BLOG #17: ABJECT EXPRESSIONISM
I would not recommend closing your very first issue at a magazine via your home office, especially when that home office is only about five and a half paces from your bed. I am fortunate to have a huge room and yet imprisoned by the fact that I wake up to my monitor staring at me like a jerky screen monolith. Taunting me.
Aw, you wanna write on me, huh Maya? You wanna share all kinds of personal thoughts on me. You wanna go on silk and further customize your Gen Z-era blogging experience? I bet you have so many big, throbbing ideas your fingers are just itching to type out…
My computer is femdomming me. Techdomming. Now I’m giving in like the *whimpers* pathetic little loser I am. One more, computer. Thank you, computer. Ok, Computer.
—
I started the first part of this post in mid-October in between busy writing days and wanted to keep up my monthly-and-then-some schedule but was in too deep with my many side projects and a rather impressive bout of melancholy last week.
11/2/2025 afternoonish
My grandfather died this morning. My mom called me from California, where she lives and where he lived, and told me and it was really sad. He had a great life and was a prolific musician. He was strange and good. He wrote me a song once, and wrote and played a lot of other stuff that you can recognize in Pixar movies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He was a teacher of music. He called weed “pot” and liked to smoke it. He was funny on accident a lot of the times and when he was funny on purpose he wasn’t that funny. He was special. He wasn’t blood-related to me and we were kindred. He called me a “bohemian soul.” He didn’t like to eat a lot of foods. He was silly, talented, and important to me whether I realized it actively or not. I think he would find techdomming funny as a concept if he could read this right now.
Naturally, when people die, you think about them and the memories and what not. I rambled to my best friends and H— this morning about some family lore and they listened. I don’t think I want to tell you any of those things (beyond mentioning that I am thinking about them in manner both resembling and distinct from ‘reminiscence’) but I will tell you about some movie opinions I had recently because gramps loved when I ranted. I liked being a “very opinionated young woman” to him.
—
11/20/2025 nightish
Anecdote: When I was getting my Zoom-MA at Columbia SOA for film theory, I took a class that I forget the name of in the filmmaking department all about narrative storytelling done visually through director style. Our professor (who I won’t name…you’ll see why in a sec) didn’t have homework, other than reading his sometimes New Yorker essay-long emails tying various films to art movements in history. One class was entirely dedicated to Fuqua and how the framing of Denzel in Training Day resembled the last supper; that’s the type shit we would do. And we’d spend every three-hour-long seminar discussing the art history movements from the emails, watching clips, drawing parallels, making conclusions. Our only assignment was to create a treatment for a movie we’re working on (I was lucky to have had a script for a feature I was working on despite not being a filmmaking major) adapted through various art periods we’d learned about. It’s the kind of class that only exists in TV shows when they show the misunderstood creative outsider kid that “it gets better after high school,” because these are the types of things you get to learn.
One week, I was late to join class because I was dreadfully hungover, and when I was let into the Zoom meeting, one of my classmates was mid-sentence, telling my professor “When you showed me that painting, you called me a nigger.” Woah! Good morning, Maya. The email we were to review over the past week and discuss in that session was about abstract expressionism, personally, one of my favorite painting movements, and a lot of the paintings our professor attached were from Otto Dix. Specifically, the paintings where he depicted the casual Black jazz player by painting them…the color black. I immediately put two and two together and understood that the five Black people in the class (six including myself, though I did not knee-jerk) were rightfully knee-jerking the painting. The rest of the seminar was derailed as four of those five proceeded to lecture my professor on the delicate nature of representation, racism, colors, lighting, and why all of that is important, to which, at least conceptually, they’re right. Another Black woman and I messaged on the side wondering if we were actually going to get a chance to talk about the nuances of this week’s lesson in abstract expressionism or if we were going to hear our skinfolk continue to bemoan factors of our daily life as Black people to the bored, camera-off white audience of sorts who was (probably) thankful for a camera-off situation. My professor didn’t handle it well and he did as best as he could to listen, all while taking the usual “I’m not racist” intellectual missteps, aka reifying his identity as Jewish, gay, and an ally to other minority groups, and qualifying himself through a laundry list of actions, friends, and other primary sources of the like who can definitely assure naysayers that he is, indeed, a totally stand-up and non-racist guy.
We took a necessary break before the screening portion of the class and I pondered what felt like the real question at hand: Is the painting racist? By today’s standards, yeah, probably. In the same way a McDonald’s ad is racist or, honestly, with the same whetted logic that everything is racist. Which, it is. And, not but, there’s a lot of context here with this particular painting, such as the fact that Dix was a German painter working and living in Weimar Germany at the time, that race relations are inherently different in different countries because of imperial and colonial histories, and that all of the above perspective was actually addressed in our professor’s email to discuss what “expression” means in filmmaking, when there are art movements like abstract expressionism and painters like Dix. That was a conversation that we never got to have, because of knee-jerks. And I’m not blaming my fellow students for reacting the way they did, because I’m not in the business of minimizing someone else’s reactions to racism. And, at the same time, I actually applaud my professor for trying (and partially failing) to have a conversation about representation beyond what, at the time in 2021, were aggressively stupid word salads about “being seen and heard” and “Black bodies” that ultimately led to less perspective, less solutions, less inspiration for Black people to make work that reads, responds, and reacts to a broader category of lived experiences of racism. Those two things could be true at the same time, I thought, trying my very best to explain the drama ensuing to my then-roommate and best friend Gaby, who was very there for the tea. But what was this moment, beyond the tea, I thought. Five years later, I can just say that what didn’t sit right with me was a lack of perspective, and a lack of an opportunity for others to share. There was one moment when this one lightskin guy stepped up on his soapbox and claimed that he was speaking for everyone Black in the class, as if we must have all been invariably hurt by the Otto Dix painting. The Otto Dix painting didn’t hurt my Black feelings, or all my other Maya feelings for that matter. And that upset me, because it felt like there was some hard line being drawn in the sand that, if you are Black and self-respecting, you should be offended. That if you are not offended, that you agree. When there’s an entire gray area between those two things that I felt like I lived in. Plus, I don’t like when people speak for me—the only people (one of whom also happens to be a lightskin man) allowed to do that are my mom and my dad, and tbh, they wouldn’t dare.
Anyways, we got through the rest of that class rather begrudgingly and then got through the rest of the semester begrudgingly and when I submitted my final project to my professor, he gave me the highest mark and said, in as many words, that we should hang out. I told him I’d like that, and also that I liked his lesson during the Otto Dix week. He sent back “:)”. We never did get to hanging out after that, and admittedly as I write this sentence I think about how I dropped the ball on that one.
—
12/4/2025 morningish
I bring up that anecdote because it reminds me a lot of the hairbrained hatred of PTA’s One Battle After Another. My Kima saw OBA with Alex at Lincoln Center ahead of the public release, and they both said it was a perfect movie. Iliana saw it twice and agreed that it was a perfect movie. Bennett concurred. One of my favorite things about talking movies with my friends is that we all differ so these notions did not follow me pre-baked into the theater when I saw the movie with Gaby. Thereafter, I agreed that it was a perfect movie.
And here’s why, from a character perspective of Perfidia, whom a lot of people have labeled and subsequently critiqued as a fetish character from PTA. When we—people who are critical of race and reception in film—talk about wanting diverse characters as Black women, to me that means imperfect Black women. Black women who dare express a full range of human emotion, including those more unsavory emotions that we as Black women are taught that we must “rise above,” as if stereotypes of loud, angry, spiteful, and the like are our fault. Like many of my sistas, I was taught the rise above because it is an express means of survival. And that’s why seeing a character like Perfidia (Gaby reminded me of the song; do with the lyrics what you may) is actually revolutionary, because like the entire plot of the movie, her existence as a revolutionary—somewhat overzealous to the point where her desire to alter the material conditions in a Marxist way ends up (rather ironically) embodying a kind of individualism and ego that follows more of a capitalistic way of thinking, overly passionate and unafraid of becoming someone’s Black woman dom fantasy (Col. Lockjaw)—is shown as imperfect, human. Perfidia rats on her French 75 members, leading to their disappearing at the hands of Lockjaw. She absconds to México, and is sympathetic, as we see in the letter she writes to Willa, read aloud at the very end of the movie. She doesn’t make sense as a traditional hero because she makes mistakes, and unlike a lot of woman character tropes, let alone Black woman character tropes, her strength isn’t in an unwaveringly strong sense of perseverance, it’s in apology, remorse, regret, and ultimately, love (again, as we see in the end scene of the movie with the letter.
Before I get into PTA and what I consider his masterful understanding of translating contemportary moments to the screen, here’s something that I’ve noticed about people today and the idea of revolution. There are rose-tinted glasses applied onto what a revolutionary movement is, or what it is romanticized to be. The people who wear these glasses, from what I’ve seen, at least, are formally educated Americans who mask an insurmountable guilt for belonging to the imperial power of the West as birthright, as a sympathy for those nations bombed to dust, pillaged, and all the other stuff war in this context implies. It’s a minority mindset, as in overly identifying with those hurt by the mere existence of the West, let alone America’s war industrial complex. Again, from my perspective, the American flavor of this kind of person romanticizes the various organizations and attempted upheavals of power structures that govern the West; Black Panthers, Chicano and Yellow Power movements, the Young Lords, the Yippees, et al. Instead of looking at those movements as wholes—each of which made real strides toward a restructuring of power and were ultimately quashed by strategic levying of the law and underhanded operations at the hand of the government because they posed real threats to the material conditions of American life—they become stories of power. Of overcoming odds. Of OGs, real ones, and riders, of people who never compromised as if never compromising is the only way to accomplish something. That feels like, today and to me, a kind of insane way of looking at these organizations of people whom, because they are human beings, are imperfect. There were internal issues with each of the American movements that I listed. And when people talk about, say, the levels of misogyny that existed in various chapters of the Black Panther party, the narrative becomes “actually, they were problematic.” Black and white, again, ironically. The person who proffers that critique is the superradical, so cynical that even one of the most organized, challenging, and successful attempts for equity of Black people isn’t good enough. That idea, is a false narrative that flies in the face of history, and AGAIN, IRONICALLY, reflects a more individualistic idea of what you, the individual, think someone else should have done to be “better,” by your own made up ideas of virtue. If you look at revolutionaries as playing roles in history and not as people trying to stand up for the rights of other people, you my friend, are not a Marxist who wants to change the material conditions for people. You want people to exist according to your own image of what a “revolutionary” is, which, to be so fucking honest, is more akin to capitalism, imperialism, and a Western idea of individualism than you’d like to admit.
Both stills from One Battle After AnotherOBA is great to me because PTA rips off those rose-tinted glasses. The first 35-ish minutes of the rise and fall of the French 75 amp you up, playing into the revolutionary shoot-em-up take-no-prisoners mentality (the bank robbery scene where Jungle Pussy says “This is some Set It Off shit”) while simultaneously showing the real work they’ve done; (the very first scene where the group frees hundreds of detained immigrants from federal custody, and Perfidia forces Lockjaw (Sean Penn) to brick up at the thought of her squashing his operation). The revolutionary narrative exists alongside the real revolutionary action. Perfidia gets caught after shooting someone caught up in the moment, and she rats on her comrades, all of whom are later disappeared by Lockjaw’s goons. Perfidia, (gasps) makes a mistake, and reveals herself as human. There’s this one shot that sticks with me from this moment, where Perfidia is in a wheelchair after being caught and there are buku white pigs following her down the hall high-fiving one another while her head is in her hands, which reads like annoyance and grief in simultaneity (Teyana Taylor you tore the entire movie). The whole time Perfidia had been fucking Lockjaw, in a way I read as, plotwise, her taking advantage of the exotic temptress stereotype applied onto beautiful Black women like herself to keep the French 75 safe. Perfidia’s daughter Willa and remaining French 75 members Deandra (Regina Hall), Ghetto Pat (DiCaprio) and others go into hiding, fast forward to Willa as a teenager doing karate at the instruction of Sensei (Benicio del Toro), where you get the sense that the story, now in present day, is about to begin. The movie is a “let’s get him” type wild goose chase of Lockjaw looking to capture Willa so he may join exclusive Christmas Adventurers, a select group of scary old white guys who sign off-every secret meeting with “Heil St. Nick,” (hmm, I wonder what this could be referencing…), who deny his admittance because they heard rumblings of a “half-breed” daughter he fathered. Ghetto Pat, who’d raised Willa as his daughter, is left to find her after her relocation by Deandra and remaining French 75. And he fails nearly every task given to him, he can’t remember the proper access codes to earn information on Willa’s whereabouts, because after going into hiding, he’d numbed himself with weed and the unique, contemporary kind of white privilege of someone who knows the history (see: “fuckin slave owners everywhere” moment) but doesn’t understand its material impact. Through a wonderful and stunningly visual hour and change, Ghetto Pat doesn’t just reunite with Willa, he gets active. He stops posturing a revolutionary, and becomes one through action. And, PTA does masterful character work to show how Ghetto Pat is nothing without the ultimate guidance and demonstration of revolution by characters like Sensei, and other undercover French 75 whose lives remain dedicated to the movement, hiding immigrants from ICE raids in an underground-railroad-esque set of maneuvering, done without pomp or circumstance. These are people, PTA shows us, like the local strip mall sensei. These are not figures for your revolutionary storybook of right and wrong. It is here where I think the undeniable strength of the movie lies. PTA rips off your glasses, but he doesn’t crush them in front of you and call you stupid. He just shows you humanity, and in a cinematic way rather than a pedantic one. I genuinely feel sorry for you if you cannot see that, because you are refusing to treat people like people.
—
I guess OBA reminded me of that one time in film class because of this: It’s not about whether or not the Otto Dix painting offends you, or if it should. It’s about refusing to understand art, when deployed as a metaphor for something greater—an emotion, like abstract expressionism—as a vehicle for the social in tandem with the formal. This idea is not new, and as Bennett reminded me the other day, it’s essentially the art-critical opposition to an idea of Kantian purity in the reading of art as purely an art object. When reading OBA as a story that shows the humanity of a movement, allows its characters to be flawed, the film is not art as an art object in a vacuum, it is a work whose meaning exists visually (the cinematic choice of the car chase scene, for example, as a HUGE flex of directorial swag imo) and whose story derives a dual power from the context of real-world history, a point of view that action is required for revolution, rather than pathology. It is abstract and digestible as an abstract of our present moment. The Otto Dix haters, the OBA haters, are abject. You see how I’ve got here.
The week my grandfather died Harry (woah, name drop!) and I saw two movies together. On Monday, we saw Bugonia which I thought was great and he was meh about. I do think genuinely everyone should go see this movie and ideally that they should pay to go see it in theaters because the sound design is impeccable. It’s very Yorgos in that he didn’t write the screenplay so it’s good…really a much better director than anything. The script was written by this guy Will Tracy who was inspired by this guy Jang Joon-hwang’s movie Save the Green Planet! (2003) which is essentially the same premise—two guys capture another guy convinced that he’s an alien in disguise and won’t release him until he confesses his crimes against humanity and swears to stop the immediate plan to destroy planet earth. Bugonia differs in that the alien mask worn by Emma Stone's character is a clear critique on our present moment, therapy speak (“open a dialogue,” “I hear you,” and all the other bullshit) as the newest tool for corporate manipulation of the underclass, something so precise that anyone who expresses the human emotion of contempt—speaking out against it—is somehow halting progress or argumentative. This is the alien-human order the film establishes. The two guys who capture the alien in Bugonia are renegades against the alien order, written adjacent to (yet not politically affiliated with) libertarian-esque “don’t trust them” conspiracy theorists who, as we’ve seen in recent history, are typically detached from reality to a dangerous point, and often affiliated with the right-wing (see: QAnon). The film does the whole “is she an alien?” or “are these guys crazy?” thing until the end when you realize that both are kind of right. It feels a little simple, and I honestly thought the ideas here were more transgressive and helpful to audiences before I learned that Bugonia is essentially an adaptation of Save the Green Planet!, which I highly recommend you seek out and watch especially if you liked Bugonia. Also, just a bit of shade, I think this was Yorgos’s strongest movies narratively because…he didn’t write it. And the guy who wrote it loosely adapted another existing movie. Anyways.
—
Since I started writing this post I turned 27 and also feel like I became an actual woman, not the technical “you’re legally an adult” kind I became when I turned 18. People have been trying to instill fear, or at least caution, for the fact that this is the first year of my Saturn return. I still don’t fully know what that means, and I don’t think I want to research further, but according to astrology-friends, the Saturn return signifies when you become the self that you more or less remain until you die. It’s typically a period of challenges, neutrally: you could be challenged with bad stuff or good stuff that ultimately leads to a sense of becoming. As a Sagittarius I love change but I also am human and am scared of it like we all are. I don’t know what’s going to happen and it’s as invigorating as it is scary. I will continue to think the way I do, I think, as a Responsible Gun Owner of feelings and opinions that could be used as weapons for senseless violence. There you have it, the metaphor behind the name of this blog. I have never shot a real gun, and I would like to.
I guess I’m thinking about righteousness and how it is, really, a lot of flagellation for the ego. Morals are a slippery artifice that, when wielded just so, create this untouchable level of “I’m right” that can’t not be heavily ego-driven. That’s what a lot of recent events tell me, and One Battle After Another is a great vessel to understand that. It feels like people don’t know how to hold their opinions in tandem with facts that they may disagree with. It leads to defensiveness. Ego responses. Heavy ass “well so and so was actually problematic” instead of learning to walk and chew gum at the same time. You can think the Otto Dix painting is racist and appreciate it in the context of the world that inspired it. It feels like we’ve lost the capacity to disagree with one another in defense of the narratives we build, disseminate, and then group-think. Some idea of legacy for an idea that we can actually control, paying lip service to it, as a means of protecting the ego.
What do I want from this thought? Nothing. I hope people can understand themselves better with the understanding that we’ll never understand everything. We are human, first and foremost, in our little forevers, until we die and evolve into something else. Maybe that’s my Saturn return, accepting that.
Comments
Post a Comment