“She’ll come back as fire
To burn all the liars
And leave a blanket of ash on the ground.”
— Nirvana, “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”
It’s her birthday today.
When Nirvana’s album In Utero came out in 1993, I couldn’t believe my eyes: the 5th track was called “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.” I was already well-versed in Frances Farmer. I saw as many of her movies as I could get my hands on, and watched the Jessica Lange movie many times. I read her autobiography Will There Really Be a Morning? I read Real-Life Drama, Wendy Smith’s exhaustive history of The Group Theatre (which everyone should read: it’s such an important part of our shared cultural past, particularly what happened with all of these individuals as the 20th century limped on). Seattle was Farmer’s hometown, but I hadn’t considered the connection, that she would be on Kurt Cobain’s radar … but of course it makes perfect sense. Seattle, the small-minded unforgiving community, ran the teenage Frances out of town on a rail for having the AUDACITY to write an essay about atheism, and for being a TRAITOR to her country by traveling to Communist Russia. Hollywood wasn’t the first to ostracize her. Seattle was the first. Hollywood was the LAST, And here Kurt Cobain was, the biggest rock star in the world at the time, resurrecting her as an avenging angel. She was coming back to Seattle and she was PISSED.
The year before In Utero came out, Cobain and Courtney Love had a daughter. They named her Frances.
Immortalized by Jessica Lange in the 1982 film Frances, the real actress deserves to be remembered in her own right. She never got the chance to really show her stuff … and was frustrated with both the roles she was given and how Hollywood soft-pedaled or white-washed reality.
Frances Farmer cared deeply about reality. After all, when she was a teenager she won a contest by writing an essay about how God was dead. The prize was a trip to Russia. Even as a kid, Frances Farmer did not give a fuck what people thought. She was a rebel and an outlaw.
People like that are often labeled mentally ill, are often marginalized, stigmatized, outright punished. The rumors and speculations around Farmer’s mental diagnosis have clouded the conversation for decades. In the film, she is shown getting a lobotomy. This “fact” has been called into question. So. It would be great if it could be cleared up – just so “lobotomy” is not the first damn thing you think of when you hear Frances Farmer’s name. But the fact remains: she was hounded and persecuted and dragged naked out of hotel rooms and thrown in jail and put into institutions – horrifying places – where all kinds of shit was done to her. The “treatment” of mental illness was often worse than the illness itself.
Farmer was such a talented actress (watch Come and Get It, if you haven’t already), but she wasn’t a people-pleaser. This brought her a lot of problems. She was well-read, tough, thought for herself. Her temper was ferocious and often terrifying. She was an alcoholic. A witches’ brew of volatility. Considering all this, her belief in reality – her insistence on it – may seem like a contradiction.
An important side bar about this “reality” thing, because if we want to de-stigmatize mental illness, like “we” keep saying we have to do, then “we” have to actually do some work to understand it. (Well, I don’t. I already know.) Trust me: it is often the “mad” who have a better grip on what is REALLY going on than so-called sane stable people. The “mad” KNOW reality’s solidity because they have experienced solidity’s dissolution. They don’t take solidity for granted. Mental suffering can lead to a willingness to look reality head-on and face harsh truths. Those muscles are well-flexed in the “mad,” not as much in the “well.” This is one of the great observations of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Justine, incapacitated by mental illness, is not afraid when the end of the world comes. She stares at it dead-on. Her sister, so stable, so sane, falls apart.
I have always sensed this dynamic was true, just from my own life. People called me pessimistic or fatalistic. Nah. I’m a realist. I am better equipped for actual reality because I have no illusions. Thank you, Lars von Trier: I have never seen this portrayed. So many narratives about mental illness have the ill person working their way back to sanity, finding the ability to feel joy again, to live in the moment, to blah blah zzzzzzzz. How about we look at what the SANE can learn from the INSANE?
This is not to say that Frances Farmer didn’t have challenges and that she didn’t put other people through hell. Her self-medicating was advanced, her drunkenness was acute. The more trapped she felt, the worse she got. If you are trapped, you will try to escape. The more you “misbehave”, the more people treat you like you’re bad and “crazy” and the cycle continues.
Farmer believed strongly in Left causes (consider her teenage visit to Russia). She questioned authority, she questioned consensus. Seen in this light, her involvement in the Group Theatre – taking Broadway by storm in the 1930s – makes perfect sense. She wanted to be a part of that dynamic: art that meant something, art that reflected people’s actual lives and hardships. She got cast as Lorna Moon in the Broadway premiere of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy, opposite Luther Adler as Joe, the boxer/violinist. Elia Kazan played Eddie Fuselli, the gangster who sucks Joe into the criminal underworld, for probably homoerotic reasons (Kazan played it that way, at any rate). Farmer loved being a part of something she believed in, being part of a collective. She was so isolated in Hollywood. Nobody understood her out there. Nobody liked her (and sometimes they disliked her for very good reasons!) Lorna Moon is a dream role, particularly for someone like Farmer, hungry to show her stuff. Lorna is a tough-as-nails “kept” woman, a gangster’s moll, who – when she does fall in love – experiences it as PAIN, since it is so unfamiliar and her life has been so harsh, particularly in regards to men who have used her, probably from the moment she developed breasts. She was prey. She grew up fast. This is Lorna Moon. Lorna Moon was a realist too. No illusions. Farmer understood this woman. She got good reviews. I wish I could have seen her in it.
Luther Adler and Frances Farmer, “Golden Boy”, 1938
The Group Theatre was well up and running when Farmer joined the cast of Golden Boy. Its successes changed the course of American theatre, introducing new voices and structures and styles, making everything else seem outmoded and stuffy, but, sadly, it had only two more years left in its existence at the time of Golden Boy. Farmer stepped into a well-oiled and extremely complicated group dynamic, filled with rivalries, hatreds even, disillusionments, bruised egos, ideological/political disagreements … These entanglements would follow the Group Theatre members through the decades, when they went their separate ways, many of them becoming the legendary acting teachers who brought “the Method” – and its offshoots – to American acting training. People like Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg.
Elia Kazan and Frances Farmer, “Golden Boy”, 1938
My sense from what I’ve read is that Farmer adored the process, loved every second of it – collaboration, in-depth rehearsals, a feeling of camaraderie – but also … she wasn’t quite a “part” of it. The group was so much a group, it didn’t do well with outsiders. All of this was complicated by her hot and heavy love affair with Clifford Odets.
My deep thanks to Benjamin Dreyer (author of Dreyer’s English) who sent me this screengrab of a book which Odets inscribed to Farmer, in 1937, thanking her for her work in Golden Boy. I gasped when I saw this.
Odets was a womanizer. I think Farmer thought their relationship was more than it was. And I think she harbored somewhat reasonable hopes that she would continue on with the Group Theatre, becoming a company member for real. This is not how it played out. Odets dumped her. The Group dropped her after the closing of Golden Boy in New York, and chose another actress for the London run. Farmer was crushed. The company was in death throes at the time … And of course there was some resentment among long-time company members at Farmer’s presence, an “outsider” brought in to play a plumb lead role. They were supposed to be a repertory company, they were supposed to cast plays from their ranks. It was the whole POINT. Maybe Farmer felt a little bit used, like they only “let her in” because she was a movie actress who could bring in an audience. I don’t blame Farmer for feeling used and hurt.
Whatever was really going on (and everyone has a different story), Farmer was devastated twofold: by the end of the affair with Odets as well as losing the opportunity to take Lorna to London. She did a couple more plays in New York with the Group, directed by Kazan, but the plays didn’t go over well (The Group folded in 1940) and her alcoholism was pretty severe by this time. She was not reliable. She was losing control.
I love this portrait of her by the great Edward Steichen. It captures something about her, her essence, her spirit.
Things went downhill at a rapid pace. Back in Los Angeles, the arrests piled up, for driving drunk, for disorderly conduct, for assault even, for resisting arrest. There is the infamous story of her being dragged out of the Knickerbocker Hotel kicking and screaming, hauled off to jail, all as the paparazzi snapped pics. When asked at the police station to state her profession, she said, “Cocksucker” and then winked at the cameras. She laughed. In the photos, her hair is wild, uncombed. She looks feral, furious, formidable.
Dammit, I LIKE that woman, seething, staring at the camera dead-on. Unrepentant. Trapped. Furious. I fucking get it.
These pictures of Farmer went everywhere, and they are still the first images in Google results. This event was the end of her career, really, and the beginning of her harrowing race to the bottom.
If you don’t know her story, and you haven’t seen the film Frances, then of course you should go and see the film – just to witness Lange’s tremendous performance – but go into it with the understanding that it takes liberties with the facts (as most biopics do).
The best thing you can do is seek out Farmer’s actual work in film, and see what she was like onscreen. She was luminous. She was an adult woman, not an ingenue. Watch her in Come and Get It, her best role (half directed by Howard Hawks – the better half – and half directed by William Wyler). In it, her toughness was present, and you get the sense of a woman who can take care of herself, a woman with a sense of humor. A Howard Hawks woman, in other words. It’s a very attractive mix. This is a Lorna Moon kind of character, so Come and Get It is a glimpse of what she must have been like in Golden Boy.
I came across a poem Farmer wrote in 1957 called “The Journey”. The quotes heading each section add up to Philippians 4:11.
The Journey
NORTH
“Not that I speak of want…”
If in Seattle then, the rain still
Mingles in the trees mixed with the dank and dearly loved grey spume off Puget Sound
Who will remember?
I feel the source but I long since have torn myself away
Against the rock and rain of other shores
My roots are breaking
Oh mother who closely clung and fiercely fought the native years, How can it be that only in defeat you found your strength?
Retreat, retreat in peace and grieve
The gray sky covers all and still it rains on Puget Sound and still the tree lies shattered.
SOUTH
“But I have learned..”
Along the rim of Hawks Nest Bay
A growth of trees drop shade
The red ant swarms green water hisses over reef
And I walk naked on the shore
As smooth as white as snow
The sand stretched under the sun
Black aching shoulders of rock rise in silence
Where is the island of peace?
The green hill with grasses?
Deep in the dangerous sea the shark fin passes.
EAST
“in whatsoever state I am..”
Now richly droops wisteria bloom
While elegant bugs on separate flourishing leaf
Luxuriously maneuver
If we are silent while we feel
How quiet is the night with jasmine
If we but hold our breaths one second
while the wind is busy out to sea
How sharp will seem the sting
Of slug and ant attacking blossoms.
WEST
“there with to be content…”
The day breaks out of infinity
And across the stunning fire blue sunrise
Death approaches
Now I deny the dream
Now I see how pitifully I fail
Let the earth rising up to greet this landing
Reject me
Let the winds move in and out of space
And claim me
Let it cease let it finish
let me not face this mystery
But the plane landed
Goodbye she said
into the day’s brightness
The plane departed.
Frances Farmer’s story is one of the most tragic in Hollywood history because the bare bones of it suggest so strongly it didn’t HAVE to go that way. If everyone just calmed down and took a BREATH … if she quit drinking, if she had a little bit more support, if, if, if … she might not have been so wild, her career might have been more fulfilling, she could have been spared demonization, ostracization. There’s something haunting about her. Kurt Cobain knew the score. Frances Farmer lived many years after the terrible period of the 30s-40s. She continued to work, albeit sporadically – television, theater … although she was mostly forgotten by that point. She stayed busy with hobbies. But … what if?
She was difficult, brazen, she acted out, she was not always in control. I wonder though: who the hell IS? Rigid people are always in control! No thank you! Social media turned up the heat under the control-requirement. You must perform yourself perfectly at all times. You must always watch what you say. You must be completely packaged. This is not a normal way for human beings to live. (Not for celebrities and not for normal people, and social media blends those categories.) People crack under the pressure. When people crack under the pressure, onlookers bust out their pitchforks, ready to drive the cracking person out of town. (I always think of the South Park episode, where Britney Spears, clearly in the midst of a full-blown psychotic break at the time, is offered up as a human sacrifice. The South Park episode – and Craig Ferguson’s heartfelt monologue about Britney were two of the most biting critiques of not just the media’s feeding frenzy, but the public’s. (And listen to how the audience starts laughing when Ferguson brings up Britney. A mental crack-up is FUNNY, get it?) This is why I give a side-eye to a lot of the platitudinous “we need to de-stigmatize mental illness” commentary. I have gone on about this for years, most recently in the wake of Sinead O’Connor’s death. Okay. If you say shit like “let’s de-stigmatize mental illness”, good for you, and if you back it up with commentary showing you know what you’re talking about: I am all for it. But you best believe I will be watching you very very closely for what you say and do during a public crack-up like Britney – or Amanda Bynes – or Elizabeth Wurtzel – or etc. What happens when people behave badly? Or do you only de-stigmatize mental illness when someone DOESN’T behave badly? Do you factor in mental illness’ tendency to “present” in bad erratic behavior? Like, this is what it looks like. It’s not pretty. Do you de-stigmatize it THEN? Or are you being judgey about bad behavior? Are you making fun? I’ll be watching. Not sure what these people think a crack-up looks like. Do they think it looks socially acceptable? I always say, if I was world-famous in 2009, I would have been made fun of relentlessly, mocked, hounded, criticized, for my outrageous behavior, when what was happening was … I should have been in a hospital, not wandering the streets. This is not an EXCUSE for terrible behavior, but it is an EXPLANATION. De-stigmatizing mental illness means knowing what it looks like when someone goes off the rails.
The more you are required to be in control, the more you are dominated by society/peer pressure/intersecting pressures – the harder it is to stay within the lines.
The more you are required to follow a given script, the more irresistible it is to say “Cocksucker” when some judgmental bitch asks you what you do for a living. And you say it just to see the shocked look on her face. And her shocked expression makes you laugh. You light a cigarette and grin at the camera. Just to remind everyone – and to remind yourself – that you are free.
That’s Frances Farmer.
God, that poem is beautiful.
I recall getting In Utero when it came out and reading the song list. “Frances Farmer?” I then remembered the Seattle connection. Kurt knew history.
It’s been a long time since I saw the Jessica Lange movie but I recall a scene where Clifford Odets is tearing the petals off roses and throwing them onto a bed with white sheets, nothing but lust in his eyes. One of the sexiest scenes I can think of.
Come and Get It would be the best place to start with Frances?
Yes – Clifford throwing the petals, and her being seduced! He was very passionate, very manipulative, and literally could not be monogamous. He put women through HELL.
Come and Get It is definitely the movie to see. It’s a weird one – it’s based on a book by Edna Ferber about the logging business in the PNW (speaking of Seattle) – and Edna Ferber of course was a die-hard Left-wing activist – her book was a conservationist book, all about the rapacious destruction of the land from the logging industry – this was right up Frances Farmer’s alley. The production got confused however – Howard Hawks was assigned to direct and he promptly lost interest in the hard-hitting POINT of the movie (the logging industry is bad) and became fascinated by what he always was fascinated by – men and women and sexual tension. So he turned it into a Howard Hawks movie – where a sassy tough dame (Farmer) trades witty sexually charged barbs with a man – Hawks basically got rid of the main adversary and propped up a lesser character to be the romantic lead – Howard Hawks didn’t give two shits about putting out a message movie. Edna Ferber must have been like WTF have you done to my book. Samuel Goldwyn saw a rough cut of some of the scenes and flipped out. Hawks was OUT and then William Wyler was brought on – another weird choice because he was mostly known for melodramas and his work with Bette Davis – INTERIOR movies, drawing rooms and polite society … If you know Hawks’ and Wyler’s work you can almost tell when Wyler took over, because suddenly there are all these scenes in drawing rooms. lol
So the production was a mess – and the movie is completely confused – it’s split into two and one half has nothing to do with the other half – but yeah, she’s great in it – and there are some great scenes (she was also surrounded by a terrific cast).
God, she looks so much like Tuesday Weld.
Good to “see” you Melissa! You’re right!
I really appreciative this..very much ….as someone who has mental illness , which I hope does not have a bad effect on me knowing you…..”.it is often the “mad” who have a better grip on what is REALLY going on than so-called sane stable people. ” which is really true
She was an amazing woman and actor ..really enjoyed reading this
Jeanie – thank you so much! I feel very strongly about that one thought you quote and I am glad you agree!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
This is so on-target! I’m mentally ill myself and have acted out in public. I was aware of what was happening but I didn’t care. So I was beating a bunch of cardboard boxes in front of my building with another cardboard box, who cared? (My doorman, who gently led me inside.)
Ohhh thank goodness for gentle doormen!
Acting out in public is often PART of these conditions – and yet we give people no grace. We don’t factor it in. Britney Spears is the clearest example I can think of (of famous people). She was ILL and people just stood around and gawked and criticized. God, it was awful to watch from afar. And it keeps happening again and again and again. Which is why I keep writing about it, lol.
“Or do you only de-stigmatize mental illness when someone DOESN’T behave badly?”
Oh, yes. The way people immediately dropped FreeBritney after she got free of the conservatorship and started talking all over again about her “weird behavior” on social media and siding with the detractors in her life makes me really angry.
Oh yes, great example. It was (and continues to be) so infuriating. The woman is obviously mentally unwell – like, this is not news. I am not sure what these people think it is going to look like. They were all full of themselves calling for her to be freed and then recoiled when she kept “acting weird.” They wanted her to be sane and happy and “grateful” and they didn’t want her to be all MESSY.
Dilettantes. How did they expect she would act after everything she’s been through?
How can this tendency be stopped? It just keeps happening and it’s upsetting every time. We keep talking about educating people about mental health but … this kind of thing keeps happening. and it will happen again. No grace is given to someone when they are literally at the point where they need it MOST.
It’s maddening.
There was a post on Tumblr right after she won her case that went something like ‘Now that Britney is free, she is eventually going to do things that are strange and off-putting, because that is what years of trauma and mental illness does to a person. We should not use this to question whether or not she should really be free; instead we should support her right to be free even more.’ And I really wish this was the mindset of more people.
“They wanted her to be sane and happy and “grateful” and they didn’t want her to be all MESSY.”
The ’oh Britney, no’ response post-trial really ticks me off. It’s almost like people thought she OWED the public “normal” behavior after it rallied behind her, and they’re disappointed she didn’t deliver.
“No grace is given to someone when they are literally at the point where they need it MOST.”
Exactly. Exactly. What do they *think* rock bottom looks like? Or even the aftermath of rock bottom?
’oh Britney, no’
I haaated the “oh Britney no” vibe. This is such a deep topic and I have such strong feelings about it. in 2013, I think, Elizabeth Wurtzel of Prozac Nation fame – published a rather unhinged-sounding op-ed about her life. It was compulsively readable because she was a good writer. but … she was writing about her life without any perspective, she wrote from WITHIN the madness. and the REACTION to it was just appalling. people recoiled. wrote judgmental “think pieces” about how selfish and “navel-gazing” and “problematic” she was. It’s like all along even with all the praise she got for Prozac Nation – it’s like all along nobody ever really knew what she was actually talking about – which was mental imbalance from the inside. Like, what did they THINK it looked like? even I read the piece and thought “my God doesn’t this woman have friends she can reach out to? this should not have been published.” It was NAKED. But clearly she had burned a lot of bridges because of her behavior. (and I don’t blame friends and family for getting tapped out. It’s a difficult subject. I understand people close to her needing to back off.) so she put it all out there in print. I wrote a whole piece about it – and I was actually going through an actual crack-up when I wrote the piece – hahaha – so I think I took it a little personally, how judgmental everyone was about that piece. Because …. we do all this talk talk about understanding mental illness but then we reject it when it’s really, sorry, CRAZY. Like … yes. the woman is “crazy”. she’s been telling you that all along. This is what it looks like. stop JUDGING her. she clearly needs help – and I don’t blame people for not wanting to deal with it – but she’s SICK.
there’s a kind of comment like “well I suffer from anxiety and I don’t act like an asshole.” I hate to say it because suffering isn’t the Olympics but maybe if you don’t act like an asshole, then maybe your anxiety isn’t as bad as the person in question? Like, do you even know what an illness is?
this is a tough subject because then people think you’re “excusing” bad behavior. No. but there are extenuating circumstances that give context. same with drug addiction. “i was on crack at the time” IS an explanation. and if you’ve committed a crime while on crack then you still have to go to jail but at least let’s have some understanding of what addiction is – AND how if we have what they call “trauma informed” understanding of addiction, then maybe we can give people some grace, and also a chance to put themselves together.
We aren’t who we are at our worst moment. we shouldn’t forever be labeled as who we are at our worst. (well, unless you’re a serial killer or something).
Yes, I think context really helps. I think (hope?) people these days have a better understanding of what it’s like to “be in a bad place”; but we have to be prepared for HOW bad it can get.
Thanks for the link!
“But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence”
Oh, wow, yes. As someone who has definitely lost her shit over articles of clothing I can’t find RIGHT NOW, articles that have disappeared on the Internet, and things like that, this speaks to me. The worst part is, you KNOW it’s the mental illness talking, but you keep digging deeper anyway.
Oof, that Wurtzel piece is really a difficult read. Yeah, you can feel her digging her heels in, and she is very harsh on other people the way most of us with diagnoses can be (only, she actually voices this out instead of keeping it to herself like most of us do).
“I did not expect, not ever, to be scared to death.”
This is so real though. So much of it is rooted it “what ifs” and fear.
Wurtzel’s piece really is so real. By the end she’s declaring basically that SHE is brave enough to live in this pure risky way and everyone else is kind of … sheep with layers of protection – but SHE knows the secret, SHE is brave.
This really hit home. I have those tendencies. They ran amok when I was really sick – and I punished the “happy” people in my life for having the things I wanted. Then I moved into another phase where I was just like Wurtzel – You all have it easy, but I am brave enough to face the void by myself!!
I’m sure there are pieces on this here site which have that vibe. Maybe the dreaded Triangle piece which … when I re-read it I shiver. I sound INSANE. with the logic of the truly insane. But I figured I should keep it up because it is a good reminder of what it looks like (for me anyway). I have told my friends that if I ever start talking in apocalyptic ways about Triangles again to tell me to knock it off. lol so it’s now become a joke. I’ll say something MILDLY deep and one of them will murmur, “Triangle.” lol
But yeah. I’m not famous so … I didn’t blast that shit out in New York magazine. Yikes.
So I read that piece and recognized myself in it – and shivered. And then was hurt – but not surprised – at the judgmental response to it. It’s complicated. I could be like “yes she sounds like she’s in a really really bad place but … I GET IT.”
There’s this myth that mental illness is … sympathetic. This is one of the by-products of destigmatizing it to such a degree that everyone can claim it now. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel. Because a lot of the mean-spirited commentary comes from people who claim their mental diagnoses in their Twitter bios. so it’s like “listen, I have really bad anxiety and I’m an introvert but I’m not an asshole.” << I can't help but wonder if responses like that come from an unwillingness to admit how annoying you can be when you're sick. Like, you don't WANT to 'see yourself' in Wurtzel (at least in that piece). You have to "tell on yourself" - and even with all the "confessional" stuff out there - I think people aren't "telling on themselves" like she did. People "share" but it's palatable, it's performative. The internet has done a number on self-expression. Wurtzel came up ragged and the old-fashioned way. Her death made me so sad because she was obviously so alone at the end.
and Prozac Nation was good! so was Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. It’s all very Gen-X-zeitgeist – which I think was probably a burden for her, like “voice of a generation” burden – but still, you HAD to read them. she was everywhere – and the books were good!
So if you were a fan of her in real time in the mid-late 90s – that New York mag piece was … really sad.
Okay I found the piece I wrote about Wurtzel – I was also writing about F Scott Fitzgerald’s controversial essay “The Crack-Up” – which got a similar recoil reaction – people thought it was embarrassing that he would write so openly about his “crack-up”.
https://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=61473
Amanda Bynes’ “crack up” is another good example of what we’re talking about. In my memory, the reaction to her getting in all this trouble, and “acting out” – was all jokes, and faux-horror and PTA-parent judgment – and now, after watching that doc about the shitshow that was Nickelodeon – and how close she was to the center of it – I hope some people look back on how they responded to her crackup – with jokes, with snark – feel ashamed of themselves. she was a CHILD. and even if we didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes, it was obvious SOMEthing was.
I hope she’s doing okay now.
Oh, Amanda Bynes. I watched her on TV growing up. When all these Disney/Nick kids started growing up, there was always this chatter about how they were a “trainwreck,” and “acting out,” when there were obviously shady things going on behind the scenes. I’m glad that documentary cracked it all open and made people more aware.
Last I heard, she was seeking out a more lowkey job in entertainment. I hope she gets all that she wants in the world.
Yes – the fact that she didn’t participate in that documentary is (I hope) a sign of health, of keeping her privacy and moving on. I don’t know if you’ve been following along with everyone else, those interviewed – Shane Bell (yikes), Alexa Nichols (yikes) … it’s like their trauma was blasted out there and they all started to self-destruct. which, again, is … not a surprise. It’s a tragedy all around. Very glad that documentary was made, though. I was not in the demographic who watched Nickelodeon – I was in my 20s – and some of the footage of these shows was just … shocking to me. Those who emerged unscathed – or at least strong enough to make their own way – like Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande – like, how did they do it?? what was their secret?
Not sure if that madness rabbit hole I just fell in is helping or not, at the moment — oh well.
It’s interesting to read all this in retrospect – I had no idea this was going on at the time, had never heard of Wurtzel. I often struggle with the idea of self pity – I often feel like it’s a label used to dismiss any sincere attempt to describe our own sufferings. But if you are detached, you don’t look in enough pain to deserve help – or to write about it, because you have to PROVE that you have the right LABEL, lest you get accused of appropriating a pain that isn’t yours. If you’re rigid and defiant in the middle of whatever storm you’re in, you’re unpleasant, too crazy, and/or “glib.” It’s like you can only “win” by being normal enough, which… is the whole fucking problem in the first, place, so really, if you’re crazy enough, what are you going to do?
I’m so interested about that conversation about madness and writers’ craft, and I do see the point you made about her maybe not having worked hard enough at it. She wrote //I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty, and the only way I am able to write that way is by being that way.//
But it also seems like she had not been fortunate enough to find an editor who encouraged her to, maybe, sit on that piece for a month or two and revisit it before publishing it.
There’s also something very specific to that generation and time period, in that, maybe? Along with grunge, in yer face theatre, and etc., an urge and the means to put out work fairly quickly, a sort of immediacy… that ironically we kind of lost now we COULD do it even more easily, but everything is controlled by algorithms and so most of what you see is what is palatable, and what is palatable is rehearsed and polished and standardized and blah.
Although people often call me an extremist, I think it would be nice if we could find a happy medium between bland bullshit and things so raw that self destructive behaviour is almost encouraged. Obviously it shouldn’t only come down to whether you’re as talented as Fitzgerald, because, well, no one is (“the tin cup of self-pity” — dude!). As someone speaking from the mediocre basket — I’m not putting Wurtzel in that basket, maybe I should just call it the “could improve” basket, the “need some polishing basket”, I find that we’re in a period where it’s mostly “nice” writers that get encouraged. In courses, in reviews, on Substack — whatever. I go on Substack and everyone sounds the fucking same and it makes me want to blown my brains out.
And unfortunately it also sometimes makes me want to double down on being bad. BUT I do work at it. I must be a bit of a masochist for keeping participating in poetry workshops, there are people who are good, and… as one of the others, I don’t get any helpful feedback. Listen, Becca, yes roses are nice and the lake represents death, well done, both of our poems sucks, but at least mine as personality, and a specific perspective? But I’m not always PLEASANT. Reading all those comments from 2013 and seeing what gets published and what gets traction now, I miss those remnant from the 90s that at least had some teeth.
I didn’t know who Amanda Bynes was until I googled her this morning, and the whole Britney 2007 crack-up was too far from me at the time. But I had very similar feelings, I think, about Amy Winehouse. She was on covers of trashy magazines and the butt of the joke, and I could not fucking stomach it. I couldn’t understand how people could laugh at someone who was obviously in so much pain? If I had been in the public eye, I would have had the same kind of shit happen, I just was not interesting/talented enough, THANK GOD. But the contempt of people who just want pleasant and quiet is the same.
// In the middle of a crack-up, reminding yourself of the orphans in the Sudan does nothing but to re-entrench the disease and make you feel like a Worthless Piece of Shit for being so Selfish.//
hahaha ffffffffuck me
yeah Wurtzel was a massive deal – at least here. Prozac Nation was a PHENOM. Made into a film even. And Wurtzel had this gonzo tell-it-all vibe that was truly exciting – nobody had blogs, this “confessional” thing was something new, at least from my generation. Or it was part of a larger “fuck you” that Gen X went through when we came of age and started getting made fun of for talking about our feelings. lol Like people mocked Kurt Cobain for his openness about his struggles – he wasn’t “manly”. And there were all these “fuck being ladylike” vibes – this was before the early 2000s when suddenly there was this weird shift – to a really misogynistic sexualized vibe again. My friends who were born just 10 years after me – and went through their 20s in the early 2000s had a whole different TRIP put on them than those of us literally just before, who came of age with Liz Phair and Kathleen Hanna and Courtney Love. I don’t know. It was a great zeitgeist shift as we moved into the internet age and Wurtzel was “pre” internet. Prozac Nation was a hell of a book title!! She was an exhibitionist about her pain and it made people uncomfortable – but it got everyone talking about these important issues – which we STILL need to talk about.
// ironically we kind of lost now we COULD do it even more easily, but everything is controlled by algorithms and so most of what you see is what is palatable, and what is palatable is rehearsed and polished and standardized and blah. //
This is really interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
I am thinking of Emily Gould – who also may seem kind of “niche” now – but at the time, the rise of the internet, and the rise of Gawker in particular – she was HUGE. and very public about everything. She was not well liked. she’s still out there, and still pissing people off. it’s weird though – like, even though she was a ubiquitous internet presence in the early-mid 2000s – there seems to be less OF her in evidence than Wurtzel – who was just a couple years before. Like, Gawker is done. That was years of Gould’s work. If you were at all tapped into New York media in the mid-2000s – and I worked in New York media – Gawker was a daily pitstop – Emily Gould was everywhere. She has written a couple of lengthy pieces for New York magazine and she has that “confessional” thing going on – she “tells on herself’ – like Wurtzel does. She isn’t interested in being “empowering” or a “good example”. She lets it all hang out. I don’t think she’s the writer that Wurtzel is – and … her time at Gawker revealed a pettiness … which was all part of that time, the “voice” that rose with the internet – which still plagues us!
// I find that we’re in a period where it’s mostly “nice” writers that get encouraged. In courses, in reviews, on Substack — whatever. I go on Substack and everyone sounds the fucking same and it makes me want to blown my brains out. //
I know!! I just read an interesting piece about this – I think it was on Substack, lol. I’ll see if I can find it.
Things get ironed out. The pieces that get the most traction are the ones that are List-driven (5 things I watched this weekend), and the voice (especially if it’s a woman) is adorable and “relatable” – no spiky edges. One of the things I really miss is women who talk about the mess of life, and include themselves. The problem with admitting negative things about yourself on the internet is that people will come for you – they will “pile on” – which is, again, just evidence of what we’ve been talking about.
Honesty is NOT encouraged.
Now I’m old and I don’t give a fuck what people think of me. But imagine being, say, 16 or 17 now. The terror of being “revealed” is engrained in these kids. I see it in my nieces and nephews. You have to “present’ yourself in a palatable way – without ever making waves – because you will be ATTACKED. and these kids grow up assuming “the internet is forever” is a normal way to live. It’s AWFUL.
I don’t know the solution.
and yes – the commentary on Amy Winehouse was sickening and I think the paparazzi played a part in her death. Disgusting. She was SICK. and you made FUN of her. Disgusting!
// ’m not always PLEASANT. Reading all those comments from 2013 and seeing what gets published and what gets traction now, I miss those remnant from the 90s that at least had some teeth. //
yeah it’s interesting.
I feel like … and I hate to make generalities so feel free to push back – I’m just thinking out loud – but … it was easier to have “teeth” before the internet. Because “the internet is forever’ hadn’t made its appearance and so you could express yourself in the vacuum that every writer has expressed themselves in back to antiquity. You pour your heart out, you get a book publisher, it’s published – maybe you get some mean letters – maybe you get bad reviews – but you aren’t harassed in a constant every-minute-of-the-day way where you have to shut down your social media. And then the media cycle moves on and you’re no longer on the chopping block and you can move on to the next thing. and even if people remember – and reviews of your next book mention your last book and the controversy – it’s still happening in the vacuum of the professional media.
It’s not this feeding frenzy.
So – you feel safer to show your teeth without “the internet is forever” hanging over your head.
Maybe.