Welcome To The Dollhouse (1995)

One of the best ways I can think of to describe this movie is to say this is a possible precursor to the romance movies about the frumpy girl with low self-esteem and a 'bad self-image' who believes she's a loser. A story to set up how someone could come to be the mousey, frumpy secretary who loathes her life.  As the title suggests, the film comments on how the 'perfect family' or 'perfect life', such as the kind you might find in a child's dollhouse, is about as close to reality as a doll is to a human girl, and what the terror of trying to make that connection might be like.

The main character of this story is a girl named Dawn Weiner. She's in her first year of middle school, has no friends save one neighbourhood boy a year younger than her, and is savagely bullied at school. Her life is a daily torment. Her locker is tattooed with insults and profanity, she is ignored by almost everyone, except when they want to harass her, and the only person who is continually interested in her is a delinquent bully boy who threatens to rape her.

Her life at home is no better. She is a middle child and is perpetually overshadowed by her perfect, adorable younger sister and her smart and obedient older brother. Silenced in all arenas of her life, she starts quietly acting out; calling her sister some of the names she's called at school, making every interaction with her parents a confrontation, and even causing a small crisis with her sister's safety. All of these come to naught however and just leave Dawn feeling more frustrated and unwanted than ever before.

She tries to sooth the feelings of rejection most often by seeking some way to become socially relevant, which comes in the form of hero-worshiping one of the guys in her brother's garage band. Her brother is a nerd and he and his friends cannot play their instruments very well, but he bribes the most popular kid in school to play with them in exchange for helping him pass him computer science class. Dawn becomes intrigued with him when she finds out he's a bit of a playboy and tries to get close to him, interested in the attention he gives to girls. She even seeks out the bully who threatened to rape her, almost as if acknowledging that abusive attention is better than none at all. The movie ends on a very somber note, displaying Dawn accepting her discontent with hollow docility.

Dawn's struggle of feeling unwanted, unimportant, and bullied increases steadily throughout the film, but her reaction to her situation does not significantly alter as her treatment gets worse. It's almost as if she's come to the decision that they might be right and that any real fight would be a waste of time. No one would be on her side anyway. Everyone else around her seems to have a more secure position in life or a stronger goal or passion for themselves than she does, and she just seems to get left behind and trampled over as a result of not being able to stand up for herself. She can't seem to be as 'perfect' as her siblings, or as popular as the kids at school and is left grasping at straws as she realizes that she doesn't feel that she fits into any social category she knows of, and everyone around her doesn't seem to have the time to deal with her difference. Too timid to assert herself and her importance as an individual, she accepts the oppressive silencing of her individuality by her culture.

This movie is also a story about a gentle, caring girl who slowly changes as she faces the harsh reality that the world is not fair. From Dawn's interaction with others and from the way she carries herself in the beginning of the story, the viewer gets the impression that she's an innocent child that would err on the side of good rather than evil. Her daily harassment at school and invisibility at home slowly changes how she interacts with people however. She stops hanging out with who she usually hangs out with and starts being meaner to others, quietly. She starts seeking out a superficial existence of sexuality (again without much commitment as she has trouble affirming anything about herself) because being real has only brought her pain. She is given many chances to act, and seeks out various people and situations, but never commits herself to a definite course of action. She doesn't fit anywhere in her world. At home, her family is too busy with their own affairs to notice or care about her and at school there is no clique that suits her. The mean kids are too mean, the smart kids are too smart, the cool kids too cool. She's just left floating adrift, a bit of fluff passing from one space to another, never finding a place to settle and solidify.

After watching this, I had a minor onset of anxiety, and will probably not watch it again. We all have fears and insecurities about who we are and how we're perceived, but this girl's life is only rejection and abuse (not severe, but enough to be damaging). She's a quiet girl who doesn't react loudly to neglect, but instead just slowly wilts over time, which is almost a more terrifying prospect.

An uncomfortable film to watch.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

This was a very engaging story about the slave trade circa the 1800's, told by a woman from Africa named Aminata.

The story begins when Animata is a young girl living with her parents in an African village called Bayo. From a young age, Aminata has learned from and helped her mother in midwifery, and it was on one of these journeys to help her mother deliver a new baby that they are set upon by slave traders. Her mother is killed in the conflict, but Aminata and the village slave (who had accompanied them for protection) are captured and yoked in line with a several other captives. After a gruelling three-month journey to the coast, they are put on a slave ship. Aminata's mother was from another village before she married, so was able to teach her daughter the language from her home town. This bilinguality, as well as the fact that she was able to serve as a midwife, earned Aminata some distinction with the ship's captain. For a time she was spared some of the horrors found below deck, that's not to say she did not still witness horrifying things.

When the boat lands, Aminata is auctioned off to an indigo grower in the southern US. Here she meets several people who teach her various things, including the very scandalous act of reading. She also reconnects with a boy who she had met during her capture and eventually marries and has a child with him, but both she and her child are sold to different owners once the plantation owner learns of the child's birth. Animata is then sold to a Jewish indigo inspector who greatly advances her reading ability and uses her to keep his books, all the while using her previous skills to get her by. She eventually ends up going to various other locals, gains her freedom, and constantly seeks to reconnect with her loved ones, further establish her independence. Meanwhile, she must constantly battle oppression, racism, poverty, and heartache.

What I really enjoyed about this novel was its attempt at telling the story it had to tell without demonizing anyone, and all around sparing the reader of a pity party. That is not to say that the events in the novel were trivialized or excused, but rather that the heroine never took the time to whine about her situation, she just kept pushing forward. At one point she even states that she's not an emotional person and I think that helped with the authenticity of the storytelling. It was more as though she was bearing witness, but she was still very present in the storytelling process. The author made a point to not paint a black and white (so to speak) picture of the situation. Aminata and her family were muslim, which varies from the rest of her village, and from what the average reader would expect. This also hints at a previous cultural interaction and exchange. The idea of racism and slavery is also blurred a bit. In Aminata's village, there a village slave who plays a small role in the book, which also speaks to the fact that slavery was not invented with the black slave trade and that slavery in fact may have existed within Africa by the very people who later became slaves themselves. Also, when Aminata becomes a slave of the Jewish man, and even how the slaves born in America view the African-born slaves complicates the idea of discrimination in the book.

Aminata was a very strong heroine. Even though she was faced with extreme hardship and faced countless struggles, she not only never gave into despair, she proactively used her skills and intelligence to survive and progress. She gave herself purpose and constantly strove to better her situation.