Harmonica. Episode 4. Damn that’s dark. (Swedish TV series, 2022).

Harmonica. Episode 4. Damn that’s dark. (Swedish TV series, 2022).

Alcohol parenting and grief.

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

A father and son sit opposite struggling to meet each other; their struggles hidden behind alcohol and their won past – their parenting, their concealing their emotions because of many reasons we, the audience cannot be present for: their lives and their past. They meet and we sit, or I sat and often felt the confusion between husband and wife and father and son. I also felt culturally prepared as well as distant: even through alcohol neglect they are able to manage a conversation that attempts to touch emotions. 

Dark emotions are bared: being called weak: the weak son who felt disapproval and isolation from his needs to feel loved and warmth from his father, an alcoholic and musician like himself. The son, needing to feel acknowledged and to move beyond his despair – the grief he felt for the loss of his baby daughter 16 years ago and his mother. He cared for his father like a parent for their child. Feeling invalidated, the son angrily asserted that he was always called “weak”. 

I overheard another person mistake weakness for vulnerability ( a conversation and a woman attempted to correct another through asserting that instead of weak she would “put” vulnerability. The context unknown to me, I believed she was wrong) and this error felt, from within, wrong. Vulnerability is who we are in relation with others and how they might attempt to dominate and determine our lives as well as our own attempts to express emotionally how we feel as humans whether authentic or not. Being labelled “weak” is an attempt to control and dominate as well as determine and eliminate the force or energy – artistic or other – that the person labelled might have felt. Shame. Weakness is to feel shame not feel, through reframing a thinking again about the situation. For the man, the son, this was a burden and heaviness of shame through desiring to see his father’s approval and love. Parents often hear this social shaming as a judgement: the worst parent, the most (for women, body shaming after pregnancy or simply feeling tired) it’s bitterness sticks and depresses through the complications of one’s own private life. People struggle with the invisible – this “sticking” of labels that walks into their private lives without invitation and attempts to remain in control.

The son was vulnerable because he was brought up in that family, but he was determined s weak and this didn’t “listen” to his needs: he needed to hear- and feel listened to- that he was respected and loved. That he mattered. Around alcohol, his life didn’t – according to his wife – mature as expected. For me, the viewer, I found he struggled with knowing about maturity as well as an inability to overcome or accept his grief and the grieving process became complicated. The confusion I felt at times in the conversations between him and his wife – were they listening to each other and having the same conversation? This complication: grief gone extended through time without respectfully and responsibly listening and managing the loss meant, for someone around alcoholism, complications beyond our own – perhaps in denial – expectations socially. I put in “denial” because we as humans – even in therapy counsellors are aware – prefer to put a different light on our story. One that seems socially acceptable. 

Counsellors know there is some lying but what the client isn’t aware, they also know complexity and complications are human. The superhuman seeks flattery and social integrity and this man in this film sought warmth, connection and artistic acknowledgement for his art and self expression. He struggled. His relationship with his father cut short and left with unknown and uncertain feelings. His healing: the loss of his child and now his father needed attention and his estranged wife offering through music a way for them to re-light or reframe their lives together for a future was a path he needed.

Through darkness there is light and this ordinariness shifted beyond superficial and conformist acceptance of the crowd or status quo to reveal from dark times, music and art can offer healing and paths to explore out of the ordinary, or places that deny the spirit and spiritual in humans. 

Like the pain and suffering in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the Swedish writer has presented me with an encounter that I cannot judge as right or wrong because intertwined with each other is the complication and suffering of human existence: they tried their own way instead of following someone else’s “right way” and they became an encounter – not my usual – as  a perfect stranger – as interesting.

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

“Being loved for who you are”: Min pappa Marianne (My father Marianne). Swedish language film, 2020, directed by Mårten Klingberg.

“We forgive him…for they know not what they do…” Luke 23:34

“Being loved for who you are”: Min pappa Marianne (My father Marianne). Swedish language film, 2020, directed by Mårten Klingberg.

Love and knowledge. How do I begin? This film, tender and simple in approach raised complex questions about nurturing and solution finding in families. Marianne/ Lasse felt both father and Marianne. To be “me” was to express himself/herself as a human loving their family, work and community with feminine clothing. Their name, Marianne fitted them. Marianne/Lasse loved and through his vocation, as a Swedish priest in a small town, the problem is solved with another priest “Being loved for who you are” is what God has taught them and expressing genuinely who you are was difficult as well as fitting the love Lasse/Marianne expressed.

The film was a journey seeking solutions for a troubled family denying Lasse/Marianne’s step into self-expression. The adult children struggled to accept the appearance and felt their childhood was a lie, false, fabricated and misleading. Not an image of perfection but still loving in God’s image Lasse/Marianne needed to heal his/her family and future through revealing the truth: Marianne! 

The resentment felt by the adult child, the daughter, was the problem and the solution was for her to accept that love still existed and was persisting beyond the image “Marianne” in female clothes. Her father had always loved her as Marianne and even though the name was hidden, the expression was Marianne. For some families, self-expression is invalidated and Marianne’s daughter almost succeeded in invalidating her father/Marianne. Coming out as their genuine “self” their “fit” was not easy. Some would turn to hidden, secret lives and others to rejection and aggression because of humiliation and shame. 

The daughter felt humiliated. Her self-expression, her needs for her identity to be fulfilled through her family image was questioned and shattered. Social pressure – or her belief this pressure existed – humiliated her. Her father was a priest and respected in the town. Coming out as Marianne shattered this ideal. For some, feelings of intense shame manifests through violence and aggression. This lack of knowledge about shame, feeling shamed, as well as humiliation supports coercive control and those addicted to denying self-expression. For maladaptive narcissists who attempt total control over intimate partners as well as their image, the need and desperation to squash or destroy self-expression to humiliate an other is a way of life. No empathy. Simply the appropriation (like in Single white female syndrome) or denial of an existence offers the opportunity for the unloved to thrive in groups and communities. Marianne demonstrates love and knowledge with confidence, vulnerability and integrity. She remains loving and caring. 

Marianne states, You don’t know what it’s like being “me” to her daughter. The parent relationship – the sacred nature of admiration and paternal respect is questioned. Should the daughter ever attempt to cross the familial boundaries and explore what it is like to be her parents and discover difficult decisions and problem-solving isn’t simple like her childlike nature believes? It’s not simply becoming a parent when a child begins to understand their own parent’s journey. Through social and emotional development some people begin this journey earlier through natural expression of empathy. 

Empathy is knowledge and Marianne’s encounter with grotesque drunks at a diner probing whether she is a tranny or prostitute reveals her integrity and self-control. She states simply from the bible, Luke 23:34  that “We forgive him for he knows not what he does” or has done. The common drunk harassing her has no love nor knowledge for others. He is selfish and abuses Marianne through stereotypes and his own selfish lack of knowledge to discover what it is like to be, or to walk in an other’s shoes. 

I asked, How do I begin because so many times I have heard people discuss how others have told them they can’t be or do something creative and express themselves. I have heard victims of domestic violence discuss the accusations to control them and how unloving the perpetrator (male/female/other identified) expressed cruel hatred and resentment towards “freedom”. I searched the director of this film and found the SBS advertisement: free. What does this, “free” mean to Marianne and her family? Free to live and to love safely without constant criticism and the denial of self-expression? Freedom to express and to remain within the church being seen as loved by their God, their choice? Empathy is a feeling and so too is self-respect and self-control. Marianne needed to feel empathy and respected within her family, church, community and herself. SHe respected herself to come out to her family and live peacefully, lovingly and honestly. Others don’t do this so easily. The cultural difference the writer has expressed is one for change: acceptance of who we are is difficult. 

Some research suggests that transitioning isn’t always a peaceful, loving act. Resentment persists. The cruel cold hatred directed towards others and self because of not “fitting” their body-mental constructs is a strife that creates struggle, neglect and other social issues. The writer suggests that love with strife can be balanced, like Empedocles suggested, dynamic creative and with some pushing from Marianne, energising to renew difficult relations.

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Looking up. Emu Dreaming: opening my eyes at the MCA

Looking up. Emu Dreaming: opening my eyes at the MCA

The arrow, Brook Andrew’s Warrang 2012, black and white animated LED spoke to me in a few “directions”. I thought if looking with Western eyes I need to look at the ground and acknowledge the ground. Like a Hip Hop Gesture with hands asserted, fingers spread or contorted to speak, dance, move and connect I am left outside. I am not a Hip Hop expert with the skill to enter the language; I have seen the playfulness of some Aboriginal choreographers create movements from everyday experiences like a chain toilet flush. I giggle because stand-up chain flushes are rare and exploring this as an approach to choreography and movements is light, and comical or with a laugh hidden between knowers or knowledge-makers that forms a group. Outside the MCA is a common meeting place: a grassed area for sunning, chatting and observing the ships and walkers-by. Looking out from the windows is my favourite art-walk. I walk through and I am drawn to the windows to observe outside: the blue skies and bright sunlight in day and, in the past, the upper level outside I have looked up and observed the night sky. Less noise; the Quayside landscape opens to night lapping of the gentle waves and hue from the colourful reflections from the night lights set allure socialising in bars, cafes, cinemas, dance and drama theatres.

Gregg Dreise is an author of children’s books. Awesome Emu, published 2021, led me to reframing and rethinking Brook Andrew’s arrow. Dreise puts simply with colourful illustrations the Emu Dreaming story. It led me to look at the Emu, the arrow print and my connection to place differently. It now reminded me of emu prints in paintings. Some emu symbols look like arrows. The footprint is represented either with a long toe in the middle or arrow-like. The Emu’s significance, like the title of Ray & Cilla Norris’ book Emu Dreaming: An introduction to Aboriginal Australian Astronomy, have been seen as “creator spirits” and the emu in the sky can be seen where westerners place the Southern Cross star constellation.  For nourishment and spirituality, connection and place, some Aboriginal Australians believe the position of the emu in the sky directs them to find emu eggs. 

Understanding Dreaming is like taking another look at an arrow outside the MCA. It is not linear in perspective and the stories connect as well as today include the disconnection from land, sky and ancestors. Belonging is often a concept that attempts to question and connect people to a place, to a history and to their stories shared and heard. I don’t feel I belong in the MCA and my place is at the window looking out, looking at the frame and seeing the landscape organically move with the tides, people and shifting light. No LED lights, simply the sun and time. The Emu hasn’t always fascinated me and like the Ibis I have needed some time and quiet to reconsider my stance and understanding of these birds. They have appeared in the landscape – emus seen running up and down farm fence lines frantically trying to find a way out. They have been seen in enclosures simply pecking. Now, like the Ibis and my re-framing of what I thought was a pest is now a symbol of habitat loss and push for humans to dominate the landscape and belong through capital gain, building homes, roads and environments regardless of the natural, organic landscape and the micro-universes existing within non-linear concepts of time. The emu, the arrow points a way: down? That I hesitate to celebrate. My footprint no longer disturbs the landscape. The path is permanent and the sound of buskers creates the contemporary song I know: there, for me, has always been the calypso drumming, a golden statue, ferry horns, and chattering couples, families now with pets at Circular Quay. Beneath the MCA was once a landscape inhabited by people and animals existing together for food, life, stories and families: Lore. Black and white, like an old photograph the LED continuously pulses or looks like the tide in a direction the observer constructs with their mind or mind’s eye: their brain constructs the image to make sense. The pulse flows down with the arrow-head. This makes sense and the MCA’s role is to support making sense of the world through art and creativity for visitors and students in workshops and exhibitions. The Emu, the creative spirit, has now a place for me whether Brook Andrew intended it or not. 

To “look up” is to defy western conventions that simply sees an arrow pointing down, and to find spiritually where the Emu has tread.

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Black Cockatoo Crisis, Australian documentary directed by Jane Hammond, 2022.

Black Cockatoo Crisis, Australian documentary directed by Jane Hammond, 2022.

My book written by John Bevis, poetry about bird sounds, was stolen. Bought from America, the poetry for me was meant to challenge a less than loveable person who decided to harass me, saturating me with the sound “tweet tweet” stating that’s the sound of a bird and that’s all I will hear whenever I look out the window and listen to the bird sounds and other landscape rhythms. To organise and determine my experience: to decide how I will think, feel and behave when attempting to relax in the landscape. “Chirp, chirp” “cheep cheap” and “tweet”; my agreement did not meet theirs: they dominated and were determined to destroy silence and the recognition of others in their place. A bulldozer and property developer, the mining company and the politician set to capitalise on finite resources: the economic reductionists to popular (culturally sanctioned) reasoning. Noise. Noise that lacked rhythm, silence and love. The determination of the person to overcome any connection through overused metaphor and onomatopoeia was too simplified for my breath and awareness: I refused to let them feel victory. Their bulldozing of my space – metaphorically – wasn’t going to destabilise my enjoyment for others, outside. 

Setting aside my own needs was their desire to put themselves above all others: flora, fauna, rock, minerals and my breath of fresh air. “I breathe in I breathe out”, is a line from Solli Raphael’s winning slam poetry poem. Raphael’s poem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rydKJcHH4M) became popular in my classroom: For the rhythm, the message and the attempts to emulate his style. Australian Air, the title, was discussed against a backdrop of anthem learning: Advance Australia Fair as well as Dorothea MacKellar’s poem I Love a Sunburnt Country. Fairness? A question and a constant reminder in playgrounds and childhood development. Noticing what’s not fair and who gets a prize, turn of a toy, attention, etc. Australian Air, Raphael suggests, is polluted with anti-love and anger: destroying landscape and First Generations people to dominate “speech” and “stories” with unfair truth and determined meanings. Raphael acknowledges like others that we all breathe and all need the air to breathe and this is universal but asks: Why do we deny some the right to breathe freely with feelings of self-entitlement?

In Luce Irigaray’s The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger (1983), I found a paragraph that connected me to this experience and the documentary Black Cockatoo Crisis, 2022:

“Love can alter the forms they [things] take, and can switch their places, without for all that destroying their elemental Being. Love reunites what is dissimilar: the dry loves and attracts the wet. Hatred brings about the attraction of like to like…Love of the other and love of self order the world” (p76).

Love for the Perth landscape belonged to only a few in the documentary. Raphael asks young slam poets to breathe: to simply take control of hatred and anxiety and breathe in, breathe out. A simple mindfulness technique. Watching 4WD’s drive into black Carnaby Cockatoos feeding on grain on the side of the road is a forgetting of air for me. The experience is breathless; I held my breath and I admit I do question the presence of the camera that filmed the accidents for knowledge or for the love of conserving and preserving the Black Cockatoo in Western Australia. In this documentary I found Irigaray’s words:

“Seeking a flash of illumination in the works of those who still sight that distress that is the destiny of all–earthly exile. The pain of a separation at birth that would maintain each one in his death. A life where love would never transgress the boundary of the proper” or never transgress the boundaries of domineering people. Similar to the annoyance I felt when an attempt to overcome silence and breath through tacky, overused made up bird sounds “cheep cheap tweet tweet”. For my love to transgress the hatred of that person I could (and did) simply walk away. For the birds they have experienced so much habitat loss and aggression: some people to others’ distress shoot the birds and run them down purposefully. This, I borrow from Irigaray, is man’s distress and hatred – his lost connection to air and the elements for the sake of a warm, comfortable dwelling that doesn’t coexist with the landscape and the needs of the ecological system – local and global.

Val Plumwood (2002) suggests that documentaries like this one reveal to us “basic ecological things long forgotten or grown oddly unfamiliar, things we need to know about ourselves. They include those of canny animals who gaze back, size you up and tell you who you are–a dangerous predator! …To stay alive…they have to outsmart you…”(p177). 

The black cockatoo lives are threatened from smuggling, mining and development. The birds live with the knowledge that we don’t know how to cohabit and coexist. They live without love from the masses who enjoy the mining spoils and development capital. Hatred sustains their loss of habitat and they, without help, cannot simply transgress the boundaries of hatred to illuminate their lives with love. The documentary revealed a vulnerable bird and my own need to remember their existence and to join with others (a small group) to help protect them. The birds look at us and, I feel in others like the one who dominated my landscape with “tweet tweet” their inability to see or recognise the cry and call for help is not “Cheap cheap”. They want us to look and remember as well as forget and leave their habitat untouched. Forget the mining, these birds cry in a losing battle. To coexist is difficult and Hammond’s documentary reveals this to us.  A homemade bird box from recycled and reclaimed materials is not too expensive to commence a conversation including the flora and fauna and is a loving gesture to help the birds survive beyond the boundaries of human thought and existence.

The documentary’s purpose was to raise awareness and funding for the protection of the black cockatoos in and around Perth. The impact isn’t simply local because mining has long term irreversible effects felt throughout Australia and contributes globally to unsustainable ecological practices and damage. 

Luce Irigaray, 1983. The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Mary Beth Mader. University of Texas Press.

Val Plumwood, 2002. Environmental Culture. The ecological crisis of reason. London & New York: Routledge.

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Miracle in Cell Number 7, Korean film, 2013, directed by Lee Hwan-kyung. Loneliness and mirrors: a short discussion.

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing” – Rollo May.

“We are the hollow men…shape without form…shape without colour”– T.S. Elliot.

Miracle in Cell Number 7, Korean film, 2013, directed by Lee Hwan-kyung. Loneliness and mirrors: a short discussion.

In his podcast, Eternalised discusses, ( titled 8/11/22 Loneliness, Emptiness, Anxiety in Modern Society, Spotify), the American existentialist psychologist Rollo May, 1953, writings to examine the relevance to contemporary society: man’s emptiness is his human condition without a deeper search for him (them) self and connected values. Society has alienated and has kept man (humans) alienated or isolated and feeling empty. To venture, is to “become  conscious of one’s self” and have “painful feelings of powerlessness”. This perspective foregrounds “should”: What I should do to maintain social status…Should marry the right person, job and maintain an image set against the needs and values: What others expect of them. “I am just a collection of mirrors…reflecting what others expect of me”. 

In the Korean film, 2013, Miracle in Cell 7, a young father with cognitive impairment is wrongfully arrested and accused of murdering a young child. He is beaten as a “paedophile” and doesn’t know how to speak out about the arrest, accusation and his subsequent sentencing to death. His own daughter presents us with a mock trial; remembering her time in prison with heer father’s 6 cell mates and how they cared (smuggling her in) and witnessed his care for her.

The head of police lost his young daughter and accused the man. His bitterness and emptiness enslaved him: he was his own captive as the man made friends, cared for his daughter in secret in a crowded cell as well as her ingenuity on the outside meeting a teacher and befriending the prison warden. The head of police refused to accept there could be another story: a truth beyond the innocence and naivety of the man accused. He bullied and threatened the man until he admitted to the murder to protect his young daughter. The man, eventually murdered through wrongful evidence and accusations received posthumous justice: his daughter became a lawyer. The head of police did not simply represent and reveal a collection of mirrors and social expectations: his coldness simply was and lived the mirrors: without reflection and release from his own pain and despair, his refusal to accept a truth beyond his construction and social power meant the death of his daughter was misunderstood and the death of an innocent man and loss of another family’s social and emotional development together. It was clear, the Korean director, Lee Hwan-kyung determined to reveal the hysteria, inconsistencies and social hypocrisy that institutions of power uphold and shamelessly (relentlessly) maintain for “face” or the desired mirror reflection.

Social values: kicking and terrorising the man accused of child sex abuse continued into the prison system. Not simply the public but also the cell mates physically tortured the man upon hearing of his sentence and accusations. Once the cell mates – the criminals – witnessed and experienced the “simple-minded” man’s loyalty and love for his daughter and for them, they reframed their initial irrational judgement of him: they experienced a newness and learning about themselves and others. The criminals confidently defended the man and fought to have him freed. The criminals knew he was bullied by the justice system and the police commissioner. The criminals – the symbol of questioning conformity, reveal to us what Rollo May suggests is the opposite of courage, conformity. The criminals needed courage and knew the corrupt system was difficult and like a prison wall, immovable and inflexible. The justice system, held up for scrutiny by a young woman and her new family – the cell 7 criminals – was questioned and the system fought back because as a system it reflects individuals who don’t experience shame and professional reflection in the right way. The gaze, the way the mirrors are set to reflect themselves, was not in this film a reflection that allowed or provided people with the opportunities to set themselves and others free. Social status is an anxiety; the police commissioner’s desperate attack on a man to prove his daughter’s worth in life and death was more than the man and his own daughter was clear. I want to conclude my open discussion with the thought that the death sentence for this man, was a way the police commissioner existed in irony, that with his coercive control and attempts to reflect institutional power he sped up the death sentence for the man because he had lost his way, he was experiencing depression and this depression – the loss of his daughter – meant for him no future plans that were valued. It was an irony: his control was a loss of way, values and connection with other humans and the truth – in this film – the daughter and criminals were denied a voice because of their social position (and enslaved truth in society). The police commissioner’s loneliness also, following Rollo May, revealed his lack of likeability through his empty determination for social acceptance.

The daughter setting her father’s memory free had, through the comedy and questions about man’s emptiness and isolation, for me some tear-connections. The darkened space for film viewing, me the spectator, was still taken by the director on his journey to release those caught in the injustice system and question parenting skills. The daughter and her father had a great relationship. He had limited cognitive ability and still cared and kept her safe. His limited cognitive ability questioned the man’s security as a commissioner, police officer and the law. 

The film also questioned parenting skills: Did the cold-hearted policeman really love his daughter? Or was the sentencing, death sentence and allegations (without evidence the accusation of child sex abuse was ambiguous and indicated fabrication of evidence for a trial and a criminal “constructed”) saving his face, his dignity as a father who misplaced his daughter who then went to slip on ice and fatally hit her head outside his control?

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Steel Magnolias, 1989: A reframing of Type 1 diabetes on film

“Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections– and it matters which ones get made and unmade” –Donna Harraway, 1985. 

Steel Magnolias, 1989: A reframing of Type 1 diabetes on film

Julia Roberts’ character had Type 1 diabetes. Her glucose shake and loss of consciousness with the need of juice indicates the chronic and dangerous aspects of Type 1 diabetes. She wasn’t meant to have a baby and died because of her desire to be a normal loving mother, wife and daughter. These days, Type 1 diabetes is monitored through senor technology and connection to APPs on a mobile phone or smartwatch. Another carer can have access to the continuous flow of interstitial data. A beep alerts the person and they know to monitor their glucose levels. With this technology, Roberts’ character would have survived or at least a better chance of getting help. Without a mobile phone nor sensor, her family and husband were not alerted soon enough to take her to emergency.

Teachers in NSW participate in Type 1 diabetes training when a child in their care attends the school. The symptoms discussed can cover many other illnesses a parent may witness in their home. It’s a shock when a child is diagnosed but it is not life destroying and the stigma is all that remains after a diagnosis. In Australia, statistics have revealed that more people die of Type 2 diabetes than Type 1. Roberts’ character slipped into a coma. 

Frightening and frustrating for the mother who had staunchly taken care of her daughter she experienced the loss of her child. A lot of research suggests that newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes families go through a grieving process. The film reveals the strength that Roberts’ mother experienced through community and close friends. The grieving process was familial and communal. The support and sense of humour supported a more natural process. I once heard a teenager in hospital assert: “There needs to be more humour” and their smile lit up from their illness and beamed through to touch those who heard. Their giggle was reassuring. With a sense of humour they felt fine and didn’t need to dwell on whether their illness was going to be fatal, and their mortality was questioned too soon. 

Of course, Fields, MacLaine, Parton, Dukakis and supporters contributed to the 1980s female sense of humour and camaraderie. Like a 9 to 5 film with Fonda and Tomlin or a First Wives club with Hawn and Midler these films revealed a female sense of humour necessary for survival at work, home and in relationships. Steel Magnolias, 1989 isn’t as outdated as I thought. The care of Type 1 Diabetes is essential and technology is integrated into that care as well as feelings of safety or reassurance. The improvement of life and the ability to live without feeling controlled or enslaved to the diagnosis is integral to education and re-framing what it means to live a healthy, happy life.

I framed this discussion with a quote from Donna Harraway’s famous Cyborg Manifesto, first published in 1985. I originally considered Heidegger’s Poiesis and technology writings. He is difficult. What is revealed and what comes forth into being when considering a diabetic sensor and alerts sent out from your phone? I would, as a parent, consider love and care. What is revealed or comes out of concealment through a sensor placed on an arm? No shame wearing it and more education becoming aware or a process in society of awareness: active reframing of something, a diagnosis, once lived through concealed with some shame around “sharps” injections and the process of insulin maintenance. With advances in technology this area of life for a Type 1 Diabetic has been reframed. Athletes and politicians wear their sensor: visible in the light, this supports others struggling to feel “good” about themselves and their diagnosis.

When technology, like hacking, sharing of illicit images without consent is also an act of “revealing” what wants to remain concealed: the enslavement to capital gain through harming others, it is difficult to discuss Heidegger simply here. The access to a libre sensor is a privilege and generosity, I believe has extended from medical costs to the love of a family and their well-being.Roslyn Diprose, in her discussion of generosity (2002) suggests there is a forgetting and an emphasis towards questioning social justice. Steel Magnolias, 1989, reveals an approach to Type 1 Diabetes that families of today need to forget because of advances and their need to enjoy life, work and relationships. In this light, ontology needs to be felt and intertwined with a corporeality that welcomes and accepts the gift: a sensor, new education and support styles that, through funding, has better located social justice for lower socio-economic recipients of Diabetic funding and resources. Of course, I spoke of stigma not much different to others living with other disabilities and diagnoses (HIV is one as well as schizophrenia because of media reports). 

Roslyn Diprose, 2002. Corporeal Generosity. On giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. State University of New York Press.

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© Cate Andrews, 2024.

False memories. (A discussion in process…)

False memories.

For me and many others who have an interest without scientific expertise, we have been offered some light on where in our bodies we might feel “remorse”. Generally, neuroscience research suggests that feeling regret occurs in the OFC, the orbitofrontal cortex. Camille, et al. 2004 found that patients with lesions in the OFC show no impairment experiencing disappointment even though they experience no regret.

Defining remorse through neuroscience has become, out of our ordinary construction and beliefs, that shame, blame and feeling remorse is semantic and in some ways philosophical – like a PhD from an Arts department, without scientifically proven evidence nor study. 

In their study of the amygdala’s role in responsibility, Nicolle, et. al., 2011, suggested there is a difference between feeling responsible and being responsible and this complicates and confuses those of us situated outside the scientific context for research. What is the difference, depends on those who do physically “feel feelings” and not simply either rationally develop an awareness (and aren’t violent criminals) or unfortunately, parrot or mimic the language to fit in or publicly gain status.

They found that there was, using fMRI (imaging) “enhanced amygdala response to regret-related outcomes when these outcomes” were associated with high responsibility (gambling and loss, for example). Their research found that the orbitofrontal cortex only revealed an enhanced response for regret when the participants were not “objectively responsible”. 

Often in news reports, victims statements and those that feel victimised through psychology and counselling methods for convictions in the courtroom and through the legal process, we read about “false memories”. Richard Guillatt’s commentary about a NSW couple imprisoned and convicted of “depraved” child sex abuse suggests that the role of doubt and evidence is stronger than the role of individual memories and psychologists who contribute to uncovering repressed memories or a voice to speak out. The parents of a young woman claim they did not abuse their daughter for a 14 year period. Reliability of evidence is a legal drama: it constructs the case and is played out through chosen roles: doctors are chosen by each team for their approach to playing a certain role. One example is the police officer that presented the documentary about the Bowraville murders. The Aboriginal Australians involved were able to confront and change a law without gaining coronial approval that the children involved were murdered and it was covered about to protect a shady character lurking around town: a potential paedophile. The Stolen Generations know also that their evidence and testimonies fell on deaf ears or, through neuroscience, ears that didn’t feel responsible for their loss, maltreatment and abuse. 

Without neuro-imaging, what convictions can we hold against people? Qualitative research suggests that active listening is a skill. What are we listening to when we read that a judge stated the disgrace or abnormal picture they experienced of the parents was their “remorselessness” when sentenced. I ask what before who, because how do we know what to expect and how to see “remorse” when some members of the community have experienced absolute blank faces when questioning responsibility and abuse. Casting a “shadow of doubt” over the allegations and the sentence: 48 years, is often a tactic also evidenced in Fiona Barnett’s allegations directed towards the Kidman family and paedophile rings. I once sat in a rape trial and the “old” apporach was to accuse the victim and her role to play. Did she flirt, did she remove her clothes? On the other side, police often neglect to believe men have been the victims of physical and emotional violence when answering calls of domestic violence. In research there are grey areas: there are victims and there are perpetrators. 

Without evidence, a memoir was written that included the title remorse (after this judgement) and love. The memoir, not investigated, is an appropriation that I allege was written using this newspaper story: using the judge’s words and appropriating them for their own purpose. With this in mind, I question the credibility of the story and suggest that this irresponsible appropriation, is whether covertly or overtly positions the writer as punishing those who speak out about child sex abuse and to gain notoriety, to cast only “light” and never accept doubt of their constructed story. Like the accusation of false memories, the bringing to light of constructs might be either conforming or confirming women-as-performance and their drama (through history construction) viewed as lies and in doubt. Feminists challenged this.

Casting a shadow of doubt comes from a newspaper reporter/writer. Reporters often go into stories to present them the way their group would prefer. They are given a privilege, a job title and access to reporting believed to offer a perspective that questions truths and/or lies or false memories. Why do people lie or deny responsibility?

 To remain adored and admired is what hasn’t been investigated because maladaptive narcissism – unless Kim Kardashian for example is held responsible for the demented ugly look and aggressive natures women and men are following in herds to achieve: botox, fillers, removals of organs, APPs etc – is not a crime (unless a murderer is caught). The local law court in Parramatta is one place that is filled with domestic violence cases. Both men and women who have followed unquestioningly the Kardashian “look” are requested to attend. 

They look aggressive. This is noticed. It’s not a crime. Like military tanks, the “look” just keeps spreading and rolling over others and their own public performance. It denies and the aggression is more agitation than love: it is strife. With no balance or love-connection, the strife and agitation keeps momentum through competition, jealousy and hatred or resentment of others with attention. 

The parents didn’t – like another media example made of the Kidman family and their social status as psychiatrist and celebrity creeper – look like aggressive people. The shadow of doubt is implicated in the system: institutionalised violence has blind spots. We don’t know the truth because this sex negative society – different from other cultures and their open discussions about sex and sexuality. Victims without voices are, like what Paul Keating once said about Australia medals: the recipients are often politicians (male, white) and political choices for the recipients are made through a white, male system and they are not “humble” in their unashamed disregard of victims and their inappropriate acceptance of accolades. Maladaptive narcissism suggests that they, through neuroscience research, haven’t got the processing skill to recognise responsibility whether objective or subjective. Paul Keating, I must say, suggests that it is the achievements of those not acknowledged in the public that are the most needed for high regard. He also suggested that without the acknowledgement and inclusion of diverse Aboriginal Australian voices we Australians wouldn’t experience a depth in our culture that would mature with this connection. Do we know anything about Paul Keating’s private life and why his daughters were connected with Epstein Island? Is his parenting held up for scrutiny? What he says makes sense to me, however, could he be constructing a false image in public just as other carers people have trusted and then found abuse claims and court cases ruled otherwise? 

The superficial connections supported by social media celebrating lifestyles of the wealthy and their “hobnobbing” dating connections reveal what realists would consider superficial surfaces diverting gazes as well as filling air space with vanity and the desperate need to be “seen” and admired. The realist approach I appropriate is to suggest that behind closed doors, there is a reality mind-independent – of remorse and maturity that – if seen by us, the questioners, might place them in a murky light less admired than they desired. 

Mind-independent of course I am playing with words to suggest that stupidity occurs without having a mind or cognition to rationally change decisions in irrational moments like jealous rages. To question and re-frame the remorselessness of the parents would mean, to connect with others who have also challenged institutionalised racism and abuse. The young woman’s story reveals neglect. Not all who have experienced neglect get an outcome that determines guilt, punishment and 48 years for the crime. Doubt plays a role in this as well as institutionalised violence. I approached the story – originally – through researching resilience. I accidently came across the story because psychologists – a few – suggested that her sports training gave her resilience to survive the unthinkable. Of course, some neuroscience research suggests that resilience is also a physical location in the brain. 

To complicate a discussion further, neuroscience research has also found that a neurotransmitter, Neuropeptide (NPY) is implicated in resilience. NPY is associated with better resilience or management of enhanced or increased stress and emotional regulation. How would you survive in a small town, with parents’ respect gained in the community, neglect and abuse? The father was a sports coach and the children were sportspeople heading for competition. Without sport, what would her life have been? Does this indicate that resilience – hers – was neurobiological and put into doubt by those who aren’t the same or don’t think through this framework? Was she neurodivergent and her sensitivity difficult and beyond her control? Were her siblings complicit? Or without awareness that in the shadows people get away with things? Like politicians and as Fritz Lang’s M (1931) film suggests, the underworld is full of different characters existing in darkness and different shades of light as well as power. The strings are pulled and not all in the underworld experience the pull to achieve anonymity, criminality, approval of the process or acts. The hierarchy that constructs the institutions in the news world or print and light( tv as well) exists below. Film sheds light and doubt or shadows for the spectator to question and develop as a social medium for change. 

Bertolt Brecht stated, ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.’ How we develop the hammer’s skill is the important question that we need to ask when doubt is alleged in sex abuse claims and other areas. A court drama, like a painter’s, has a frame and limited knowledge of how to look at the picture or outside the frame has meant that many victims who haven’t written a memoir or been discovered by police haven’t held a hammer to society to smash the mirror and re-frame it. The wrongdoing? The lack of recognition and a humble nature that acknowledges responsibility and either rationally accepts remorse or feels it. A documentary needs to reveal this responsibility: to light the areas that have existed without voice or law to confirm their existence.

In response to : ‘I know we’re innocent…these things just did not happen’ Wrongful convictions report posted 1 April, 2023. (A jailed NSW couple protest their innocence as a new podcast – Shadow of Doubt – investigates their convictions for ‘depraved’ abuse. By Richard Guilliatt in The Weekend Australian (April 1 & 2, 2023).

Nicolle A, Bach DR, Frith C, Dolan RJ. Amygdala involvement in self-blame regret. Soc Neurosci. 2011;6(2):178-89. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2010.506128. Epub 2010 Aug 13. PMID: 20711938; PMCID: PMC3062246.

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Mrs. Lowry and Son, 2019, director Adrian Noble.

Mrs Lowry and Son, 2019, director Adrian Noble.

I knew nothing about L.S Lowry prior to watching this film. I still don’t claim to be an expert, like some I watched with. They knew all – from the film and other articles – they made their claim. This knowledge was theirs: they knew. I sat silently listening to them. I was silenced by the film, not by their knowledge. I felt strange. L.S. Lowry was painted in a light that was grey and sensitive. His mother, insensitive to his existence, abused and neglected him. He remained loyal, looking after her – is this care? I wandered off from the chatter, and thought about care. What if I was bedridden, who would take care of me and how would it be done? The cruelty that was and became the life L.S Lowry on film was difficult. Feminist theory has argued that women need re-education and care to change and develop away from the financial dependence that patriarchy had imposed. Some feminists suggest that men need the education and the impossibility, like Shirley Valentine suggests, marriage is “like peace in the Middle East: There is no solution”. The mother-son relation was seen, through my eyes, a pleasure for the mother to feel touched when her hair was brushed and flattered into a childish stupor when a neighbour paid her attention. This girlish performance of admiration and adoration was short lived.

Mrs Lowry complained of her middle class upbringing and the shame of living “working class” (and on borrowed, creditors money for these complaints!) She belittled and demoralised her deceased husband and son. She ranted that she never wanted a son or child. SHe abused him for his need to paint what he saw: factories, stooped workers dressed in grey and their stories. She abused him for this obscenity to her sensibility: sailing boats, once admired by the neighbour, became the focal point. Dirty factories and ugly portraits were as shameful as his poor position in the workforce. Mrs Lowry didn’t – in the film – connect with her son and his diversity: art was not a hobby. Art was who he was and how he experienced his world. His mother wanted him to see a doctor for this appeal and self-expression. I didn’t claim to know like those around me “knew”. I felt the director and writer offered me a path to feel empathy for an artist and their struggles within their family and with society. For this knowledge, the gift of connecting with someone, was important. I couldn’t know L.S. Lowry or claim this. I did feel angry that someone was treated this way because of wealth and class. I did connect with his feelings of invalidation: the cruel anxiety that the mother threw away from herself at him through harsh, critical words to set herself in a place above him and of authority was something I have researched in education, the arts, and through psychology research.

Mrs Lowry reminded me of a lecture about generalised anxiety: how this impacts on the way people believe they are being viewed by others and their reality. Often distorted, generalised anxiety locks people up – metaphorically – in their homes and away from gatherings because of anxiety. They don’t enjoy public speaking and they find relief through avoidance. Mrs Lowry locked her son up in her own class anxiety. Instead of going outside and simply enjoying a day – beyond class distinctions there’s always the sunshine or feeling of rain or interacting with a milkman or butcher. Mrs Lowry chose to demoralise all of these. What did she fear the most? Looking like a poorer woman or not having the civil awareness to interact with people as humans? I saw her as a cruel, fear filled woman ageing in her bed and delighting only in the touch of her son. Her loneliness was cruel. Her class upbringing made her this cold, and lonely. 

Posthumously, L.S Lowry was offered a Knighthood and he turned it down. Unlike most who enjoy the fame and spotlight, the film offered us some insight: his mother was no longer living so he didn’t need to accept the gesture. He painted what he saw: the outside world is what I have briefly noticed in his artwork. Factories, red doors and stooped people dressed in blacks and greys. Head down, walking, moving, not leisurely resting. Leisure time was not present in his paintings. Or was the walk something more for this class of workers? Did some, like him, have another life we can’t know beyond the soot, the debt and their stoop?

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Pengar or Jag vill ge dig en puss: A short discussion of the 2021 Swedish film Suedi directed by Manuel Concha.

Pengar or Jag vill ge dig en puss: A short discussion of the 2021 Swedish film Suedi directed by Manuel Concha.

Take a Kurdish-Swedish migrant from the ‘burbs or the hood (In Sweden I am not sure what they say or have) and gift them some found cash and this simple story of migrant-change, or trans-migration, from his own culture and racial heritage to newly born Swedish millionaire in love with a blonde Swedish lawyer, with a voracious sexual appetite without saliva exchange: no kissing. Of course, this Cinderella tale – almost like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman – except a man who enjoys kissing (Roberts’ character, the hooker didn’t kiss because this wasn’t part of her profession!) and intimacy, in love with a woman who believes he is Swedish. A comedy that simply suggests is it about money and race, or is love about getting wet, to share saliva is difficult, and dancing together in the muck-of-it: questioning societal norms and family traditions?

Of course he confesses. The Swedish family-irritating with their optimistic offerings for assistance – to basically change lightbulbs is a Swedish support network where the family gets involved! It’s a must do. Hiring a family has been written before. Hiring an actor-family to play a role that doesn’t fit any of them was comical and light. The focus became stealing new money to exchange for the “old money” became for me, symbolic of an exchange or transition from old ways to new. Like the Swedish-Lebanese film Zozo, 2005 (Directed by Josef Fares) where a young boy loses his family in Lebanon and migrates to live with his grandparents in Sweden. The old ways to solve problems don’t fit the young: fighting and physically damaging each other was, for Zozo a young boy, not what he desired for his future. His choices were for a more sustainable transition. His needs were to develop beyond the senseless loss and grief: the civil war in Lebanon. The old versus the new. The grandfather’s love, pride and culture with Zozo’s youth and need for stability. 

The old way, for the Kurd, is to remain honest and the Kurdish-Swedish man wanted to be honest. The new money, remaining dishonest, was to be exchanged for the amount only. He wanted love and to remain with his love. This was a transition that proved difficult: money laundering was not his – or his friend’s – way of life. The expectation would be that coming from the ‘burbs and being from a Kurdish or Muslim area would mean criminal activity amongst the poorer communities attempting to settle in Sweden.

He loved his Swedish woman – a love that could only have met through changing identity – blue contact lenses, a new name and a suit beyond the ‘burbs. Transitioning: migration of identity to love and belong became possible through confessing, exchanging the old currency for new and finally exchanging saliva, a kiss.

Crossing borders, like migration and refugees, is difficult for mental health disorders too. A woman with anxiety about saliva exchange – anywhere in her life – experiences difficulty in intimacy. Comically, she explores a sex life that he tolerates. His optimism doesn’t match the Swedish optimism. The writer has painted him with a depth and honesty that contrasts through hair, skin, eye colour as well as cultural background. This honesty hasn’t been noticed by the Swedish culture he desires to join. He has been rejected by nightclubs because of his “look”. This film is about “looking” at tolerance, acceptance and open to the unknown. 

It was a simple film and the kiss, I didn’t lose myself in romance, questioned social change: the Swedish woman voiced her disdain for patriarchy in the workplace and received no female support. She walked out of a job because, as a woman, she was not valued for her skills and expertise. She, in Swedish-style, did say she didn’t understand her husband-to-be’s experience. She didn’t say “Me too!” She empathised instead. It was his story she listened to and hers wasn’t the focus. This, I could see, was the writer’s approach to a loving relationship. The man had a story and existence that was difficult. Her story, still supported by him – he was a warm character who simply loved and simply wanted to love – was important and he was too. This was Swedish. The Human rights in a relationship that the culture is attempting to change with laws, education, and care for the citizens. This isn’t always the experience. Me too would have revealed a lack of understanding for his story: his family’s difficult choices for migration and settlement in Sweden- a culture distant from his Kurdish one. 

She wasn’t open at first to his deception and events led to a transition for her: a kiss. Sharing saliva in a risk-taking situation meant she wanted to take the risk: they both questioned Swedish patriarchy and society together. It wasn’t ideal because money was still bonding them. The way the money bonded them and took them on a journey led them to feel the love beyond deception, cultural backgrounds and the “look” of differences. Like hummus often served with red stripes, his Adidas tracksuit marked his identity in Sweden: from an area with a different accent, culture, food, and way of life. And like Hummus that brings people together at the table – shared – his appeal for love and to share this (and his Kurdish sensibility that revealed care for others); to be seen as honest and loving was a giving and sharing beyond stereotypes of the ‘burbs and refugees. The sumac marks the hummus and enhances the history, connection and taste. Adidas marked the Kurdish-Swede and the stripes gave him strength, comfort and togetherness with people he respected: his family and friends. 

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

Happiness: perspectives…another conversation about the TV series Tod von Freunden, 2021 Beneath the Surface.

Happiness: perspectives…

Beneath the Surface, 2021, (German/Danish languages) Tod von Freunden, explores themes of grief, togetherness, community and happiness. 

Charlie’s story. A TV Series told and unfolding through the stories of the main characters. In our lives we are and experience imperfection, or our mortality. The closer we are to accepting and experiencing – feeling the pains, struggles, happiness, and other range of emotions – we experience genuine connections with others, in our bodies and our development. Once we displace these feelings for false or surface superficial connections we lose the genuine feelings and, through lies like the ones in Beneath the Surface, we notice only unhappiness, despair and frustration.

Charlie questions whether what she has built in the workplace and her agreement at home is worth believing in their younger dream of ideal happiness: living with another family sharing parenting on a small single home (with workplaces/barn) island in Denmark. She questions her dream. She questions her role in her family and the responsibility of making decisions for her work and (un)balanced with home life. What is the balance, CHarlie’s character presents us with? Where do we measure and find it? Once children enter High School and beyond, the development changes and parenting – she reveals – doesn’t drift apart but insists on close supporting stability. The stability in her life becomes the ability to manage difficult conversations and accept deception. Accepting imperfections and, as the audience, witnessing the strength facing truths that have hurt and, through secrets, denied some the right to choose other paths. 

Happiness, through the eyes of the characters, becomes dark with drug and alcohol consumption without responsibly questioning the role of the drugs and alcohol in their lives. Happiness isn’t always a smiling face with joy beneath the surface. Happiness, we are led into, is existing with a range of difficulties and building bridges together; bridges that offer hope as well as paths to reconciliation from younger wrongs.

Charlie and her business is about building bridges that construct, through aesthetics and design, places to admire as well as strong paths to hold populations and their travels. It is a TV series that travels between characters’ perspectives and re-positions blame. 

Responsibility, to build that bridge together, isn’t easy. It is messy and feels soul destroying – as we witness young people and their inability to speak out about their problems. How does happiness from the past endure life changing knowledge: lies about the past. How does the cruelty, the theatre that unfolds through emotional torment and the need for protection and safety, become part of the story and remembered with the knowledge they have felt happy? The cruel acts that risk-taking younger people perform; their emotion-driven motivations intercept and interfere with the “ideal” parenting island. Happiness, some say, for a parent is only as much as your saddest child. Or you are only as happy as your saddest child: the connections and bonds go beyond the comprehension of the young person. Their world is different and to walk in their shoes is to re-experience or re-frame your own childhood. It is to wonder with them as a guide to empathy as opposed to blame and shame as a parenting tool. The bridge between generations, as the writers reveal, is one not so distant as well as future-oriented. Without this future orientation, happiness slides into despair and hopelessness. Charlie’s character embodies this and brings to light this message: indirect communication, such as drug abuse, is still communication. The need for social intelligence to notice and acknowledge these cries and whole body demands for fulfilment becomes a theme addressed through reframing What is happiness, beyond the surface representation in society of wealth, luxury and ideal photo-finished images of family life?

© Cate Andrews, 2023.