Disgust. A conversation about the character Anaïs in Anaïs in Love, French 2021 film directed by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

― Anais Nin

Disgust. A conversation about the character  Anaïs in  Anaïs in Love, French 2021 film directed by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet.

Why talk about disgust? Conflicting meanings and reasons why disgust is powerful and socially bonding and considered moral whereas I have reframed it, from embodied feelings to consider it as a feeling that is unethical.

Disgust means to me someone who has behaved in a way that disgusts me. They have done something that denies conversation as well as defies my own questioning regarding their self-entitlement to behave in a certain way in a social setting. Their defiance doesn’t present me with creative energy nor an opening to question my own bias nor subjectivity. The behaviour is a barrier and invalidates future acts that might change society or provide happiness and relief from the ordinary. This “barrier” feeling, meaning no potential, depth nor possibility for transformation (either the act the person has done nor my thinking to attempt to reframe) is like stopping a stream needing constant motion to cleanse, renew and explore. Invalidation is one concept I have considered to discuss the inner feelings of disgust.

The barrier is a blocking, a wall that behaviour “behaves” (I think I’m trying to reach the moment of feeling like stating a world that worlds, or a lack that lacks) to control me and my own needs.  And the behaviour invalidates my safety and expectations in a community. Some people simply live in a way that’s disgusting and their treatment of others (their well being, need for safety, enjoyment, and social cohesion or intelligence with empathy or awareness of alterity and diverse interests).

Disgust isn’t moral for me it’s ethical and for me it pushes me and my inner being. Disgust, feeling that disgust is another psychosocial attempt to control. I feel controlled by the barriers that feeling arouses. It’s an attachment that’s perverse or against my own nature. This is unethical for me.

Disgust becomes a feeling of oppression and the oppressiveness of the other that determines me and wishes only to subjugate, control and dominate. Their perspective is the only one. The wish to dement; or to repeat their behaviour to produce and reproduce their social, what disgusts me, as the only access to the social. The oppressive feelings is that unethical, felt disgust. It’s not moral, for me, because I have repositioned myself through questioning as the one the disgusting or act of behaving in a certain way can’t stand and determines to overpower and defy their own discomfort and feelings (immaturity, for example as well alienation and isolation from their group) to cast aside any connection to rule or control.

One film that reveals an example of this (I have experienced this in  many situations) is 2021 French film Anaïs in Love directed by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet. I couldn’t stand the immaturity of the young main character Anaïs. Her selfish, self-centred pursuit of whatever she wanted and with disregard to others’ feelings was, I assume, a perspective of French freedom and sexual liberation. I usually attempt to consider other perspectives offered to me through film narratives, and almost accepted her older female (played by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) lovers’ approach that she needed to express herself. Her allure was her energy and free nature. But when Anaïs didn’t get her own way I didn’t find this freedom. I simply thought her immaturity was disgusting and unethical. She was selfish. The film, like the title explored female sexual expression and attraction. I did consider the erotic stories of the author with the same name  Anaïs Nin and this quote from her writing: 

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings”.

 My feeling of disgust revealed more about my own sense of identity and love as well as my values: that  Anaïs in the film didn’t know how to replenish, she simply took. Her character, I felt, lacked social development and love that would end up alone simply because sexual attraction would wither with her need to feel free without connections. A strange feeling. The questions that might be better explored through French philosophy about freedom and whether Sartre’s often quoted assertion “Man is condemned to be free” might suggest that Anaïs’ freedom for me was a condemnation that was unethical or disgusting because it was individual and selfish because of her lack of acceptance. Her need to impress herself and feel wanted oppressed others’ needs.

For me, the character drained the sources of others’ generosity or sexual attraction to her and love never really matured nor developed as a way to understand and connect with people. Disgust, beyond abject physical repulsion or rejection, becomes part of the discussion about maturity and community not simply a power of horror oppressing diversity or differences that is generally accepted as a moral attitude towards control and social meanings of disgust.

© Cate Andrews, 2024.

An Ibis and a shift in perspective or another walk with the concept “freedom”.

An Ibis and a shift in perspective or another walk with the concept “freedom”.

Not so recently I watched a short film on SBS about the Australian “bin chicken” or Ibis. In the 1970s this bird was heading for extinction and went into breeding programs. Today, they have evolved and adapted to become the most robust scavenger Sydney knows – of course the wealthy get wealthier and the cars get heavier and the cockroaches still multiply, but if the complaints have to happen it’s always about something that doesn’t have walk-in wardrobe rights and prescription addiction. The Ibis is a bird I haven’t admired until very recently. A visit to the Sydney Botanic gardens offered me some time to spend renegotiating and developing beyond previous opinions. Ibis have strong feet and are stubborn; they relentlessly pursue food scraps and lunchboxes without care for the humans munching and with disdain shoving them away. They persist. Apparently, they have 700 chicks. I am unsure of the truth of this. Up close, our Sydney Ibis look greyed and dirty.

Not like Edwin Long’s Orientalist painting Alethe Attendant of the Sacred Ibis in the Temple of Isis at Memphis, 1888, feeding exotic white feathered birds light, black hooked beaks elongated and regal; and ethereal white on their feet, these birds have wrinkles, blood red markings that terrorise or question our sensibility – are they bleeding or aroused? Like Emu feathers up close, they are anything but a soft goose down doona or quilted jacket. They do have a distinct smell, and their textured greyish white roughness appears more from graffiti than high art guarded on gold gilded walls, polished and oiled for contemplation. The Ibis kept me active and this was enjoyable, meditative and in conflict with past opinions an active feeling of change. Up close, I found a connection I never thought. To my finger snaps and clicks rather than pushes and kicks like other visitors guarding their food the Ibis walked away, looking vulnerable and not so defeated but my heart strings were slightly pulled. I felt for the Ibis. A first and a feeling unforgettable. Their determination appeared different: vulnerable and strong. A bird like all others. Needing protection and defending their right to survive. The Ibis and my now curious approach to the bird – the ancient Egyptian temple versus the bin chicken a bogan label from Australians less-admirable admiring these birds even less than I admire their aggression towards them – came at the same time as my reading to a class of diverse cultures and language primary students black cockatoo (the purposeful use of lowercase on the cover noticed, the alteration of their habitat unnoticed by most Sydneysiders and their passing by of – it looks – everything but their own reflections in their car windows and mobile phones. The gardens are located near the newly renovated AGNSW – an establishment that on that day seemed to attract pomp and prestige) by Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler for young readers. A short Kimberley-located fiction about a young girl and her totem. Totem’s have never caught my attention before, but the dirrarn’s symbolism revealed my need to reconnect with sustainable living and cultures as well as prompting young readers to think about the ethics of freedom. What does it mean to be a 13 year old ABoriginal girl from the Kimberley region connecting with her language, family and culture – code switching – as well as nature, her Country, her developing love and feelings for others?

Freedom is difficult for young children and teenagers. Individual pursuits conflict with family cultures. The cage for the dirrarn or black cockatoo wasn’t right in her culture. But for the young girl, she felt compelled to support the healing of the wounded bird. Reconciliation suggests our wounded culture needs support to heal and the cage, the cold-hearted cage of capitalism (Max Weber borrowed) and individualism has meant the pushing aside – like the Ibis and the careless feet that taunt their approaches – of reconciliation for environment and human needs. Merrison & Hustler write that the young girl wandered the streets thinking about the cockatoo, and freedom and then hearing in her language a voice weaving a tale into the air, connecting and freeing the young girl. The land, her country and her responsibility – her feelings of respect – was also to honour the vulnerability and weakness in herself and the wounded bird. Her struggle, was it right to attempt to heal the bird in a cage? Code switching between cultures and age groups meant this conflict was unresolved, we are left to consider the options and make our decisions just as the young girl tried to live through hers. “…Freedom was in her, her land and her soul…A strong wind blew around…[her] and she could feel freedom like a physical force”. Like sitting simply present in the gardens and taking another look at the Ibis, to notice their vulnerability and their strength, freedom did blow around me in the warm sun and for a moment away from the chatter of the crowds.

© Cate Andrews, 2023.

Loss in the French film Les Petits Mouchoirs 2010 (Little White Lies)

Les Petits Mouchoirs, 2010; Little white lies. French film.
Director Guillaume Canet

Watching this film, two words popped into my head: Ignore and Ignorant. Why? A white, French middle class group of thirty-somethings friends go on summer vacation – a ritual they all have enjoyed – without one of their best friends, a male who has a devastatingly critical Vespa crash after partying taking recreation cocaine, alcohol and I am not sure anything else.

Throughout this film – and other French films I have seen – marijuana presents a French-style approach to culturally thinking about what is freedom? and (re)thinking personal freedom. Only recently, marijuana has been decriminalised for personal use in France (2020 I am told) and remains one of the most popular recreation – now it’s decriminalised – shall I call it simply “plants?” instead of “illegal drugs”.
Little White Lies doesn’t provoke envy within me for wealthy people’s consumption of alcohol (social gatherings and heavy drinking) nor sharing a spliff of marijuana. The ending, the hit-in-the-face from a friend (not Parisian) was quite sobering: the loss of their friend who spent his time in intensive care whilst the group holidayed was abruptly confronted: Who do they think they are? Whilst one man selfishly badgered the others about a woman he loved and had left him for another, was selfishly annoying and distracting. He couldn’t stop obsessively asking what he should do, and at his age this seemed immature as well as sensitive. The time he consumed was wasted: he got her back in the end. There was another uncomfortable, and physically quite confronting for both involved: the exploration of a very uncomfortable development of a deeper feeling of love (unreciprocated beyond a fraternal bond): in agony a young man explored his feelings of love for his best male friend. He expressed his unknown ability to control the feelings. He hadn’t felt this before with a man and he was confused. His sharing wasn’t met with sensitive care. The other man, disgusted, confused and feeling quite physically aggressive when faced with the feelings of another man. Of course, in the end this was worked out.

Ignored, the man in intensive care represented also the undoing of the group and their superficial relations. Even though they had been friends for a long time, this time couldn’t sustain their more youthful approach to middle-age. Transformed by this accident, the group revealed their ignorance. They lacked the ability to talk about their feelings. When one did, about his homosexuality this was met with a barrier or verbal blockage: communication broke down and every act – like a French salutation or kiss hello – was met with disgust or questioning: was that meant to be sexual?

The etymology of ignorance, is Latin: not knowing and there was a definite absence revealed in this film. The lack of wisdom in relation to the unfamiliar and unknown became an examination of Parisian self-centred middle class relations and the inability to simply accept and speak about feelings and uncertainty. Ignore, from the Latin, not know also suggests that in life, we cannot always control or know how to manage every situation or whether someone might die from an accident, a traumatic event that disrupts lives beyond our ordinary, everyday connections. Too much had been ignored in this film and that was, the relations weren’t maturing. They were developed young – marriages and friendships and through time, they remained young and problem-solving through nights out and partying still accepted. Their time, their ageing needed to change. Would that man have survived if they had thought to stay closer to him, in intensive care, offering him their voices and touches to give him hope in their presence? This is unknown and some research suggests physical presence is necessary for survival.

The drug use obviously annoyed me because one woman became pregnant and remained smoking marijuana and consuming alcohol. Her freedom to use, to experience her intimate needs in her own way wasn’t revealed as ideal or a role-model I would follow. Others might find this manageable: to maintain connections as well as drift in and out of relations didn’t suit one of her past lovers. This was experienced in a restaurant – the friends organising their holiday were interrupted by a thirty-something female. A lover and also not ignorant to the lies she was told by Marion Cotillard’s character. Maturity suggested the lies wasted her time and disrespected her, her integrity and her need – we sense this in a fleeting passing – for more socially intelligent discussion and honesty about their intimate relationship and the breaking of it through lies. Lifestyle choices reflected in the title: Little White Lies suggest the hurt and harm people do because some of us are wired to feel – whether intuitively or maturity – the truth through social connections. Through eyes, the more mature ex-loved sensed the disrespect. For us, the audience, we feel this disrespect mirrored in the group’s superficial brushing the confrontation aside as a simple jilted lover – a “conquering”, not a deep journey.

The man who dies had consumed cocaine and alcohol (and whatever else in a club). A message I received as an audience member was the regret that some experience because intimate relations are lost or disrupted through drug and alcohol abuse. However, some argue that doesn’t discuss freedom enough: who should control an individual’s use of marijuana? The government, education, religion? Or more informed discussions developing humans through the socialisation process to understand the physical, social, emotional issues that impact a pregnancy, sexuality, friendship and intimacy beyond individual choice, addiction, and the harm these bring socially, emotionally, financially, intimately.
The rights of the unborn child also need to be considered in issues surrounding personal freedom. And, the rights of the man in intensive care: his friends were his family, his close-knit community left him for a summer beachside holiday. Little white lies became the friendship rather than care and compassion. They had the foundations and they had, at times, discussion techniques that went beyond English (or what I know as more white-Australian) culture and cultivated manners.

Cocaine, the party drug, I also perceive through the title, a white lie; gives people confidence and takes lives through lies: financial, disruption of personal and professional connections, physical violence and the destruction of intimate relations (familial and sexual). The cocaine industry is an environmentally destructive force. Rising deforestation has been linked with coca production: rainforests in Columbia (approximately 300 000 hectares each year: dothegreenthing.com) are being destroyed through unthought, or ignorant, party consumption of the drug. The connection to violence (Mexico prime noticeable example) is devastating as well as water contamination through waste as well as production impacts people living near rivers as well as endangered marine life. The carbon cost of partying – wealthy style – is quite shocking. I believe another factor to consider when thinking through personal freedom: sustaining the environment for the future is personal as well as communal. Some research suggests that large scale cannabis, a water-hungry crop (https://daily.jstor.org/the-environmental-downside-of-cannabis-cultivation/) production also produces water fights and redirection of water away from everyday consumption and use (farming and personal).

Just like an unborn child who cannot speak, the conversations need to be developed if reconsidering the concept freedom to include the environment to shift our perspective beyond cultural acceptance and taken-for-granted assumptions about the environment, sustainability, and the rights of the unheard, the millions of poor who suffer living near contaminated water and destroying their farmlands for violent drug-criminals and for the permanent destruction of live good soil for methods that are more harmful to the future of land-use in rural areas such as Columbia.

©Cate Andrews, 2022.