Hm... (After the Oscars)

I had just finished my class and came out of the building located on Pitar-Mos and I was either heading to classes at "Litere" or going home and reaching for the subway. The wound of having lost my mother as a senior in high school was still open. As I was on Magheru Boulevard, I stopped to read this: "All about my mother."

I did not end up going to the film that day. In fact, it took me days to negotiate with myself whether or not to go see it. The era of the Internet where one could find useful and misleading info was dormant. The title kept singing inside my mind, like a siren.

I went. I cried. I went back to see it again. I fell in love with the director's script and colors and atmosphere, and the very eclectic, complex, fragile worlds of humans, none perfect, that he was creating.

When I came to the States, I would have more opportunities to watch Pedro Almodóvar's movies. When I was researching for my PhD, I referenced two of his movies. Years later after I had watched "All about my mother," I would return to U of Bucharest to deliver a speech that would later be published: “Questioning Two Canonical Concepts of ‘Self’ and ‘Authenticity’ in Pedro Almodóvar’s Film All about My Mother" (University of Bucharest Review: A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies). That was happening in 2008, the year of my most devastating depression. By then, I had become a mother, but that was not why I was depressed.

Even when his movies started to disappoint, I knew that like all humans, creativity is open to suffer from whatever one may be struggling internally and/or as a consequence of the bull crap that is outside in a society/world.

We need breaks. But people like Almodóvar can't afford them. Because they must have visibility. As I write this, I wonder if it is true. Why we do that? Let people have breaks. Let them retreat from the public eye.

Almodóvar, who shares the same BD as Will Smith, said that the latter's acceptance speech at the Oscars felt like what "a cult leader" would deliver. Of course, removed from the heat of the moment, however triggering that was, one may feel more rational and composed.

Who talks about the devil in the 21st c? Where is this said devil? Do not be so smart and quick to judge. When a bad, terrible, horrific thing happens, how many of us say/hear, Where is God? How could God let this happen? We say, It was all God's plan. What happens when "His"plan fails? Does God fail?

We are bound to make/repeat mistakes. We have ties to both characters (!) mentioned above. On Tuesday, I will workshop with students what it means to sympathize with the devil. Not because of what happened at the Oscars. It was scheduled on my syllabus. I want to know how, as an educator and a creator, one can discover the intricacies of the antagonist, the villain, the one onto whom we dump all the blame to glorify the protagonist, the hero, and, by so going, to be typecast in our role, too.

This post does not have an end.

LE: The Academy Awards has still not issued an apology to Jada Pinkett Smith.