why movies bring me closer to myself
The first movie I ever loved was probably the wizard of oz, which my sisters and I affectionately called “naughty witch”, as toddlers.
My grandparents had a cottage on this little lake in Wisconsin but we never swam when we visited. My Umpa was notoriously cheap—even though he was the only doctor in the small town my mother grew up in—and refused to buy a boat so that we could swim in the middle of the lake, away from weeds and algae at the pier. For him, the cottage was all about fishing on that long rocky pier. For my sisters and me, the cottage was another place to play pretend, and watch the few VHS’s my grandmother kept at the house.
There was a tv in the living room, but that was mostly for the grown ups. It was in the sun room where we watched our films, and where I always slept. The room had wood paneled walls and two blue beds on either end, and a small tv with a vcr. The only tapes we had were The Pink Panther (Beyonce edition), Sister Act, and The Wizard of Oz. For some reason we never watched The Pink Panther, but we saw Sister Act and Oz over and over again.
For my 4th Halloween I dressed as Dorothy, while my sisters wore a witch and Madeline costume. there’s a home video of my mother asking us to say something as our characters. “I’m Dorothy, I’m from Kansas” I said in my best transatlantic accent. My little sister cackled like a witch while my twin pressed the button on her Madeline doll, “are you happy to be in Paris?” I had given my twin a Madeline inspired haircut with my “pretend” scissors the day before. She didn’t look happy.
Kids TV and movies were booming during the late 90s and early 2000s. Disney movies undoubtedly had a hand in raising us, for better or for worse. I loved The Little Mermaid, and Peter Pan was a home staple. Once we got older it was the DCOM’s - Disney Channel Original Movies - HalloweenTown, Smart House, Get a Clue, that filled our weekends.
We didn’t only watch Disney movies though.. I have a core memory of my mother sitting us down for two nights of Gone with the Wind, split between the intermission..we were 5 and 7? While it certainly isn’t a perfect film, it did co-star Hattie McDaniel, the first Black person to win an Oscar. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as “Mammy,” who carried the famous line “I don’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no babies!”
When i was 9 years old we realized that I needed glasses because I would sit super close to the TV; close enough to feel the static during commercials. Maybe that’s why I’m not one to multitask while i watch something. It’s lights off, joint ready, and snacks on my right. I like to notice everything. The set design, the colors, the editing, music, fashion. Writing, acting, and plot are important too, of course, but what brings me in is the world building. What does it look like, feel like? can i touch it? can i see something in goodwill.. a mirror, a dress, a color that reminds me of the story? can I be part of it?
During high school, i started memorizing quotes from films and tv that stayed with me. I wrote them on my fingers, my notebooks; created covers for my school binders, a mixture of poetry, quotes, and images of my favorite characters. rory gilmore and effy stonem were completely different, but if you put them together, they create someone reselmbing myself.
Junior year I used a line from the movie Whip It in a presentation for class. Elliot Page’s character, Bliss, is in awe of a local roller derby team. Kristen Wiig’s character tells Bliss, “put some skates on, be your own hero.” This was the first time I had ever heard of this idea; I didn’t know you could save yourself.
Other lines continued to change me, like the quote that’s on my home page, from a movie called Phoebe in Wonderland. At age nine, it’s Elle Fanning’s first lead role, and she played Phoebe, a mentally ill girl who is cast as Alice in her school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. The play and real life get mixed together, and Phoebe struggles to balance it all. Her teacher, odd and caring, tells Phoebe that
“at a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are. .especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself.. But i am this person. And in that statement.. that correction.. there will be a kind of love.”
My twin sister showed me this movie. She introduced me to lots of music, shows, and film as we got older. A filmmaker and writer herself, we shared a love for storytelling and poetry. We often recited poems and quotes to each other in lue of conversation.
my sisters and i know better than anyone ever could, how a certain movie that we picked out at blockbuster, that we’d seen a hundred times, had felt in that moment. the through line of movies hold us together. And within those movies, on the floor of our living room, or the sunroom at the cottage, we were safe.
