Julia Neugarten's Blog, page 2
January 23, 2018
The Difficulties of Jane Austen on the Big Screen
When making Jane Austen’s classic, much-loved writing into films, a key aspect of her style is often overlooked. No matter how much I love them, many movie adaptations of Austen are longwinded and static to the point of being boring. As is often the case with books we consider ‘classics,’ audiences have an awe for the source material that prevents them from being amused. And you should be in awe. I am in awe. It is decidedly awe-inspiring that a woman of Austen’s economic and social standing wrote such brilliant, insightful and lasting works. But these works also happen to be hilarious.
Love & Friendship, the movie adaptation of Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan that came out earlier this year, gets the comedy of Austen exactly right. The film is fast-paced, modern, and as a result laugh-out-loud hilarious. Yet around the time that it came out I read and heard many complaints. People seemed to think that this was not “the real Austen,” whatever that means. They were of the opinion that something had been diminished, some injustice had been done to her original works. I wholeheartedly disagree.
I don’t want to say or write anything to detract from the understated brilliance of such movie adaptations as Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensebility, or Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance in Emma or the more recent Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightly. Lord knows I’m not out to criticize the much beloved miniseries that gave us the tantalizing visual I’ve copy-pasted below.
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But these adaptations, while they were conscientious and wholesome and generally enjoyable, missed out on an aspect that I think is key to Jane Austen’s work; she can be very, very funny, and much of her sense of humour relies on a measure of mean-spiritedness. She is a master of the art of mockery. Here’s an example of her sense of humour. The modern-day word “savage” comes to mind.
“Mrs. Hall of Sherbourn was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.” Letter to Casandra
Men are wont to say to their wives:
“I do not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred.” Sense & Sensibility
And Jane herself remarked once to her sister of some mutual acquaintances:
“I was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow me.” Letter To Cassandra
Of course, Love & Friendship is a modernized adaptation of Lady Susan, and often modernizing much-beloved classics rubs me the wrong way. I can see where the criticisms are coming from. I just like to think that this fast-paced, hilarious adaptation is just the way Austen would have liked it, and that it is not too far removed from the way she intended her work to be read; as a scathing whirlwind of social comedy.
January 16, 2018
Films of 2017
Films seen in 2017
Arrival – January 5th
A Street Cat Named Bob – January 11th
Passengers – February 1st
Moana – February 6th
Beauty & The Beast (live-action remake) – March 31st
Shame – April 11th
Slash – April 14th (at the Imagine Film Festival)
And So It Goes – April 30th
Mamma Mia! – May 14th (Mother’s Day re-watch)
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge – May 26th
Wonder Woman – June 19th
The Circle – July 3rd
Baby Driver – July 4th
The Mountain Between Us – October 16th
Murder On The Orient Express – November 11th
Battle of the Sexes – December 8th
Edward Scissorhands (rewatch) – December 23d
January 9, 2018
Live Shows of 2017
2017 was a good year for me in terms of shows and stuff. Not the best maybe, but it was pretty great. Here’s a quick overview.
Harry Potter & The Cursed Child Parts I & II – January 21st 2017 – The Palace Theatre, London
This was the theatrical highlight of my year. I know a lot of people hate The Cursed Child and I sort of understand why; I think I wouldn’t like it either if I hadn’t seen it live and obviously expensive live performances in London are not universally accessible and I’m not sure I agree with Rowling’s decision to do it this way, but she did, and I was lucky enough to see it, and I loved it.
Teenage Fanclub – February 7th 2017
The Divine Comedy – February 19th 2017 – Paradiso
Elvis Costello – March 8th 2017 – Carre
Elvis Costello is the best performer of the year, every year.
Andrew Solomon – March 24th 2017
Gloria Wekker: White Innocence – March 29th 2017
Judith Butler – April 2017
Jens Lekman – Tivoli – April 20th 2017
Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes -Paradiso – June 24th 2017
Southside Johnny is also always amazing, but for some reason this year was extra-amazing.
Little Steven – Carre- June 25th 2017
Belle & Sebastian – Tivoli – September 1st 2017
Peter Perrett – November 13th 2017 – Paradiso
Someone – November 17th 2017 – Paradiso Noord
Gorillaz – November 21st 2017
I also went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer and I saw a bunch of amazing shows. The best one was A Super Happy Story About Feeling Super Sad. Read about it here.
January 2, 2018
Read In 2017 & 2018
I participated in the Dumbledore’s Army Readathon this January. A post to view my progress can be found here.
I also hosted the Mental Health Reading Challenge and participated in Femividual’s Feminism Reading Challenge. Her Bingo Card is at the bottom of this post.
January
1. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers – Max Porter
2. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison (bingo square: black feminist)
3. The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket
4. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about being a girl)
5. Transmission – Hari Kunzru
February
6. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (bingo square: feminism in another country)
March
7. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: feminist book from before 1930)
April
8. We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson
9. The Turn Of The Screw – Henry James
10. The Reptile Room – Lemony Snicket
11. The Wide Window – Lemony Snicket (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
12. The Miserable Mill – Lemony Snicket
13. The Austere Academy – Lemony Snicket
14. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
15. Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (bingo square: book of essays)
May
16. Renascence and Other Poems – Edna St. Vincent Millay (bingo square: book of poetry)
17. Are Women People? a Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times – Alice Duer Miller (bingo square: book about politics)
June
18. Notes From Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
19. Second April – Edna St. Vincent Millay
20. Helen of Troy and Other Poems – Sara Teasdale (bingo square: book of your choice)
21. Spring Awakening – Frank Wedekind
22. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
July
23. The Ersatz Elevator – Lemony Snicket
24. Dear Evan Hansen – Steven Levenson (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
25. The Vile Village – Lemony Snicket
August
26. The Children Act – Ian McEwan
October
27. The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
28. Turtles All The Way Down – John Green (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about body image)
November
29. Pierre & Jean – Guy de Maupassant
30. The Hostile Hospital – Lemony Snicket
31. The Carnivorous Carnival – Lemony Snicket
32. Milk and Honey – Rupi Kaur
33. The Slippery Slope – Lemony Snicket
34. The Grim Grotto – Lemony Snicket
35. The Penultimate Peril – Lemony Snicket
36. The End – Lemony Snicket
37. Maus I – Art Spiegelman
38. Maus II – Art Spiegelman
39. Death In Venice – Thomas Mann
40. Who Could That Be At This Hour? – Lemony Snicket
December
41. When Did You See Her Last? – Lemony Snicket
42. Shouldn’t You Be In School? – Lemony Snicket
43. Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? – Lemony Snicket
44. Almost Midnight – Rainbow Rowell
45. Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography – Lemony Snicket
46. Mis Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
47. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: a memoir)
48. File Under: 13 Suspicious Questions – Lemony Snicket
49. Zombicorns – John Green
50. Miracle On 34th Street – Valentine Davies
51. Men Explain Things To Me – Rebecca Solnit (bingo square: book about rape culture)
52. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue – Mackenzi Lee (bingo square: LGBTQ book)
Short Stories
More than 10 of the 52 books I read last year were short stories. However, I’ve challenged myself to read 52 books; that means a novel, a book of non-fiction, a play or a collection of poetry or short stories. I’ll be listing individual short stories I’ve read in 2017 here. They do not count towards my reading goal.
The Three Garridebs – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Final Problem – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Musgrave Ritual – Arthur Conan Doyle
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
Nobel Prize Lecture – Toni Morrison
The Dignity Of Begging – William Bloke Modisane
The Talking Raven’s Last Warning – Mia Couto
Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet? – Nadine Gordimer
The Man In The Crowd – Edgar Allan Poe
Young Goodman Brown – Nathaniel Hawthorne
In The Penal Colony – Franz Kafka
The Happy Prince – Oscar Wilde
The Selfish Giant – Oscar Wilde
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime – Oscar Wilde
The Sphinx Without a Secret – Oscar Wilde
The Fisherman and His Soul – Oscar Wilde
Sambo – William Fryer Harvey
Cat Person – Kristen Roupenian
I’ve reproduced the Feminist Reading Challenge Bingo Card here. I filled out 12 of the 20 squares. It would have been more if I’d counted double: some books cover more than one square, but I felt like that’d be cheating.
In 2018, I did not manage the Goodreads Reading Challenge I’d set for myself of 52 books. I only read 16. The reason for this is that I started reading Infinite Jest, which took me ages to get through. Here’s the list:
Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky AlbertalliAll My Friends Are Superheroes – Andrew KaufmanBoy Meets Boy – David LevithanThe Lost Language of Cranes – David LeavittThe Beatrice Letters – Lemony SnicketFlowers for Algernon – Daniel KeyesThe Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa LahiriYou Talkin’ To Me? – Sam LeithBartleby the Scrivener – Herman MelvilleThe Wasteland – T.S. EliotWaiting For Godot – Samuel BeckettFoe – J.M. CoetzeeThe Pale King – David Foster WallaceSeks op Z’n Duits – Linda DuitsMissing Kissinger – Etgar KeretMy Purple-Scented Novel – Ian McEwan
Read In 2017
I participated in the Dumbledore’s Army Readathon this January. A post to view my progress can be found here.
I also hosted the Mental Health Reading Challenge and participated in Femividual’s Feminism Reading Challenge. Her Bingo Card is at the bottom of this post.
January
1. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers – Max Porter
2. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison (bingo square: black feminist)
3. The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket
4. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about being a girl)
5. Transmission – Hari Kunzru
February
6. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (bingo square: feminism in another country)
March
7. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: feminist book from before 1930)
April
8. We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson
9. The Turn Of The Screw – Henry James
10. The Reptile Room – Lemony Snicket
11. The Wide Window – Lemony Snicket (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
12. The Miserable Mill – Lemony Snicket
13. The Austere Academy – Lemony Snicket
14. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
15. Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (bingo square: book of essays)
May
16. Renascence and Other Poems – Edna St. Vincent Millay (bingo square: book of poetry)
17. Are Women People? a Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times – Alice Duer Miller (bingo square: book about politics)
June
18. Notes From Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
19. Second April – Edna St. Vincent Millay
20. Helen of Troy and Other Poems – Sara Teasdale (bingo square: book of your choice)
21. Spring Awakening – Frank Wedekind
22. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
July
23. The Ersatz Elevator – Lemony Snicket
24. Dear Evan Hansen – Steven Levenson (Mental Health Reading Challenge)
25. The Vile Village – Lemony Snicket
August
26. The Children Act – Ian McEwan
October
27. The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
28. Turtles All The Way Down – John Green (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about body image)
November
29. Pierre & Jean – Guy de Maupassant
30. The Hostile Hospital – Lemony Snicket
31. The Carnivorous Carnival – Lemony Snicket
32. Milk and Honey – Rupi Kaur
33. The Slippery Slope – Lemony Snicket
34. The Grim Grotto – Lemony Snicket
35. The Penultimate Peril – Lemony Snicket
36. The End – Lemony Snicket
37. Maus I – Art Spiegelman
38. Maus II – Art Spiegelman
39. Death In Venice – Thomas Mann
40. Who Could That Be At This Hour? – Lemony Snicket
December
41. When Did You See Her Last? – Lemony Snicket
42. Shouldn’t You Be In School? – Lemony Snicket
43. Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? – Lemony Snicket
44. Almost Midnight – Rainbow Rowell
45. Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography – Lemony Snicket
46. Mis Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
47. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: a memoir)
48. File Under: 13 Suspicious Questions – Lemony Snicket
49. Zombicorns – John Green
50. Miracle On 34th Street – Valentine Davies
51. Men Explain Things To Me – Rebecca Solnit (bingo square: book about rape culture)
52. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue – Mackenzi Lee (bingo square: LGBTQ book)
Short Stories
More than 10 of the 52 books I read last year were short stories. However, I’ve challenged myself to read 52 books; that means a novel, a book of non-fiction, a play or a collection of poetry or short stories. I’ll be listing individual short stories I’ve read in 2017 here. They do not count towards my reading goal.
The Three Garridebs – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Final Problem – Arthur Conan Doyle
The Musgrave Ritual – Arthur Conan Doyle
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
Nobel Prize Lecture – Toni Morrison
The Dignity Of Begging – William Bloke Modisane
The Talking Raven’s Last Warning – Mia Couto
Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can Meet? – Nadine Gordimer
The Man In The Crowd – Edgar Allan Poe
Young Goodman Brown – Nathaniel Hawthorne
In The Penal Colony – Franz Kafka
The Happy Prince – Oscar Wilde
The Selfish Giant – Oscar Wilde
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime – Oscar Wilde
The Sphinx Without a Secret – Oscar Wilde
The Fisherman and His Soul – Oscar Wilde
Sambo – William Fryer Harvey
Cat Person – Kristen Roupenian
I’ve reproduced the Feminist Reading Challenge Bingo Card here. I filled out 12 of the 20 squares. It would have been more if I’d counted double: some books cover more than one square, but I felt like that’d be cheating.
October 30, 2017
My Favorite Podcasts
Podcasts are ideal. They make you feel like your time on autopilot was actually well spent. I can listen to a podcast during laundry or cleaning or basically any chore, or I can listen to it during my daily commute, and I will feel like that was time well-spent instead of time spent doing boring responsible stuff. This change of heart was brought about by one podcast in particular: Witch Please.
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Witch Please is a fortnightly podcast that offers an in-depth analysis of the Harry Potter books and movies from an academic perspective. It is produced and presented by two scholars of literary studies with a focus on feminism and the materiality of print. Their film-focused episodes also feature their colleague Neale who has a degree in Film Studies. So it’s Harry Potter related, it’s academic and it’s feminist, but most importantly, it’s hilarious. These ladies have the best banter I have heard since Aaron Sorkin last wrote a TV script.
Which brings me to my second-favorite podcast of all time: The West Wing Weekly, an episode-by-episode analysis of The West Wing, cohosted by Joshua Malina who played Will Bailey on the show.
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I’m also a big fan of Fansplaining, “the podcast by, about and for fandom.” This podcast also has some academic undertones as both of its hosts are academics on top of fangirls. They are what is known as “acafans.” If you were to ask me: “Frenzied Fangirl, what do you want to be when you grow up?” I would say without hesistation: “An acafan.” So there you go.
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There are A LOT of other podcasts on my to-listen list. Most of them were recommended to me by people whose taste and judgement I trust. I am especially excited about The Guilty Feminist, Gilmore Guys, Banging Book Club, Mugglenet Academia and The Hilarious World of Depression. There’s just so much to choose from! Tell me about your favorite podcasts in the comments.
October 23, 2017
Say “Clitoris.” Out loud. Right Now.
Please be advised that the content of this blogpost is NSFW and not suitable for minors.
Apparently saying “clitoris” is a big deal. I don’t mean it’s a big deal for me personally, I say it all the time. “Clitoris.” In case you need a little reminder, here is an awesome cartoon explaining the clitoris to you:
Le clitoris – Animated Documentary (2016) from Lori Malépart-Traversy on Vimeo.
I hope there is no further need for me to tell you about the clitoris. If you’re a woman, you know it (and if you don’t know it, get off the internet right now and get to know it) and if you’re a man you hopefully know it too. So I won’t have to explain to you why I am a huge fan of the clitoris. And I won’t have to explain to you that I’m not the only one in the clitoris-fanclub. Just look at Lindsey Doe from Sexplanations.
So the fanclub is huge. Which is why it’s so surprising that there’s almost zero mention of the clit in popular culture. Yes, Dwight once mentioned it in The Office US, but only in the context of a joke. What was the butt of the joke, you ask? Of course it was the clit’s infamous elusiveness.
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In the world of pop culture, consensus seems to be that in order to locate the clit, you’d better be some kind of super sleuth.
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This picture is only funny to me because Sherlock is gay, not because the clit is that hard to find.
Now that I’ve presented you with some popular misconceptions about the clitoris and made a decent attempt to debunk them, here comes pop-culture’s feminist warrior: Rachel Bloom. Bloom is a comedian, an actress, a producer and a (song)writer on the CW’s hit series Crazt y Ex-Girlfriend, This weeks episode featured a storyline in which an adult man comes to terms with the fact that over the course of their marriage he has never once given his wife an orgasm. He feels understandably bad, but one of the main characters helps him see that this is just a symptom of a much larger issue: he and his wife fail to communicate honestly about sex. This storyline was human, and interesting, and it addressed an issue lots of couples deal with. None the less it almost didn’t make it into the episode in this form, and here’s why:
The CW didn’t want the word “clitoris” said on television. Let Rachel Bloom explain why.
Rachel also tweeted about one of the songs on this week’s episode, Strip Away My Conscience. Apparently, she was forced to make some changes to the lyrics.
The original lyric was “Dude, I’m so wet” but that was too dirty so we changed it to “let me choke on your cocksuredness” and that was fine.
— Rachel Bloom (@Racheldoesstuff) 21 oktober 2017
So “I’m so wet” is too filthy but “let me choke on your cock(suredness)” is fine? Dudes and dudettes, Frenzied Fangirl is furious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that the C-word is finally getting some screentime, but it looks to me as though we still have a long way to go.
October 17, 2017
Bad Case of Lovin’ You (Doctor, Doctor)
I sometimes post lists of my favorite fictional [insert category here] on this blog. Past lists have included kisses, Christmas-themed stuff, mothers and fangirls. These are probably my all-time favorite type of posts. They’re even more fun to write than the ones where I get to rant about the patriarchy. So I decided to do another one. The doctor is in!
Dr Carter
Move over, McDreamy, McSteamy and McWhatever-They’ve-Come-Up-With-Since-I-Stopped-Watching-Grey’s-Anatomy: Dr John Carter is officially the hottest. He’s so hot I made you a little slideshow. You’re welcome.
Click to view slideshow.
On top of all that gorgeousness, Dr Carter was also the greatest character on the show. He was clever, kind, resourceful and cheeky, while at the same time being a huge and adorable dork. He was also super-rich and philanthropic, and he ended up going to Africa to help out in a hospital there. Don’t you forget it.
Dr Bailey
The original queen of sass.
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The Doctor
Does she have a medical degree? Who knows. She is the only Timelord left and I think that’s worth something. I am, of course, super excited about the first female Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker, who is making her debut this Christmas.
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Dr Hannibal Lecter
Dr Hannibal Lecter is all of my worst fears come to life in one misleadingly appealing Mads-Mikkelsen-shaped package. No further comment.
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Dr Frankenstein
Admittedly, Dr Frankenstein messed up pretty bad. His medical license should probably be revoked ASAP. All of that monster-business would have been excusable if he’d been a little more pragmatic about it and just killed the monster. But no, Victor spent hundreds of pages whinging about his tragic fate and the beauty of the Swiss countryside. What a screwup. My guess is that Mary Shelley was trying to tell us something about what happens when you let men go about their “science experiments” without women around to occasionally check up on them.
Dr Mindy Lahiri
As I was going through Google Images to find one to put in this blog post, I realized it is time for me to watch The Mindy Project right now, immediately, at this very moment. God, that show was so awesome. Why did I never keep up with it????
Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz
Although the internet tells me Doofenschmirtz is not an actual doctor, I’ll include him in this list anyway. He apparently obtained his degree with money instead of hard work.
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and finally….(drumroll please)
Dr. John H. Watson
I love him almost as much as his boyfriend Sherlock loves him.
October 10, 2017
Turtles All The Way Down Review
Today was the release of John Green’s long-awaited new novel: Turtles All The Way Down. I wouldn’t be a Frenzied Fangirl if I hadn’t immediately run to the nearest Waterstone’s to grab myself a copy, and I’ve just finished reading it. Here are some thoughts. Please be warned that this review contains SPOILERS. Although it does not go into the plot very much, if you want to approach this book without any prior knowledge of its subject matter, leave now.
[image error] Here’s a picture of our cat, the book, and the awesome t-shirt and bracelet I also got.
I thought Turtles was a great read. John Green is in my top-three favorite Young Adult authors of all time, and there is a reason for that. His style is always delightfully airy, even when dealing with the most difficult topics. His wit makes the terrors described in Turtles readable, but only just, because mental illness is and always will be a terrible thing. This book reminded me how gruesome it is to have your own mind turn against you. I am thankful every day that my mental health is currently stable, but I am especially thankful right at this moment. Turtles reminded me to be grateful.
Just like Green’s previous books, Turtles is somewhat overwrought with metaphors and philosophical musings. This bothers me, though perhaps it fits in this particular case. After all, the mentally ill are prone to over-thinking stuff, and none more so than those afflicted with anxiety disorders. Aza, the main character of Turtles, has a pretty nasty anxiety disorder so she is always thinking, thinking, thinking.
I’m never sure: is Green writing pretentious characters or is he himself pretentious? I tend to think it’s the latter because he never seems to critique his characters in any way; he lets them be themselves without judgement, he loves them. While of course sometimes characters have flaws, and these flaws can be annoying, that is exactly what people are like in real life. These characters may be ridiculous, pretentious and self-centered, but so are actual human beings. And we love them for it.
Green’s overuse of metaphors and similes is further redeemed in this book because it is so self-aware. The main character has a therapist, who at one point remarks: “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor. (…) One of the challenges with pain -physical or psychic- is that we can only really approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented in the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.”In order to communicate the pain she is feeling, Aza has no choice but to resort to metaphor. In order to describe the pain this book is about, John Green has no choice but to do the same.
For personal reasons I was dreading the inevitable romantic storyline. Every YA novel has one, and every John Green novel has one I find particularly appealing, because Green’s love interests are always clever, somewhat cocky adolescent boys, and I have a weakness for those (looking at you, Augustus Waters). I hesitate to say that this book is more mature than Green’s previous writing, because of course The Fault In Our Stars was heavy and mature in many ways. Yet it seems Green has lost his tendency to romanticize suffering, and that is refreshing to say the least. He has also ceased to romanticize romance, and the way this book dealt with romantic love was exactly what I needed right now: “You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.”
I really needed to hear that today. I needed a reminder to be grateful. I needed to remember that things change over time; sometimes they get better, sometimes they get worse. And while you’re waiting for change, you can always resort to fanfiction.
September 14, 2017
A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)
What I’m about to do now is going to be super-frustrating: let me recommend a play to you. It is a play you can only see if you can manage to travel through time, and it is called A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)[image error].
I saw the play at the Edinburgh Fringe this August, and it means a lot to me. I won’t wax lyrical about life-changing experiences or some such, because of course the real life-changing experience was my depression itself. But to see my illness recognized, understood, and performed so brilliantly and accurately on stage was a huge relief.
The play is accurately named. Its presentation, full of glitter and singing and chorus lines, is super happy. It’s subject matter, ranging from alcoholism to depression and suicide, is anything but. The writers and performers have managed to unearth the comedy inherent in anything that is bleak or sad, and made use of that comedy without devaluating the terrifying experience that is mental illness. Bravo.
I always tell people that no one is alone in their fight against mental illness, but I don’t always believe it. Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones made me believe it, and that felt incredible. Of course you can’t travel back in time to see this play, but you can do the next best thing: read it. Paperbacks and ebooks are available from Amazon[image error]
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