Engineered Criticism

I’d like to say something along the lines of, abuse – the nature of abuse, the experience of abuse, the trauma of abuse, etc. – has been on my mind a lot lately, but the truth is I never exactly stopped thinking about it. I suffered from emotional abuse for the better part of two years. It began the same way I hear many people describe it: it seems like love at first. Someone who seems to know you at your core. Someone who promises to help you be the best version of yourself, to paraphrase a line from yet another of the great movies about abuse, Lady Bird . It just doesn’t take too long for I can help you be your best self to become you’re no good as you are, you’re worthless, and you’re lucky to have even me. I was talking recently with a friend of mine about the nature of abuse and abusers, and out of this conversation came an insight about abuse that I had never considered before – abusers are, in fact, highly empathetic people. It’s this empathy that allows them t...

1. Tonya Who? Oh boy, I, Tonya … So it’s been brought to my attention that literally every other human in the world knew about Tonya Harding previous to this movie, and everyone had their opinions set in stone. Strong opinions about this Olympic figure skater. But I learned all this after the fact. So many that colored my view of this movie. Am I gonna try to take sides on the entire debate one way or the other? Fuck no. The movie certainly doesn’t try to tell you what’s true. It’s extremely straightforward about that fact. Hell, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) turns toward the camera near the end of the movie and directly says as much: “there’s no such thing as truth! I mean, it’s bullshit! Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.” Somehow it’s less important what exactly happened. Did Tonya fire a gun at Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan)? Does it entirely matter? This story is about the cycles of abuse, it’s about passion and trau...

You know, of the movies of 2017, the two that surprised me the most were I, Tonya , on which I will likely write next, and, of course, Lady Bird, the coming of age story directed, written, and loosely based on the life of Greta Gerwig. Lady Bird, despite what people seem to expect, has nothing to do with Lady Bird Johnson. Instead, it follows Lady Bird McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) as she progresses through her senior year of high school, looking to the future, toward college, and toward some sense of freedom. It’s a story that nearly all of us can relate to, to some extent. A sense of wanderlust, a sense of wanting something bigger and better for ourselves, wanting to at least discover what we want. And all the while trying to figure a bunch of other shit out. Lady Bird treats its characters and its situations with so much tenderness, showing their flaws and shortcomings just alongside their best aspects. The dialogue is beautifully done, coming across with a genuineness un...