Walking in other people’s shoes
Here’s what I am watching and reading and recommending: a series of 24 short films, a comic book, and a film.
“H24”, “The Mental Load” and “C’mon, c’mon” — these aren’t new films or books, but I’ve been catching up on them recently and they’ve allowed me to think, and keep thinking about, different perspectives.
I’ve been walking in the shoes of women navigating their safety in public spaces, understanding what the “mental load” of gendered housework can look like, learning about how overwhelming it can be to care for an entire family, through the films and comics I’ve been watching and reading recently. Is “helping” the same as taking charge?
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24 hours in the skin of a woman
Not long ago I came across H24: 24 Hours, 24 Women, 24 Stories, a series of 24 short films, which I loved. It’s streaming on the French-German cultural broadcast channel ARTE, which you can watch for free (and which has really interesting content and high quality artistic production to boot).
Inspired by real life events, the H24 shorts are never longer than five minutes, and are based on stories by writers such as Siri Hustvedt, Sofi Oksanen, Rosa Montero or Lydie Salvayre, amongst others, in: “a diversity of female voices and talent from across Europe come together for a series that tackles head on the everyday brutality experienced by women.”
The narrators of the stories features actors such as Germany’s Diane Kruger (Troy, Inglourious Basterds), France’s Noémie Merlant (Tár, Portrait of a Lady on Fire) and Camille Cottin (Allied, Stillwater), amongst others.
Whether it is from a first person narrative or from the perspective of the aggressor, these stories cover topics such as abuse in public spaces — be it on a bus or in the street — cyberharassment, the objectification of women, consent, and other more subtle types of violence women experience, which may not be as easy to interpret, such as a smile or flattery which don’t seem to be given with ill intentions.
The journalist Anabel Palomares wrote (in Spanish) on the lifestyle site Trendencias: “The best and the worst thing about seeing these short films one after the other is that you feel seen in these 24 hours, because we have all felt the same way that these protagonists have at some point in our lives. If only were it only fiction, and not an artistic representation of the most overwhelming reality”.
Spanish actress Susana Abaitua, who stars in the short You should be ashamed — about obstetric violence — told El Mundo that it is “key” that H24 was written, performed and directed by women: “If we start to tell stories and explain the culture those things really happen in, it’ll spark something in how younger people think about things. These types of projects work for this and should really be everywhere”.
In the first short, Signs (2021), a woman who works a night shift falls asleep on the bus and is woken up by a pat on the shoulder. German actress Diane Kruger takes on the role of the woman, but also as the man who is the harasser, narrating his version of the story with the bold confidence of not thinking he has done anything wrong, his conviction that a woman simply sitting next to him on a bus is purely there to satisfy his carnal desires.
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The mental load
The Mental Load is a comic illustrated by Frenchwoman Emma Clit, depicting the masculine logic which tends to dominate the domestic reality of heterosexual couples.
“When a man asks his partner what chore he should be doing, he is avoiding taking on his part of the mental load,” explained the author in an interesting interview (in Spanish) with the newspaper elDiario.es.
Clit, who calls herself “an inclusive, antiracist and anticapitalist feminist”, reflects on this “mental load” and the excuses men tend to make to avoid doing the household chores which should be shared.
“When a man expects his partner to ask him to do certain things, he is seeing her as a coordinator of chores at home.”
When it comes to the reactions she has had about her work, Clit says that men have told her they feel hurt because they don’t know the difference between a mental load and doing household chores: “They told me, but I hoover. And I asked them: but do you do it because you’re told to do it or because it was you who thought of hoovering? Usually, men do things around the home because their partner has asked them to; and so it’s the women who take on the mental load.”
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When we have to care for someone
One of the films I have really enjoyed recently was C'mon C'mon — it left me disturbed, reflective, mobilized (and I got the somewhat whimsical impression that the film has passed the world by).
Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) is a radio journalist who travels the US interviewing young people and children about the future. These interviews are real, since the kids aren’t actors. And neither are they used to adults asking them ‘serious’ or ‘important’ questions, as is the norm in real life.
The interviews are interlaced with the main storyline of the film, in which Johnny decides to meet up with his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) a year after their mother has died.
Johnny ends up taking care of his nephew (Woody Norman) while Viv has to be out of town with her estranged partner.
The film reminds me of that saying, that a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. Johnny is middle-aged, single and childless, and all of a sudden he experiences what must feel like fatherhood for a few days. It turns out to be an intense experience for him, and, as is known, not the same as being in a smooth sea.
The film builds up the tension between the characters of the uncle and nephew, a child who is astute and unpredictable. The contradictions keep coming, between the discord of the adult world and the complexity of making it compatible with children who have suddenly appeared.
The questions accumulate: Why is Johnny fighting with his sister, Jesse’s mother? Where is Jesse’s father, and why can’t he be with his child? What options does his mother have in this scenario?
There is a metaphorical world in the film which adds moisture to everything: imaginary friends, subterranean communication between trees, existential questions of children, ant colonies and conspiracies.
There are also moments of high anxiety which any parent or carer could identify with, such as when Jesse gets lost in a shop and his uncle can’t find him anywhere… Who gets the angriest, the most frustrated? The uncle or the nephew? Why did this happen?
Desperation, sadness, impotence and uncertainty run through the film. The film lingers in my mind, leaving me feeling that something like hope and love dominates: you’ve always got to keep fighting, especially for what we love.
C'mon C'mon made me think, amongst other things, about the structure of care in general, about what happens when a carer has to care for someone else (in this case an estranged partner) but simply can’t manage.
You also see how the family dynamic can be so fragile, especially when there are children involved. And you see the beauty / difficulty / challenge / transformation which can result from surrendering to the daunting task of taking care of someone for someone (as it happens with the uncle in this case) who has never taken on that role.
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Have you seen or read any of the above, or will you? Let me know how it goes!
Once again, thank you for reading, commenting, sending mails and sharing this newsletter with others.
Stay well.
A hug,
Nacho
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📣 Nabeelah Shabbir, a member of this community and a friend, edited and improved this newsletter with lots of love. Thanks, Nabeelah! 🙏 If there are mistakes, they are my fault, not hers! (and please forgive me for them!)