‘Whatever we give you it’s never enough’

adrianyapck
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

If you’ve not seen the film, possible spoilers ahead.

I’m back to playing catch-up with my movies-to-watch list again. I had a beat on it for a bit but, a slip here and a couple of ‘another days’ there and I am back to breathing its fumes.

Me and the wife watched a marvelous film over the weekend directed by a young and feisty woman, about a young feisty woman. Every year, an unsuspecting indie appears more-of-less out of thin air and condenses everything I’m feeling into its 93-minute runtime. Which says a lot either about the intuitiveness of unknown American filmmakers about the plights of lower middle class young adults in Southeast Asia or the uncaring willingness I have to barter my intellectual heart to anything that looks pretty and independent. I’m thinking it’s probably the latter.

The film is based around a simple premise. Young independent teenager who is brought up in right-wing religious-heavy conditions in Sacramento, longs to leave it, to sample the culturally-rich landscape of more cosmopolitan cities such as New York. To do this, she would have to obtain the blessings of her domineering mother, raise the money to get there and convince a school in those cities to accept her, all while contending with the usual teenage melodrama of sexual awakenings, high-school politics and well, prom.

Film premises that center on characters that are enticed by the ‘big city lights’ only to discover that it’s not all what it’s been made out to be, is not new. What makes Lady Bird refreshing is that it’s probably one of the only good films to represent that prose. Why? Because the arts largely does not run on the currency of tradition. It’s often hard to convince most self-aware individuals that it’s plausible that our limiting traditions represents a better choice than the big, big world outside of it. It’s hard to make a moralistic stand like that without it sounding like dross from our parents when we were kids - ‘Play with fire and you get burned’, ‘Be careful what you wish for’, etc. Translate that into film and the task of making it decent becomes almost impossible.

I’ve spent a large part of my existence trying to prove my upbringing wrong. I was raised under extremely-right wing Christian-leanings thanks to the church my dad decided to walk into when I was about eleven. That formed the major part of the narrative of my life for the next 15 years. That church decreed that anyone that regularly sits on its chairs and calls it their spiritual home and wishes to serve within its walls, should not own a TV, drink a drop alcohol and all the vices classified worst than these two (if you can even call these two things vices). Doing so would incur the wrath of God in portions of three fireballs, two lightning bolts and a large portion of ‘burn in hell’. My believe curve in that subculture went from ‘unsuspecting father-follower’, reaching the summit of ‘street-preaching believer’ before gradually withering down to ‘cynical objector’ at its tail-end.

God in my eyes has been viewed through a variety of filters over the years, from the initial abusive authoritative figure, to hard-to-please drill sergeant, right up to distant parent and gradually arriving at loving and gracious father at this moment. I struggled during the initial years to reconcile between people telling me that I need God in my life and the lack of want I seem to feel regarding him. I overdrew during these years and found myself a dry, cynical wreck before I’ve even reached 30.

I was somewhat vindicate in my uncomfortable views of that community when it all went south years later with allegations of financial misappropriations and sexual misconduct. I have issues trusting people in power with Godly intentions these days. I much prefer to parlay with their heathen counterparts if I have to be honest. Less agenda, more candor. I am not cynical about God. Not at all. I am just wary of the people who come in His name without his full permission.

I mostly see those initial years I’ve struggled with having God in my life as the wasted years of my spiritual life. Where I was struggling to find a place in a confining subculture only to later realise there is a variation of that subculture that exists somewhere else that would’ve encouraged my idiosyncrasies, as opposed to making me believe that there was something wrong about who I was.

That formative nature doesn’t come out much anymore. Mainly because I’ve spent a large portion of the last two decades, snuffing it out with a pillow every time it resurrects. I can recognise that perhaps I have overcompensated slightly by now forging an identity as a person who always plays very close to the line. I often have to kick and scream before I fall in line, a byproduct of being sold that I had to be a mindless drone to those in spiritual power to amount to anything. These days, I dislike being told what I should or should not do with my life because I endured years of people telling me I was good for nothing in a church context because I was not extreme with my faith. I absolutely hate it when churches adopt a high-school approach to discipleship where the beautiful, smart and charismatic rise up to the top and the ordinary are left grasping at straws below because I was subjected to a pastor’s popularity contest/game-of-death once. No more. I don’t care who you are, or what you represent. I will never allow myself to feel that again.

I can see and appreciate what the film was trying to say but at the same time, I can recognise that I’ve not learned to properly appreciate the upbringing I’ve had. I’ve not had that ‘appreciating the sound of choir boys in New York’ scene in my existence just yet, where I suddenly have an epiphany that everything I’ve always wanted is meaningless and what I had before was actually more valuable than I thought it was. I mean, I can appreciate some of the subtexts (like how recently I’ve been toying with the idea of retreating back into a smaller church) and how it has held me in good stead but to fully appreciate it for what it was? Probably not quite yet.

Personally, I’m still very much stuck in Sacramento, hating every moment of it, trying to burst out of its unappealing confinements because I truly believe there is something better out there for me. Although in most ways, I’ve found it, but it’s not helped me appreciate where I came from any better.

Will my epiphany come? I don’t know. I don’t even know I want it to come anymore. Spend enough time in tiger skin and you start believing you’re a tiger.

adrianyapck

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commentator | observer | a mediocre life consigliere, without the blood and bad accent | www.adrianyapck.com

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