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WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING 2022

No, I never hated them. They hated me. They laughed at me. They left me. They harassed me. They attacked me. You want me to beg for my life? I don't have it in me. I won't. I will not offer myself up. They can make their decision. But they're not deciding anything about me. It's them. They're judging themselves.

#where the crawdads sing #2022 #film #daisy edgar jones #taylor john smith #harris dickinson #tom milton #sterling macer jr #michael hyatt #logan macrae #bill kelly #ahna o'reilly #garret dillahunt #jojo regina #luke david blumm #blue clarke

#where the crawdads sing #movies #daisy edgar jones #taylor john smith #harris dickinson #michael hyatt #sterling macer. jr.#jojo regina #garret dillahunt #ahna o'reilly #david strathairn #illustration #vintage art #alternative movie posters

0s & 1s

0s & 1s [trailer]

James Pongo's got a cushy job, a busy social life and an alluring love interest all coming at him right through his laptop. When he wakes up after a night of partying to discover that his computer is missing, his hyper-connected reality takes a nosedive.

The story is a bit odd and nothing to write home about. But its realisation is very inventive. It has a do-it-yourself-at-home vibe. But it's still remarkable on a technical level. There's a LOT going on on the screen.

While I never used AOL myself, the movie still brings back some ancient computer usage memories. Watching the film today makes you feel old.

#0s & 1s #Eugene Kotlyarenko #Morgan Krantz #Jeremy Blackman #Ryan Reyes #Matty Cardarople #Ahna O'Reilly #recommended

Let's Review: Where The Crawdads Sing

*CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE BOOK AND THE MOVIE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.*

If we have learned anything from the 2020s, it's the pain of isolation. The pain of being cut off from our families and friends. The pain of loss. The pain of feeling so invisible you start to wonder if you're even really here at all. The pain of living with that raw, gaping hole in your soul we call loneliness. And yet that space can also be a place where we can be free, a garden from which we can regrow and nourish ourselves.

Anyone who's ever read Thoreau or Emerson can tell you that nature and solitude are often bosom companions; It is a partnership that can create ideal conditions for sowing resilience and self-reliance.

We see these themes take new root in Delia Owens' bestselling novel Where the Crawdads Sing, now a major motion picture.

The story is about the life of Kya, one of the most memorable literary heroines ever written. In the North Carolina town of Barkley Cove, she's commonly known as the Marsh Girl due to her solitary and secluded life in the marsh found outside of town. But they don't really know her at all. It's one thing to live a solitary life by choice, but it's quite another to have that life thrust upon you, forcing you to adapt or die. This is Kya's burden to bear as she is slowly abandoned by her entire family, leaving her alone to learn how to survive and etch out a living for herself in the marsh. But one day her quiet life is abruptly interrupted when she finds herself charged with the murder of Chase Andrews, a local golden boy, and has to face trial at the hands of a town that hates and misunderstands her.

Daisy Edgar-Jones delivers a high profile, career-boosting performance as Kya, giving her all the Southern grit and vulnerability that the character deserves. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty solid, but the stand-outs for me have got to be newcomer Jojo Regina as Little Kya and veteran David Strathairn as Kya's genteel yet down-to-earth attorney Tom Milton.

Kya's journey feels like an updated retelling of another classic southern story: To Kill A Mockingbird. They are both stories that focus on a tomboyish girl struggling to fit in and make sense of the world around her; they're also both courtroom dramas centered on a sympathetic but socially reviled character.

But this time around, the heroine is not Scout, it's Boo Radley.

Where the Crawdads Sing offers a sympathetic look at a successfully self-sufficient female recluse, a rarity in mainstream narratives. The story frames her in a favorable light and shows us what happens when we see things from the local boogeyman's perspective (or boogeywoman in this case).

We get to understand her loss, feel her pain right alongside her, and admire her intelligence and talents.

Through her eyes we get to see the beauty of the marsh. The novel is rich with beautiful poetic imagery about the natural world, and we get to see a great deal of that reflected on film.

But Kya is also cinema's latest incarnation of the often outdated wild woman trope. These figures are outsiders, cast out of their societies, usually as a result of familial abandonment, and often find themselves joining marginalized communities (Kya is mainly solitary but she does rely on the kindness of Jumpin' and Mabel, an African-American couple). The wild woman is framed as pure, simple, un-nuanced, naive or unaware of social niceties, and therefore uncorrupted by human society, which has allowed them to remain innately good. But they are also seen as desirable specifically because they are viewed as "wild" (i.e. independent) and "dangerous" (mostly for failing to conform to gendered expectations and uphold patriarchal values) and therefore need to be "saved" or "tamed" by men in order to become "civilized" (i.e. married, child-bearing, and domestic). These narratives frame the woman's independence from society (i.e. men) as a detriment, an affliction that needs to be cured immediately. These women are usually softened or "redeemed" through the unsolicited efforts of a man. She's usually not looking to be tied down by anyone, but usually gives in after some initial resistance and this is often framed by the narrative as a success on the man's part, regardless of the woman's needs or desires.

Think Stands With A Fist from Dances with Wolves with her wild hair (because how else would we know she was a wild woman?) or San from Princess Mononoke (who's still a great female character but still checks off most of the aforementioned boxes).

For the most part, Kya's story does an excellent job of showing us how resilient and independent she is as her own person and largely side-steps the worst parts of the trope. But unfortunately, she still stumbles into the trap when it comes to the romance subplot and the "love triangle" that waters down an otherwise strong character arc.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with female characters who need to rely on men in order to become stronger or desire romance in order to be loved. Kya's relationship with Tate is sweet and subtly subversive (they never get married or have children) and I do enjoy seeing them grow old together. Plus, there is something darkly fascinating about Kya going after Chase, a guy who's clearly no good for her, from an ethological standpoint.

But this all means that Kya's life is still centered mainly on the men in her life, whether it's her romantic interests or her male family members. There's even a troubling implication that Kya's existence is validated by these men; in the trailer and in the movie, when Kya bemoans how invisible she feels and wonders if she's even really here at all, Tate answers "You are." which could subtly suggest to the audience that Kya can't feel seen in her own right unless she's being acknowledged by a man. Although Tate does appreciate Kya for her intelligence and her abilities, his interest in her, at least according to the novel, stems from her being "not like the other girls", which is a whole other thing I have no time to get to in detail here.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

But maybe not.

It would've been nice to see Kya cultivate some female friendships (maybe a girl in town who was curious about her) or find a few female role models or maybe even serve as a role model to another marsh girl. We see a little bit of this with Kya's relationship with Mabel, who helps Kya learn about numbers and how to shop for herself, but it's brushed aside pretty quickly and gets no real development. We do get to see that Kya had a good relationship with her mother, but she swiftly leaves the story, never to be seen again except in memory.

It also would've been cool to see Kya explore her femininity, gender presentation, and sexuality on her own terms without it being largely left to others and to men as we see in both the novel and the movie. However, we do get to see her perspective on losing her virginity to Chase and see on her face how uncomfortable and impersonal it is.

Bottom line: we need to see more Kyas in our literature and hopefully in the future they can be even better characters and learn from the example set by the novel and the movie.

The movie is very faithful to the novel, except for some omissions (most notably Amanda Hamilton) and narrative restructuring: the trial acts as a framing device for the movie, introduced right away as opposed to being sprinkled sparsely into the narrative up until the third act, where it serves as the climax in the novel. This change works well for the movie and gives Kya a reason to tell her story.

This is definitely a book club movie night kind of movie, one where you read the book (or in my case, listen to the fantastic audiobook) in anticipation, go see the movie with friends who've also read the book, and then have long discussions about it afterwards.

It's been a long while since we've had a cinematic event like this, and I think that's worth celebrating.

Whether you love it or hate it, it's still a fun night out either way.

My Rating: 3/5 crawdads