Control & consent

"An emotional craniectomy to say the unsayable..."

Microfiction and a meandering comparative review of May December & The Piano Teacher (spoilers ahead).

If you wish to avoid directly supporting this newsletter through Substack (in lieu of its CEO’s refusal to de-monetize Nazi/extremist publications), please consider tipping me via Paypal or Venmo and I’ll add you to the subscriber list: $70 for the full year. If you would like to avoid Substack entirely (which I won’t take offense to), I am one of the 60 writers who will be published on Flaming Hydra, a cooperatively-owned newsletter and writer’s group. It’s $36 for a full year’s subscription (a great deal!).

Before things fell apart, we were in love.

On the tenth hour of the eighty-third day of our courtship, we drove to the top of the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. The mountain was not very tall. I sat in the passenger seat blindfolded, wearing a light jacket. It was early autumn. During the ascent, I thought, Oh, a hill.

He walked me, blindfolded, to some sort of cliff’s edge. I followed his lead. His arm rested on my waist, like we were dancing. My body felt loose, relaxed. My coat rustled with the leaves. When he finally pushed me, I fell with no resistance.

When I tell friends of this night, they act concerned. They ask if I am alright. They are confused. I do not try to argue or reason with them in this state.

---

“Violence is never the problem. Love at first sight is.” Diane Williams, This is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate

“I myself cannot (as an enamored subject) construct my love story to the end: I am its poet (its bard) only for the beginning; the end, like my own death, belongs to others; it is up to them to write the fiction, the external, mythic narrative.” Roland Barthes, The Lover’s Discourse

---

Movies should talk to each other. I’m unsure how exactly this would transpire, aside from ambushing their directors into one of Variety’s Directors on Directors roundtable. Whenever I’m watching (or re-watching) a particularly layered film — in this case, Todd Haynes’ May December — I often find myself associating certain scenes, characters, or lines of dialogue with that of another equally compelling piece of art — in this case, Michal Haneke’s The Piano Teacher. I can’t help it; they just feel related. Not in a boring in-universe way (like Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár and Bradley Cooper’s Lenny Bernstein); nor are they kindled from the same inspirational flame (like how May December, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Marias are descendants of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona). I’m referring to a relation that feels inexplicable, abstract, and non-sensical, like the intimate closeness that one can share with a stranger over the course of an hour-long conversation about everything and nothing.

---

The letters written by Erika Kohut (The Piano Teacher) and Grace Atherton (May December) to their younger lovers are disturbing and desperate.

Two women, two younger “lovers,” two vastly dissimilar entanglements—

Erika Kohut: 38, tight-lipped and stern redhead, esteemed (and mean) piano professor at an elite Viennese conservatory, lives with her controlling alcoholic mother, (implied to be) a virgin with voyeuristic and sadiomachistic urges

Grace Atherton: 59, anxious blonde with a lisp, stay-at-home wife and amateur baker, sexual offender, married twice with six children

The letters reveal the illicit fantasies these women, as experts of emotional restraint (Erika) and manipulation (Grace), have harbored and are haunted by. They’ve undergone an emotional craniectomy to say the unsayable. Reading the letters aloud is akin to ogling at an open wound; it feels like a violation, a debasement of feeling. The reader/listener incurs the abject ick.

Both letters, in these two films, are read aloud by a Third — the character whose introduction initiates the women’s unraveling.

In The Piano Teacher, that figure is Walter, Erika’s love interest and student. In May December, it is Elizabeth Berry, a Julliard-educated actress doing field research for her upcoming role as Grace.