choire:

 I don’t trust memoirs much, and I don’t trust people’s accounts of themselves very often.

I once thought it was my duty to mistrust people’s accounts of themselves in the interest of “keeping it real.” Lately I’ve* drifted into seeing someone’s account of his or herself not as a representation of what was (even though that’s what it purports to be) but rather an account of what is. It’s an odd sort of truth that people put into their narratives … if they’re honest, that is. There are definitely instances where I’ll be listening to someone/reading something and be like “what a fascinating script!” but even that is information that can’t help but reveal something real; a poorly painted backdrop and ill-fitting costumes thwart the suspension of disbelief but they end up telling the story behind the story. In fact, in those instances you can see the “actors” all the more clearly because the artifice they’re wearing is obvious to the point it contrasts what is underneath.

I think personal accounts are vital to caring for each other. I think it’s really hard to be entirely honest when giving a personal account, exactly because of the issue of “I don’t know why I wanted that.” I think to stop giving/receiving personal accounts of things because it’s difficult/impossible to be truthful in them is sad and isolating. 

Not that Choire is saying we shouldn’t listen to each other’s stories! But when you admit that most stories are more fake than true, including your own, it’s tempting for the next step to be throwing your hands up in the air and saying, “Fuck it! Why bother?” I think it’s really important to bother, although articulating why is a bit of a challenge. It has to do with what’s happening now, and how what’s happening now is going to lead to what’s happening later, and the fact that sometimes we want to navigate our way to “later” in each other’s good company.

*Yes, this is a personal account, isn’t it? So maybe I always drifted this way? From where I stand now it appears to have been a process.

So I have no problem looking at this movie as fiction, which it undoubtedly is, given the tale’s trip through more than one writer at this point, a game of telephone. When regarded as fiction, it makes absolute sense to me and it doesn’t trouble me in the slightest, not even politically, really. I mean guess what, here I am typing on my Tumblr while people are probably starving down the street.)

I don’t have a problem looking at it as fiction either, but I do have a problem with something fictional being represented and generally accepted as truth. “Based on a true story” are very, very dangerous words, especially for women because the stories we’ve swallowed and tried to crap out into some kind of lifepath are so very, very distant from the shape of an actual human life. Everyone knows that Cinderella is fiction and it’s still kicking the shit out of us. It’s bad enough knowing that some people are born rich and I’m not. Thinking that maybe some people were also born with fairy godmothers and I’m not is something I’m really glad I don’t have dogging me.

I also think that people rebel against spending a long time on a woman’s examining of herself (err, sorry, that sounds weird!). But I think that’s something new and honestly I think we’ve never really been exposed historically to the idea of a woman piloting a narrative that has to do with working out what she wants.

I am waiting for the mainstream female version of Stand By Me or Dead Poets Society, the coming-of-age story for women that doesn’t revolve around beauty/sex/romance. I’m sure there are films that answer this request but do you see any of them on TNT on Sunday afternoon? Watching my little sisters respond to Sisterhood of the Pants I got the feeling someone had just given them a roadmap to hell.

One thing I liked about EPL is that it contains an oppositely-expressed but shared viewpoint of And the Heart Says Whatever, which is a memoir that stubbornly sticks to the truth of “I don’t know why I wanted that.” (“Whatever.”) 

First thing written about this movie that made me really want to see it.