Skunk on Our Back


Dear Eugene,

"Very soon you will find you don't make choices but choices make you," I texted my daughter last night.

I hate myself talking this way, preaching, and not a very original sermon.  I am sure I stole the line from someone else; call it parental (re)appropriation.

But that's what parents do, don't they?  They expose themselves to the hazard of glib dismissal, disdainful glance, self-disgust, the quickest and most disgraceful free fall from youthful care-less idealism to decrepit care-full disenchantment.  They can smell just as good the skunk on their back that everyone else in the room is pinching the nose for.

We have ourselves a functioning nasal system too, you know.

Last night I watched a movie, one that I expected myself to like--like, really like--but was disappointed.  I won't give you the name, don't want to spoil it for you.  Most people like--like, really like--it.  I will only bring up one point to say what I want to say here.

It's a coming-of-age movie, summer breeze, first love, swimming pool, cigarette smoke, piano and books, culture and mattress, beautiful stranger, rustic charm, self discovery, done better before, seen by me many times, unfair to the movie, valid to this viewer.  OK, that's not the "one point" I wanted to make.

I want to talk about the parents, in particular the dad, in this movie.  To say he is "open-minded" about his barely-adult son's love affair with a beautiful stranger is not a very mind-opening statement about who he is.  I found him more like a doting grandpa, Santa Claus, but no, more than that, a crude caricature of a "loving god."

He actually "concludes" the story with a sermon on not only the validity but supreme value of our pursuit of desire.  He is a teacher of history and culture, but seems to have learned nothing about what human desire has done to ourselves and even less about passing on the lessons to his impressionable, vulnerable young son.

The least he could ask is, "Son, do you use a condom?  Does your partner care to use one for you?"  And do we need a #MeToo movement to know beautiful strangers can be ugly manipulators, deadly extortionists, merciless killers of mind and heart and body?  Can our reckless pursuit of desire put an end to all pursuits in life?  Am I as little as what my desire says I am?  Should I reduce myself to what and how I am feeling right here, right now?

The movie thinks it is about innocence, but it's about naiveté.  A person is naive when he preaches about his own innocence with not enough self-awareness and even less self-criticism.

So that's it, I guess: A storyteller who is not aware of his own blindness can't help us to see much.  The fat characters in Wall-E are the ones paying to put the movie on screen, soft drink in the right hand popcorn the left, the full meal deal.  If there ever really was a Pocahontas she didn't have a Barbie figure and whoever would and could afford to buy a plastic replica of her from a Disney store is likely from the tribe of her exploiters.

We can't have a skunk on our back and magically smell good too.

Yours, Alex

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