Maymay and I saw the new Woody Allen film Vicky Christina Barcelona tonight in Bondi Junction. Beforehand, we drank beer on an open air balcony, swam in the Pacific, sat in the sunlight, and had something called a sacher tart (torte?), impossibly delicious and made with ingredients we could not identify.
Yes, I did suggest the film to him. Yes, I did suggest it because of the promise of hot onscreen sex. And yes, it was sexy.
It was also infuriating. Gripping my seat, digging my nails into May’s arm, biting my lip and scowling ferociously infuriating. But it’s Woody Allen. Maybe I should have expected that?
I really have a hard time watching people fuck relationships up. I realize this ruins me for about half of cinema. And I have a particularly hard time watching people fuck up polyamorous non-traditional relationships that are literally idyllic. What? We couldn’t have walked away with one mainstream representation of polyamory that didn’t involve mass marriage and teen pregnancy? That was too much to ask? Obviously, yes.
I have been writing short stories (and hopefully long stories) about non-traditional relationships and kink, of late. I find myself reluctant to add drama to these stories, because I want so badly for there to be good stories about my kind of sex and relationship that don’t end in emotional meltdown or fiery death. I want stories about kink in which the protagonists are not intrinsically fucked in the head, and stories about poly in which the relationship is not inevitably doomed.
But those stories, though lovely, are narratively boring. There’s a trick to writing them, somewhere. I’m still sorting it out.
8 Comments
Oh, oh, I know, I know! Include some traditional relationships that are perhaps peripheral (or even essential) to the narrative, and let THOSE be the ones that end in fiery death and emotional meltdown!
Please excuse my id. It escapes now and then, and it can be a spiteful little beast, especially after spending a lot of time with the family over the holidays. . . .
It’s Sacher Torte. It has chocolate cake and jam and just a teensy piece of heaven…
And if done right is so rich it qualifies as pure sin.
Maybe if you wrote stories that were resolved by transiting from a traditional relationship to a non-traditional on? For example, Secretary, and Shortbus, though people are fucked in the head in both. A troubled marriage that is saved by both partners realizing they are submissive, and collared to the same owner? Maybe stories of transition between non-traditional relationships? A quad with problems that evolves into two stable triads, maybe?
I don’t know, that’s just the top of my head. I don’t think relationship troubles are limited to troubled relationships, and I think relationships can grow through their troubles. I have to believe there’s a way to write interesting stories about poly relationships, and kinky relationships, because I hear interesting gossip about them all the time. :-)
Another possibility would be for the drama to be about something other than the relationship. Perhaps something like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man; the relationship is important to the story, but the plot is about solving a mystery.
Here’s my 2c, worth even less. I am published, if this is of interest.
Put these stories aside for a while. You can do *those*. The trick is elsewhere. So put those stories aside and write one out of your most painful place. Write a story that has no agenda, a story that doesn’t rely on coherent, rational, adjusted thought. Break through to the Eileen that wrote about her family’s rejection. Write out of *that*, or similar. Grab your voice, and never let it go. The shape of your stories will come to you.
I do apologize for barging in.
Rose
You want a representation of a healthy relationship from Woody Allen?
Y’know, Barry has a point there.
I missed the opening credits of the movie so I wasn’t actually aware it was Woody Allen movie until the end, which probably explains half of why I was so annoyed.
the other thought is that if a relationship is being represented, warts and all, by the purveyor of, well, whatever it is that Woody Allen purveys, then maybe that’s a sign that polyamory is finally breaking through to the mainstream?
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