"This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self." (John Watson, pseudonym Ian MacLaren, 1903)
I went to see My Week with Marilyn not knowing why I, like so many others, are still interested in her life--both her internal distress and her external success.
The external persona is now so coagulated, so concretized, with distinct physical landmarks and gestures of speech and body that a woman--or a man--can easily pass for "Marilyn" if she or he studies and mimics those landmarks and gestures. No actual physical resemblance is required: hair and makeup, speech and movement, these will suffice. It's entertaining to see people, from drag queens on P-Town streets, to celebrities in Vogue print layouts, to folks at costume parties, take on this costume of 50s woman-girl-ness. We know what it is as soon as we see it, and we mostly enjoy it. It is spectacle, something to marvel at--recreating those curves, the red mouth, the white hair and dress, the wide eyes and wispy voice. Finding just the right balance of knowing sexuality and innocent fun.
The movie, set while Monroe was already a movie star, but not quite yet at the peak of her stardom, reminded me that she had to put together those particular landmarks. Not quite from scratch--lots of female movie stars had already done a variation, falling on various points on the sex/fun continuum. And not alone--heaven knows several industries invested in this one femininity project, from the film industry to the cosmetics industry to the fashion industry. But still, she had to practice what to do with her eyes and lips and hair in front of a mirror. She had to develop that walk. She had to refine the balance of sex and fun, smart and dumb, in what she said and how she said it. You can see even the practiced movements and positions of her hands on herself, to move the viewer's attention this way and that. Before anyone could copy it, she had to (with much invested assistance) make it up, try it out, and refine it.
This transition has been much written about, from "Norma Jeane" to "Marilyn." It was a transition over years, but some say it was also done each work day, as she put on full makeup and costume.
Why does it still fascinate? I don't think it mesmerizes men solely because they want her. And I don't think it intrigues women solely because they want to be wanted like that.
I think it fascinates us simply because it is a huge, movie-screen version of the more modest project each of us engage in every day. Even if you're not female.
It is the huge project of creating a persona to present to the world. Trying out different clothing, ways of speaking, ways of moving and holding still. It is time consuming. Especially because most of us don't even have stylists. And we get invested in it. For some it is clothing and makeup and how to move; for others it is academic knowledge and how to write; for still others it is amassing money and the appearance of financial clout.
That said, some of us keep our persona as close to what we actually feel and know inside as we can. I think this is what is currently called "living authentically." But still--that sense of an individual self, and ego, a personality, is there, and the choices we have made in the past tend to cut us off from the full range of possibility in the present. So as authentic as we strive to be--to make the inside and the outside match--there is just too much inside to ever be fully represented on the outside.
My Interior: infinity. My Exterior: infinity limited by my filters of presentation, further constrained by your filters of perception.
Ditto for Your Interior and Your Exterior.
Of course, most of what we see on movie screens and in magazines is this kind of persona-writ-HUGE. It all fascinates, with its spectacle and the way it does the same job that we have to do every time we wake up, but on a much more detailed and careful scale. Because we don't admit that it's part of our job, part of our lives, but we pretty well all acknowledge that it's the whole point of the entertainment industries--carefully constructed fantasies, make-believes that we temporarily agree to believe. (It's this "temporary" that is sticky. For them and for us.)
Why does this one persona continue to shimmer, when many other personas that have been carefully developed have dimmed?
I think it is the way that the story keeps getting told of Norma Jeane being "under" the Marilyn persona, always feeling insecure, not good enough, unlovable, in need of protection, in danger of being abandoned...and wanting to be loved "for herself" rather than for her persona.
I think that's a pretty common thing. One of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace, seemed to be haunted by similar demons. His persona was of the rational, intellectual, brilliant young man. His fear that he wasn't really brilliant seems to have kept him (I say this based on reading his fiction and nonfiction, as well as what other people have written about him) in a similar state of anxiety and depression.
Now, both these people had underlying mental illnesses that made them less stable and more prone to get stuck in the rut of continuing to develop and defend the persona even after recognizing that they want people to find out the "truth" about them and love them for that which is hidden rather than that which is put on display.
But that sounds pretty familiar to me, although it has never driven me to booze or pills. We all have to build a persona to present, even when we say we are not going to engage in that business (think teenage rebellion...yet the gaggles of teens rebelling at any given time wind up dressing and talking alike anyway...humans are such incorrigible imitators). And most of us, at one time or another, in modern life, start to fear that "the real me" is not being seen or loved, because all anyone bothers to see is the surface we have arranged for them.
This is where a crucial decision is made.
What do we do when we realize that there is a "gap" between how we feel inside and what we are presenting to others on the outside?
Do we tenaciously grip the persona, afraid of what will happen if we change it? This tends to lead to various dysfunctional behaviors, as the strain of defending and shoring up the persona gets more intense.
Or do we loosen our grip on who we think we are, how we show ourselves to the world, and take a chance at letting the Exterior more accurately reflect the Interior? (Or maybe sometimes the opposite--we may be able to "fake it 'til we make it," and work to grow the parts of the Interior that are emphasized in the Exterior, though I think this only works in small ways, when the two do not feel so very far apart.)
This is the work of yoga techniques: to recognize the ways in which the Interior is a bit different from the Exterior persona. It differs from most western psychological techniques in a few ways:
1. We may start with My Interior, but we soon realize it is Every Interior. That's why it's infinite. My Interior Is Not Actually Separate From Your Interior! (Is that terrifying or soothing right now?)
2. We work with both the body and the mind, and come to see these things as fully unified, regardless of which we started with--in hatha yoga, jnana yoga, raja yoga, bhakti yoga...and eventually we actually realize that the illusion (maya, samsara) IS the reality (Brahman, nirvana)
3. We don't believe the infinity of the Interior can ever be fully captured by the perception of the Exterior...unless perhaps this is what happens when we become Enlightened or fully Realized or Awakened, whatever you want to call it, but then it still depends upon everyone else becoming Enlightened, which is where the gurus and the bodhisattvas come in.
4. Thus, the Interior and the Exterior do not have to be fully reconciled--for they cannot be, until we are all more awake--but we do have to cultivate a constant awareness of the infinity of the Interior in order to not get caught up in the game of developing and defending the Exterior persona. (That game will continue, but we will always see it as a game, and rather than try to manipulate people into thinking it is not a game, we will encourage them to play, and remind them that it is play, even when the stakes seem serious.)
This last point is why I woke up and had to write about this. There are many scenes in the movie that show how an experienced, aging actor, Laurence Olivier, is angered and frustrated by Monroe showing up hours late, balking at his directorial suggestions, and flubbing lines continually. The movie suggests that her behavior is mostly due to her insecurity--it would take her hours to "prepare" the persona with the makeup, costumes, and gestures ready to execute, and even after all that she sometimes did not think she could do it. (The movie also intimates that some of this insecurity had already become a manipulative tool on her part--incorporating the fragility of "Norma Jeane" into the fixed, secure persona of "Marilyn" for sympathy.)
But we also see how Olivier fights his own demons of Exteriority-- he does not like how old he looks on the screen, particularly next to this spectacle of bubbly youth.
Yet instead of relating his own internal troubles to those of the woman he is frothing at the mouth about, he is further angered. If he can overcome his insecurities and show up on time with his lines, even though he is always afraid he will not live up to his persona in how he looks or how he performs, then she should, too, dang it. (Or bloody whatever.)
Sometimes we are hardest on those whose Exteriors are so shiny and bright, when we suspect that their Interiors are too much like our own.
Watch for this the next time you are in a yoga class. Or a grocery store. Or anywhere, really. Watch the way the mind takes in other people's Exteriors and "temporarily" believes they represent the whole Interior. And then decides that Interior/Exterior would just be so much better to live in than our own. Lucky dog.
Or so much worse. Poor thing.
That Interior already is you. Remember. Remember. Even as you play the game.
Tat tvam asi. Thou art that. You are That. See yourself in others, and others in you. Whether it's a glossy bubbly sexpot or a rapacious businessperson or a brilliant writer or an enlightened saint.
"This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self." (John Watson, pseudonym Ian MacLaren, 1903)
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