Month: August 2022

            A while ago I read an article on how the princesses I grew up watching (specifically from Star Wars and The Princess Bride) are taking on roles that feature them as generals.  In the case of Carrie Fisher, she portrays the same character from the original Star Wars films now carrying the title of “General Organa” as opposed to the title of “Princess Leia” she carried in the original movies.  And what of the other?  I admit, I had to look up the character she played because I was unfamiliar with the source material, but Robin Wright portrays the character of Antiope in the recent DC live action movies, where she acts as sister to the queen and general of the Amazons.

            Mind, I do not think screenwriters completely try to pretend that these characters were always viewed as the military leaders they appear as in these recent movies, at least not in the case of Star Wars. My interpretation of a small piece of dialogue during the opening scene of The Force Awakens was that it served as a nod to the original viewers of Star Wars when it came out in 1977. Essentially one character comments on how his general will appreciate the service another is doing, to which the other, an older man, says that he always knew her as ‘Princess’ when he first met her.  The transition from constantly being referred to as ‘Princess’ to becoming ‘General’ might have given the character more agency, at least to the screen writers, but even in the second film, shot practically forty years prior, the character seemed to command more authority than a typical princess, at least from a military point of view.

            Now onto Robin Wright’s characters. Unlike the previous example, Wright did not portray the same character transitioning from princess to general, but rather in a different role.  That does not diminish from the achievement she had obtained. When I first saw her on screen, she was built up to be a princess, and seeing the same woman years later acting as a general is not just entertainment; I believe it is a symbol of the different phases of life. When we are young, we grow up with stories of princesses and monsters, and in classic stories the princesses are often helpless, just as young children are. But what happens when those monsters return to meet a princess who grew up to be a military power? Suddenly the dynamic has shifted, and I see it as a fitting metaphor for the young women of today.

            By now, I imagine most reading this blog are wondering why the word “mostly” was included in the title. If not, I am happy to remind you of that. Again, I fear I must jump back to the world of Star Wars, though not to any of the movies this time.  Rather, a character introduced in one of the newer Disney + series, later going on to appear in another. Fennec Shand was built up to be a sort of anti-hero within that universe. A strong character to look up to as a force to be reckoned with. How then does she qualify as a princess of my childhood? The same actress, Ming-Na Wen lent her voice many years ago in the movie Mulan as the star, and so became a Disney princess, personally my favorite of them all.

            There is an author I follow on YouTube because of videos that she puts out on a weekly basis. One such video is about giving female characters more agency in stories, and one of the pieces of advice she has is not to make the character a princess, but rather a queen. While queens are traditionally viewed as more matriarchal and supporting characters, that is not always the case. Mary Queen of Scots took up the title of queen when she was little more than an infant.  Over the years, there have been a number of role models for young women to look up to, though perhaps only recently have the role models been in positions with the same type of agency.  While I am glad to see that modern projects such as Reign and Mary Queen of Scots have started to bring to the public’s notice strong women from the pages of history, I am frustrated by how many lesser-known women have yet to get their moment to shine. Give me a drama about Boudica, a Celtic queen who led an uprising against the Romans. Give me an adventure movie on Grace O’Malley, the pirate-queen of Ireland who negotiated with Elizabeth I face to face. Let Hollywood start portraying historical figures with the same regard they give to these fictious universes.

            Does the title bother you? Drove me nuts for a while, where only one spelling was accepted on spelling tests and English classes throughout my public schooling. It wasn’t until I was a few years into college that I was taught that the traditional American spelling (theater) was used to refer to the building, whereas its counterpart was used when describing the art style. But I didn’t start this post to discuss etymology of words, so let’s dive into the real substance of this post, shall we?

            It’s genuinely hard for me to remember a time I was uncomfortable with a crowd watching me, even though I know there definitely was a point in my life where that was the case.  I suppose in that sense, theatre helped me to become comfortable with presentations in school, among similar activities.  I distinctly remember a project I did in middle school on the French Revolution, in which each student had to do a presentation on the assigned topic, and I remember it mainly for how theatrical I turned the project when dramatically describing the last words of one of the major political figures of the era, and my abrupt change in tone talking about the immediate aftermath.  Later in life, this also helped me to participate and get first place in a Poetry Slam when it was my first time even going to the event, never mind actually participating in it, and again aided me when I had to do a presentation on a thesis required to complete my undergraduate degree.

            Apart from helping me become comfortable with public speaking, theatre also offered lessons of a different kind.  Theatre helped me through those awkward years as an adolescent…those years that, in roughly the words of John Mulaney: “…and you were like ‘no one look at me, or I’ll die.’”  Yes, as counterintuitive as it seems, theatre did help with that for a few different reasons.  The first of these reasons I view as something like immersion therapy, forcing yourself in a situation where all eyes will be on you to figure out standing up to that particular inner demon.  The second reason I think is one of the factors that helped me discover my love of writing; that on stage I could be someone else and escape the real world for a while.

            That is not to say theatre is a way to avoid all negativity.  I’ve found over the years that being exposed to so many different personalities through theatre can be a double-edged sword.  It’s equally possible that one can meet some talented and delightful people, and yet at the same time it is no less likely meeting people who have a little too much confidence.  Sometimes directors feel they can excuse it in exchange for the quality of performer they are getting.  Unfortunately, I have found that more often than not, those kind of people are a rarity, and that they think having the behavior of one offstage will endow them with the talent of one. They are wrong.  My philosophy when it comes to the theater I work in is that everyone there is not being paid for any of their actions, so I do what I can to help make it the pleasant experience that it should be.

            Just one quick note before I go; I was experiencing computer problems last week and was not able to get on and post. Barring technology related issues, I’m hoping to make these posts on a weekly basis.

A free cookie to anyone who guessed the meaning behind the title of this post before the last sentence of this paragraph. Anyone reading this this might have guessed it is some kind of a timeline, and they would be correct, but a timeline for what? This is the last chance for anyone to guess the meaning of the title, and the topic of today’s post. The title is the timetable to one of the most valuable things in this world: trust.

Trust is unusual in the sense that it takes approximately a minute to form, a second to break, and it can take up to a lifetime to be rebuilt. Though perhaps the first part of that sentence should be amended to say it takes that long for someone without trust issues. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that it was said by someone blessed with a less cynical point of view than my own.

In some cases, trust can form over the short period of a conversation, other times it might take a few nights of hanging out to try and gage whether or not one is deemed “trustworthy,” though that itself is a little deceiving in its phrasing. There is a line I have stashed away for the right plotline where Character A asks Character B if they think that Character C can be trusted, to which A responds with something along the lines of saying that C cannot be relied on if their lives depended on it, however A trusts C to react in a way that aligns with C’s motivations. When I use it in the right story, I promise it will come out less clunky than that; I just kept the actual phrasing private to avoid anyone stealing it before I officially use it in my work.

One of the more somber memories I have from college was losing someone I considered to be a good friend over a stupid argument; an argument that to this day, I can’t remember how it started. Backing up about seven months for context, I had asked this person to a dance, and due to possible romantic feelings I had for her, I was thrilled to hear her say yes. However, she had overbooked herself, and the person she had agreed to help out would not let her off for that one night. When we talked about it afterwards, she said to me, apologetically, that she always did that sort of thing; said yes to fun plans when she had previous commitments to attend to at the same time. Thinking about it now, all it would have taken for me to have completely absolved her of letting me down then was a simple addition to what she said: “but I’m working on it and trying to be better.” In lieu of that statement, I figured that was just who she was, and I didn’t ask her to try and change that, I just made a note of it that she shouldn’t have been trusted in that regard again, not without rebuilding that trust, and as was previously stated, that could take up to a lifetime.

Although we never discussed it, she apparently had a different view on the timeline of rebuilding trust, or perhaps she thought the lifetime of a Mayfly was enough time to earn that trust back in its entirety. In the following months, no opportunity presented itself that made me think she was trying to earn it back, no signs of any altered behavior to avoid a situation like the one that arose with me. She didn’t understand that just being a good person meant that she deserved that trust and should be forgiven for breaking it in the past, so when we got into that argument, she took offense to it. I sometimes wonder if I had explained to her why she didn’t have my full trust if we’d still talk to each other today, but I was impatient, and knew I was in no condition to talk about such things at the moment, so I abruptly ended the conversation. I would regret that decision for over a year.

I did everything I could think of to try and earn a second chance; to be the kind of person who deserved something of that nature. I quit drinking; I started going to therapy in hopes of learning some other method besides repressing to deal with the anger that I felt to those closest to me, and I even turned somewhere I hadn’t seriously thought about in about two or three years.

I started attending a weekly religious group in hopes of growing in a spiritual manner. For months and months before speaking to her again, I tried every method of bettering myself in the hopes to earn that second chance I craved. I strolled through the campus at night, through all the drinking and shouting to get to a nearby beach, where I could sit and listen to the crashing waves, enjoying the smell of salt water, reflecting on if I was making progress or not, but telling myself the real test would come months later, when we would finally speak again.

I never got my chance. I was told the best thing was to let go of that friendship. I was told that she knew who I was and that I wouldn’t really ever be happy around her if I had the second chance I craved. She might have been right, or she might have been wrong, but it tore me apart that she made that decision for me. After all this time, I have no idea why I wanted that friendship back; I gave to her that second chance without asking for her to do a single thing to earn it, and there I was trying everything I could think of to earn one from someone who thought she was entitled to that privilege for simply being a good person.

And what is my opinion of trust now? If I seemed pessimistic then, now I am downright cynical. Nothing in this world is free; time is the thing that must be spent in order to deserve a second chance. I still hold to the timeline of trust as stated in the beginning of this post, but I must add something else; the visualization of trust…perhaps more accurately, the visualization of mended trust. I imagine trust is a vase, and someone breaking it knocks it off its place. Even if the act was unintentional, the vase is no less broken, and it will take time for all the pieces to be put back where they were. Despite that time is spent working on it, even if every single piece goes back to where it was in the original shape, the vase itself will never look as it did before it was broken. Unfortunately, too many of us think it simpler to buy another vase and throw out the old one, rather than taking the time to repair what once was.