{"id":2814,"date":"2023-06-12T19:38:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T23:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/?p=2814"},"modified":"2023-06-16T08:37:28","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T12:37:28","slug":"confessional-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2023\/06\/confessional-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessional Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Sorority sisters, advertising rush.
Source: Wikimedia<\/a>
Creative Commons License<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

With the Confessional Poets, there\u2019s candor, yes. But more than that there\u2019s shame. There may indeed be pleasure in that shame, the smile that comes with admitting one is broken. That pleasure, however, is by necessity ambiguous. You can see it, for example, in the title of Anne Sexton\u2019s \u201cThe Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s even more apparent in the poetry itself:<\/p>\n

The boys and girls are one tonight.
\nThey unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
\nThey take off shoes. They turn off the light.
\nThe glimmering creatures are full of lies.
\nThey are eating each other. They are overfed.
\nAt night, alone, I marry the bed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If there is no sin in Sexton\u2019s conception, there is sadness, atomization. She (the speaker, the poet by extension) is troubled and incomplete. Loving herself is beside the point. In this moment, there is only the knowledge of inadequacy, the only sort of confession that (in my experience) makes sense.<\/p>\n

Confess we do, though we could not be further from such a sense of the term. Witness Bama Rush <\/em>(2023), a documentary purporting to be about Greek Life at the University of Alabama. That description might lead you to expect an investigation, or, as the trailer suggested to many, a takedown. This country has put up with quite a bit of abuse coming out of the Hellenic system\u2014what better time than now?<\/p>\n

Bama Rush<\/em> has little to do with sorority life. It plays up the various girls it follows in the lead-up to their matriculation, asking them about their experiences as young women. We hear of assaults, eating disorders, and the various, undeniably real, plagues faced by many girls and women. We hear from current sisters about the rigorous standards to which they are held (which I got the feeling we were supposed to resent, but what\u2019s the point of an exclusive organization if it doesn\u2019t demand things of its members?). We hear of the prominence of the University of Alabama, of the cabal of privileged Greek-Life members who run its student government (would that we heard more about this!). By the end, almost all the prospectives have dropped out on account of pressure from sororities. The filmmaker, Rachel Fleit, has been beaten by her subjects, forced into a retreat, searching for some way to finish her film.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s hardly her fault\u2014a documentarian can\u2019t know how things will go headed in. What baffled me was the film\u2019s focus on the director as a person. I\u2019d wager at least a quarter of the film concerns Fleit\u2019s struggle with accepting herself (she has alopecia). Over and over, we hear through direct confessions into the camera about Fleit\u2019s difficulties, about how she used to wear a wig, about how she accepts herself now. We\u2019re supposed to take this honesty as a testament to the ubiquity of self-esteem issues; in essence, the director equates herself with these young would-be sorority girls.<\/p>\n

Such candor comes so often (and with pictures!) that it begins to feel as if the movie is as much about the director as the supposed subjects. What, then, is the point? That all young women face tribulations? That self-image is often a sticking point? Surely no one would disagree. To say such is to call the sky blue\u2014true but ambiguous in importance or salience. At best, this decision spreads the film\u2019s already troubled premise thin, leaving us with little more than the sense that Fleit wanted to find a way to center her own story within the film. At worst, it sucks whatever value the story has out, vacuuming away any coherence from the broader movie.<\/p>\n

According to Fleit, her own vlog-esque inclusion in Bama Rush <\/em>was not her idea<\/a>. That may indeed be true. I have no desire to disparage or attack Rachel Fleit (whose story\u2014told on its own\u2014might make for a fascinating documentary). But the very fact that anyone thought including the director\u2019s teen years\u2014devoid of sororities or Greek Life more broadly\u2014had any relevance to the supposed topic of Bama Rush <\/em>speaks to a broader trend in our society. We\u2019ve laid claim to the raw honesty of Sexton, et al. with no sense of the ambiguity, the pain, or the shame. We\u2019re expected to clap and cheer at every calculated utterance, to smile and nod at what passes for candor. But what\u2019s the point of confession without ambivalence? What do we gain from knowing of another\u2019s personal foibles without salaciousness or condemnation?<\/p>\n

We gain nothing; we see nothing\u2014nothing but boredom and a sense that the speaker thinks highly of themselves, expects us to care about them and their lives in detail. Anne Sexton, by contrast, cries<\/a>: \u201cI pray that God will digest me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Confessional Poets, there\u2019s candor, yes. But more than that there\u2019s shame. There may indeed be pleasure in that shame, the smile that comes with admitting one is broken. That pleasure, however, is by necessity ambiguous. You can see it, for example, in the title of Anne Sexton\u2019s \u201cThe Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2640,"featured_media":2816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1731],"tags":[2431,3790,3786,3788,2347,3792],"class_list":["post-2814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-documentary","tag-greek-life","tag-hbo","tag-rachel-fleit","tag-sorority","tag-university-of-alabama"],"yoast_head":"\nConfessional Everything<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bama Rush has little to do with sorority life.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jappersandjanglers\/2023\/06\/confessional-everything\/\" \/>\n<meta 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