SPIRALing Thoughts While Driving
As #OtherWorlds2019 approaches, staff members are sharing the feature films they’re most excited about. Next up, Founder and Artistic Director Bears Rebecca Fonte with a very personal look SPIRAL (which screens Friday, December 6 at 9:45PM as part of our Under Worlds sidebar):
Last week for a brief period of the state legislature of Iowa flew the transgender flag over the Iowa capitol on Transgender Day of Remembrance. They literally only flew it for five minutes but it still inspired bigots to complain that some sort of ‘Rainbow Jihad’ was infiltrating politics and intended to destroy the entire value system of the state.
First of all, I certainly hope that's true. Iowa is trending in the right way and if my people can take some of the credit for that then I will dance in the street like Mick Jagger and David Bowie after they tumbled like dice all funk to funky-like. But second of all, shut the fuck up. You had your time and it's called 1935 to the early 2000s. Then again, yeah, I live in an urban area and I always have, and I have to remember that change comes slower the further you move away from population centers where people have to actually interact with each other. Or rather when those people have to interact with an ‘other,’ which is what I am.
Right about now it probably feels like this blog is going all over the place but bear with me because eventually I'm going to talk about a film. Also, I am driving to Ft Worth to get our posters signed so I am dictating and driving, which means this is gonna be stream of consciousness (see what I did there) piece.
So back to people being forced to talk to each other, that's the whole point of something like the United Nations. When we come together, we're able to see past our differences – or honestly even if we don't want to we are forced to -- because we have to acknowledge that we're all in the same space. We all know in our heart of hearts (I hate that phrase I can’t believe I just used it, like I have a mini heart ready to pinch hit or who calls the shot, the man behind the man, or woman behind the man as the case would be… where the fuck am I? oh Jarrell. I mean where am I in this blog?) that the world just works smoother if we spend as much time forwarding our own personal goals as trying to prevent other people's civil liberties.
Seriously. I don't care if you want to believe that the Earth is 4,000 years old and that Moses rode on a brontosaurus, it actually doesn't get in my way for you to believe that just like it doesn’t get in your way if I think gender is not determined my something as misunderstood as chromosomes. I think science is closer to Adam and Steve than Sdam and Stegosaurus. So just move on with your life and do that thing and I will stay out of yours if you stay out of mine.
So, yeah, the movie SPIRAL. We were done programming this year's festival. We were down to one last spot for a horror film and, in my mind, I had just programmed it off an e-mail sent me by Dan Repp, our Senior Programmer. But that email had two films in it and I had only watched the first one. The second one was SPIRAL.
SPIRAL is by no means your typical horror film. In fact, it takes a very long time for anything horrific to happen. But that doesn't mean it isn't filled with some of the most realistic terror that people experience every day. In the film, which admittedly is set ten years ago – one of the first opportunities I can think of as a film being so recent that you can source props from the dollar bin of eBay – a gay couple retreats from the city to find a more simple and relaxing life in what I can only describe as a suburban subdivision randomly dropped 30 miles Major City, USA. The couple finds themselves adjusting to a new place, and new neighbors, ones who seem like they have never met a gay couple. Of course, their initial impression is influenced by their age difference, their individual economic stability, and their race. Malik, who is there to ghostwrite a book without the urban distractions of their last home, instantly feels like more of an outsider then his more well-off, whiter partner (yes, he’s white, Malik is black – do I have to write that? I feel like when a filmmaker names a character something like Malik they are intentionally drawing attention to the non-whiteness of that person, and how the name sounds coming out of the mouths of people named Hannah, Charles, and Liam. But neither Malik nor Aaron are particularly welcomed into this neighborhood of homogeneous hetnorms (this is my new favorite insult, or the more inclusive hetcissies).
I often think about the fine line between true fear and paranoia. Is that person really looking at me askance or do I just think they are because I'm very aware that I look different than everyone else here? If I am assuming that someone is a bigot just because they do a double-take when they walked by me then that's on me. Often people take time to adjust to new circumstances, including seeing people outside of their normal social circle become a more present parts of their life. And that's a good thing. And the double take isn't necessarily bad – it just means that they are processing the information that they are seeing what they are seeing. Hopefully once it is processed it won't be a big deal. Honestly, that's why I don't go out anymore without representing who I am. I realize that just stepping outside at this point in American history, as a six-foot-tall transgender woman in makeup and sort of Punky Brewster inspired wardrobe is a political statement. Especially at Buc-ee's in Waco.
Side thought: I just went in and got a Dr Pepper at Buc-ee's and it is very different in Waco than on the way to San Marcos. At least it feels very different to transgender me.
But now let's look at the other side of the fear/paranoia dichotomy. What if I decide I'm just being paranoid and I let my guard down? And then I head to the bathroom here in Waco and get jumped by two good ole boys who don't think I'm going to the bathroom God made me to go to.
This year in America 22 women have been killed in vicious hate crimes because they are transgender. Fifteen women in five years in Texas alone. That’s why we have Transgender Day of Remembrance. So in SPIRAL when Malik feels that everyone is looking at him and judging him and he doesn't feel safe, there's a reason for that. He has a double strike, being black and gay – 20 of the 22 women killed this year were transgender woman of color.
For Malik – played perfectly by Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman whom I fell in love with on Lifetime/Hulu’s UNREAL – when it's a small town and everyone knows everyone else and probably knows the local authorities, you're on your own if you think you're going to get justice. And if your partner thinks you're overreacting, then you really have nowhere to go. And if you come home one day, and someone has broken into your house and spray-painted ‘faggots’ on your wall, what do you do then? They made their feelings clear but not their intentions. Now you have a justified fear and paranoia that they might go even further.
The reason I programmed SPIRAL one minute after watching it is that I have felt for most of my life, just as helpless as Malik does. This film capture that. And that was all by minute 45… after which the film falls into a more traditional horror structure, although I don't mean that as an insult whatsoever. I say that it falls into it because it almost feels like an LGBTQ socio-political drama that just ends up being in the wrong place at the wrong time and stumbles into some sort of Lovecraftian cult with a conversion therapy aesthetic. I actually don't know anything about where the director writer falls in his sexuality but SPIRAL truly captures the heightened fear that I have as an ‘other’ and that I can only partially imagine as a white ‘other.’
Oh look, Hillsboro.
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