The Ties that Bind

Is it only a British trait to be so sniffy about success? The collective cynical groan that follows any BAFTAs and Oscars where a film sweeps the boards is indicative of the ‘what’s so special about you?’ attitude that pervades our culture. Just look at the tabloids, if you don’t believe me. Just who does she think she is? (Yes, it’s more often a she, in my experience). So, when it came to the film, Gravity, my expectations had been tempered by the luke warm shrugs and grudging recognitions of its technical prowess. 

The latter is, by any measure, gob-smackingly stunning. As it begins, the startling visual clarity contrasts with the soft murmuring of comm transmissions. The dazzling light refracted off my grubby glasses and I had to pause the DVD to polish my specs. I was geared for a ‘slow’ story, but I spent 87 mins in a frenzy of heart-thudding, palm-sweating tension as Dr Ryan Stones’ rapid, oxygen-starved breaths filled my ears. I recalled the gut-pulsing suspense I’d felt witnessing Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling stalking a murderer through the dim corridors of his lair in Silence of the Lambs. Technical wizardry aside, I was in Sandra Bullock’s shoes - those moon boots - and I too was filled with the horrific sense of helplessness as she free-wheeled through space. A lone woman desperately, clumsily, facing off peril.

I have resisted reading any articles about the film. I’m reluctant to let any smart critic’s eloquent sentences colour the immediate and exhilarating reaction I experienced from watching this film. Through its simplicity, the allegorical nature of this story is easy to appreciate on many levels. Dr Stone’s determination to make it back to earth from space leads to a re-entry sequence that brings to mind how particles of life landing on a planet with ‘just right’  levels of oxygen, water and sunlight led to our existence. The rebirth of a individual woman, breaking free from the womb of a capsule, swimming through the gushing water and gasping for breath on solid ground before she struggles to walk upright parallels the original birth of mankind.

It is a man, Alfonso Cuarón, who tells this woman’s story. He possesses an unsettling capacity for plumbing the depths of the female psyche. Just think of Y Tu Mama Tambien and the haunting conclusion to an otherwise hi-jinks sex comedy. Its heroine is elevated from a confused and impulsive cougar to a woman whose legacy to her erstwhile lovers is like Artemis’ revenge on Acteon. Neither goddess or woman gives pleasures freely and both the eager voyeur and ardent lovers feel the painful bite of their own reality. 

As with any story, we bring our own stuff to our reading of it. And this is where Gravity struck me deeply. Before the birth of my daughter, life felt an unsubstantial thing. Existence felt like sleeping under a duvet when I really wanted the reassuring weight of a feather quilt. The image that often came to me was of floating around space untethered to earth just waiting for the strike of space debris or the pull of a force that would send me skittering off into nowhere. It was a terrifying feeling. I wonder if that’s what Kundera meant by the Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I’ve always been too distracted by the actress in that bowler hat to find out. 

This weightless feeling ended with the pull of new life that was my daughter. I now felt I was a conduit for whatever higher power endows this planet with life. I was tethered. I was safe. So, what greater horror lies in wait for a parent than to lose this tether, as Dr Stone lost her daughter in the story of Gravity. How many parents would say of their children, ‘He/she is my whole world’ ? Just what do you do when that world is gone? With the tether broken, the choice remains: float off into space or re-enter the atmosphere by any means possible.

It’s a choice that some people face on a daily basis, whether prompted by a tragedy or not: the drunks, the drug addicts, the depressives. But when we survive a tragedy, when we are left numbly standing at the graveside or witnessing the ghastly aftermath of an earthquake or tsunami, we are forced to find that particle of will to survive, the atom that still quivers in the vast emptiness of our grief, and guide it back to a place where it can be nurtured and grow.

Cloaked In Blood

I wonder if one of the reasons Frida Kahlo’s paintings speak to women across decades and cultures is that she never shirked from the visceral nature of a woman’s existence. We cannot escape the defining patterns of reproduction that shape our lives or the limits of our physical size and power which can make us objects of abuse.

It’s a year since The Roundhouse by Louise Erdrich was published. I’ve only just had the pleasure to read it for my book group. In it Erdrich addresses one of her prime concerns: the continued debasement of First Nation women in American society. They are still regarded primarily as sexually available and consequently suffer a higher than average incidence of rape, exploitation and trafficking. In her notes, Erdrich offers some shocking statistics: one in three Native American women is raped in her lifetime. And as she reiterates in her article for The New York Times: More than 80 percent of sex crimes on reservations are committed by non-Indian men, who are immune from prosecution by tribal courts. 

Maria Russo,  NYT book reviewer, writes:

“Legal black holes have created an opening for predators to operate unchecked and unpunished ... only beginning to be remedied after The Tribal law and Order Act was passed (in 2010 )."

Yet, my understanding of the Tribal Law and Order Act is that it simply gives more bite to the "toothless sovereignty" of tribal sentencing, rather than confronting the vagaries of jurisdiction.

A doctor commenting on Erdrich’s NYT article tells of a personal experience treating a brutally raped woman in an emergency room on a Navajo reservation. When prosecuted by Tribal Court, the perpetrator was found guilty, but the maximum sentence he could receive was six months in a tribal jail. Nevertheless, a federal prosecutor took up the case and he ended up with a sentence of 11 years. The disparity between the sentencing power of federal law and tribal law speaks for itself

In all her novels Erdrich allows us to touch base with the First Nation point of view, and never more so than in The Roundhouse. I found myself contemplating the ‘land of the free’ as something appropriated and exploited by greedy and cynical usurpers. A force that has released a monstrous ‘wiindigo’ spirit in their wake to stalk and consume the fundamental freedoms and self respect of Native Americans, in particular, their women.

Recently, renowned Classics Professor, Mary Beard lectured on the silencing of the female voice throughout history, charting it from Telemachus of the Odyssey telling Penelope to be quiet and go up to her room right up to the malicious trolls of present day who abuse Beard for daring to voice her opinion. It occurred to me that The Roundhouse presents another example.

The crimes against Geraldine and Mayla are an attempt to silence their voices. They wish to make a simple statement of fact - to declare the name of a child’s father. Yet, the shocking and grim consequences of their silencing is all too plausible given the current laws governing the prosecution of crimes taking place on Indian Territory.

For it is the inadequacy of existing jurisdiction that allows the violent attack on, and attempted murder of, Geraldine to fall into an abyss of confused buck-passing. Jurisdiction that, in theory lends empowerment, in reality does just the opposite. Cases such as this serve to highlight this grave and fundamental flaw.

Russo also comments: “Be careful liberal minded reader. In Erdrich’s hands you may find yourself, as I did, embracing the prospect of vigilante justice as regrettable but reasonable ...it wasn’t until I put the book down that I recognized - and marvelled at - the clever way I had been manipulated.”

My italics, because I’m not really sure wherein the ‘manipulation’ lies. Though I clearly understood Joe’s motivation in killing Linden, I did not ‘embrace’ it. I felt the sickening inevitability of his actions, and the scene where Joe tenderly observes his mother gardening is a striking image of how fundamentally her life and its modest joys are threatened by Linden walking free from jail. The basic liberty of feeling safe in her own garden is in jeopardy, and Joe recognizes at that moment just how precious this is - worth killing for. Despite its poignancy, this did not move me to join a virtual lynch mob for Linden, but it did appall me that the inadequacy of law, and the disempowerment of a people could drive someone to such a desperate act.

The truth is that most blood spilled on Reservations is the blood of women. Most injured and abused flesh on Reservations is that of women. Take yourself to a powwow in Minneapolis and you will see women dancing in red shawls. Dancing for those women who survive, even if they do not live to tell their truth and see justice.

For speaking her truth, Mary Beard has been viciously insulted and even threatened with rape and decapitation. Fortunately for her she can dismiss them as disturbing but empty threats. Unfortunately, for women on a Reservation like Geraldine and Mayla, they are a reality.