lover as much as the lover desires to bestow their affections upon their beloved? Perhaps this is why they only spend limited time together, if not their mutual desire would surely collapse. Ernauxs portrayal of being the other woman is brutally honest and a bit gritty at times but I don't see it as a negative image on women as a whole, I see it as a negative portrayal of people in general. In this story both the man and the woman are seen in and unsavory light, she as an empty vessel of a woman only being able to feel desire for one thing in life, and he as a user with a single track mind in regards to women. The only thing people in this story are guilty of is being slaves to desire, Ernaux lives only for the moments that she is with A and A is only seen as alive in his past exploits with Ernaux. Yes, she lives through A solely but she is not the first and not the last person to love obsessively through their lover. While the story may not be representative of the entire population of lovers in the world it does represent a descent number of them, primarily the ones who suffer for their love because they live the most passionately through it. The depiction of the erotic film as related to Ernauxs writing is similar to the cathartic effect of theater. What she writes should not make you feel comfortable, or rather it should portray something so shocking that if you were to experience it in your own life either first or second hand that you would fear repercussions, guilt, anxiety, self loathing, etc. It should make the reader feels invited, unabashed to experience it through her. Like the erotica film watching two people have intercourse in detail while they know they are being watched is one thing, a curious guilty pleasure one can indulge in alone. Yet if you were one of the people engaging in the act and realized that it was later going to be publicized and watched by other the negative feelings flood into ones being.  This comparison invites us to experience through her what we would be too ashamed to admit or to experience on our own.

Love Song

"Oh, Maker"

I hear the drizzle of the rain
It's falling from my window
And in the corners of my mind
I hope that I'll get to see you again
La da die da die da die da die my friend

I hear the colors in the flowers
Just like the candle snuffed at dawn
You're here, you're near, you're there and then you're gone
La da die da die da die da die

Suffering in sinking sand
All the hurt
See I'm really lost baby
We suffered a rare, rare blue
So much hurt
On this earth
But you loved me
And I really dared to love you too
Perhaps what I mean to say is
Is that it's amazing that your love was mine

Oh, Maker tell me did you know
This love would burn so yellow
Becoming orange and in it's time
Explode from grey to black then bloody white
La da die da die da die da die

Oh, Maker have you ever loved?
Or known just what it was?
I can't imagine the bitter end
Of all the beauty that we're living in
Oh no

Suffering in sinking sand
All the hurt
See I'm pretty lost baby
We suffered a rare, rare blue
So much hurt
On this earth
But you loved me
And I really dared to love you too
Perhaps what I mean to say
Is that it's amazing that your love was mine

Lost inside a lonely world where lovers pay the price
Barely get the sound of music to love and go dance to
Now it's time for us to go and no one ever has to know
You're love's in my pocket and your eyes, eye's are in my
Eyes in my soul, no one will know it but me

The background story to this song is that it revolves around a forbidden love affair, one not sanctioned by the government, and upon threat of death the narrator has been forbidden from her lover. As she sits there without her beloved she reflects on the short time that they had together, and in the final verse she plans their escape.This is an all time favorite of mine which is actually fairly bittersweet when you think about it. "Oh,  Maker" is the song I want to be played at my wedding, and I'm not budging on that. To me having a song that is about this wonderful tumultuous love that was so great that you cant even regret it when breaking up represents exactly what I expect in a spouse, someone so amazing that even if the marriage were to fail I couldn't regret being with them for even a minute. In the lyrics she goes on about how painful it is to be without her beloved yet she cant regret it because the love was so incredible, and tying in with the title of the song she even carries on to question if God has ever experienced the highs and lows that she has felt. To me its a very powerful song and if you can convince yourself not to dwell on the fact that the relationship is over with you'll come to see that the song describes the greatest kind of love.

The Bad Girl: Part 2

¡Aye Ricardito! My heartbreaks for this poor deluded idiot. Which I suppose, in retrospect, is a sign of very good literature simply for the fact that the characters could evoke such strong emotion from me which is no small feat. All of my feelings aside the bad girl part two did not fail to deliver, while reading through the first half of the book there was a small creeping fear in the back of my mind that the whole story was going to be this cat and mouse game of deception until it reached some sort of dramatic and ultimately fulfilling end. Oh how wrong I was! The maturation of the relationship between Ricardo and the bad girl surprised me, at first they share this infantile lover beloved dynamic where Ricardo makes his affections too known and the bad girl shuts him down at any hint of commitment unless he can provide her some useful service, which in that case she'll humor him. The bad girl does an amazing job of leaving him wanting for more, even for years at a time she leaves an image of her perfection with him so powerful that no one else can compare. As the saying goes time heals all wounds but Ricardo seemingly cannot quit this dangerous girl, even worse are the personal extremes that he is willing to go through just to please her. He puts himself in financial danger, emotional turmoil, physical danger, and in a place that is detrimental to his career all for a woman who refuses to even pretend like she loves him. If this were based on a true story I would use it as a case study for the love as a mental imbalance theory, Ricardo has more then enough symptoms to be diagnosed with a handful of well fitting psychiatric disorders. He attempts to woe the same girl over and over again in the exact same way and receives the same result every time, but does this make him crazy? No, according to society he is just a man in love. However at the turning point of their relationship we notice that the image of Ricardos desire has begun to crack and for the first time he finds her unattractive, what does this symbolize? and why isn't his obsession with the bad girl done after he finally sees her for what she is? I believe that in a sick way this is love blooming, yes the whole time he claims to love her over and over again but if the image of love that you desire is no longer perfect then you no longer have the image to desire. Just like Narcissus touching his reflection in the pool of water, the image was disturbed, and realized for what it truly was but in Ricardos case he didn't die from lack of desire in fact I believe that it was the banishment of that very image of his own creation that gave birth to a form of love for the bad girl. Yes, there are supposedly many forms of love and none of them should be like this but this was not meant to be a fairytale, unrequited love does exist and it can prove to be a very powerful force. Although Ricardo pretends to take care of the bad girl out of obligation, the extremes of care that he goes through for her betray him, he never gets over her and he never will. He's like a duckling that had the ill fate of imprinting itself on the wrong parent, he is forever vulnerable even when it comes to her even when the dichotomy of there love finally shifts into his favor he is powerless to her. The shift in Ricardo becoming the hunted and the bad girl being the hunter highlighted the Celestina-esque plot twist where although it is known that he loves her, she too will secretly love him. This play on human desire turns the enigma of the bad girl into something so much more, we come to realize that even this kind of love of the image and desire is a reciprocal relationship in which the object wishes to be worshiped as much as the worshiper wishes to desire the object.

Bad Girl Part 1

It appears as if I'm having flashbacks to Celestina! A young boy hopelessly in love with a distant girl? Who rejects his advances yet welcomes his presence? No, I guess that doesn't sound familiar at all. All joking aside poor Richardo has fallen in love with a pathological liar, but in his reality she is not a pathological liar she is the beautiful, seductive, goddess on a pedestal that he has dreamed of his whole life and she only lives down the street. Richardo  represent a wonderful case study for this class, while he is fully aware of the unraveling lies of Lily he still pines away for her even when the rest of the world condemns his affection he seemingly does not care.

"You're like a calf Slim, You're turning blue, Slim, that crush is melting you, Slim"(7)
Everyone outside besides Richardo is fully aware of the ridiculous state that he's worked himself into over a girl he barely knows. A sane person does not ask out the same person more then 3 times in a lifetime, that should be a red flag indicating one of two things, the first being that perhaps the person that your asking out just is not that into you and the second being that you may have a chemical imbalance in your brain which is causing you to be irrational. In that passage his friends are displaying somewhat of a teasing indifference to his emotional state, they realize that he is too far gone to help but being the good friends they are they still gently try and warn the poor fellow. As we have discussed the first stages "love" can also be confused with the high of a drug, its not love at first sight its more of a chemically induced euphoria at the first or second sighting. Richardo has built up Lily in his eyes so much that he is blind to the fact that the rest of society thinks that she is worthless. Let it be known that I am not saying that I think the negative views of society should impact a persons love life but most of the time they serve to caution you against bad people, a lesson that Richardo should have heeded sooner then later.

With society looking down their noses at Lily and Richardo looking up at her Lily's only option is to preserve the image of her that Richardo idolizes to stay in some form of favor. Although we do not really hear her perspective of the whole thing the idea of her keeping the image for Richardo is echoed when she comes to  him as Comrade Arlette in Paris she knowingly half resigns herself to letting him chase her down for the rest of her life. "She hesitated a moment and, with a sigh, made a concession: "I might even end up falling in love with you.""(27). While she isn't happy and she still holds Richardo at a distance Lily is gently basking in his attention for her, she likes having him on the back burner because he offers her security and things she could never have on her own yet she knows the importance of preserving the false image for him. Even when kissing or making love she still makes herself emotionally unavailable to him. As was the case in Celestina the moment that Melibea gave herself over to Calisto his love for her cooled, I believe that the same will be for poor Richardo once he realizes that he holds all of the cards and his illusion is shattered.

Thoughts on Solaris

Soderbergh’s film really brought the concept to light of when we realize that we love only an image and that our worshiped beloved is not real, what happens? The plot of the film utilized the modern science fiction setting to its advantage by making this hypothetical situation become a reality in a sense. To put things in perspective realize that the apparitions of loved ones who had passed on were a product mostly of the crews mind, yes some other worldly force made it possible for these people to appear in a tangible form but they were built from memories. That fact is scrutinized when the reincarnated wife of Chris tells him that she’s suicidal because that’s how he remembered her. Yes, the film does confront other issues like what would most people do in that situation? Would they kill the reincarnated loved one like Dr. Gordon because once they realized that it was just an image the illusion was shattered? Or would they try and cling to the lifeless image like Chris to Rheya despite the nagging better judgment that he should just let her go.  This film was loosely a modern representation of the myth of Narcissus, in which Chris at first basks in the joy of having the image of his love back in his life but is then he is brought to a startling realization by Dr. Gordon that the Rheya on the ship is literally just an image of his past love made by something potentially dangerous. Just like Narcissus once the image is shattered Chris meets his demise, something that is echoed in the beginning of the film by Gibarian who also loses his life to an image of his own creation. Oddly enough every main character in the film dies due to an image of their own creation in one way or another except for Dr. Gordon who was the only character to realize the truth of the matter and took it into her own hands a way of dispelling the image from her life. Perhaps this is background commentary that alludes to the fact that we need to free ourselves from the false image of love that we create within ourselves in order to truly love and be loved.

The Tale of Two Emma’s

Now as often as you’ve heard me voice my distaste for Emma Bovary, I can see she’s a popular character.  While watching I Am Love I felt like I saw a modern portrayal of the very woman, only this time I could feel for her when she came across in the form of Emma Recchi. Let me elaborate why, Tancredi was no Charles Bovary, he was not earnest in his affections towards Emma instead he took her for granted and let her fall to the way side in a marriage where she lacked desire for anything because she was given everything. Her children being out on their own didn’t need her rearing or protection, her husband being busy with business didn’t have time to talk about anything besides the family, money, work, fame, ect and poor Emma Recchi was simply a doll. She was lifeless, bland, without any feeling, and she didn’t do anything for herself until she finally felt that spark of desire with Antonio then all hell broke loose.  Even when a person has no need for anything they should want for something, and if they want for nothing, then they have no drive for life much like in the case of Madame Bovary. Emma Bovary had everything she would need: a house, devoted husband, a well formed child, good looks, and a developed skill set of any woman of that era. Yet she desired for more and went out of her way to fill that desire, Emma Recchi does the exact same thing. She too has the perfect life on paper but she desired a spark to ignite some feeling which was absent from her life, although Emma Bovary voiced her opinions more fluidly, Emma Recchi had no trouble voicing hers once she realized what was lacking all along. This is a common theme that is being repeated and yet we never learn our lesson, Why is that? I think because we are inevitably drawn to this fate, it’s like a train wreck only we are in the conductors’ seat and while we can see it all happening time and time again we never stop, we never bail out, we just stay put, and enjoy the ride until it’s over. The whole enjoying the ride until it’s over thing is great until we realize the “over” part tends to be accompanied by painful heartbreak, depression, severed relationships that had been built up for years, broken families, and of course the possibility of death whether inflicted by yourself or the enraged lover. The Lover and Beloved dynamic will never die out and as much as we try to play the foreboding prophet to our own friends and loved ones much like Cassandra we will only be met with deaf ears and frustration.