This is going to be part of a daily writing activity. The goal is to get myself back into writing analytical texts, and to practice the usage of what I’ve been reading for bigger projects. Typically these writings will focus on the various media that I’ve been watching and have been rolling around in my head for a couple days. The first focuses on the 2000 film You Can Count on Me, which I’ve been pondering for a couple days now. Don’t expect a long form analytical piece from these, but do expect general meditations on art applied to recent films, books, shows, video games, etc. which made me consider something new about art.
You Can Count on Me is a film from Kenneth Lonergan which reminded me of movies and stories that I cannot get enough of. In its execution, it seems simple, but surprised me with its delicate handling of two different people trying to navigate living as adults with trauma. The only ostensible detail we know about them from the start of the film is that their parents died in a car accident when they were very young. The story then cuts straight to their adult lives, giving no context of the years which passed in between. In addition to this, dialogue and language are the only ways in which these siblings are able to disseminate this information to one another. This causes a rift due to their different experiences trying to navigate life (Sammy choosing to go further into her religion as a means of coping, and Terry choosing to become nihilistic and embrace the chaos of life is one recurring example of this). Terry’s direct communication with Sammy’s son (Rudy Jr.) also causes problems as Sammy believes that keeping her son in the dark about his life will give him time to embrace the harsh realities, where Terry is more than willing to simply communicate life’s darker moments, and allow Sammy’s son to navigate them while also serving as a help through these tough moments. Because of these tensions, the film goes through multiple scenarios and constantly poses, but never answers the question of how much parents should tell their children about the darker sides of life from two opposing sides who are neither correct or incorrect completely in their approach. It is in this way which art proposes questions which can not be answered fully that the film shines. It is reminiscent of the questions posed by The Catcher in the Rye or other similar pieces of art which pose questions of youth and the reality of the world. Terry doesn’t want to harm the child, and understands in his interpretation of the world that the child is no more innocent, and no more worthy of protection from the harsh realities of the world than any other person, and to cope is to have time to process and think, where Sammy doesn’t believe that an “all at once” approach is the correct way to teach these lessons, but in doing so does not allow her child to experience the pain for any extended amount of time. Questions are avoided outright by Sammy which Terry doesn’t understand might be upsetting to the child.
It’s in this unique way that the film shines a light on relationships without needing a large metaphorical or existential threat to consume the action of the story, which is rare in popular media as a whole. An example of this being a film I quite like, The Babadook, which navigates these questions by externalizing trauma as a literal monster. Be certain, though, that there is no correct way to navigate these questions through artwork, and whatever symbol, signifiers, etc. are used can be used to get across the same message. Instead the focus here is that The Babadook externalizes its threat as a physical entity, where the threat in You Can Count on Me remains internal to each of the characters, and only externalizes itself at the extreme ends of each point of interpretation. For example, interpreting Sammy as one hundred percent correct leads us to the logical conclusion that she is still working through her trauma, and her externalization of that is to act in impulsive ways, unable to make clear decisions. This comes in the adulterous relationship she courts with her boss, where she never feels truly happy or satisfied, but in the expression of sex, distracts from the horrible reality she lives in. There’s an excellent scene where after having just had sex with her boss, whom she hated for weeks beforehand, she alternates between smiling and grimacing due to the conflict she has created, and refuses to address. Her hatred for her boss is washed away when her physical pleasure is brought upon, but never truly disappears from her life. This is extrapolated out by her never telling her son about his father, what he was like, or why he isn’t there, in order to stave off that uncomfortable conversation with her son. This behavior should not be interpreted as protection of the child himself, but as a force by which Sammy shows her trying to ensure that she herself doesn’t feel that pain again, and doesn’t have to deal with it. The choice made by Sammy to try and keep him from feelings, however is a protective measure, but is teaching her son to act as she does, which is shown to be imperfect. Terry’s approach is to drive Sammy’s son without her knowing to his father’s house, in order to immaturely show the boy “how much of an asshole,” his father was and is. The boy’s father, Rudy, who the boy is named after, claims that Rudy Jr. is not his. This obviously causes Rudy Jr. to become confused, as well as Terry attacking Rudy Sr. and being dragged away by police. This is a pivotal moment in the externalizing of the pain of both of our main characters. Instead of an existential threat, the threat comes from the characters themselves. As Terry is being arrested, Sammy is currently with her boss, and avoiding marriage with another man which she refuses for so long to turn down. This climax of sorts serves the role of showing not only the most extreme way in which each character deals with pain, but provides the viewer with a question to chew on. The viewer has no doubt taken a side more or less at this point, but whose side can you be on when no one is able to communicate their trauma. How can you help someone deal with trauma who actively avoids it? How do you help someone deal with trauma who cannot see the world beyond it?
The film has no answer. It cannot, and it should not. Acceptance of trauma is good, but if you refuse to see past it, the entire world will become devoid of meaning. Refusing to face trauma is a temporary measure which only serves to further mythologize it as something that has power over you, much like a Babadook, or other monstrous symbols used to externalize human experiences. Both characters are engaging in a semiological battle of interpretation against their shared experience, but neither can find the language necessary to communicate their findings to one another. Terry becomes childish in many ways because he was never able to look past one event of his life and grow from it, while Sammy has looked it in the face and chosen to ignore it in favor of performing adulthood. Their performances of pain and grief externalize themselves through the character’s actions, which is something that externalizes these emotions in the form of monstrous entities lack in conveying. If the monster itself is the problem, then the monster must have come from a character’s knowing choice in order to properly be treated as a symbol for how to deal with trauma and life in general. This is where the mythology surrounding films like Friday the 13thcome into play, where the knowing decision that is made is to engage in sex. It becomes puritanical because it necessarily treats that one act as enough to justify punishment. The characters themselves are not responsible for Jason, but rather the action of sex itself becomes responsible. In You Can Count on Me, no action from our characters is met uncritically and unexamined. This is the strength of a film that is able to contain its stakes in the interpersonal relationships and lives of the characters it presents us with. If the whole world is ending, it’s hard to process that emotionally before stopping the existential threat, but if you love your sister, you can navigate working with her in a meaningful way while trying to prevent a further rift from forming.
Ways in which people navigate experiencing life are rarely cut and dry. Many of them cannot be solved by one week with our siblings, experiencing the highs and lows of human life. In this way, good art cannot provide an answer to our problems without further dialectic and semiological study. A value held in common myth from the 1980s cannot be fully transposed without dialectical work, and neither can you navigate trauma from 20 years in the past without reconciling and adjusting for who you are now, who you were, and who you want to be. You Can Count on Me ends with the two principle characters staring into the distance as though it were the rest of their lives, fully affected by their experience, and having learned something from one another. It is a hope that lives on, with uncertainty which their faces display excellently. That uncertainty necessarily is embraced by those trying to heal, and the film displays in its final moments that everything can and will change; all that is left is to learn from it.
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Smelly Marxist 