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Friendship is a Religion
05-01-25Personal essay
On New Year’s Day, I told the people on my Instagram close friends story that I am “lowkey in love with all of [them] in different ways”, before wishing them “happiness, success, and good health, always”. The people on there range from those I’ve known since we were 11, to people I befriended after graduation. If I wasn’t mellowed by the foamy, ylang-ylang scented water and tropical atmosphere of the bathroom I had been stewing in for over an hour, I probably would’ve recoiled after posting it - for its brazenness - but I was in a vulnerable mood. It was the first New Year’s I’d spent alone.
The clarification “in different ways” was made mostly because they are all so different as individuals. There are aspects of all of them that I cannot help but be a bit in love with. If you cut one of my friends open, you would find freshly fallen snow. You could make snow angels. Underneath this is the snow you could make a hardy igloo out of. If you cut another open, fireworks and stardust would effervesce out of their chest. Another is fashioned out of crisp, clean sheets. They have a lace trim. A candle is burning on their bedside and it smells sweet. Another is a vessel for gorgeous forests and clear streams. Another is a gothic mansion. Wisteria adorns its façade. Another is a greenhouse. Everything is lush and green. Butterflies flicker about. One friend is teeming with bubble solution. Cut them open and see glittering marbles float out and burst with a soapy pop.
The formation and preservation of friendships has become a high maintenance affair as an adult. Gone are the days when I was thrown into a room with 30 children my age, with a similar background to me, as developed as me, and forced to be with them for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. These friendships could be made and survive passively. Uni saw me thrown into a room with 15 mostly-fledged adults I saw for about 3 hours a day, twice a week. I didn’t gel with many of them, despite being united by the pursuit of the same degree. I could blame circumstance. Covid impacted my first year. I spent a lot of time cooped up in my tiny room that received little sunlight doing online “classes”. I didn’t party because I was conscious of being out late with drunk strangers. I was the only person of colour in my flat…in a 10-man…in Finsbury Park. This is a complicated way of saying I felt lonely. But this was also my fault, partially. I contributed to this loneliness by retreating into myself, losing my vigour and affability, following one too many irksome interactions.
Things improved in my third year. I loved my flatmates. I became myself again. This set a solid base for forming new friendships and building upon existing ones. I understood that I had to do more to keep the flame I shared with each friend alive, because our time in close proximity was running out. I told my friends I loved them for the first time. Freshly Fallen Snow and Crisp, Clean, Lace-Trim Sheets. I did it in an awkward and roundabout way. Their response was something to the effect of a “well, yeah.” This sounds apathetic but it meant they felt the same way and it went without saying. I was just stating the obvious. I think the previous two years of my life did a lot by way of pushing my appreciation for my friends to the forefront of my mind, and taught me to have more faith in the idea that people who were meant to meet will eventually snap together like magnets. I found myself frequently fretting over the poor decisions I made during that time, but in retrospect, these poor decisions were made to my eventual benefit.
I think everyone should be a little bit in love with their friends. Friendship is love, love is devotion, devotion is religion. I know a lot of people who struggled through hardships and found light in a religion. My hardships weren’t hard enough to warrant me becoming traditionally pious. I’ve instead found piety in my platonic relationships. They are so much more fruitful than anything romantic. I’ve never been a words of affirmation kind of person. I think talk is cheap, in most cases. Sweet nothings are exactly that. Sweet…but ultimately, nothing. Words exchanged between friends are profound. There is no ulterior motive. You love them because you love them. It’s worth telling them so. I’ve since become more conscious of the loveliness my friends exhibit. I like to fully take them in when they speak to me. The way their hands and faces move. The inflections in their voices. I don’t have much to talk about any more. Nothing new is happening at present and I find myself constantly being engulfed by my past, which is not interesting to listen to. I think they forgive me for this. I just want them to know I’m devoted to them.
Happy New Year, everyone. Tell your friends you love them.
On Malena
04-01-25Short review of Malena (2001)
World War II Sicily serves as the backdrop for Malena, an exploration of the male gaze and misogyny, starring Monica Bellucci and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. The picture follows Renato, a 12-year-old boy, who becomes besotted with the titular character, the beautiful wife of a soldier away at war, and how he “observes” her (his observation largely involves him peering into her house and on one occasion, stealing her underwear so he can masturbate with it), and also how the other inhabitants of the town, male and female, treat her in her husband’s absence. Throughout the film’s 1 hour and 32 minute duration (which felt like 5 hours), I was sat on the edge of my seat, eagerly awaiting to be fed some morsel of Malena’s personality; her true self—waiting for her to snap. The film is named after her, after all. Instead, the credits rolled and I felt hangry (angry due to hunger) and sad. Though initially dressed up as an erotic comedy-drama, it became something more akin to a horror film.
Malena remains a two-dimensional object throughout. She exists as a diluted spirit; a blow-up sex doll that lies ruefully in the back room of an automobile repair shop. A profound sadness in her eyes. Inanimate. There to be consumed. Granted, you could argue that this was the whole point. The audience is only meant to know as much as a naïve, horny 12-year-old boy knows, though Harvey Weinstein is credited as co-producer, so I’m struggling to be this forgiving. Even in the comfort of her own home, Malena behaves as though she is being observed, which she is, though she is entirely unaware of it.
It is far too easy to produce a film that stars a bombshell actress, have her naked more than clothed, abused, raped, ensure that she does not see justice, and then claim that it’s meta. It reflects how beauty can be a double-edged sword, but what is the message when no character undergoes any form of development? The docile persist in their docility. The aggressors persist in their aggression. This does not mean to say that it’s a bad film. The acting is fantastic and the score and cinematography are quite stunning. Even Renato’s imagination sequences were fun to watch…until he too started to concoct rape fantasies, with Malena as his victim, which erased his small attempts to avenge her by urinating in the bags of women who badmouthed her and spitting in the drinks of the men who objectified her, since he is not much better himself.
In John Berger’s 1972 book, Ways of Seeing, he states that “men act and women appear,” which rings true to the dynamics within the film. Married women are virtuous by default, but only when plain or accompanied by a man: when their appearance is palatable. Within the film, this plainness and alleged “virtuousness” embodied by the other women in the town emboldens them to behave like men. These women act. When Malena traipses through the town centre to tend to her elderly and infirm father, she lowers her gaze. In return, every other inhabitant dissects her with theirs, and punctuates her journey and existence with dehumanising commentary, with this eventually amounting to a harrowing public beating from the women unto Malena.
There were countless moments when I wanted to reach through my laptop’s screen, grab Malena by the shoulders, and shake her screaming, “LASH OUT! YOU HAVE AGENCY!” Though I imagine she was only crafted to become a limp rag doll in my grasp and gaze at the floor mournfully. This is not something I would watch again, though I do think everyone should watch it once, to understand how men approach this subject matter. If I am watching a film about misogyny, I would like to see some form of justice - and maybe I expected too much of something produced not only solely by men, pre #MeToo, but by the very man who catapulted the movement into the mainstream.
Everyone say thank you, Harvey.