The Affair

I've never had an affair, but recently I was pulled towards one. I found myself not answering texts, canceling plans, and saying to myself just a bit more, then I'll stop. I was enamored, enraptured. I lost the whole weekend to it.

That thing, while not an affair with another human, does bear its name: The Affair on Showtime. I'll only say a bit about the show because you should really watch it yourself. It's essentially the same recollection of an affair from two perspectives, Noah's (Dominic West) and Alison's (Ruth Wilson), each taking up half of an episode. However, things get complicated with and beyond the affair as the deeper, sadder details of these two peoples' lives emerge. You'll notice right away that little, superficial details change according to whose narrative we're in: the color of a dress, who kissed whom, when in the day something happened. Beyond showing us the faults of memory, these little details also highlight each character's worldview and self-perception. This narrative style is why I felt an affair-like addiction to the show, because watching was like uncovering the layers (and the deeper, sometimes sadder details) of the characters like you would a lover. I wanted more, more, more.

So many secrets.

What is it about television dramas that make you feel like you're cheating on your life with your TV set? How can we go hours and hours holed up with only food, sleep and HBOGo like we would with a new flame?

Binge-watching is rampant now that we have Showtime Anytime, Netflix, Hulu, and all the other il/legal streaming sites, but I think the technology is just an enabler for a certain personality type. Not everyone has this desire to tv-marathon. I was talking to a friend recently who said something along the lines of, if he watches more than a few episodes of something in a row, he wants to throw up and then go for a run. Good for him for avoiding atrophied muscles from too much couch-potato time.

I'd posit, at least for myself, that the personality type that can watch tv for hours, even ashamedly, is the same kind that thinks a lot (or too much?) about stories, connection, and possibly also about love and relationships. I've written about media voyeurism before, where I let media teach me lessons instead of experiencing them first hand in the world, and I think we media types like neat, dramatic, and constructed narratives because they are easier to follow than the random events in our lives. For example, how do I even know what an affair looks like? Since I've never had one or known anyone to have one (I'm still in my twenties, and at my age people are young enough that cheating usually leads to a clean breakup before marriage or kids), it's the movies and books and television that show me what the guilt and the illicit pleasure and the heartbreak feel like. While I'm definitely NOT wishing an affair on myself to chalk up to experience, I still use the power of storytelling to show me the truths and authenticity of humanity in the places I haven't gone.

Here's an embarrassing example that might help clarify my point. About a year ago I dated someone briefly (keyword, briefly) who dumped me for another girl. The Facebook message signaling the breakup cited an exclusivity talk with the other girl and not wanting to blindside me when we were going to hang out that night, hence the Facebook message. I wasn't falling in love in the slightest but I still felt rejected and undignified enough by the cowardly message for a good cry. The thing was, this person had made me a really beautiful, wood-carved plaque with a quote from Before Sunrise on it (readers of this blog will know that film is my absolute favorite ever). In my indignation over the breakup I grabbed the plaque, swiped the hammer from my desk drawer, and tried to break the thing. When that didn't work, I took a sharpie and scrawled "Fuck you" on it and threw it away. 

But that didn't make me feel better, only worse. I missed the plaque immediately, not because it was a symbol of our time together, but just because I liked it. What's worse, while destroying it I felt like I was watching my body write the swear as my brain was thinking, this is something someone in the movies would do. Silly, yes. Pathetic, slightly. But the takeaway there was that I should listen to myself instead of deferring to a narrative cliché. I tend to like my rational ability to know what keepsakes and memories to hold onto, however hurtful they once were, and I ignored that disposition in my moment of weakness. Because I watch too much tv, maybe.

Oh well, at least I'll have the Instagram snapshot of the plaque to remind me to listen to the moment. Haha, the irony.

Blue Is the Warmest (Hair) Color

Instead of dwelling on the explicit 10-minute sex scene in Blue Is the Warmest Color, which I've finally motivated myself to watch and which divided critics and the queer community (so much scissoring!), I want to focus on a smaller question:

Why has this movie's title been translated as Blue Is the Warmest Color? 

The French title, La vie d'Adèle, meaning "The Life of Adèle" after the lead character (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos), works so much better as a title for a 3-hour exploration of female sexuality. Ok, so there is the irony that blue is considered a 'cold' color. Yes, director Abdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film L'esquive is a subtle and brilliant exposé on France's multicultural youth, dresses his protagonist in blue and makes her girlfriend's hair blue for edginess and lesbian appeal. But everything that's meant for warmth in the film has the opposite effect.

First of all, Kechiche's choice of constant, extreme close-ups on Adèle's face made her seem bland and vacant rather than emotive. I think this choice was intentional, and it works at the beginning, when Adèle is still discovering herself and her sexuality, but it turns quickly annoying as all I could focus on was Adèle's inability to keep her lips closed. Her mouth had this lazy pout on it that I can't make sense of. Is she a daydreamer? Is she not self-aware? I was relieved by the final scene in the art gallery where we finally see her in medium long shots - still so uneasy about her surroundings but at last not the center of our attention.

 Look at that pout.

Secondly, Kechiche takes the path of least resistance to portray the romantic connection between Adèle and Emma (Léa Seydoux), but it's a shallow one striving for depth. Adèle's into books, while Emma's studying painting. Adèle is a helper, while Emma's a talker. They supposedly have sexual chemistry (more on that in a minute). This is supposed to be a life-altering shift in Adèle's life, but Emma seems to figure only sexually into this shift. There are no coming out scenes, only a meager (yet affecting nonetheless) instance of homophobia, and just one Pride Parade, but no real scenes of romantic support, admiration, or devotion. Aren't they supposed to love each other? I want more of those scenes. Kechiche gives Adèle's personal development a shot in that we watch her graduate, march in an education protest, and become a teacher. But really she's just a muse (Emma's muse and Kechiche's) and we all know that a muse's pedestal matters more than her heart or mind.


Ok, I will talk about that sex scene. There are the obvious criticisms, a few of which I'll name. It turns pornographic and male gaze-y in Kechiche's hands because he's a straight man trying to represent female sexuality.  There is a lot of focus on bums and panting. It involves positions that seem potentially unreasonable for a first sexual encounter (and some, like scissoring, that are stereotypical of lesbians and that may or may not be performed outside of porn, depending on whom you ask). It's not even that sexy but rather borderline animalistic.

Yet my biggest problem with the scene--and really, the whole film--is that it is supposed to represent the apex of female sexuality - pure pleasure, desire, fulfillment, even ecstasy - but we are not really there with Adèle and Emma even though we're watching them. We're not sympathizing or even experiencing vicarious/movie-watching pleasure. Rather, the tone I get is of Kechiche feeling jealous. Later in the film there is a group discussion about how female pleasure is deeper and more complex than male, and I get the sense that this is personal for Kechiche. He's making a movie to try to get at an understanding, but he's actually pushing himself, and therefore us, farther away from that understanding by defaulting to voyeurism. If we understood Adèle better (meaning Kechiche had actually made her a complex character instead of a shell of a young woman), we could have gotten there, together. But as we watch her walk away from the camera down a street in the final shot, her blue dress diminishing against the sunset, we don't know her at all, or what this sexual "awakening" has done. This is a shame, because I could have seen a lot of myself in her.