Jess 🧚‍♀️

So far for zepotha I’ve already seen 5 different plots and like 25 different characters. They can’t seem agree on scenes and everyone is just making up their own shit.

Goncharov started as a joke but ended up with a poster, a cast, memes, a wiki page, letterbox reviews, fanfics, cosplays, a over 40 page (last time I checked at least) google document with info and scenes about the movie, a soundtrack and even Martin Scorsese himself confirming he made this movie.

thought about the movies everything everywhere all at once and the half of it today until i was sick. eeaao because i was analyzing joy wang's character as a nihilist and the half of it because i'm writing a final paper comparing it to sartre's no exit.

i'm so behind on this class, it's not even funny. it's called literature & existentialism and i picked it because i thought i would like it. i was supposed to like it. then again i was also supposed to take another lit class and consider the major this semester and none of that happened either. when i did wake up in time, i'd go to this class and sit in the back and try to just listen in, and the professor would call on me for nodding off.

but it'll be okay. my discussion post is a month late but i talked about how jobu tupaki searched through all possible universes for a version of a mother who loved and understood her. how she was driven to give up her sense of freedom and agency in the face of these pressures from her mother -- to be straight, college-educated, skinny, more fluent in chinese, less americanized -- and succumb to the conclusion that nothing matters. i have an idea for the thesis for my final paper -- in class we learned about sartre's framework for the concept of "the other" and how profoundly disturbing it is to be in the presence of another person, because as the center of your own universe you are in control of the meaning you choose to give to the world, and when another person is within your universe, your agency is being chipped away. you -- and your meaning -- become chained to the other's judgment of you. and for the half of it i was thinking about different ways people try to take back control of their narrative from the other, whether that's through overexplaining or overexposure of yourself or through physical distance from the other.

there's other things, more important things, about both movies that an existentialist framework could never fully explain away. i thought about evelyn, when facing the possibility of losing her own daughter to the black hole, asking helplessly to her father how he found it in himself to let her go. i thought about the lights from the failing laundromat, the smashed windows, the glass on that dark street, and mother and daughter trying so hard one more time to listen to each other, even though it hurts so much. then i thought about the ending of the half of it, paul munsky running after ellie chu's train, knowing that it's futile and that she's going where he can't follow, but doing it anyway because it was her favorite scene from the movie ek villain and he remembered. he remembered because he loves her. no drawn-out 60-page essay, translated to english from french, laying out a blueprint for how a man should face the burden of his freedom or his death or whatever, could dream of capturing this.

i didn’t choose this town,

i dream of getting out,

there’s just one who could make me stay,