Barbie
Last week I saw the Barbie movie. Many of the other cinema-goers were dressed in pink, in homage to Barbie's favourite colour which dominated the film's set and costume design (incidentally contributing to a global shortage of pink paint.)
It was fun, but I've never been interested in pink. I'm more of a purple girl myself. A quick scan of the internet tells me that purple is associated with spirituality and imagination, as well as a more traditional connection to royalty – itself a reflection of purple's status as an exclusive and desirable pigment. Kate Smith, a colour professional, adds that “Purple is cheerful–whimsical and playful. It’s associated with an escape from reality and magical images.”
But back to Barbie. When I was growing up, I didn't play with Barbies. I preferred plush animal cuddly toys to dolls, although I did have a favourite and much-loved baby doll named Karethy. Even now, my comfort zone remains pretty well-entrenched in this pattern: the fond affectionate reach of the maternal and the soft cuddliness of furry pets. When I was growing up, it was other girls who played with Barbies and collected extensive wardrobes of minute clothing and tiny stilettos. And now? It's other women who shop the high street fashions for leisure and adorn themselves with makeup and accessories.
Yet life is a curious thing. In my middle age, I am wondering about my inner Barbie. In my preference for purple, have I missed out on pink? Is it time to choose something new to play with?
unpsychology
Yesterday we published the ninth issue of Unpsychology Magazine, in its first part. The beautiful layout of this issue was created by my co-editor Lesley Maclean and its musical dimension by sound editor Patrick Carpenter, along with the Imaginings Ensemble.
My favourite piece in issue 9.1 is Jason Young's essay, “From slaying to staying (with) the trouble.” Young explores the journeys of the heroines of three films: Alice (of Alice in Wonderland,) Chihiro (of Spirited Away) and Dorothy (of The Wizard of Oz.)
In the essay, he states that
Beyond models of the patriarchal hero as the one who makes plans (i.e. determines a desirable future), sets out (i.e. asserts their autonomy) and conquers evil forces (i.e. masters an unruly chaos), we find in these works heroes of a very different sort. Without a full understanding of how they arrived in their predicament, nor possessing a clear way forward, the young female protagonists of these stories nonetheless proceed by befriending and integrating the novelty of their strange new world. Theirs is an ongoing negotiation with ambiguity and sympoietic ‘making-with’ that requires adaptive awareness, empathy and openness to an ever-shifting and unpredictable environment. They do not so much achieve solutions to their (often intractable) problems as they attain periodic culminations of events that emerge from with(in) a relational space of participation — a space where often the framing of the problem itself is transformed.
I would certainly add Barbie to this analysis. In the film, Barbie and Ken venture away from Barbieland into the Real World, where they follow very different paths. Barbie seeks out and honours the wisdom of girls and women, while Ken discovers the thrill of patriarchy.
The film very cleverly and compassionately finds a satisfactory denouement to this conflict of interest – but going into details would constitute a spoiler (so I won't.) Suffice to say that Barbie stays with the trouble.
desire
I've always been intimidated by desire. It contains an implied lack that seems somehow shameful, and connected to the cardinal sin of envy. Yet I recently stumbled across an incredibly restorative article: “How to put your envy to good use” by Josh Gressel. He writes
Envy is a door to your personal underworld. Rather than shunning this door for fear of where it will lead, I suggest you learn to open it to explore the riches awaiting on the other side... What you will find is this: Envy is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. It is a sign there is something right with you that you aren't claiming.
A friend of mine has encouraged me to write about my desires – a formidable assignment, for sure. I didn't think I would manage it, but then I realised that it fits very well within the theme of unpsychology: Imaginings. Desires are no more than imaginings, playful and experimental. Right?
Well, not according to Andreas Weber, in his fascinating book Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology. I was led to this book through a reference in Imaginings – via the article by Tempist Jade entitled “Pandemonious revelations: the terra-fying mystery of belonging.” Weber points out that desire is utterly grounded in and embedded within our biology as living organisms.
… we have to get used to looking at life-forms with new eyes – eyes that no longer consider them as comprehensively optimized mechanical artifacts, but as beings that want to survive, beings for whom a continuing existence has an absolute value that suffuses everything that they do with a feeling of desire for being and with a fear of failure.
… The laws of desire frame the principles according to which life-forms experience all instances of bodily concern as existentially meaningful. A life-form can fail at any time - and therefore it wants to survive. Because of this existential life wish, the world of organisms is not a neutral stage, but one deeply steeped in values and meaning. Its principles – the wish for continued existence, the visibility of this life wish as an emotional expression, and the necessary presence of other beings to enable one's own life – make up the ground rules of desire according to which living matter pushes toward unfolding.
So rather than slotting desire into the imaginal realm, where it hovers about in ethereal idealism, what happens when I bring it into its rightful place, at the heart of my existence as a living being? Our world suffers deeply from the artificial separation demanded by Platonic and Cartesian dualisms: the mad is separated from the sane, the rational from the magical, desire from matter. What happens when we bring these all together, mix up the pinks and the purples, and embrace all our messy, contradictory, paradoxical elements as biological, imagining creatures? What happens is this: we step into madreality.
madreality
I'm still feeling my way into what I mean by madreality, but when I think about Barbie, and unpsychology, and desire, I get a step closer. Madreality is a state of broken wholeness that holds together all the fragments of the human and other-than-human condition. Good and bad, broken and whole, serious and playful, full of desire and utterly contented, earthy and frivolous, crazy and grounded... like the teasing glimpse of a mirage, madreality offers itself to anyone who surrenders to its magical potential. We're not one or the other; we're all this and more.