Comments Off on Faithless Adaptations: A Critique of Little Women (2019)
Adaptations are a tricky business for any filmmaker. Regardless of the text you are adapting, there will be a dedicated fan base for the original source material who will be both the first in the cinema to watch your creation, as well as the ones most eager to tear it apart. I found myself in this position after reading Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age novel Little Women.
In typical bildungsroman fashion, Little Women follows sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March from childhood to adulthood. Originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, the story was heavily inspired by the author’s own childhood and family. Since its publication, the novel has been well loved by readers for its honest portrayal of sisterhood, love and self-discovery.
In 2019, the novel was once again adapted into a film by renowned director Greta Gerwig. At the 92nd Academy Awards, Gerwig’s film was nominated for several awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Naturally, I was very excited to watch this so-called masterpiece.
However, I was sorely disappointed. Gerwig made considerable changes to the structure of Alcott’s novel and to her characterisation. While changes are inevitable in transplanting hundreds of pages of writing into two hours of screen time, they have to make sense. If a change is nonsensical, it risks undermining the authenticity of the adaptation and calls into question the adaptor’s understanding and interpretation of the text.
One major change in Gerwig’s Little Women was the decision to alter the timeline of the book. Instead of beginning during the sisters’ adolescence and ending during their adulthood, Gerwig’s film flits between two narratives; the childhood sequences serve as flashbacks to the main adult storyline. This, I believe, renders mute the major themes of the novel: family and growth. As readers, we watch the March sisters grow and develop as the eponymous “little women”. Many of the chapters in Part One of the novel involve the sisters learning moral lessons through their mishaps and misjudgments. For instance, in “A Merry Christmas”, the sisters are exposed to the value of sacrifice. In “Amy’s Valley of Humiliation”, Amy faces the consequences of disobedience and conceit, while in “Jo meets Apollyon”, Jo is shown the importance of patience and self-control. This depiction of personal growth is undercut by bringing the adult storyline to the forefront. The girls’ childhood is not meant to be merely fodder for character development; it is integral to who they are as women. Their familial and sororal bonds are the driving forces behind their entire existence.
In a similar vein, Marmee — the mother of the March sisters — is horribly characterised. During the years of the American Civil War, she is the main caregiver of the girls as her husband is serving as a chaplain for the Union Army. Alcott’s Marmee is the guiding light for both her children and the reader; she epitomises all she preaches. She allows her daughters to make mistakes and then helps them learn from the error of their ways. She teaches them what is important and good and right in a way that makes them (and the reader) want to (or at least try to) obey because they know they will be all the better for it.
Gerwig’s script is written in such a way that Marmee, despite being played by the incredibly talented Laura Dern, fades into the background in every scene instead of being the central force that her daughters gravitate towards. Her dialogue is reduced to backhanded quips at her husband for a reason that is difficult to identify. Perhaps this is Gerwig attempting to add comedy or perhaps it’s her not knowing how to subvert a relationship that is already quite subversive. The marriage between Mr and Mrs March is meant to be one of love, devotion, adoration and equality. Alcott’s Marmee is imbued with agency and wisdom; she is respected by all who meet her. The essence of her role in the family is established in the very first chapter as Marmee reads aloud the letter sent by Mr March: “They all drew to the fire, Mother in the big chair with Beth at her feet, Meg and Amy perched on either arm of the chair, and Jo leaning on the back”. Gerwig seems to believe that Marmee cannot embrace these principles in a film set during the 19th century so she must resort to making sharp retorts to whatever her silly husband says to assert her authority.
The film also makes the mistake of attempting to adapt Little Women in line with contemporary standards of feminism, ignoring the fact that the novel is already subversive for the time period and place in which it was written and set. In one of the film’s early scenes, Jo responds angrily to Friedrich Bhaer, a German professor who is staying at the same boarding house, when he criticises her writing. Jo’s reaction, while stemming from hurt, is illogical. Jo is writing ‘sensationalist’ stories for a newspaper to make money; importantly, she elects for the stories to not be printed under her name. In the novel, she hides this occupation from her mother because “she was doing what she is ashamed to own”. Jo does not need to ask Bhaer his opinion because she shares it already. She eventually quits writing sensationalist stories, musing “I almost wish I hadn’t any conscience, it’s so inconvenient. If I didn’t care about doing right, and didn’t feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally.” The director instead appears to have re-imagined this scene from a “feminist” lens; Jo can write whatever she pleases, Gerwig seems to be saying, and how dare Bhaer judge her when he knows nothing about literature! This representation has no footing when we take into account that in the source text, Jo and Bhaer’s views on the matter are aligned.
Just because Alcott’s novel does not embody that which we perceive as feminism today, does not mean that it is not a subversive representation and examination of womanhood. The sisters were never restricted by their gender, at least not by their parents. They were not forced to conform to societal standards of womanhood. They stayed true to who they were. The novel centres on familial love, it promotes empathy and compassion, it encourages the reader to — like the sisters — to be the best version of themselves. It is very empowering to read a novel about four sisters who love each other dearly and who have a strong maternal figure that cares exclusively for their happiness. Marmee does not need to assert her authority by shaking her head mournfully at her husband’s idiocy, and the “tom-boy” sister does not need to prove her agency by disagreeing with something that she fundamentally agrees with.
Gerwig also struggles to authentically represent the progression of Amy and Laurie’s relationship from childhood friends to two young people in love. In one line, Amy contends that she has always loved Laurie. However, none of the flashbacks in the film even hint at a romantic affection harboured by the young Amy. Similarly, the two seem to be just pushed together and suddenly declare their love for each other. This fails to capture the mutual respect and adoration that develops while the two characters write letters to each other while in Europe. Jo’s rejection of Laurie also fits awkwardly within the narrative, creating an uncomfortable love triangle. After Beth’s death, Jo reveals that if Laurie were to ask her to marry him again she would say yes. She even writes him a letter, but hurriedly removes it from his mailbox after discovering he has married her sister. Here, Gerwig misinterprets the effect Beth’s death has on Jo. The death does not suddenly make Jo realise that she does in fact love Laurie or that she desires to get married. Instead, the loss of her sister opens herself up to experiencing a different kind of love that she has not yet felt.
A novel worthy of an adaptation is naturally loved for what it is, so the question stands: why do filmmakers make these changes? In May, George RR Martin wrote a post on his “Not a Blog” blog, titled “The Adaptation Tango” that appeared to answer this question. He makes excellent observations from the perspective of an author who is no stranger to his work being adapted (and butchered). He states, “Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own’.” Regardless of who the author is or how great their work is, he says, “there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.” He finishes with: “They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Gerwig’s Little Women has been enjoyed by audiences, and for that I am glad, especially if they felt the same joy as I did reading the novel. Yet, I cannot help but feel that it is almost disrespectful to mischaracterise an author’s creation for your own monetary gain.
Of course, Gerwig is not alone in this. Adaptations have been criticised, crucified, and torn to pieces for years past, and will be in years to come. Netflix recently announced that they were adapting Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, The Picture of Dorian Gray, but instead of remaining true to his queer construction of Basil Hallward and the titular protagonist, the characters are instead to be made siblings. This seems particularly troubling as Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality, with excerpts of the novel used as evidence to convict him. Emerald Fennell is also set to release her own adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Victorian gothic, Wuthering Heights, although no details on that project have yet been revealed. It appears that as long as the written word remains, the adaptation tango will too keep on going.
Whenever we drove to Cooma to visit my grandmother, I would always pester my father to put on Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) for our drive. Something about the tinkling glockenspiel and jolly tones of Papageno’s comical arias was charming, even if I couldn’t understand all the words yet. I would always get upset when we arrived just as the Queen of the Night came on to sing her famous aria. My father would never leave the car running for another mere two minutes to let me listen to the Queen trying to emotionally blackmail her daughter into committing murder.
While watching this opera a few months ago, I registered an interesting theme that was present in it, a theme that is also present in many of the fairy tales and stories so many of us grow up with. Even while basking in pure joy at seeing this beloved opera performed, I recognised the villainisation of strong, independent mother figures — those powerful women with no husband or no man directly in their lives. I noticed how their wickedness is starkened when cast as the dark shadow to their glowing, virtuous daughters or stepdaughters. The Queen is a prime example of this, a paragon of jealousy and vengefulness. Her assigned archetype of antagonist is her eternal punishment for daring to try and keep her daughter, Pamina, out of the clutches of her nemesis Sarastro, the rational and just leader of the enlightened Temple of the Sun cult.
But is the Queen justly cast as jealous and irrationally vengeful, and Sarastro fairly hailed as just, rational and enlightened? It is important to recognise the origins of the opera, which was written by men, and which premiered in 1791 — a very different century in terms of gender equality than that with which we are familiar with. Villainising a woman in a patriarchal worldview would hardly have been blinked at, as shown by the continued acceptance of the villainous nature of the Queen throughout the opera’s history. But how does the trend of strong women being punished manifest not only in this old opera but follow through to also exist in the stories we are so familiar with today? Bear with me, I know opera isn’t everyone’s thing (actually, it isn’t really mine either, and this is the exception), but the Queen and her relationship with her daughter is such a perfect lens through which to view this common theme that is tangled into so many of the stories we are raised on.
The opera starts when a handsome prince, Tamino, is rescued from a fearful serpent by the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, who can harness the Queen’s immense power. The Queen then sets Tamino to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the clutches of the evil man Sarastro, who heads the Temple of the Sun. Tamino embarks on this quest, with the promise of Pamina’s hand in marriage if he succeeds, with his companion Papageno, a cheeky and disobedient bird catcher also indebted to the Queen and her ladies. However, instead of rescuing Pamina, both he and Pamina herself see the “error” of the Queen’s ways and instead convert to join Sarastro in blissful and patriarchal “enlightenment”. Endings to the opera vary, some with the Queen receiving the ultimate punishment of banishment, others with the Queen reluctantly accepting her daughter’s choice and Sarastro’s undeniable wisdom.
The Queen is certainly no hero, as is obvious enough from the aforementioned emotional blackmail of her distressed young daughter. Offering one’s daughter to the first man who can save her is also questionable, though Pamina is conveniently quite pleased with the arrangement. However, the same abhorrence that infests the Queen’s actions does not do the same to her motives. She is a woman who refuses to bow to powerful men in a blatantly misogynistic world, as is evident from the lyrics of multiple arias — not surprising when considering the fact that the opera was written by men for a patriarchal society.
In the middle of the opera, we learn that the Queen’s husband died many years ago and that she refused to then relinquish her power and bow down to Sarastro. Fair enough, why should she? In Sarastro’s opinion: because she’s a woman, of course, and women are irrational and threatening to the values of justice and truthfulness when they have no man for guidance. Pamina, recently traumatised and vulnerable from her mother demanding Sarastro’s cold, dead body, is receptive to this message as he embraces her and tells her the gentle truth as he sees fit. And she enacts this “truth” she had been told, suddenly convinced that the idea of life without her own man, Tamino, is quite unbearable. It is surprising Disney never took up the story, as the Queen has such potential as a wicked stepmother and Pamina is the perfect inspiration for another princess who is given no purpose by the writers other than a prince as a means to happiness.
This corruption of Pamina, then, is the first punishment Sarastro, and as an extension, the librettists, enact against the Queen. Her daughter has fallen into the trap the Queen so desperately wished to keep her from, and the prince she thought she could rely on, a compromise to save her daughter, has likewise been ‘enlightened’ by the sexist, domineering Sarastro. Yet she continues to be punished. Throughout the opera, she becomes a trickster. At the beginning of the opera, she is portrayed as the hero, a mother desperate to get her kidnapped daughter back from a man she doesn’t trust. Yet, by the end, she has become a vicious and jealous woman who is unreceptive to reason. Her initial virtues are cast, then, as nothing but a trick, her name, and as an extension, the name of other women in a plight that refuse to conform, slandered forever.
Yet the punishment that stings the most, of course, is her banishment at the end. The ultimate punishment is a warning of what happens to women who reject the notion of male guidance and prefer to live their own lives and raise their daughters as they see fit. To the modern-day woman, Sarastro’s solemn arias about how women are not to be trusted are rather amusing, and we tease each other in the intermission about being hysterical. But to the Queen, and perhaps any women watching this performance throughout its two-and-a-half century existence, her fate is a cruel reminder of the society in which they live, where the presence of a man in their lives is the only guarantee of survival, where any desire or quest or attempt to live independently or semi-independently of men will be scorned and punished. The Queen’s fate is common in many fairy tales, where the mother figures (often a stepmother) act cruelly but are in a similar position of a dead husband or a second husband to ensure their survival. They are pitted against their daughters, their daughters sweet where they are bitter, gentle where they are harsh, submissive where they are authoritative. Being a woman is a nuanced business, but these dichotomies insinuate that there are only two ways to go about it — be good or be evil — a lie through which male dominance has historically consolidated its grip on humanity. So next time you watch a Disney movie or read a fairytale to a young cousin or sibling, or perhaps even go to the opera (not that the Canberra opera scene is particularly active), lend an extra thought to the wicked mother, and whether she is truly wicked, or merely forced by the writers of the past to be wicked through her actions.
Comments Off on 10 Quotes That Permanently Changed How I Dated Men
The philosopher Charles Mills once famously said that:
When you get right down to it, a lot of philosophy is just white guys jerking off. Either philosophy is not about real issues in the first place but about pseudoproblems; or when it is about real problems, the emphases are in the wrong places…
Is he right? Maybe – but the right kind of theory can, actually, change your life by solving real problems. In Year 10, I stumbled across the work of Judith Butler during a boring English class, discovering and resolving several identity ‘problems’ or troubles of mine.
To spread the joy of having your sense of self shattered by feminist philosophy and queer theory, I’ve collated a series of ten quotes that indelibly altered my perception of myself, the guys I date, and why I date them — alternating between long and short quotes for those of you with the attention span of a TikTok.
1) On subjection
Sexual objectification is the primary process of the subjection of women. It unites act with word, construction with expression, perception with enforcement, myth with reality. Man fucks woman; subject verb object.
– Catherine Mackinnon, “Method and Politics”, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 124.
2) On sexuality as language
Sexualities are like languages: they are complex systems of communication and reproduction of life. As languages, sexualities are historical constructs with common genealogies and biocultural inscriptions. Like languages, sexualities can be learned. Multiple languages can be spoken. As is often the case within monolingualism, one sexuality is imposed on us in childhood, and it takes on the character of a naturalized desire. We are trained into sexual monolingualism. It is the language that we are unable to perceive as a social artifact, the one that we understand without being able to fully hear its accent and melody. We entered that sexuality through the medical and legal acts of gender assignment; through education and punishment; through reading and writing; through image consumption, mimicry, and repetition; through pain and pleasure.
– Paul Preciado, “Introduction”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 8.
3) On being gay in a straight world
The homosexual identity, …is a systematic accident produced by the heterosexual machinery; in the interest of the stability of nature-producing practices, it is stigmatized as unnatural, abnormal, and abject.
– Paul Preciado, “Countersexual Society”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 28.
4) On being gay in a gay world
Again and again, I was astonished to learn from gay friends of hot spots in notorious toilets at the diner, the bus terminal, or, Minerva help us, the Yale library. What gives? Women, straight or gay, do not make a lifestyle of offering themselves without cost to random strangers in sleazy public settings. At last, I saw it. Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in prehistory, is anywhere you kneel. Similarly, straight men who visit prostitutes are valiantly striving to keep sex free from emotion, duty, family — in other words, from society, religion, and procreative Mother Nature.
— Camille Paglia, “Homosexuality at the Fin de Siecle”, Sex, Art, and American Culture (London: Viking, 1992)
5) On inequality as gender
Stopped as an attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequality between men and women.
– Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 6–7.
6) On homophobia
…violence enacted against sexed subjects—women, lesbians, gay men, to name a few—[can be taken] as the violent enforcement of a category violently constructed. In other words, sexual crimes against these bodies effectively reduce them to their “sex,” thereby reaffirming and enforcing the reduction of the category itself. Because discourse is not restricted to writing or speaking, but is also social action, even violent social action, we ought also to understand rape, sexual violence, “queer-bashing” as the category of sex in action.
– Judith Butler, Footnote 26, Notes to Chapter 3, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990, 1999), 212.
7) On sexuality as aesthetics
Sexuality is defined here as a political and yet sometimes unconscious aesthetics of the body and its pleasure.
– Paul Preciado, “Introduction”, Countersexual Manifesto (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2000, 2018), tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn, 8.
8) On sexualisation
Feminism has no theory of the state. It has a theory of power: sexuality is gendered as gender is sexualized. Male and female are created through the erotization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex and the distinctively feminist account of gender inequality.
– Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence”, Signs, vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer, 1983), 635.
9) On love
The urge toward love, pushed to its limit, is an urge toward death.
– George Bataille, “The Link Between Taboos And Death”, L’Erotisme, or, Death and Sensuality: a Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1957; New York: Walker and Company, 1962), 42.
10) On cruising
Cruising carves out intimacies in public space in the same way poetry carves out intimacies in public discourse; and cruising is also itself a kind of discourse, with codes that have to be secret in plain sight, legible to those in the know but able to pass beneath general notice, like one of Wyatt’s sonnets. Both poetry and cruising have a structure that is essentially epiphanic, offering the sudden, often ecstatic revelation of a meaning that emerges from the inchoate stuff of quotidian life.
— Garth Greenwell, “How I Fell In Love With The Beautiful Art Of Cruising”, Buzzfeed (April 5, 2016).
And… who said novels can’t be philosophical, too? Here’s one of my favourite quotes from my favourite character from my favourite novel, Gone Girl…
Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.
– Amy Dunne, in Gillian Flynn, “Ten Months, Two Weeks, Six Days After the Return”, Gone Girl, (New York, Crown, 2012), 454.
Where will you be in ten years?
The hands of the clock drag you from one moment to the next.
Are things going to get better? Are things going to get worse?
Time looks out and demands an answer.
But you don’t know what to say.
Sometimes, it feels like the world is going to end. It feels like it’s all too much, and there’s nothing you can do. But then, there’s this moment, this moment when you see your friends in a show that they’ve been working on for so long. The show finishes, and you see them up on stage with a look of supreme joy and accomplishment. And when you see that – anytime something like that happens – you can’t help but feel like things are going to get better.
And then, there’s this moment when you go to the endpoint and see someone you love cross the finish line minutes before the cutoff. They collapse into their teammate’s arms in tears of joy and disbelief and exhaustion. And when you see that, and when you start to feel that warmth which spreads from your chest to your entire body, and when your jaw starts to hurt a little from smiling and your hands start to ache from clapping – anytime something like that happens – you can’t help but feel like things are going to get better.
But get better for how long?
One day, you’re not going to wake up. One day, you will be bones rotting under the soil or ashes turning in the wind. One day, you simply won’t be here. But you still will have been here. So, the question becomes, did the time you spent up until the day that you died, did it mean anything at all? You can hope that your life amounts to something. That you being here somehow made the world a better place.
But hope is a terrible, empty thing.
There is no security in hope. Hope doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to buy a house or find the time to tell someone that you love them.
‘I hope that I’ll be happy in 10 years.’
‘I hope that they know how much they mean to me.’
‘I hope that it’ll all be okay.’
Hope is never enough, but perhaps it’s a start.
What would the opposite of hope be? Would it be despair? No doubt despair is horrible, but it’s not empty. To despair is to know that all is lost, while to hope is only to wish that nothing is. Regret? Perhaps regret finds itself more at home with hope than despair does. After all, both deal in imagined pasts or futures.
‘I regret what I said. I regret what I said, but I can’t help but hope they know I didn’t mean it.’
Could you have done anything differently, or in every life are you cursed to walk the same streets and recite the same speeches and cry the same tears and throw up in the same bathrooms and love the same people?
Hope is always the hope that something does or doesn’t happen or has or hasn’t happened. In other words, hope is only hope because it keeps the company of uncertainty. In the instance of despair, hope either vanishes or changes. It vanishes because it has been killed, or it changes because despair has given birth to a new hope, a hope that it was all a dream, or that things are going to be okay, or that things are going to get better. We are held over the abyss on a tightrope stretched between past and future, in a moment marked present, with very limited knowledge of both what lies ahead and what lies behind. Hope is perhaps the only thing that allows us to keep our balance.
To give up on hope is to give up on life itself. Hope is always a wish for things to be better. For the world to be a kinder place, for smiles to be shared and laughter to be heard louder and more often. We can never be entirely sure of the future, of what lies ahead. But we can always hope that what lies ahead will be better than what we have now.
In ten years, I hope that I’ll be happy. I hope that my loved ones will be happy. I hope that the world will be a better place.
On the night of the 1st of September, a category 2 cyclone hit Melbourne. I was alone in my parent’s house, lying high and awake in my childhood bed. Checking my notes app the next day, I noticed that I’d written something.
“It’s two forty-five in the morning. I’m alone in my childhood home, and I’m a little scared.”
I used to love storms. I still do, at least on an intellectual level. There’s something empowering about the natural world, and the quiet strength of our buildings withstanding a battering. But it’s been three years since I was in Melbourne for a proper storm, and I’m not used to them anymore. Melbourne isn’t entirely home anymore.
The storm, and my reaction to it, cemented a realisation that’s been dawning on me for some time; I’m getting older. I’m not the same Henry as I was in first year. When I first moved to Canberra, I was a fresh-faced (albeit hirsute) eighteen-year-old. There were endless streams of new people to meet, and I had complete freedom for the first time in my life. As these years went on, Canberra became home. Daley Road became home. I don’t know when Canberra became home, though I know that it is. But now, I’m about to turn twenty-one, and I’m preparing to leave this leafy home. Moving out of Daley Road feels like I’m moving into a new phase. I’m on the precipice of adulthood, and I’d be lying if that wasn’t daunting.
Canberra is a transitory place. Most of us never plan to stay here forever, though many of us will. As students in Canberra, we live a quasi-nomadic life. Our friends are from all over, and there’s endless trips to someone’s hometown that can be made. Since moving to Canberra, I’ve spent more time in Sydney than I ever thought I would. I’ve become familiar with a smorgasbord of small towns —places I didn’t even know existed when I decided to leave Melbourne.
Just like Canberra, being college-age is transitory. For the past three years, my identity has been in constant flux. Every possible experience is handed to you on a platter. I’ve attended talks at embassies immediately after coordinating some of the Engineering School’s brightest minds to make a bong. That’s the beauty of early adulthood. It’s a period of constant discovery. Of constant change, excitement, and experimentation. There’s a reason you don’t see many 40 year olds packing into the forests near Pialligo for a doof. After a while, the chaos becomes disorienting. I’m aware it’s bizarre that I’m writing this sentence but nevertheless, I’m getting old.
Adulthood excites me. A while back, I had a conversation with one of my best friends. Being from Melbourne, we’re both rarities in our Sydneysider friendship group. Driving along Hoddle Street in Melbourne, on our way to a day of unnecessarily expensive sandwiches and thrifting in Fitzroy, he asked me whether I’d rather get older or get younger and redo my childhood. I generally avoid existential crises before lunchtime, but this dilemma gripped me.
I didn’t have a good answer at the time, but I can now confidently say that adulthood excites me more than youth. Stability is more thrilling to me than chaos. I think that makes me boring and I think that’s what scares me the most. I was asked once if I’d prefer to be happy or interesting. At the time I said interesting. But I can’t stand by that answer anymore. I would rather be happy and simple.
The tragedy of youth is that it ends. We can only be interesting for so long, at some point, normalcy comes knocking. What is daunting to me now is that I know I’ll open the door. As I attend my last college events, as I go to house inspections and fill out rental applications, as I apply for APS and paralegal jobs, as I leave hospo behind, I am walking down the corridor. I don’t know if I’m ready to open the door, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll have to turn the knob anyway.
Comments Off on What arts degrees are really costing us
Upon making the ever-predictable switch from the flashy PPE degree to the humble Bachelor of Arts at the end of my first semester of university, the typical reaction — after a cursory glance at my outfit, followed by a quip that I ‘look more like an Arts student anyway’ — was that of good-natured derision: ‘studying unemployment, then?’. After all, as one jokes, I may as well have taken several tens of thousands of dollars and tossed them in the creek. The disdain towards arts degrees as endeavours of childish passion or directionless experimentation is one which I have internalised since learning of their existence and the attitudes they elicit, and one which has been perpetuated for generations. The idea that the BA is professionally futile sits smugly in the minds of Australians, young and old, not budging for any desperate attempts by arts students (myself included, of course) made to polish its colloquial reputation. They’re unemployable, plain and simple!
Adding fuel to the fire for the status of arts degrees is the ever-looming rise in their prices, a lingering hangover from the Coalition government’s 2021 implementation of the ‘Job Ready Graduates’ (JRG) scheme, which increased student contribution to humanities degrees by 113 percent. 2024 is the first year that the average arts degree costs a student over $50,000. The scheme has been subject to heavy criticism by Australian universities but nevertheless forced the tightening of their budgetary belts to respond to the withdrawal of government funding to the humanities. Close to home, several Bachelor programs such as Development Studies and Middle East and Asian Studies have been struck off the ANU’s degree offerings in light of the changes.
The JRG scheme has, however, proven a failure, with the subsidisation of ‘in-demand’ non-humanities degrees making negligible changes to interest in the arts. The Labor government is soon set to reflect in new policy a need to reconstruct the scheme and its fee arrangements ‘before it causes long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education’, according to education minister Jason Clare.
However, the impacts have already been felt. Pre-existing notions of arts degrees as futile, unemployable ventures have snowballed, with their emergent association with financial irresponsibility and privileged pretension. All this against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis and persistent HECS-HELP indexation has led to the warped image of the BA as being accessible exclusively to those cushioned by wealth and guarantees of stability.
This image is not innocuous, and threatens not only a new arts student’s fragile ego but the essence of the study of humanities itself. Studies of politics, literature, history, anthropology, development and sociology rely inherently on diversity of perspective and challenge the structures that govern human interaction to foster the critical thinking skills required to maintain it. For as long as arts degrees are believed, understandably, to be lying behind significant social and financial barriers, the arts degree will fall victim to the fatal flaw of any area of study: homogeneity.
ANU’s status as the university with the lowest proportion of low-income students in the country makes this all the more apparent. The mere fact that the typical ice-breaker question in the first tutorial of Introduction to Philosophy was which inordinately expensive residential hall each of us resided at was evidence enough that diversity of background and perspective is, for the most part, not the forte of the arts cohort. The reality remains that for many prospective students from low socio-economic backgrounds, these expensive courses are cast as a rich kids’ playground, where ideas from well-funded high school philosophy classes are recycled and jargon is revered. Admittedly, epiphenomenal consciousness can have even the most avid wordsmith’s eyes rolling. Still, it is the critical thinking skills that humanities courses seek to attune that are the victims of the stereotype of pretentiousness that surrounds them.
The development of literacy, critical analysis and communication skills — emboldening the idea that more than one solution to a problem exists and that subjectivity holds value — are the arts degree’s overt strengths and those its defenders eagerly spout. However, as far as their usefulness is concerned, for every prospective student who refrains from pursuing tertiary education by virtue of its financial impossibility, the quality of these skills diminishes.
Suppose there are not wide ranges of perspectives and criticism in the classrooms of these courses. In that case, they will never truly serve to develop the ‘adaptability and ability to help shape change’ proclaimed by our university as the degree’s purpose. What’s more, at a time when artificial intelligence has thrown the replicability status of human critical thinking and retrospection into question, to hike the prices of the courses designed to foster them such that they are confined to the realm of academic indulgence, rather than the accessible mainstream, is irresponsible. It only acts to give arts degrees unique futility.
In a time where HECS no longer universally cushions young people’s tertiary education decisions and university education maintains its culture of exclusivity, a costly course thought to be undertaken by those with the assurance of employability and financial stability is ‘useless’ insofar as it remains restricted and stained by elitism. Change to the JRG scheme is imperative; job readiness is never achieved through punishing students’ pursuit of passion, but by opening opportunities to bring invaluable diversity of attitude and perspective to the classrooms, training the future (very employable, thank you very much) professionals of Australia.
Comments Off on ANU Arts Revue: Sending Brian Back to Kansas
Arts Revue opens with a joke. Not a skit, a single joke. The keyboard player gets up, walks to centre stage, and announces that he’s going to tell a joke that’s ‘okay to say’, because he heard it on the radio.
“How does a pornstar get paid?
Income.”
(Get it, because it sounds like in-cum?)
It wasn’t a bad joke – it was fine, it got a laugh – but we were left confused. Who was this guy, who didn’t appear in a single skit after his one joke? Why was this the opener? Were they stalling while they sorted out technical issues? Did he just really want to be a part of it, while also playing his keyboard?
Arts Revue left all of these questions unanswered, but it gave us a great show to make up for it. The just-fine pornstar joke is thankfully followed by an excellent ‘Life is a Highway’ parody, ‘Life is a Parkes Way’, full of jokes about the perils of driving in Canberra. This was the first of many solid parodies. A special shoutout to ‘Love is an Open Door/There’s Vomit on the Floor’, an ode to a scenario many a Senior Resident has faced on a Thursday night, and a long but funny and oddly heartwarming skit where the Phantom of the Opera joins the Backstreet Boys. Though these were all good, the highlight had to be the number about society keeping Miss Piggy and Kermit apart. The costuming – a frog suit, a dress and a cheap wig – was exactly what you’d expect, and Georgia Mcculloch’s performance as Kermit was especially moving. From Kermit to Brian Schmidt’s American accent to the practised cadence of a newsreader, Mcculloch’s unique talent for impressions – ie. ‘doing funny voices’ – meant she never once broke character.
If a powerful, poignant anthem about the enduring power of frog-pig sex doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, then Arts Revue provided plenty of ANU-related comedy for the average revue enjoyer. A breakup between ANU and Schmidt, where his Nobel Prize is the other woman, captured the heartbreak of Schmidt’s departure. Even the Devil himself, accompanied by a grovelling minion he had an insane amount of sexual tension with, visited to announce his plans for a new and improved ANU. These ranged from not-that-bad-maybe-an-improvement-actually (sinking Wamburun into the depths of Hell) to downright evil (quadruple-factor authentication for every sign-on).
Not all of the skits were this good. A few were just drawn-out puns. A woman goes to the doctor about a lump on her arm; it’s Taylor Cyst, a cyst that plays Taylor Swift songs. Bird watchers make jokes about seeing nice pairs of tits. The latter does get points for walking right up to my co-writer and implying they had thrush, though. Excellent audience participation, almost as good as the bit where they turned off all the lights and ran a guided meditation, lulling us all into a false sense of security so that they could steal our belongings. Thankfully everything was returned after the show – no need to press charges.
Charlie Joyce Thompson deserves a special mention for bringing an extra laugh to every skit he starred in. His delivery, accents, acting and improv were fantastic and he had us keeling over, whether he was playing Miss Piggy or a South African High Court judge.
We saw Arts Revue on the opening night, so we were ready to forgive any tech issues. Which is good, because there were a fair few of them: lights going up randomly during scenes that were supposed to be dark (at least we think so), Taylor Swift playing during the devil’s speech and the wrong Powerpoint playing during a student presentation skit – somehow, this last one was still kind of funny.
Nonetheless, Arts Revue proved a funny, well-coordinated, well-acted performance. Its strengths were its actors and its parodies and musical numbers, each one somehow better than the last. It ended with a bang: a parody of ‘I’m Just Ken’ to the tune of “I’m Just Brian” and mashed up with even more Backstreet Boys. A fantastic way to the end night, and a charming and funny end to the revue season.
Comments Off on Interview with ANU alum, director and producer of The Giants, Rachael Antony
Few figures have had as powerful an impact on the course of Australian history as Bob Brown.
Currently showing in cinemas, The Giants is a feature length biopic directed and produced by ANU alumn Rachael Antony, exploring the life and accomplishments of Bob Brown alongside a stunning portrayal of the history of the Tasmanian forest and landscape. The documentary reveals his journey from doctor in Tasmania, to eventual leader of the first Greens party, and hero of the Australian environmentalism movement.
The Giants skilfully traces the achievements of Bob Brown as champion and protector of the Tasmanian forest and Franklin River, beautifully interwoven with the lifecycle and stories of the forest itself. While much of Bob’s life has been subject of public interest and knowledge, The Giants takes viewers behind the curtain. The film explores Bob’s private world and the important figures who have continually supported him behind the scenes. Showing the parallel life stories of Bob and the forest he treasured, side by side, The Giants invites viewers to come to know the trees as Bob did; wise custodians of the land and complex beings with their own history to tell.
Seeking to both entertain and educate, The Giants explores the horrors of clear felling and logging that plague the Tasmanian forest. While tracing the journey of Brown’s courageous fight to save both the trees and the Franklin River, viewers are reminded of the willing ignorance of political figures against whom Bob fought, showing (as if Australians needed further reminding) the sheer greed and recklessness of private interest and political parties’ historic, blatant disregard for Australia’s natural treasures. This destruction continues to this day. I suggest readers check out the Bob Brown Foundation Instagram to follow the journey of Lenny who is currently attached in protest to a cable logger, protecting the forest around her from logging, which is a critical habitat for Swift parrots.
Breathtaking drone shots, archival footage, and intriguing animations work together to create a stunning cinemascape for viewers, bringing the trees to life and immersing viewers in the world that Bob fought so hard to protect. For aspiring activists, those interested in the origins of Australian politics, or any lover of the natural world, The Giants is a worthwhile watch.
I sat down with Rachel to chat about making The Giants, the inspiration behind the film, and why more people should put Tasmania on their travel lists.
To start off with, I’d love to know a little bit about you and your background, and how you came to be directing and producing this documentary?
Long story short, I studied in Canberra. I studied anthropology and politics. And even though I didn’t work in either of those fields, I found that they were really quite helpful because I think both anthropology and politics ask you to question your assumptions and to ask questions of the status quo, and that’s really the starting point of any storytelling, I think. Later I studied journalism at RMIT. So I started out as a writer, and then I guess as time has evolved, and video has evolved, I’ve branched into different mediums and worked in TV and online video.
Originally the idea was to get people off screens and get them engaged into events, but based around the screens, I guess. So one of the things that came out of that was we wanted to do this big event for the anniversary of Cathy Freeman’s win at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. So we want to do that in 2020, and then what happened was everybody loved this idea, but we couldn’t get any money. Then we ended up getting some funding from ABC to make a documentary and that was the best possible thing that could have happened because September 2020, everybody was locked down, stuck at home watching television. Yeah. So that’s how that came about.
So then once we finished Freeman, I guess we were thinking about telling stories about people whose stories are bigger than themselves. Because I think, while people can be fascinating individually, the stories that they tell in terms of the way that their life is, and the messages, the bigger that is, the more compelling it is.
We were thinking about other people who we felt were really interesting and to be honest, really only one name came up and that was Bob Brown.
I think one thing that we were quite concerned about was the messages we’re getting about climate change. We have a kid ourselves, so we have this very tangible link to the next generation. Which is not to say that we wouldn’t have cared otherwise, because we did. Then of course, with the bushfires, what we saw was a massive amount of our native forests destroyed. And then soon after that, you know, while native animals were being pushed to the brink of extinction, we saw state logging operations coming in and conduct salvage logging, so removing old dead trees from the forest that – if they had just been left – would have served as habitat because various species of birds or possums can live in dead trees, and it gets them off the ground away from predators.
At this point, we just felt this was taking things too far, humans will never have enough. We’ll never say ‘no, we’re done now’. It’s always about more, things are really out of balance. We thought ‘this is crazy’, and around the same time we have been getting really inspired by some of the reading we had been doing. So we’ve been reading the Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, and they’re making us start thinking differently about forests and trees and also realising how crucial they were.
We made this film pretty quickly, so it’s hard to remember exactly how it all came together. But what we came up with was telling the story of Bob Brown, intertwined with the life of trees. The reason we did that is because we felt that by embedding the forest into the film from the outset, it sort of explained Bob’s worldview and why he’s worked so hard to save these forests and why we should all care about this as well. We also wanted to show the majesty and beauty of these places. Keeping in mind that, you know, Australia is one of the few places left on earth that does have primary forest. In Europe, they basically have no primary forest. So this is a very long story, but um, an answer to your question ‘how did it end up producing directing?’ well, a whole lot of life events.
One of my favourite parts of the film was the way it wove together Bob’s personal life with the hidden story of the trees and embedded his story within the story of the forest. I got the impression of so much richness and depth to Bob’s life. How did you decide which aspects of Bob’s personal life you were going to kind of focus on?
So we decided we would tell the story of Bob, intertwine it with a life of trees, everybody said that was a good idea. Nobody said ‘you’re crazy, how are you going to put Bob’s life into 45 minutes and the trees into 45 minutes?’ And so the answer to that is, we didn’t.
The film was at an hour and fifty three minutes, we could not get it any shorter. Our first cut was three hours, and we hadn’t even finished making the film. So to answer that, we really had to be quite brutal. I guess, because we had intertwined the life of trees, we had meeting points for both. So that gave us a trajectory, from you know, seedling, childhood, to sapling, maturity, and grandfather elder, if you like.
So we knew where we were going, then we needed to figure out which things to put in, which not. In the end, we had to get rid of a lot of stuff that’s actually pretty fascinating. Bob tried to pass gun control in Tasmania, years before Port Arthur happened and both Liberal and Labour parties shot it down, figuratively speaking. We didn’t put in the fact that he and another bunch of environmentalists were sued for $20 million by the Gunns wood chipping company in Tasmania.
We didn’t put in the fact that Bob once took out a mortgage to pay the ransom of an Australian pirate who had been kidnapped in Somalia.
So I know this is so much more, so what we had to do is this broad brushstroke story that connected as much as possible with those key convictions. He talks about optimism, he talks about defiance and he talks about compassion. So we found those stories, the ones that told those stories most strongly, or pointed into the direction of the forest, are the ones that we went to. So it was really quite a heartbreaking process. Also, obviously Paul [Bob’s partner] is a central character, but I’m sure if you’ve seen the films, you know that at every step there’s this amazing woman, right in there, doing exactly the same thing, he doesn’t do it alone. Each one of those women has a whole backstory. Basically we could have made a mini series, but we didn’t, we’ve made a film. So yeah, so the answer is, we just took the bits that told the story the best, and then we had to kill our darlings, so to speak.
Obviously we were always going to talk about his relationship with Paul, and then that became a slightly bigger part of the story, because while we always wanted to present that essentially as a love story, obviously it was complicated by the legal and social context of the time, so we needed to provide some background to that. So we have Paul, who was involved in gay law reform in Tasmania, tell that story about the movement that was headed up by people like Rodney Croome. So that did become a little bit bigger, but I think it also became stronger because of it.
When you were envisioning the documentary, how were you hoping people would feel walking away from it? Was there something in particular that you wanted people to feel or be influenced towards?
We felt Bob was an interesting character because he’s a baby boomer, but his interest in his message is so contemporary. We felt that a lot of the dialogue around climate change has pitted one generation against the other: the generation that’s old and has benefited from everything and stuffed it up for the younger generation. And a lot of that is true, but not entirely true. We felt that the best way to tackle these issues was in a cross generational way, whether it’s on action or voting, or whatever it is. We thought that Bob, because he’s an older person, but he speaks to younger audiences, we felt that he was potentially a unifying person in some ways. What we wanted people to feel was wonder and marvel for our forest and our natural heritage, which is so extraordinary. Most Australians know about the Redwoods, but I don’t think many people know about the Eucalyptus regnans. People would be horrified if they thought ‘oh, you would just pulp the redwoods for toilet paper’, but that’s apparently okay in Australia!
But it’s not, because 70% to 80% of people want native logging stopped, they just don’t understand what it really entails. People think it’s been used to make fine furniture, but it’s not, only 2% is used for long term wood products, 60% of it is left on the forest floors, and it’s set on fire. It transforms from a carbon storage facility of a forest to carbon emissions. It’s just insanity.
So we want people to feel a wonderment about the forest, but we also wanted them to feel hopeful and galvanised, if that’s possible. We didn’t want to make a depressing documentary. We can’t watch depressing documentaries and definitely can’t spend two and a half years making one. So while some of the subject material was challenging, I think overall it’s a hopeful film, and I think overall, Bob is a hopeful person and you do need hope right now.
We just need to stay focused on the idea that if we are hopeful and if we act, then change will come. And as Bob says, it was a long campaign to save the Franklin, eighteen months before it was saved, it looked like it was doomed. So eighteen months isn’t a long time, it’s not even two years. So what we think is, let’s talk about native forest logging now and let’s finish it now. Because if we’ve got money for submarines and football stadiums and tax cuts for very rich people, then we have money to stop this industry that’s costing us money and to make meaningful action on climate change.
There’s some absolutely stunning shots of the Tasmanian landscape throughout the film. How did you balance trying to get those shots with trying not to disturb or harm the ecosystems and wildlife where you were filming?
We worked with a team called The Tree Projects in Tasmania. They’re professional tree climbers, and they helped to rig cameras high up into the canopy. So the opening shot that you see is not a drone camera. We showed the forest in a number of ways. One was using cameras, one was using drones, and one was 3D scanning of the forest working with an organisation called TerraLuma, at University of Tasmania. Then sending the data to Alex Le Guillou who’s a French animator, and he turned it into point cloud animation. The animation you see in the film is actually an actual tree. So what we did was actually cast three trees like you would do three characters. Eucalyptus regnans, which are amongst the tallest plants from the world; Huon pines, one of the oldest lived and myrtle beech in the Tarkine, which is one the most diversity rich trees. One of the people we spoke to described it as a ‘great barrier reef of trees’ because it’s covered in lichen and algae and stuff. Very interesting trees. So in answer to your question, for instance that tree in the Tarkine, it’s just inside an area near a clear fell. So basically, the Bob Brown foundation stopped them logging it, otherwise it wouldn’t have been there. They’re really taking direct action, using whatever means they have to protect the Tarkine and to protect native forest in Tasmania, as are, you know, groups across Australia. And it’s really thanks to their direct action that we could film that tree, because literally, it’s next in line.
Speaking about some of the other groups that are operating in Australia, while you were making this documentary, I think it was at the same time that Blockade Australia was taking action that was very reminiscent of Bob’s methods, these really direct, not aggressive, but impactful stages of a protest. How do you kind of feel about that? Did it give you any similar hope, reflecting on those young people doing such similar work to what Bob did during his life?
I didn’t think specifically about Blockade Australia, but, obviously, we’re all very well aware of the school strikes and all those other environmental grassroots movements, and also youth movements. At the time, I remember just before COVID-19, when there were these massive street protests, and there was debate over whether kids should be on the street or not, and my personal feeling was always to say “when there’s kids on the street, it’s a symptom that adults haven’t stepped up and done their job, so this is the only means left to them.” They can’t vote, they don’t have other means of power. So for me, it was really a symptom of adult failure. I guess we wanted to contribute to that.
I think that when you think about climate environmentalism, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed. But ultimately, everybody can do something.
When I interviewed Christine Milne, she said something very interesting, which was that environmental movements need everyone, they need people to protest, sometimes they need people to get arrested, but they also need graphic designers or web people. Ultimately, the world just needs people who can just have an environmental frame of mind.
Maybe you can’t protest, but maybe if you’re in health or education or departments, you often have within yourself the power to ask questions to make changes, and these can add up to quite a lot. I think when you look at Bob Brown and all he’s achieved in his life, him being one person alone, but making that decision is just really the fundamental start.
Something I really loved about the film was how it wove archival footage of the protests on the Franklin together with recent footage of Bob Brown. What was the process like of finding that footage?
It was really massive because Bob Brown has basically put on fifty years of activism, so he’s been in the public eye for that time. So, we had an extraordinary amount of material to work with, but that was also the problem as well, because there was so much to work through so we did a number of things. We got a lot of news, archived from the ABC, and probably most of what you see of the Franklin is that, but the more recent Franklin footage was sourced from other places.
One of the reasons why we showed modern footage of the Franklin is that the older footage, I think, fails to capture the beauty because it feels a bit faded and it doesn’t quite have the aesthetic quality of contemporary footage. So we wanted to really show, ‘actually this is how it looks and it is really spectacular’. Also access from the National Library of Australia, they have Bob Brown’s personal archive there, which is again, massive amounts of boxes, and we were able to go through that to get childhood photos and reports, and letters and get up the idea of who was crucially important in his personal life, and then there are a number of documentaries as well that we could source material from. So, let us say that we have an archive producer who basically has this spreadsheet from hell, so it’s a huge job.
When you were going through the process of filming, you said it was over two and a half years. Was there a particular memorable or special moment either with Bob Brown or maybe just with the trees, that stands out to you from your time making the film?
Well, so when I say two and a half years, that’s not filming, that’s doing everything so you know, producing, scripting, and post production everything. We did the shoot in Liffey, at Bob’s farmhouse and it was really, I guess, interesting, because he had talked about this house as like this companion and this friend. So it was interesting to go there and see how it was, and suddenly just to be struck by the warmth of that environment and how beautiful it is. Because you’ve got the farmhouse, you’ve got the mountains, you’ve got the river and all the elements are in place, and I feel like there’s something in that landscape that really balances Bob’s idea, which is like you’ve got this little human space, which is the hut, but there’s space for nature all around it. And that for me sort of encompasses the way he looks at the world. We should take up a little bit of space but let everything else flourish.
What’s interesting is the Tarkine where we filmed, it’s really 30km away from Cradle Mountain National Park, which is one of the biggest tourism draw cards in Tasmania. So you could literally go there and just drive along [to the Tarkine], and that would be like the perfect tourism adventure, but it’s just being logged and Tanya Plibersek is yet to rule on whether that forest will become a toxic waste dump for a Chinese mining company. So really, the more people who go to the Tarkine and talk about it, the better, because this is an absolutely astonishing rainforest and the Bob Brown Foundation has this encampment out there sometimes and you can go and meet people and find out about the place.
When you stand in that forest, it’s weird, it’s like you’re not standing on ground. You’re standing on this sort of spongy surface. It’s like millions of years of organic matter beneath your feet and it’s so quiet, it’s just really unworldly. So I really encourage people to go there, as Bob says, the Tarkine is a very arresting place.
THE GIANTS is now screening at Palace Electric Canberra, find all screenings: https://www.thegiantsfilm.com
There will be a National Day of Action for Native Forests – including Canberra on August 19. Details here: https://defendthegiants.org/events/
Few figures have had as powerful an impact on the course of Australian history as Bob Brown.
It’s you from the future. I just wanted to let you know that life is good. It’s not always rainbows and sparkles, but it’s good. I’m happy – even though the thought of university makes me stressed, and it always feels like I’m running out of time – I’m happy despite it all.
Nowadays I say yes to spontaneous activities because I know life will never feel as free and liberating as it does right now. I make mistakes but it’s okay, because I try to grow from them – it’s not always easy, but it’s been working so far.
I still hold onto our friendships from home but I now understand that sometimes people grow up and apart. I love every new person I meet here, which isn’t surprising because you and I always fell in love with strangers. Every day I wake up and learn something new. I am learning how to be an adult and how to be a better person. I make an effort to be good and kind. I’m discovering my true self and it’s really fun. You would love to see it.
I try not to worry about the little things, remembering that embarrassment is merely a social construct. Still, sometimes those self-critical voices in my head get a little too loud and it gets hard to ignore them.
I’m still anxious about the future, even though our Buddhist background taught us to be present; I’m always trying to plan ahead. That used to be the only way you knew how to get work done, to complete all of it a few days early. Do not procrastinate. Reward yourself only after all the hard work is done.
Now I’m realising that maybe that only worked when I had the safety and stability of being at home with that clean and strict routine of being at school for six and a half hours and coming home just to be taken care of. I take care of myself now, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I just wish you, my younger self, knew that you didn’t always have to know the right answers. Remember what Mum always says, “you never know what will happen tomorrow”. Why do you still feel uneasy about your career? If you believed that, why did you always feel uneasy about the future?
Maybe it’s because no one ever told you that growing up is tough, or maybe they did and you didn’t believe them. You didn’t know if there would be a safety net waiting for you when you fell down the rabbit hole. You could never think past getting into university, and now that you’re here you still don’t know what’ll happen once you get your degree. But now I know it is okay not to know. You don’t know that life is a cycle of trial and error, but I do.
I love you, my younger self, but sometimes I think you may have conditioned me to be an over-ambitious perfectionist. You made me dream big and want to change the world and, while a part of me still wants those things, I’m worried that if I fail I will be disappointing all the people counting on me. That seems unfair, right? To have the burden of the expectations of everyone I care about and love.
You still have lots of dreams, but the pathway just seems a bit unclear. I think that’s what scares me: the unknown and the lack of clarity. To dream as big as I have is a scary thing. That irresistible drive to achieve every dream you ever dared to have is what’s driving me to keep going now.
I wish you had learnt not to compare yourself to others at a younger age. I would tell you, “you don’t have to be doing the most all the time and that you’re allowed to take things slow and go at your own pace”. I know it’s easier said than done, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
The thing is, I keep comparing myself to you too. I keep thinking about how productive you are compared to me now. I’m fearful of losing motivation and of giving up. I don’t want to disappoint you, little Chetha, but I don’t want to be exhausted either. I am trying to maintain that balance but it feels like walking on a tightrope. If I concentrate on moving one foot in front of the other, I know I’ll be okay.
Life is uncertain and dreams are expensive. But I wanted to tell you that I now know it’s okay to change plans. I know that I’m worth more than the grade I get on an assignment. I know that I can make decisions and pursue my dreams at my own pace. I don’t want you to be worried about me, I promise I’ll be someone you’re proud of.
Lots of love, always and forever,
Chetha (from today) xx
PS. When overwhelmed, listen to the lyrics of this song. I think you’d appreciate it.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 2 ‘To Be Confirmed’
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
We never know what will happen tomorrow. We never even know what will happen in the next few hours of each day. We have so many questions and not enough answers. We make plans just for them to change. Life itself will always be uncertain, but isn’t that what we should love about it? The possibilities are always endless. But sometimes all we yearn for is confirmation that everything will be okay. That we’ll be happy and healthy and that all our dreams will come true.
Do you have any uncertainties in your life at the moment? What do you wish you could confirm, if life was to be ever so generous?
Whether or not I can study abroad in Japan this year?! Anonymous, 20.
COVID! Everything is really uncertain in jobs, travel, education and socialising. It’s changing so often that it’s hard to keep up to date. Ruby, 19.
What I’ll be doing one year from now. Will COVID catch me if I go to Europe in the middle of the year? Clancy, 20.
I wish the world would tell me if he liked me back. Anonymous, 23.
I feel like I have many uncertainties in my life that I wish I knew all the answers to. But to be honest, the beauty of life is this idea of not knowing. You have no idea what will be happening in a week, a month or a year, etc. Anonymous, 19.
Whether I will be successful, not just career but whether I will be happy and content with my life. Anonymous, 20.
My love life lol. Anonymous, 19.
Will life, in particular uni, ever actually get back to normal? I feel as though I might never get the uni experience I was looking forward to for years and talked about by friends and family. Dacey, 19.
As I approach my graduation, I feel very uncertain about what my life will be like in one year’s time. Where will I be? What will I be doing? Who will I be? Will I enjoy it? Rose, 21.
My fit for Badger on Thursday. Anonymous, 18.
Where I can confidently handle being COVID positive in the inevitable situation that I contract the virus and what my health will be life after. Anonymous, 47.
My future. Anonymous, 19.
Everything, I guess. Mainly if I’ll end up where I want to, even if that plan changes. Jasie, 19.
I want to know if I’m liked. I want to know whether people find me annoying or not, not so that I can dial down my personality for others, but so I can find a balance which will make everyone feel comfortable around me. Anonymous, 18.
If my family is happy and healthy. Anonymous, 20.
I feel uncertain with my place in the world as a person of colour. I’ve so often been belittled by white people. It’s hard to feel safe when quite often, white people speak over POC or try to suppress them. Anonymous, 23.
If this is going to be the year of my burn out or revival. Anonymous, 20.
Employment and financial future. Currently super poor, I wish I could be told that everything will be okay. Pete, 20.
What I’m eating for dinner tonight. Matilda, 19.
I worry about the fact that I’ll probably never be able to buy a house. Anonymous, 20.
Whether I’ll fail my supplementary exam, lmao. Anonymous, 19.
Uncertain on the direction of uni life and my career following. Gus, 18.
Uni experience and whether it will be fun or sad. When will COVID stop defining our lives? When will I pull myself together? How to get rid of pantry moths. Anonymous, 19.
If I have COVID or not or if I’m going to get it in the near future. James, 19.
I’m uncertain about what the world is going to look like in 10, 20, 30 years etc. When, from an environmental standpoint, the path that we humans have been on isn’t a reciprocal one, but a more linear destructive one. And that’s the reason I’m doing the degree that I’m doing. Because I’m uncertain about what the natural world is going to look like in 30 years. I want to be a part of those who try their best to preserve it and find more sustainable and regenerative ways for us humans to live. Jack, 19.
Whether I will ever eat a quesadilla as good as the one I just had. Tiarna, 20.
I’m really uncertain about where I’ll be in 10 years from now. Sean, 21.
If my car’s going to break down today or tomorrow. Sarah, 21.
I’m uncertain about my future, like whether I will succeed in life and be happy and content. I’m uncertain about the future security of the world, both in war ways but also access to resources such as food. Maddie, 20.
Whether my package is going to arrive on time. Olivia, 20.
Uncertainties abound and yet the most troubling of all seems to be my own indeterminate feelings! How much could the going-ons of the outer world matter when my own inner world is wildly thrashing shades of sensation that I must say are the emotions and thoughts of a sentient being? Anonymous, 19.
I am uncertain as to whether I am on the right path and if the decisions I am making now are leading me to the life I want to lead. Ollie, 19.
Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 2 ‘To Be Confirmed’
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