Man Down

Paul Mescal as Connell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne
If you saw a headline for a review of a TV show that read Hulu’s Normal People Has All the Appeal of a Bad Date That Refuses to End, you’d probably avoid watching that show. Me too. Fortunately I didn’t see that review until after watching this production based on Sally Rooney's best selling novel, which I often do to compare notes with various critics. Professional critics would probably rate below used car dealers and politicians in polling of least respected professions…that is if pollsters even respected them enough to include them in their polling, but they don’t. I, on the other hand, have a bit of a soft spot for critics…and engage in the practice occasionally here at the Nob…like here and here and here. I still have all of legendary film critic Pauline Kael’s collected reviews on my book shelves. Kael was not only an intellectually provocative reviewer, but also did much to make criticism a less elitist undertaking. The titles alone of her collections, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang…I Lost it at the Movies…spoke of a less effete sensibility common to most criticism in her time. Her protégé and successor as film critic of the people, Roger Ebert, made film criticism more accessible and populist because he never reviewed movies from some set theoretical framework...not Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism or any other ism a wannabe critic might latch on to. One always had the feeling that Roger let movies happen to him without any preconceived notions or agendas about what a movie should be. Like Kael, he wasn’t afraid to say that a film was good simply because it was entertaining.  Like so much else that makes up our sorry modern world, criticism has declined. That decline can be studied in microcosm in the review of Normal People cited above. Ironically the review was written by Matt Fagerholm, Assistant Editor at RogerEbert.com. I don’t know if I’ve read any of his other reviews, so I can’t tell if this one is par for the course or just an off day by an otherwise fine reviewer. I will say, however, that much of the weakness of his review stems from the same tendency that afflicts so many post-Ebert film and TV reviewers. It is an insistence on viewing art through the prism of identity politics, especially the identities of race and gender. Too many critics nowadays seem to analyze films more by how well they address the historic systemic oppression of non-whites and women rather than how they work dramatically. It is a doctrinaire approach that begs comparisons with the old Soviet diktak that all art elevate and extol the virtues of the working masses.For instance, Fagerholm damns Connell, the main male character of Normal People, as a coward less than 200 words into the review. He describes Connell this way:

He feeds directly into Marianne’s wrongful belief that she deserves to be treated poorly, later blaming her for their relationship falling apart again in college, when he clearly was the one who walked out on her…What we’re left with is a frustrating, fractured romance between an inarticulate weakling and a woman who deserves so much better.

Let me paraphrase that last sentence to another girl meets boy love story, Beauty and the Beast--What we’re left with is a frustrating, fractured romance between a nasty, loveless beast and a woman who deserves so much better.It’s a lame assessment in that it forecloses any possibility for a character’s arc…for a coward or beast to grow. In this instance, it’s doubly lame because it completely ignores the rudeness, condescension and hostility that are the early characteristics of  “the woman who deserves so much better.”   This is typical of the Team Him/Team Her perspective that is the ruination of contemporary criticism. It not only turns the review into an unnecessary and unwanted polemic, but it does so at the cost of the very art that went into making Normal People (and other works similarly discounted) so carefully layered and nuanced. At the risk of losing readers who have not seen this splendid 12-part series and may never see it, allow me a moment to provide some critical detail that seems to have escaped Roger Ebert’s wayward disciple. Connell “walking out” on Marianne is a pivotal point in their love story as it comes just when the two of them have reached a hard earned comfort level with their relationship vis-a-vis the outside world. But Connell is not returning to their hometown in Sligo and leaving Marianne on her own in Dublin out of cruelty or disinterest or indifference. He deeply wants to stay with her, but can’t afford it, unless he asks her to support him for the summer, which despite the urging of his best male friend he cannot do. His mother worked as a housekeeper for Marianne’s mother and that class distinction has always been an undercurrent of their relationship. Moreover, we know from the 4 or 5 previous episodes, that Connell’s character flaw is not that he is cowardly (which if true would have stopped him from ever having any relationship at all with Marianne, the school outsider). Rather Connell is manifestly filled with insecurity, self-doubt, and overhwelming humility. He can’t bring himself to ask Marianne to let him stay the summer in her Dublin flat. She, on the other hand, is in constant need for Connell to publicly and clearly declare his affection for her. This is the crux of their romantic struggle. It is not, as Fagerholm so cavalierly describes it, a question of “Will they or won’t they?” The fact that that banal question is answered in the second episode should alert the astute viewer that there is something quite a bit more complex going on here. And that point is driven home in two remarkable scenes deep into the series…one when Connell and Marianne kiss and the other when they reach out and touch hands. These two scenes happen after we’ve seen numerous fleshy scenes of them having sex together. If you’re paying attention to the story Normal People tells and not one you’ve conjured up in your head, the kiss and hand touching scenes work so powerfully because we’ve become invested in their real story.  What Connell and Marianne are struggling with is their mutual communication issues that make it difficult for them to express themselves clearly, consistently and openly with the two people they both admit are most important in their lives--that is, each other. Marianne is not a victim of Connell. They are both victims of their respectively underdeveloped senses of self-esteem. To conclude that Marianne deserves better than Connell is to willfully dismiss all the moments in their relationship when Connell’s niceness more than negates any of his alleged cowardice. It also dismisses the many times Marianne willingly and convincingly expresses in either word or deed how much she loves him.As happens, Fagerholm’s begrudging bit of praise for the series exposes what a shallow review he’s written. "I’ll admit," he writes, "that the very final scene of the series is a surprisingly mature one, evoking the poignance of  Splendor in the Grass, yet it is far too little too late.It was neither too little or too late, man! The entire series…every agonizing twist and painful turn in Connell and Marianne’s relationship…built toward that mature moment. We actually got to watch them both grow emotionally before our eyes through the 12 episodes. That was our payoff…that was arc of their respective characters. If you weren’t so intent on showing off how evolved you are as a male to the women in your life, you may have noticed the story a lot of normal people took painstaking efforts to tell you. But this goes on a lot these days. In art...and in politics.