Warning: This post contains spoilers for Little Women, C'è ancora domani, Sirens, Barbie, Russian Doll, Fleabag, and And Just Like That....
I am a kid. She
is a teenager. I love spending time with her. She looks like she is at ease
with the world. I feel like an oddball most of the time, but not when I am with
her. I like observing her while she does chores. I feel angry that she is given
more work in the house and less freedom outside in comparison to her younger
brother, but I don’t know how to express my anger yet. She doesn’t mind the
housework, and she finds creative ways to exert her freedom even if it requires
lying. She dreams of getting married and becoming a mother. Her face shines
when she talks about these subjects. I dream of meeting E.T.
30 years later,
she is married with three children, and I am a resident alien often in
interactions with other resident aliens. We both got what we dreamed of, and
that makes me happy, even though I am well aware that neither
dream was achieved without challenges.
I am 17. She is
in her early 30s. We are in her car. She is driving. We wanted to have some
time for ourselves away from everyone else. She is married, not yet with
children, but she wants children. I tell her, while open to it, I don’t feel a
strong desire to be married or have children. She tells me that this is ok, but
I am still young and that desire may come later.
20 years later, being
more acquainted with love and heartbreak, I still don’t feel it. I love visiting
a married friend or a cousin, acting like an extra member of their home for a
few days, and being an aunt to their children. But I don’t need their life to
be happy or content.
We are almost
30. I love her as if she is my own sister. I often think I am not capable of
physically hurting someone on purpose, but if someone hurts her, I may be
capable of making an exception. She tells me she doesn’t want to be alone. I
tell her that she is not alone, and I am here. She objects and underlines what
she really means by not being alone, even though I got what she really meant
the first time.
About a year
later, I am her witness at her wedding. It is a joyful day for all of us. I
also feel something else that I don’t know how to express until Greta Gerwig puts it into words
in her Little Women
adaptation in the scene
where Jo tells Meg “You will be bored of him in two years, and we will be
interesting forever.” on Meg’s wedding day. Later in the same scene, Meg says,
“Just because my dreams are different from yours, it doesn't mean they are
unimportant.”
As a woman with
the preexisting condition of being a feminist, one of my life goals is to
ensure that nothing in this world is strong enough to belittle neither my dreams
nor the dreams of three women I refer to above. We live in a world where their
dreams are more easily accepted, though, while mine reminds me what my mom once
said to me during a heated argument: “If you want to do things differently,
don’t complain about it, own it.”
Before she
passed away, I called my grandma every Sunday after I moved abroad, regardless of where I was in the
world. One Sunday, she roughly said, “You are so unlucky. Where is your
white-horse prince?” I roughly replied, “I am not unlucky, I have my own horse.”
She bought that argument.
As I get older,
I hear similar remarks more often, even from family elders who are unmarried
themselves. Even if I disagree with them and at times get very frustrated, I
get the well-intentioned root of such remarks. Your loved ones want you to be
happy. The picture of happiness indoctrinated in all our heads includes a
family picture with a couple and children.
In August, during the Bikini Kill concert at Syd For Solen, Kathleen Hanna (the lead singer) talked about trying to figure out who her authentic self was without any of the indoctrination this world subjected her, and everyone else, to when younger. Her conclusion was there was no separation between her authentic and indoctrinated selves as she had never been not indoctrinated.
Earlier this
year, while watching the movie C'è
ancora domani and the series Sirens, I had to face
my own indoctrination despite owning my life choices against people trying to
convince me to work hard for a different life.
I saw C'è
ancora domani together with four ladies at Grand Teatret. That screening was a WIFT Denmark event with a discussion
afterward. The film is a dark comedy written and directed by Paola Cortellesi, who also
plays the lead. It follows the story of Delia in the post second world war
Italy. Delia is in an abusive marriage and a mother of three. She works at
multiple jobs in addition to her domestic chores and taking care of her
father-in-law. She seems to have a crush on a car mechanic, Nino, who also
likes her. Toward the end of the film, Nino asks Delia to run away with him. On
the last day the film depicts, we see Delia trying to find a way to escape her
house. As the audience (at least most of us at the screening that day), given
all the challenges you have seen in Delia’s life, you think she decided to take
Nino’s offer and root for their escape. Instead, the film concludes with a more
satisfying ending: Delia, despite her husband and with the help of her
daughter, going to the voting booth together with all the women in the film,
all voting for the first time on June 2, 1946.
I binge-watched Sirens
in two evenings at home with a friend, who was visiting from US, a month
after I watched C'è ancora domani. Sirens has been the highlight
of the TV this year for me, and not only because of the topic of this post. Here,
I will only focus on what is relevant for this post. Written by Molly Smith Metzler, Sirens
follows the estranged sisters Devon and Simon. Devon is taking care of their
father who is recently diagnosed with dementia, while Simon seems to have her
dream job working and living in a mansion. Devon is an addict and has been
having a hard time with all her responsibilities, so she decides to seek help
from Simon, who she practically raised. On the island where Simon works, she meets
a yacht captain, whose name, Captain Morgan, becomes one of the running jokes
in the show. Captain Morgan and Devon hit it off. In similar spirit to Nino in C'è
ancora domani, toward the end, Captain Morgan asks Devon to leave her life
and come with him on yacht trip that will last a month. Simon encourages Devon
to take the trip and live her life for a change instead of taking care of other
people. You, as the audience, root for Devon to take the trip as well,
especially after learning their family history. In the end, Devon decides to
stay with her father but with some changes in her life so that she does not get
as overwhelmed. She owns her decision so well when Simon challenges it that
you, as the audience, are convinced she will be alright. Simon, in contrast,
after rejecting one older rich guy’s marriage proposal due to him playing the
role of the savior, accepts an even richer older guy’s proposal who is the
ultimate savior figure at that point in the series.
In recent years,
similar to the two above, we have seen great examples of movies and TV
series that do not end with happy “coupled” or “saved-by-love” ending.
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women has a double
ending that shows that Jo’s marriage to Friedrich was added afterwards in the
book due to the publisher asking for it, which is what happened in real-life to
Louisa May Alcott. Her Barbie
ends with Barbie and Ken separating to have their independent journeys. Even before
she became a director, some of Greta Gerwig’s earlier writing collaborations
had similar spirit such as the brilliant Frances Ha.
In Russian Doll, what
saves Nadia is not “finding love” but “camaraderie.”
Fleabag season 2
ends with our main character alone, despite finding love shortly before. The
last scene acknowledges the grief that comes with the end of a love story but also
assures us that our main character will be alright.
And Just Like That... ends with Carrie typing the following ending to her first novel,
“The woman realized she was not alone—she was on her own.” While it was apparently
not so popular for many, I think that ending was the best part of that revival.
My intension
with these examples is not to indicate that an ending where people find love
and end up as a couple is a bad ending. There are many love stories that
I absolutely love; most recently, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.
I give these examples because alternative endings matter to help break the
indoctrination. They make it easier to see that different “happy” lives are
possible also in real life or to see that the end of a love story, while sad,
isn’t a tragedy, what matters more is that that story was a part of your life.
