In the West, children in film are representations of our resigned hopes and dreams. Their perspectives as protagonists are critical in their naivete, the sullying of their innocence a condemnation of the social circumstances that refuse to protect them. The ways that we choose to imagine our children ‘come of age’ are illustrations of the ways we feel we have been harmed and the ways we have been taught to harm others. And, as ever, we use the gender binary to express different collective neuroses. Girls coming-of-age movies tend to be about the relinquishment of sexual autonomy to patriarchy; boys coming-of-age movies are about the relinquishment of personal autonomy to the state. Whether or not the movie is The Goonies or Mysterious Skin depends on how much the filmmaker (or, even, the social consensus of the film’s era) seems to believe in the legitimacy of their society’s institutions.
Boys coming-of-age movies made with institutional distrust read like extinction bursts of potential — an unfolding, heartbreaking list of firsts and lasts before the boy is initiated into the harsh ‘realities’ of his society. This means that these coming-of-age movies are often in dialogue with God and nature on one end and the paternal hand of the state on the other; the protagonist is shown how beautiful the world can be through an encounter with the sublime and almost immediately the beauty is taken away from him. We are made to understand that this reversal is, if not permanent, an indication that this encounter will not be felt with the same singular purity again.
In Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, these encounters happen in or by the sea. In the film’s most iconic scene (and these encounters with The Unknowable are usually these films’ most iconic scenes) Chiron’s father figure, Juan, holds Chiron in the warm Florida water and tells him to relax and float. His accompanying line: “You feel that? You’re in the middle of the world.” In Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher we encounter the sublime also in a sea, this one made of grass. Frustrated and confused by the cruel limitations of his council estate (overrun with refuse due to a concurrent binmen strike) James takes the bus to the end of the line and kicks around a building site before discovering a sunny expanse of grass behind the building. He runs through it, leaping and pitching himself into the horizon. In Kes, an aggrieved young schoolboy, Billy Casper, finds and trains a bird (I can’t write about Kes without crying so that’s what you get).
Ratcatcher was made in 1999 but set in the economic stagnation of 1970s Scotland; Kes treads similar ground in a coal mining town in late 60s Northern England. Moonlight was released in 2016 just as much of America was embracing a far-right social conservatism. Each of these films depict a working class boy who learns that it is possible to have proximity to the sublime and, at the same time, the realities of the world make any sustained proximity impossible. In Moonlight, Juan dies halfway through the film; in Ratcatcher, James (shockingly) takes his own life and in his last moments imagines himself back in the field; In Kes, nothing happens and everyone especially the bird is fine forever!! Don’t make me think about it!
May and June were 2024’s astrological equivalent of half-time. We took a seat, caught our breath, drank some water. This week Mars ingresses into stubborn Taurus squares chthonic, megalodon Pluto. Concurrently, Saturn squares the planets in Gemini. We’re back in the arena and there is, I’m sorry to say, a vibe of helplessness in the air. However, like the wee lad protagonists in an Austerity Politics Coming of Age Movie, that helplessness lies around the perimeter of the proceedings. Political unrest, economic stagnation, inflexible social stratas: these are all circumstances that keep us feeling paranoid, stuck, cynical. These are the feelings of Mars square Pluto. This week also sees a Mercury/Sun conjunction in the sparkly Gemini — the boys of Moonlight, Kes, and Ratcatcher are defined by their acute awareness of life’s terrible immovability and its capacity to be beautiful, surprising, and heartbreaking anyway.
Monday, June 10
A shiny and pivotal feeling of optimism is mitigated by political disaster. (in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money / our great country of money, we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.)
Tuesday, June 11
The ground shakes underneath you and you know why. In times of war a country will depict itself as a woman if it fears being invaded; it will depict itself as a man if it seeks to invade.
Wednesday, June 12
Analysis of the action taken is overblown by a wall of sound. Internal calibration is dictated by a million different opinions; a million different internal calibrations occur. The point of communicating becomes the satisfaction of hearing one’s own injuries reflected in someone else’s description of you.
Thursday, June 13
A brief stallout; reevaluation occurs overnight.
Friday, June 14
The momentary daze of having a bucket of water thrown over your head. Epiphanies about how your interpersonal relationships mimic current systems of power. This doesn’t make them ‘wrong’ or corrupted, it just makes them powerful.
Saturday, June 15
Losing your favorite going out top, metaphorically.
Sunday, June 16
I’m not sure they mean it even if they think they do and are insisting upon it. It sounds the thing you wanted to hear, but come to think of it, did you know what that thing was? Or did it sound so good when they said it that you retrofitted your own reaction? It might not be “true”, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to hear anyway.