What I've been watching... The Bear and swearing in real time.
Reinserting a touch of realness in our day to day.
Occasionally, I will be adding a bonus post called ‘What I’ve been watching/reading/listening’ etc, when I desperately want to fill you in on something that has wholly affected my being-this week it’s The Bear -I hope you enjoy reading the sort of things I get up to which isn’t always super deeply concentrated. Life cannot be all work and no play, and so I hope you can get a nice breather in-between all the serious stuff!
FX’s The Bear kind of almost broke something within me. The show completely flipped everything I thought I knew about life on its head (I’m only 20). It repulsed me, annoyed me, infuriated me, concerned me, comforted me, thrilled me and uplifted me. It was truly a rollercoaster to watch that show and (forewarning!) threatens to give severe shock and hyper-tension to viewers who are yet to go through the disparities of life or experience an utterly imperfect and dysfunctional family that regularly bring their homes to flame in the name of love and kinship.
Now, considering these categories and its vivid themes its no exaggeration to propose that 99.9% of people on planet earth fall into either one of these categories, and so I expected 99.9% of people to have watched The Bear because it is something they can relate to. But that is, and was, not the case. Otherwise big streaming shows like Netflix wouldn’t be as globally recognised and admired for their constant production and distribution of shows that distort and re-present reality in all its artificial glamour. What I want to argue in this essay reader, is that we all should aspire to reinsert a touch of reality into our day to day. We are too easily cajoled into fantasy and unattainable action and thrill. Escapism is necessary, I am an advocate of it, but I am also an advocate of balance. And I think this is what we need to survive.
Confession: a lot of the time, I can be very dramatic. But as one of my sisters likes to tell me, I am one of those people that can often do both, a hybrid she likes to say. I too enjoy falling deep into a world completely reimagined, but also desire it to hold a theme of the world in its untainted state. Completely as is, in all its darkness and all its light, because then there is no false or blasphemous saviour complex that we have been presented with and then subconsciously will begin to worship, and contrary to pastorate belief, I always say that I have never seen a generation that worships more than Gen Z. This particular gen has built the biggest idols for themselves and it is showing. However, something most distressing about their worship is how it keeps them in the same place of insecurity. Because they are now so in love with fictional characters and the only result in feeling something is through a medium. A book, an Instagram page, a feed, a movie etc. There was no-one I could worship in The Bear, because they were all so unapologetically human. In other words they were just like me, and I am in no way worthy of worship. No-one was created to be this great, well-rounded, untouchable person. They were so real in their brokenness that the stark reality of it all brought to my mind people in my own life and our tricky relationships causing me to re-evaluate how we left things. How, maybe behind-the-scenes they are left cleaning up a metaphorical restaurant of trauma left behind by family members or closed ones that have scorned them.
With every episode I felt like I was right there with Carmy, picking up broken pieces of a space lined so heavily with the tiresome spirit of his deceased brother. Every episode I was rooting for Tina, wanting to console Ebra, watch Marcus’ mother for him while he finds joy in creating, build a fortress around Sugar’s bursting heart, nurse Mama Berzatto instead of her nursing a bottle, fight for understanding of Richard, be a cheerleader Sydney so desperately needed, and most of all tell Claire he didn’t mean it.
The show was a harsh truth and even harsher reality in the fact that these writers didn’t pluck these saddening storylines from thin air. They didn’t rack their brains trying to think of the perfect and most digestible or fantastical visual prose to display. They simply took what is happening all around us and wove it with such a delicacy of truth and pace that reminded me I am to not be afraid of life and what it can do and will do, but more so look to what I can mould from the dirt; what I can plant and water from the soil of human casualties. The show is something I wish we could all have watched and clung to, but I know holding a mirror up to some people’s face all day isn’t wise. Many are, sadly, afraid of their own reflection. Simply not interested in combating the things of their world that seem too tough for them, but find ease in riding along with idyllic and indefectible characters only to never be able to keep up because they don’t drive on human actualities and events like we do, leaving us in the dust of their acceleration to harbour feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. I don’t make the rules, our bodies do.
So, I loved The Bear. I loved it in the same way I think we should aspire to love ourselves, gradually and without unnatural expectation. It truly made for the greatest experience, just letting your eyes see and then your mind catch up. If you’ve watched it, did you love it? Did you think Season 2 did it justice? And if you didn’t love it, what show reminds you of the imperfections of the world? Would love to know.
All my love, Sarah J.
I want to leave here that in all the beauty that was the finished product of The Bear the production of the show has not been as kind to all, and so we are continuing to witness for so many other of our beloved TV programmes as SAG-AFTRA strikes relentlessly to give to writers and beyond what they are owed. Here’s a few links on what is going on and voice from the people themselves:
WHAT IS THE STRIKING ALL ABOUT?
CONCERNS FROM ONE OF THE WRITERS OF FX'S THE BEAR