Let me start by saying I remember All The Criticisms.
With my last and final ex, there was a seemingly-out-of-nowhere pronouncement of dislike for my low-slung turquoise corduroys; a snickering comparison of my stompy, jerky goth club dancing to The Elaine Benes; and, eventually – when the relationship was on its last legs – a near-eruption of disgust with my method of mastication.
The Girl in college who had my heart drawn and quartered made a show of her incredulity that I, an English major, didn’t have much classic poetry memorized, nor could I react quickly and valiantly enough in a crisis (she longed for, at least a Renaissance person, but preferably a real-life caped crusader).
As for my old childhood friend, he once seemed vaguely disappointed that despite being able to perform my original music in a dominant, disarming way, I could only haltingly sight-read a hymnal when playing his family piano. (Never mind that my college roommate, a music major, had been genuinely impressed that a layperson like myself could sight read at all).
My closest compatriot in grad school, a feisty, diminutive Sicilian-American who somehow managed to be hotheaded/spoiled and charming/compassionate at the same time, gave me no end of grief for my indecisive social driving (which of course served to make it more and more indecisive) and how I always boiled the pasta two minutes too long.
Finally, there’s this parental gem, which followed me from childhood perhaps more than any other, and which I believe was a response to my trying out an adventuresome style choice:
“That doesn’t look the way you THINK it looks.”
Ah.
This is all to say that the premise of Nicole Holofcener’s slice-of-life dramedy You Hurt My Feelings – a film that explores the challenge of truth-telling in close relationships – was an appealing one to me. So I made it my film of choice the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
I can see how this film might be seen as tedious, particularly because the characters behave in a deeply insecure manner AND are upper class white liberal art-ifacts in NYC. (Granted, these are characteristics shared with numerous well-loved classics, but they could ostensibly feel more tone deaf in 2023). I would also describe the movie as small: it runs about an hour and a half, concerns itself with fairly quotidian interactions and feels akin to a stage show. It remains to be seen how long it will stick with me.
That said – it’s also the only movie I can remember laugh-crying over in the dark along with a crowd of strangers.
When you consider who is likely to attend a matinee of this movie – UVA professors? Highly educated, well-to-do retirees? Highly educated and well-to-do retired UVA professors? – it’s likely the movie was playing to its ideal demographic that day. I’d be hard pressed to name a group that strikes me as MORE rife for an exercise in neuroticism.
You’ll hear more than anything that Feelings is a movie about honesty (too much, too little, the wrong kind), but it’s also about a bunch of other things. Artists wrestling with their own existential inconsequence and trying to keep going when no one else cares. Coming to terms in middle age with the fact that most of us are destined for relative mediocrity. Remembering on the heels of a humiliation that tomorrow really IS another day, and all good artists suck sometimes (and if they’re willing to go way out on limbs, I’d argue they sometimes suck even harder than ho-hum artists). Acknowledging that intelligent, discerning significant others don’t need to worship each other’s work to have each other’s backs.
It would seem self-evident that choosing brusque appraisal where silence would suffice is unkind. But vapid endorsement is also off-putting. I saw a rocky, unintentionally comical outing by a young local band the other night, and what I remember more than the music is the girlfriend of one of the members leaning in the doorway with a beatific smile on her face, nodding, her lips forming each and every word of each and every song. I wondered what was really IN THERE. Surely she has her favorites. Surely some of the lines she mouthed or arrangements she performatively endorsed featured choices she questioned. It’s natural to demonstrate support with your presence, but not natural to completely suspend judgment.
That said, it’s important to mention that all of the opinions above were completely unsolicited. I had NOT asked the equivalent of the “Does this make me look fat” question; I had simply been trying to quietly, comfortably EXIST when their proclamations burst forth like magma. The newfound awareness that I was under scrutiny had the effect of making me feel always on eggshells in those relationships, so they were doomed. It’s clear now that all those moments were signs – or more accurately, banal representations, of larger irreconcilable differences.
The institution that is the Dr. Phil show aged poorly in most ways, but a turd can have a diamond inside it, and in this case the diamond was whenever McGraw would call someone’s partner or parent out for having a “critical spirit”. I heard that at exactly the right time, it stuck, and I still haven’t found a better way of summing up what was wrong with my past relationships.
To be fair, in all the cases, there were huge mommy issues going on (I have a type, lord help me) – so I don’t mean to suggest that these folks were BORN with a “critical spirit”. Unfortunately, knowing where the poison came from didn’t do a bunch of stubborn, muddling twenty-somethings any good.
So, have I gotten it right this time?
Granted, if there’s anyone with mommy issues, it’s my DP. As for the rest: my choice of what to photograph and how to crop it often puzzles him. He tends toward the literal, and my relentless employment of symbolism in multiple mediums often flies over his head. He’s also cautiously critiqued the musical arrangements on the one and only EP he’s ever bought from me (which he only snagged because it consisted of cover songs he already knew, not SK originals). For my part, I am regularly called in to help him hack and slash the large photo lots he takes of local bands, and I don’t hold back about what I find unflattering to the subject, too blurry, too dark, lacking magic.
I think the key is that we’ve both internalized (and probably overuse) the following phrase:
“It’s just not FOR me.”
As in, “That poem just isn’t FOR me.” “That photo just isn’t FOR me.”
Stay with me here. Sure, in a perfect world, the ego would climax on adoration from the significant other. I can see how mine and DP’s phrase of choice, which emphasizes strongly that we’re NOT in that perfect world, might still sound cold to some. But – there’s a subtext there. It says, “You have an audience. You have oddlings who need you. Go forth and find your people.”
Maybe most importantly, it’s clear that an opinion given on a single art work is not an assessment of each other’s fundamental worth. There’s no innuendo of catastrophic import, no hint of underlying frustration betraying the listless wish IF ONLY MY PARTNER WERE SOMEBODY ELSE.
There’s also the increased peace with the self that often accompanies being older. It makes the feeling of standing whole and separate from these concerns easier to achieve. Leaving the theater, I overheard a retired couple discussing the film. Using a recent marital anecdote, the woman was expressing with some vehemence that she couldn’t relate to the film, that honesty didn’t hurt her feelings, but that a total ABSENCE of feedback would be the worst thing imaginable. This would seem to tie in with one of Holofcener’s more uplifting takeaways, one that surfaced particularly in scenes between the main character and her son: tackling (as opposed to avoiding) the hard conversations is in itself doing something right.
Which brings me to the green Chuck Taylors. The same guy bent about the corduroys and the chewing (whom I’m still friendly with, because his “critical spirit” is reserved mostly for his romantic partners) once shared that he didn’t think I could “pull off” green Chuck Taylors. Black, sure. Burgundy, certainly. But not green. No elaboration, just a baffling, seemingly arbitrary decree. All I can surmise – and this is what makes it so off-putting – is that it was based on a certain pigeonholing of me, born of his own wishful thinking about what he wanted in a partner and a refusal to see who was actually in front of him.
So, guess what I bought myself recently. Note that the soles are slightly platformed, too.
The Sold Kingdom 
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