Last night I did a small part, a very small part, in contributing financially to the protest pro-choice Americans have been making in the streets since Friday.
I don't know to what extent movie rentals are considered a form of expressing your displeasure with something -- in reality, almost none. But I thought it was important not only to watch Eliza Hittman's 2020 abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always on Monday night, but to pay for that rental -- even if it may have been available on one of my streaming services, which I didn't even check.
Maybe it's just important for me. After all, the first two times I wrote about this movie was to complain about how much it cost.
I could link those posts but I won't, possibly due to retroactive shame. But I'll summarize.
The first was the first time I had encountered a $19.99 iTunes rental price for a movie, which I obviously did not pay. That has since become commonplace, but it was a new pandemic novelty at the time, so I thought it was worth writing about, with a small amount of faux outrage.
The second time was when I went to see when it would be available for rental at the non-premiere initial price, and that rental date was still more than seven months away. The only option at this time was to buy it, which I don't believe in doing on principle. So again I didn't watch it.
If it could play the smallest role in Roe v. Wade still being the law of the land in the U.S., I'd buy that movie ten times over.
I didn't buy it last night. I still rented it. Now it's only $3.99. I still don't believe in buying movies I haven't seen, unless it's very specific circumstances -- like trying to finish watching Martin Scorsese's movies for a series I'm doing on my blog, and only being able to watch New York, New York if I bought it on DVD. Apparently this principle is a stronger belief in me than my belief that a woman should have the right to choose.
But of course neither buying the movie nor renting it means a damn thing. I can't accomplish anything with my piddly little rental any more than the protestors in the streets, who are really doing something, will be able accomplish anything, unfortunately. Clarence Thomas only listens to protestors when he and his wife believe in what they're doing, like trying to overthrow the U.S. government.
But I do like to think that somebody, somewhere, tabulating iTunes rentals for a two-year-old movie, will see that I rented it on this particular day and will know what that means. It's one more small voice in the chorus decrying this travesty of justice.
The movie is pretty powerful, sneakily so. I say "sneakily" because Hittman's film deals in understatement. We know how awful this trek to New York to get an abortion is for a pregnant Pennsylvania teen and her cousin, not because the movie tells us this, but because it gets incredible mileage out of facial expressions, monosyllabic responses that reveal so much underneath that isn't said. And between the lines of this movie, we see how toxic men have put these girls in this position, and how they continue to do so, even when they are in the midst of it.
Kind of like the toxic men who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
They've won. They're laughing. Clarence and Ginny Thomas are giving each other high fives every hour on the hour.
Maybe our opposing voices, joining together in a chorus, will one day be enough to set things right again.
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