tabthoughts.

Vincent & Theo Van Gogh 

“It is not immediately obvious which of Zadkine’s figures is Vincent and which is Theo. Like all who relieve the suffering of others, Theo—in a process that is the exact opposite of a blood transfusion—has taken some of Vincent’s pain into himself. Soon, however, it becomes obvious that while the sky weighs heavily on both figures, one, Vincent, feels gravity as a force so terrible it can drag men beneath the earth. From this moment on you are held by the pathos and beauty of what Zadkine depicts: despair that is inconsolable, comfort that is endless. One figure says, “I can never feel better,” the other, “I will hold you until you are better.”

1. Notice when you are slipping into negative, absolutist ways of thinking where you think the worst of yourself, your life and your future.

2. Recognise that these are habitual ways of thinking. It’s what you always think when you start to feel bad.

3. Be aware of triggers. Often certain people and situations trigger painful, negative self-destructive thoughts. Try and distance yourself from these, or completely avoid them, if you possibly can.

4. Deliberately look for the counter arguments. For example, when have things been a bit better, when have you done something right, when has someone been kind and understanding?

5. Visualise positive things that make you happy, such as curling up with a book in bed, listening to your favourite music, and so on. Often changing our thinking to things that make us happy changes our negative feelings and thoughts.

Fuck Pigeons by Felicia Chiao

Sarah McBride just became the first out trans state senator in the U.S. Watch her historic 2016 DNC speech

And Bly manor is like: we’re going to explore the trauma of loving someone despite risk of losing them in its many forms and we’re going to do it through ghosts who ‘possess’ rather than love, show multiple levels of love and loss and the haunting is going to come from a person who was forgotten by those she loved rather than the house itself.

Although I understand the sentiment of not wanting to watch any more unhappy endings for wlw in media (I don’t share it but I 100% get it), I’m so glad you went back on your original opinion and changed your mind, so first things first, thank you for that and for telling me, it really makes me happy ❤️

I also think it’s always important to take the context into consideration. Judging a movie by “do they/do they not get together at the end?” is extremely reductive, especially for a movie like Portrait. You have to consider why it ends the way it does. Are they going for a sad ending just for the sake of drama? Or is there something more being said here? There definitely is. And it’s also why, although tragic and heartbreaking, I don’t consider the ending a ‘bad’ ending at all. The whole point of the movie is to show a love between women that is possible but it’s made impossible by the circumstances they live in, Céline, Adèle and Noémie have said it more than once. We experience their love on the island and get to see how beautiful and rich and tender it is, we see how these women get to be when they’re free from constraints, which is why it’s so maddening when they have to separate, but that’s the whole point. How unjust it is, how unfair. Not just for Marianne and Heloise but for women in general. It really points the finger at patriarchy and leaves no room for mistakes. It’s not on Marianne or Heloise, it’s not their fault for not being ‘strong enough’ or ‘brave enough’, the responsibility is not on them, it’s on the system of oppression that doesn’t let them live how we know they’re capable of living. To put it in Adèle’s words, “YOU (the patriarchy) are not letting us be alive enough.” To be able to show that, Marianne and Heloise cannot be together, and them managing to escape or anything of that sort would say that if you’re just brave enough, you can evade the system, that it’s not really that oppressive. And that’s not true, and a disservice to to women in general. I know when one watches a movie sometimes you just wanna watch a nice love story for 2 hours, but Portrait is and has always been a very political movie. It just doesn’t spoon-feed you with its message so sometimes people forget that.

But I also don’t think it’s a depressing ending in the sense that you have to submit to oppression and that’s it, your life is over. The movie doesn’t say that at all, quite the opposite. What happens instead, is that we see that even after all those years, the love Marianne and Heloise have for each other has survived, in spite of the forces in place to crush it.

First there’s Marianne submitting for the gallery a painting of Orpheus and Eurydice, clearly one she painted with hers and Heloise’s love story in mind, meaning that unprompted, she still thinks about her. Then, she realizes that a portrait of Heloise is in that same gallery and she rushes to see it.

Heloise is there, with her child, who is the first detail Marianne focuses on. She is painted conventionally, her face resembles much more the first painting Marianne did than the one they created together. It looks like the picture of someone who has fallen in line with the conventions of society and been assimilated by that oppressive system. 

And then.

Even after all that time, even in a portrait that seems to say Heloise has submitted to the fate imposed on her, we and Marianne see that it’s just an illusion and the ‘real’ Heloise is still there. Page 28 is the proof of her resistance. The survival of her love for Marianne is her resistance. Yes, she cannot physically escape and be with Marianne but she won’t let her spirit be constricted by the forces that constrict her body. 

And in that final scene at the opera house, we see just how alive Heloise is thanks to the memory of her love for Marianne. And not just the romance. The intellectual side of it too, the artistic side. She cries to a music Marianne first played for her, because this woman allowed her to have access to art she had never experienced before, and challenged her intellectually, and made her laugh, and made her cry, and Heloise carries all that with her and it’s something nobody can take away, even in a society as oppressive as the one she and Marianne live in.

This movie decided to remain realistic and with reality comes tragedy and comes pain, yes, because society was horrible to women and it still is. But the message isn’t that women who love each other will be punished by society. It’s saying that love sets you free, that love is emancipatory, it’s what makes you alive even when you cannot escape. When it comes to the ending, I always think about something Adèle said. She has often talked about how Heloise’s mode of resistance is absence, because she cannot physically run away from her fate or stop it in any way, but she has removed her presence as much as she can, for example before the movie by refusing to pose and hiding her face. It’s the same with her marriage. Yes, she will go along with the wedding her mother planned for her, yes she will marry this man she has never met, she will carry his children, she will share his house etc etc. But he will never get her. He bought her essentially, so she’ll be like a piece of furniture. Everything behind that, her heart, her passion, her love, that’s hers to keep and it’s untouchable. This isn’t to say her husband is necessarily an evil man who treats her like a thing. He could be the most wonderful man in the world, but it’s not the point. The point is he got her through oppression, and if Heloise cannot physically resist the imposition, she will do it emotionally. And we see that she does. The ending proves it. Her love for Marianne is her freedom.