Last weekend, I binged watched (yes, I recommend it) Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s show The Curse, and later, watched Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things. A fantastical, surreal, somewhat awkward journey through being human, to say the least. Emma Stone is not the only thing The Curse and Poor Things have in common. Both stories seem to touch on a very human and strange experience, uncomfortably: shame.
Is it shameful to be human?
Is it embarrassing to feel?
Being human is certainly not always comfortable. Being misunderstood, wanting to be understood, wanting to be good, not knowing when you’re wrong, being wrong, wanting so bad to be right, to be wanted, to be loved, back. It’s all so strangely vulnerable. Complicated. Or, rather, complex. And, quite truthfully, it’s all so very odd! Alien-like. None of us have done this before, this being human. Funny to think of it.
I used to say Where The Wild Things Are was one of my favorite movies. I never watched it more than once, though. There’s a certain sadness in it that makes me very uncomfortable, and yet, it’s the very thing I resonated with the most. A wild, fully alive, uncomfortable sadness. A heart ache in tension with love and beauty and desire, but also anger and fear. There was something deeply emotional to me about watching The Curse, too. To watch the process of two people communicate together, misunderstand one another, and try so hard to connect to the other is somewhat painful. The trying, especially.
Another Fielder Safdie Gray theme in common: being a baby. I think it’s fascinating that we’ve somehow agreed, or convinced ourselves as a society that life comes in stages. We transition from child to adult. We leave our childish ways behind. We are mature, now. We’ve been human for a while! When in fact, I’ve never aged while being in my 30s before. After all, it’s our first time being alive.
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bella Baxter is pieced together from outside human parts and brought to life by man.
Though labeled ‘creature’ or ‘monster’, there is something incredibly human and vulnerable about Bella and Frankenstein. Learning the ways of society for the first time. Feeling and longing for the first time. Learning to communicate, to piece thought together and seek knowledge. I can’t help but find a piece of myself in them. Perhaps, we all can.
I have been under the impression that I should know by now. I feel as though I am a part of society, but I’m behind. On what? I’m not sure. Maybe how adult I could be by now. Maybe this is the source of my shame, of my embarrassment to exist. Society has me believing I should know how to be. And when I don’t, when I’m still learning, I feel shame. For failing. For not knowing what is ‘right’. For being like a child, a baby, and not an adult.
But, in Mary Shelley’s words, nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. We are new here. No matter how many days we’ve been alive. Each sunrise, each sunset, each conversation, interaction, relationship, different from the previous.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
Each day, anew. Painful, uncomfortable, strange and beautiful, but not embarrassing. Because, I realize, there is no shame in learning to exist for the first time.