Whiplash: Tough Love vs Abuse

Welcome everybody to our next episode. Today, we are going to be covering
the Oscar winning film Whiplash, which is a tremendously powerful and scary film about
a student in a music conservatory, as played by Miles Teller, who character's
name in the movie is Andrew, but we'll probably call him Miles one hundred
times, so we'll just get that out of the way, that Miles and
Andrew are now going to be interchangeable terms. But this film is a really
powerful look at ambition and where the line between narcissistic abuse versus ego deconstruction is.
And we have with us today a guest who was once my music teacher
and is also a holder of a master's degree, and I'll let her introduce
herself and go through her all accolades, but I wanted to welcome in Tessa
Hoffman as our guest today. Bye. Hi everyone. My name is Tessa
Marie Hoffman. I'm a queer performer local to Chicago, Illinois. I've been
teaching music privately for around ten years now, and I've been studying voice specifically
for just over twenty and I'm really excited to be on the podcast. I
think this is a very intense and unfortunately realistic depiction of entertainment and music as
an art in higher education. Absolutely agreed it is. It's a huge bomber.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like both of those things at the same time.
It's both so true and so tragic. Well, I'm really grateful to
have you on with us, and that Ben, you thought to introduce Tessa
to this episode, as that's a great wealth of knowledge there, because I
was saying before we were recording that, And I don't care if you like
Sins or any fun that knew me in high school listens, I know what
I'm talking about. I won't name him. I had a high school choir
teacher director who acted like this, not to this level, but would throw
things, throw a music standing against the wall, once screamed at me to
shut up in class. Once he had his favorites. I was not one
of them, Surprise and Rise, because I did not buy what he was
selling. One time he tried to leave our class in a huff because he
was mad at us, and he was trying to like intimidate us by basically
cold shouldering us and like leaving the room so we could sit in silence,
and he mildly tripped while he walked out and everyone and everyone held their breath
together because we were like, if any one of us laughs, and he's
going to rip us to absolute fucking shreds and we will not live to see
you tomorrow. But I remember we all wanted to laugh because it was so
even at the time we could. We were like, you're a baby,
Like you're acting like a baby. Well I felt that way because I wasn't
in mesh with him at all. I was like, you're acting like a
baby. This is baby behavior, and you're gonna make me feel bad because
what I can't sing Tiger Tiger burning brightly for our concert this weekend for my
parents. I was like, the stakes couldn't be lower, broke, and
you're trying to intimidate me. He was also like five foot whatever, and
not to be like a height hater, but like he was just like a
tiny little man and like an absolute maniac and for what you know what I
mean. And then later in life he would come into the restaurant I worked
in and he said, tit me a lot, And I was always wondering
if like this was him trying to like reparations for being like an absolute maniac
and screaming in my face on more than one occasion. Don't give him that
much credit. Yeah, I mean, I think he was just probably his
own version of narcissism, where he liked throwing around his money and also being
like an absolute terror. Two high school students in southern Ohio like, what
are we doing? Well? Remember, Brittany, he has earned the position
of high school choir director. Yeah, and in such he has become the
gateway to your dreams. And you must must learn that perfection is the only
way forward in a subjective art. It's nonsense. That is that is the
entire the episode is over. Hannah nailed it. It's not. I think
what's funny is I think all of us did the arts in high school and
did them a lot. Like I was in drama and choir and show choir.
Hannah, you did a lot of musical stuff. I did plays and
musicals, and I was in the band, and I was in the choir,
and we had a Bonker's band leader when I was I think I started
when I was a freshman. He was a real maniac. Yeah, and
he was, and he was a band teacher in Vassar Do you know where
Vassar is, No, because nobody fucking knows we're Vassars and gives a flying
fuck. It's not like we were going to be in a competition anywhere ever
in the history of the universe. Nobody's too small. Nobody cares. Even
if you made it to the competition. It's a high school competition and no
one cares. Yeah, it's amazing. I also was in band forever and
continue to be in bands now, though not the same kind. As it
turns out the market for trumpet playing is not in fact vast and equitable as
they would make it seem in fifth grade. But the uh, I think
the things that I find myself very lucky. And as I've never had a
music teacher mmm that was like this, I know they exist. I had
a voice teacher I was a little kid. I was like eleven years old,
and she hated sopranos and I was a soprano, and she would just
like yell in my face while I was singing about how being loud didn't mean
that I was good, as she would make me cry, and eventually I
told my mom that I didn't want to go anymore. She also made me
buy tenor books. What Yeah, I had all these tenor books that she
wanted me to buy. It was she was bonkers. And then I found
out from another voice teacher. I found it from another voice teacher that she
hated sopranos. I feel like we had to get all this like our own
like color trauma around music teachers because I also had my piano teacher was also
my church choir director shamed us all that we didn't love God enough because we
were trying hard enough in there. I mean, I think boils What boils
it all down to is I think five minutes? Sorry bernany well, And
also I mean I think we can probably this will lead into the topic at
hand, which is kind of a notiss that you want to talk about what
we're going to talk about with an education specifically, like the instructor student dynamic
abuse within the entertainment specifically that kind of thing. I think like that that
instructor, that one was my church and piano instructor. I think she like
wanted to take me under her wing. And I used to do a lot
of singing, specifically in church. Sometimes I would do like up to three
masses. I was Catholic, a weekend, which when my mom gets on
me now about going to church, I'm like, I did my quota early,
like I stockpiled in high school, and now I don't have to go
because I did all the church I ever have to do. And I think,
what is a shame about all this? And I'm sure this will come
up as we talk about it is I almost like a vow when I left
high school said I will never do anything musical ever again. I shall not
sing, I won't play the piano, I will not dance like I wrote
off creative endeavors in that way, even though I think I was decently talented
and all that stuff, because I had such shitty, multiple shitty relationships with
multiple adults as a kid, and even that young, I was like,
I am a kid and you are an adult, and you guys are horrible
and immature and disregulated. I was like, I don't want to be around
adults who act like this ever again. And I never did it. I
never did anything to the point that it feels like another life that I did
music and dancing and choir and piano playing, and like it's like, truly,
this is very areas of me, very fireside of me. I was
like, I shan't, I shall not perform again, and I did not,
and it's going on twenty years. No, that's actually a very devastatingly
common story, especially going into and out of high school. It's one of
my biggest fears as a teacher. And when I first like started my very
very first little voice student in undergrad, I like was crying a little bit
one day, like what if I ruin them? Like what if I'm the
reason they never want to pursue this again? Like I feel nuts about it.
And obviously as time goes on, you get less anxious and you see
the wonderful progression they're making and you get to steal those little good feelings.
But that is a nightmare scenario. If I ever heard someone tell me I
was the reason they stopped, I would be like, Okay, you are
allowed to kill me. You're legally aliveed and me go for it. I'm
not your vampire. Just drive a steake, get a big hammer, just
wait for me to sleep, please, But you know, just yeah,
it's your right. I think that is a fear testa honestly that I think
all of us therapists feel equally, is like it is our goal to never
be the reason, never be the therapist that makes someone not come back to
therapy. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what we so we talk a
lot about on the podcast and general, but also I think it's just something
that every I work with a couple. I have a couple of clients right
now who are going to school to be therapists, and that's the first thing
they say. What if I like screw them up? Or like what if
I say like the wrong thing and the wrong moment, And that's what they're
the most afraid of when they start. Yeah. But I think if you're
asking that question, Tessa, if you're thinking about that, if you're thinking
about it at all, and the fact that the people you talk to a
hander are thinking about it all means that you're probably not going to do it.
Yeah. Because because I will say this to segue sharply into the movie
itself, I don't think Fletcher thinks about that at all. I don't think
he gives a shit about whether he is putting someone off. I mean he
kind of says that right towards I think the end of the movie or the
last half, where he's like, if you can't handle it. That's a
you problem because you couldn't you couldn't take the heat, so you had to
get out of a kitchen. And it's never going to be me. I'm
never going to be the reason why someone does not succeed, Like it's not
my fault or my problem, it's everyone else's problem. Yeah. I think
that's very much the case that he would never consider that he would lean into
the brutality of the business which exists. It's very real. He is not
wrong on that, depending particularly on what aspect of the business you want to
get into. It's brutal, it's vicious, and people will replace you.
But looking at whether or not he would ever in a million years look at
his behavior and ask that question, I think the answer is resounding no.
Yeah, definitely no. The only reason he cried when he found out that
student was gone is because then he can't look at his own life and feel
validated that his teaching methods, as will put in air quotes for those of
you who can see my fingers doing that air quotes, that everything he's done
is valid because somebody made it to first share at Lincoln Center with m Marsalis,
which is an amazing accomplishment. But because your student did that shouldn't be
the source of your validation in the world. You get to share that win,
but that shouldn't be your validation because I think kind of the question of
the movie, if you will, and what we're kind of the question of
our first topic is is this appropriate behavior? Like is this and what we're
seeing in Fletcher, is that what's to be expected and therefore correct in terms
of how you within a high pressure setting, like how you prepare someone within
this specific industry, but in industries that are more like are similarly high pressure.
And I think, I guess I can speak for myself, but I
think I I'm speaking for all of us when we say no, Like this
character who is only the devil emoji in my phone notes because I could not
think of what his name was, so then I just kept using the devil
emoji. If you see my notes one, there are so many notes,
more than maybe I've taken for any movie we've watched, because every time I
got mad, I wrote it down and just devil emojis throughout. Maybe I'll
put it on Instagram. But I think you're hitting up on something that I
guess I just wanted to mark, which is he is someone that is seeing
everything through the realm of himself and him getting choked up about Sean Casey that
character, I think you're exactly right, which is that he can no longer
it's no longer a success story because he died. And also he bullshits about
the reason why he died, which makes it an extra not quote unquote success
story because it's someone who you could think of it like this way chose to
leave the earth right and or quit on his life is probably how he would
say, like took like the pussy way out would probably be how Fletcher would
call it. If yeah, if that mildly right? Yeah, Oh first,
I'm very yeah, oh yeah, he definitely probably use other words the
slurs, if you will. Me saying pussy is me being very pc in
comparison to him. Yeah, in comparison to Fletcher. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know that he knew that it was to think the family concealed
it until the hearing, But I think it's still those tears he showed are
definitely crocodile tears about him, not about Sean Casey's life. Yeah, and
looking at the role of a teacher. Is this appropriate in education? I
think only one of us here on the pot today is trained in hedegogeatin what
that means, So maybe we should, you know, turn to Tessa here,
and Tessa, what do you think about this role of this teacher here?
Well, I'm not gonna lie I this is my second time watching the
film. The last time I watched it was several several years ago when I
watched it blind. I had like physical visceral reactions to watching it, especially
in any of the rehearsal scenes, because I have experienced things like that firsthand,
getting called out and asking and being asked to like play that measure,
play that measure, What does this mean? What does this mean? And
I'm having a trippy moment like wait a minute. Sometimes when I'm teaching,
I do that too, Am I Terrence Fletcher? Am I approaching it in
that way? Like? Am I about to be an Oscar winner? Like?
What's going on here? But I think at the end of the day,
it's the idea that in our high school band choir experiences that we all
have, and any type of ensemble you're working with a conductor, there's that
ultimate like I'm the god of this group because I have the vision and if
you're not playing in the exact way I want, I see it as kind
of insulting. I see it as disrespect when sometimes music is just really sometimes
music is just really hard, and especially working with kids. Like I know
this is set in a music conservatory, but Miles sledsh Andrew is eighteen,
right, so his first year, so at best nineteen yeah, I think
they say that it was nineteen at some point. Anyway, he's fresh,
he has no social skills. We see, I think from the very beginning
of the film, and he's an extremely impressionable person being introduced to like the
music god of their times. So obviously I'm coming from a vocal standpoint.
In our abuse is different in terms of where very image focused. So not
only do you have to sound good, you have to look good. You
have to be a certain size a certain way. You can't be taller than
this type of person. Your voice has to sound very specific. A lot
of sexual harassment in the industry, a lot of gross, gross, gross
stuff like that. But the environment that was created in any of these scenes
is so unconducive to creating music that I physically I was having like Little Panics
as I was watching it, well, because I make that maybe you can
answer this question. But in something like what I understand to be a pretty
loose form jazz is being this pedantic, Where does that leave room for like
creativity, for people to feel empowered to be creative? Like you're right,
it's going back to like the idea of like narcissism, you know, or
like this is narcisstic abuse is like what you were saying, where it's gone
through the vision of the god in the room, which in this movie's fletcher
of like it has to be how I want it to be and how I
am vision of being and you have to meet me in my world. And
it's not fostering any love of the game, if you will, like any
like independence or creativity, which I guess I can't understand from the perspective of
if you want to work with like a big deal company, a big deal
instruct like conductor, that kind of thing, like you will go through a
version of this perhaps and you will encounter people like him. How do people
grow if not like from like a creative or like an openness around creativity,
if that makes sense. That is such a great question and I think in
this universe, they don't even imagine another world outside of Terrence Fletcher's vision.
And one of the most insane things that I noticed, and that they show
you from the beginning, is that when Miles and Sivins first meet and he's
in the practice rooms, right, he has this moment where he's like,
well, keep playing, you know, doing that little cat and mouse playing
with this food situation, and we watch Miles kind of get lost to the
music and look away, and in that time he looks away, JK.
Simmons disappears right another like little needle. And then I noticed in the rehearsals
nobody is looking at JK. Simmons. The musicians aren't while he's conducting,
and that, as a musician is wrong. You obviously you have your music
in front of you, if you're not memorized, you're reading your lead sheets,
but you are also locked in with your conductor at all times. So
I'm wondering if that idea was meant to paint this like fear of this conductor
and kind of really hammering the idea that his vision is the only way and
all of the other musicians in that big studio band are already like broken down
to the point where they know how to play it. Yeah, I think
they've earned that space from him, but only so much because watching that cat
and mouse game is terrifying. You see, in this style of education,
right, it's a weird dynamic to find that people can't be themselves in your
right, Brittany. Jazz is an inherent art about improvisation. But then in
conservatory education, where both my uncle and cousin went for music and have had
several clients go to is and seeing the pressure secondhand as not being the person
under it, but you're required to play these parts to perfection that someone improvised
initially and because they recorded it and it got played over and over. Now
it's a standard. Now everybody expects it to sound a certain way that was
created through the magic of improvisation. Now you have to replicate it, and
you have to do it perfectly, and you have to do it the way
the judges remember it and the way the conductor demands it. And the room
to be free and creative exists in jazz clubs, but not in jazz competitions,
if that makes sense, which is a absolutely mind flame standard to have
hold because it's impossible. It's a bummer. I mean, I'm probably gonna
use that word a lot in this episode. It's a bummer. Even hearing
you really say that, it bums me out. It bums me out for
because I think it establishes a dynamic which gets taken advantage of in this situation
where you have to reach a level of perfection that is maybe impossible, or
a level of matching that's impossible. And then also it's zaps. It goes
diametrically against what I would consider to be like the point or the purpose of
our and music right is to like slaughter it down to an eighth note,
you know what I mean, to like break it down that much, and
it allows someone like Fletcher to just take advantage of that. I mean,
I think for me, he just is someone who is taking advantage of the
position of power he's in. And what you were saying, you both were
kind of mentioning Ben and Tessa like the looking down part. I wrote that
down in that he is someone who trades in humiliation. He is someone who
I would think gets off on humiliation, you know, And like I said,
I want to be careful. I've talked about this podcast before. I
don't believe there's any such thing as like bad people. Also, it's a
fictional character, but I know people like him exist, and like I've said
at the top, I've encountered them, so I can acknowledge that who knows
what he's gone through to earn his place where he's at, and I'm sure
he's gone through similar situations, which is kind of like the toxic cycle of
this kind of abuse to is this sort of like you earn your stripes,
so then you pass it down because you got through the right of passage that
is being abused by a higher up, someone who holds the kings to the
kingdom, if you will. And that level of humiliation that you witness in
this movie is what for me takes it out of like you were saying,
Ben, I think earlier, maybe this before we started recording, of like
training someone to deal with like high pressure kind of like breaking them down to
build them up, where I think this goes past that into abuse. I
think humiliation is a big hallmark of that. The Emil issue was seeing this
movie the way that he is. There's no winning, like we see that
right from the jump, you know, like you said that cat and mouse
game Tessa that he plays in the very beginning. It's to create a scenario
and a dynamic that everyone understands where you cannot win because he Fletcher cannot allow
anyone to win, which to me is like a sign of also being like
a narcissistic abuser, is there's no scenario in which you win because I always
have to win, and if you are winning, I will change the rules.
So if you do well, I will bring in Connolly, the other
drummer, to put you in your fucking place, and I will create a
atmosphere so hostile that when I enter the room, no one even can look
at me. Everyone is looking down as if they're worried that if they make
a breath that's too loud, they're going to get like ripped to shreds.
Like they're terrified of him, and it is so upsetting to witness. Well,
I mean, you're hearing Tesla tell us that she's like having this sore
reactions. Yeah right, Like what's the grown up word in our jargon,
right is flashbacks for that? Right? Yeah? Yeah, like coming a
trauma reaction. I gotta say I'm surprised more people weren't barfing during the movie,
because like when he's running to the practice room late, when he falls
down the stairs, when he's like, play this measure over twelve thousand times,
I would have been barfing, my gods out. I would have been
crying, and I would have left. M M. You know when we
were talking about like music stuff in the beginning and Brittany and Hannah are describing
their experiences, test, I was going to offer you a bucket because I
agree. I think people probably did walk out of this movie. I think
people probably looked at these movies as one of the ones where you like,
nope, nope, never again, don't care, nope, done forever.
This is too close, it's too real, and it is scary, like
people like this do exist that sit in that narcissistic pocket where they I think
they made a point Brittany, to show, at least the way I saw
it, and I don't know if anybody else did, but I think they
made it clear to show like everybody holding their breath pretty much. Yeah.
Yeah, I think they did shots of the group just for that, just
for us to see how this isn't a Andrew thing. This is everybody is
just as terrified as the next person. And having that kind of environment is
not conducive to anything. It doesn't matter what you're trying to do, you
know. And when we think about abuse within education, this is a good
example of that. And I see the abuse that I see in education is
with PhD students. I see PhD students who get an advisor who they vibed
with initially, and then all of a sudden, the advisor decides that they
have to put them through the hell that they personally went through, and then
you have somebody who's miserable. I have friends that stopped being in their PhD
programs because of how horrible the advisor was or how horrible a professor was,
because they can ruin your entire they can ruin your dissertation, they can ruin
your ability to complete your dissertation. Like they have all of the power and
the student has none. M hm. Now that I have had a professors
like that, yeah, m I am sure you get that. Being with
your office in Evanston getting so many of students from prestigious Northwestern University, that's
where they all come from, from Northwestern, and they're all the PhD students.
That's because a horrible shit that goes on in Northwestern and nobody fucking talks
about. So I'm going to put you on the spot. Ben. We've
used the term narcissistic abuse a few times, and that's also a term I'm
noticing become more in the pop culture zeitgeist. So could you succinctly, if
possible, describe what we mean when we say narcissistic abuse, like versus just
saying he's abusive. Yeah, So what I see in this character that makes
it cross the line from just someone being emotionally abusive to narcissistic abuse is when
someone is emotionally abusive. It is generally speaking, obviously everything has a case
by case basis, and please don't take this as an explanation of someone you
know. But broad strokes right, is that oftentimes emotional abuse is born out
of a survival reaction that is going haywire at the moment someone is having an
inability to manage their own regulation chronically and is now reaching the point that they
are hurting other people with their reactivity and are losing sight of being able to
regulate themselves enough to take control. That is not a free pass. That
is not and it's Okay, that that's happening. But the difference between someone
being chronically disregulated and unable to recognize that when they are in that state they
are hurting people and people who are demonstrating it is my way of validating myself
through my worldview that is unrelenting. I will not adjust it. Everyone will
adjust to me, everyone will validate me. I am in control. Now
is where it crosses the line into that narcissistic abuse. No other viewpoint is
valid, no other person gets to win, no other person gets to wear
the crown. And most emotionally abusive relationships, there's a cycle of abuse.
Okay, people get over activated, they get into a fight, they may
say hurtful things, and then they break down realize them We go through a
honeymoon period and often try to make up for it, try to own what
they did. But depending on where they are in their healing journey, they
may or may not be able to recover from the wounds that cause them to
be hurtful, and we start the cycle all over again. Where they go
from we have an explosive incident that is hurtful to kind of a quiet period
to a let's make up and make everything better to a honeymoon period where everything's
kind of cool again, to attention building to another explosive incident, and sometimes
those may be few and far between, sometimes those may be frequent. But
with a narcissistic abuse situation, it will be relentless, it will be constant.
There will be no deviation from that, there will be no changing of
the roles, there will be no acknowledgement that there ever was a moment whereas
out of step, and we see that with him, it's never. It's
never I was out of line, and I am sorry I hurt you with
what I said. It's you couldn't handle it, and if you can't handle
it, it's on you, because I am the god here and I'm right.
I think the difference is that there is no cycle, not as much,
and if there is a cycle, it's with a narcissist it's only for
their gain. They will only relent so much for their gain, and we
have seen that demonstrated at nauseum for the past seven years, ever since a
certain dickhead wrote a golden elevator down and declared they were running for some officer
or other I can't remember which, and we got to see it every day
since, where that person just can't be wrong, they can't have made a
mistake. It's everybody else. Somebody else is wrong and they're just right and
their way is always right and they have the best words. And that's not
a source spot at all for me. That someone left us review saying they
thought we were supporters of this person and totally not gonna go on that tangent
today. Oh wait, I did damn well for anyone who sees that review,
we can for the clarify. I know, we didn't Instagram happen.
We're not in charge of the specific ads that show up, so we just
had yes on. We didn't mark that you couldn't put political ads on our
podcast, and so that point yeah, and so like any politics would put
on our episodes, and so we weren't aware that the whole spectrum of politics
was being advertised on our program until we were made aware of via a review,
and we promptly corrected that. The only other thing I was going to
say, and maybe this is common with abuse as well, but I think
something else that a narcissistic person does is really keeps you confused. And we
can see from the moment he meets him, he is confused. You can
tell by the very he's very impressionable young man. You can see it all
over his face. You see everything all over his face when it happens.
And that to keep someone in confusion is to keep them in a state of
stress. Yes, yeah, no recovery period, right, Like Hannah,
there's a lot of couples in marriage therapy, and I see people in distress
all the time doing what I do. But Hannah does marriage therapy, Hannah
Hoften are people Oh he didn't or she didn't mean it, or like they
come back around things are okay again for a while. Yeah, I mean
I screen out a lot of abuse from because you can't do couple's therapy if
there's an abuser, because you have to be equal with both parties. He
can't be equal when one person is abusing the other. So that's a part
of my assessment, which I know I always talk about, so I'm not
going to go into it anymore, but that is a part of it.
Is because I can't be equal with someone who's abusing the other person, and
I have had to turn a couple away for those exact reasons. So keeping
someone confused would then make it so that you are not on an equal footing,
because only one person, the narcissistic abuser, knows the truth of what's
really happening, and then the other person wouldn't. And we see that in
this film throughout, as you all are pointing out astuteley, But no more
clearly ever than in that climactic ending performance where he dupes Andrew into thinking he's
gonna be playing pieces he already knows, and then puts him on stage in
front of an audience with music he does not to embarrass him before telling him
I know it was you. I'll say this is something someone I was watching
it with some theater friends, and I know I can't speak to Like this
is the climax. Obviously, it was all written for a reason. It
was so well done. But when he starts improvising on the switched song that
he'd never played before, I'm sitting here like, you've got to have better
improvs than that, dude, Like you must really be going through something right
now, because right now this is like oh, Andrew, but that that
was definitely a barf moment for me. I would have been like, Okay,
I'll see myself out I'm not even going to try. That's the vocalist
in you, right, like from being a vocalist, Like if you screw
up, there's no hiding it. Nope. The drummer can screw up man
vocalist, so we can't. We can't screw up. If you get on
stage and say the wrong word, everybody knows. I think something important,
like we were talking about, to just pinpoint, is that Fletcher does present
to someone who is what I woul consider pathologically narcissistic. We don't see anything
about his life other than when he because we're seeing this through Andrew's worldview,
So we're only seeing Fletcher when Andrew's around, so we're not seeing any private
moments really besides him talking to the guy and his kid in that one.
But that's Andrew's observation of him, and so being narcissistic it talked about a
lot, so I just want to clarify, Like when we use it as
an adjective like that person's so narcissistic, we usually think of someone very ego
driven, right, confident, cocky, arrogant, like some things that have
more of a positive spin to it. When you are pathologically narcissistic, when
we talk about it from a clinical standpoint, I think what people don't really
understand is that you are driven by your ego, but it's not from a
positive place. It's not that you think like your shit doesn't stink, like
you're so like empowered and confident and like going through the world like Ladi Da.
When you have pathological levels of narcissm, you are actually very unconfident on
the inside. Your sense of self is coming from the outside in, and
so you have to constantly be reassured of who you are, how great you
are, your ego, all that stuff, right, And that's kind of
the way that you put it Ben like that doesn't just come and go.
That's kind of like a constant situation for someone who struggles with that, and
because of that, their presentation is more constant, like you're saying, like
the way they treat people in their life is a constant It's not a reaction
to a stressor which is more of like the emotional abuse, right like I'm
having a hard day, I'm going to go home and take it out on
my wife. This is more like I constantly feel like I have to be
reupping my internal self and I have to be doing that through other people.
So I would even say, like when Sean Casey dies and he plays that
CD, to me, that felt like a tailltale sign of one someone who
was struggling with like pathological narcissism, where he can only contextualize Sean through how
he measures his greatness as a musician. He doesn't say anything about Sean as
a person, as a loved one, his personality. It was just what
a shame that this great talent doesn't exist anymore? And that to him was
heartbreaking because that's the only way he could feel it was through his worldview.
Well, and to add to that is not just in his worldview. He
couldn't tell the story of Sean Casey without explaining his own way and himself.
Yeah right, Nah, It's okay to tell the story of a great student
who did something great, but if you have to be the one who discovered
him, you were the one. He barely made it here. He had
so much going on, but I saw the greatness in him. I cultivated
it. It all tied back to how he created that which helps keep the
other students under his thumb and dealing with his abuse because in whatever fantasy he's
creating, it can be worth it for them, and they're getting that reinforced
by the school by letting him stay in a position of power until legally they
can no longer allow it. So let's take a break here and then we
will shift into the power dynamic aspect that I know you Tessa wanted to talk
about. So let's take a break here and we'll be right back. So
kind of launching into that, what I kind of wanted to say about that
test before I hand it over to you is when someone presents like Fletcher,
there's a reason why he's working with eighteen, nineteen twenty year olds. He's
not working with same age peers, and I think that's by design, whether
consciously or unconsciously. It's similar to how people who struggle with this in real
life will usually get into relationships with people that are either much younger or people
who they don't seek out relationships with their peers, if you will, someone
with like the same kind of power and agency that they have. So I
kind of wanted to throw it to you testa to specifically talk about this dynamic,
which is instructor and student for sure. So it's what we've been talking
about is all kind of leading up to this general overview of the instructor being
the like the conductor, the train conductor, the driver, the person who
is taking the students on the journey and helping them create their own connection to
it. Where Fletcher's relationship with his students is he's this mysterious golden ticket and
if they just persevere long enough, they are going to achieve greatness through him.
Because and this is another unfortunate side of the entertainment industry and of certain
other disciplines, is that it's not so much how you do, but who
you know, which is why that concert at the end of the movie was
so important, because that's introducing young artist to established venues, right, And
I think it's one of the things that really bothers me about this movie and
leading into the instructor idea. And it's funny because the fight they have with
the cousins, I think they are the football boys at the D three school.
One of the guys when Miles is like, well, I'm in the
top music conservatory in the country, and it's like I'm going to be the
best blah blah blah. His cousin is like, isn't art subjective, like
how does best exist? And I think that, and like, don't even
get me started on sports. That's a whole other it's a whole other devastation
of existence. But it's this idea that this abuse is acceptable because it's creating
something that we as a society has deemed is more important than the means that
it took to get there. So you'll see that a lot in music and
entertainment, where the conductor is allowed all sorts of bad behavior. There was
this in my grad school. Several years after I graduated. We had found
out that one of the department heads was leading a big drug ring in the
university and taking advantage. Yeah that I was got a lot of meth problems,
but he was also taking advantage of the underage students. And it was
an underage kid's mom who got the university involved to like finally stop his transgressions.
Right. So what's tough about these relationships is that if there is only
one person holding the power, which is Fletcher in this case, he's the
judge, jury, and executioner, we lose all objectivity in art, in
music, and you really can't win at all because it's either go with Fletcher,
or you don't get to do it anymore. There's no plan B for
Miles. No. And that's one of the things where people start to trade,
right, like people start to influence Pedal, and they start to trade
because there is some truth. Money for programs or sports ball or for anything
else comes from wins. And we see that same pattern emerge. We're seeing
it right now in politics. But I said I wouldn't do that. The
thing that we see in this film is the under tone of the film is
that because Fletcher keeps winning the competitions, because he keeps getting the first place
trophies at the prestigious competitions at the top school in the nation, that he
is therefore drive being the school's ability to attract top talent, and then the
school can be self sustaining even if his methods are unconventional, that they'll tolerate
it because he's winning. Yeah, until he's too big of a risk,
which is when the lawsuit stuff happens, and then all of a sudden,
he's just not there anymore. Right, But how long have we seen things
going to the point where people demand that these people who are winning. We
sawt at Penn State with Joe Paterno the students to coach for forty years,
and there was that whole abuse scandal going on, and whether he knew or
didn't know, like come on, man like, but people were demanding this
man be put back in power at Penn State. And we see this same
pattern emerge over and over again. No, this is my ticket to winning
this person. We can sacrifice our ethics, We can sacrifice the mental health
and wellbeing of our students, including like the physical wellbeing because tessay you're talking
about it. Your programs person's probably using these kids to pedal is drugg ring
and is definitely touching people and sexually abusing people, which last I checked causes
long term, lasting damage and it's very difficult to get over. But it's
fine. We got the shiny little person on top of the shiny little thing
that says we're the best. Universities and other places that get a very locked
in limited worldview start losing sight of what's really important because that's how they get
their funding through these narrow channels, and everything else stops mattering. I mean,
I plan to talk about this more when we talk about Andrew more specifically,
an ambition but what you're highlighting on is where my brain goes to,
which is I'm gonna get on my little soapbox. Is that kind of like
capitalism perspective that like productivity and outcome rules the day and how we get there
doesn't matter. And this idea that the stress, the trauma, the abuse
that these kids I'm gonna call them kids are being put through is worth it
for the outcome. And I philosophically, both personally and professionally, massively disagree
with that. Yeah, I think what you're you're touching upon how like this
kind of power dynamic takes advantage of also that mindset and forgives a lot of
this behavior and abandons the most vulnerable people involved, and he is holding their
future hostage too. I think that's also what has to be discussed, like
you said, in terms of why does things like why don't these kids stand
up to him? You know, it's it's kind of shocking that that Andrew
even gets the point where he kicks the shit out of him on stage.
I mean that is a he hit his breaking point right because and he's also
probably he's kind of a car accident, like you know, he's who knows
what's going on with him in that moment. A writer's healing experience, a
correct experience for a writer, because I feel like in the real world,
Andrew would have just passed out, like he would have just like collapsed into
unconsciousness just from physically like blood loss if nothing else, and getting his fucking
bell wrung. I don't think he would have had I mean, I guess
adrenaline, but I would have gone like that. Yeah, he probably would
have been able to get to that dissociated that focused people in accidents and things
get to that. I think you're right, then he would have just passed
out. Yeah, at some point, your body's going to adrenaline, don't
hm, and you're going to realize what happened to you. And the likelihood
that he performs an epic tackle and starts wailing on the instructor is supremely unlikely.
But I think this kind of verges into another question we can put into
the air with this discussion, which is, I'm sure there are people who
watch this movie and think that this is the way the Fletcher is treating these
kids. Is correct that to be No, I'm being I know, but
no white friend who watched this and they're like, this is like you got
to kind of like beat people into submission and you got to like break their
spirit. And like there are people who who watch this and they think that
it is good to be this hard on people as they're developing, quote unquote,
I work like as a child therapist and family therapist. I see this
through the lens of parenting too, Like I've worked with parents where I'm like,
you're not doing what you think you're doing by dominating and shaming your kid
like this. Because I if I had given myself more time, because I
watched this movie right before we recorded, to be quite honest, I would
have done maybe some got some statistics around like shame and parenting and stuff,
because I do think there's a lot of people who think that the best way
to learn is through shame, kind of going back to the humiliation we talked
about in the beginning. And what I know innecdotally is that and through Brene
Brown, I guess is that shame actually does not help us. And when
shame is effective, it's more when we experience internal shame. And what I
mean by that is, Oh, I said something to my friend, it
hurt their feelings, I feel ashamed that I did that to them. That
feeling stays with me, and so I'm not going to do that again.
You know, like that kind of shame is good for us in the sense
that we learn from that experience and we move. The kind of shame that
we see in this movie that people do think is good for you in terms
of growing is when someone posts you shame upon you through making you feel like
garbage, making you feel like getting in your fucking face, like I think
we do see that a lot on sports too, right, like the kind
of grab your helmet, get in your face, call you a fucking slur
or whatever, like we've seen in this movie, use abuse of language.
And there are people who would probably argue with me down right now that that
is good and that actually, as a society we're getting worse because we don't
shame people like we used to. And you know what, bro come now,
I was gonna say, confine me, don't come find me, but
like I would happily make that argument every day of the week that that doesn't
work. So I guess I want to put it out to you guys too,
what you think in terms of people who do think in order to educate
and to challenge that you should be hard on people like this, hard on
people quote unquote. I saw that reaction from Tessa. I feel you need
to let that well first and foremost, it's just statistically untrue that strict or
punitive education works. It's it's just it. The science is out there,
and I felt confident that I didn't need it to make that story. Yeah.
No, the science is out there. It's we talked about this at
the beginning too. It's this idea that because these horrific things foster quote unquote
greatness, they become more acceptable, and that is only just slowly changing in
the industry like COVID. One of the silver linings was that all of this
drama and tea about abuse in the entertainment industry started coming out because we didn't
have to suck up to get hired anymore, because no one was getting hired,
you know. So we see these institutions, my undergrad to my acting
major friends. One of their biggest things is there is this group of professors
who would legitimately tell you the first day, we're breaking you down so we
can build you back up again. We are not cars, we're human being
with independent personal experiences. And it's the method argument, right, Like if
I'm going to be an incredible actor, I need to have physically or emotionally
experienced these things. But that's to me, and there's science behind it.
That's not good acting. That's re traumatizing yourself and then saying another person's words
on top of your own real emotions. When I believe our jobs as teachers
is to offer the tools necessary for the student to discover in their own autonomy
how they can best create. I think it's silly to think that punishing someone
into making great art whatever really work. Agreed, I agree, it doesn't.
It doesn't work, and it never has. It never has. So
you know, Brittany, when you were saying to somebody who thinks that that
still works, so that's still an argument. You're old, That's what That's
what it is. You're fucking old, and you human it's okay to yell
and scream at someone and you think that that's okay and it's not and you're
wrong, and you've always been wrong. Like I said, I think it's
almost like, well one, I think people just miss being able to do
that, Like if they're really miss being able to act out. You know,
when people who who miss doing that stuff or or you know, romanticize
that, I always want to say, like, what are what are you?
What do you think you're losing by not being able to behave that way?
You know? And where I can find some empathy kind of like I
was saying up top about Fletcher is I can definitely see where it can be
like a return on investment idea, which is I had to go through this
abhorrent shit. I got screamed that, I got called slurs, I got
humiliated, and it made me great and so I now get to do that
to somebody else, right, and that's what I've earned. And fuck you
that I had to be the first generation who doesn't get that return on investment,
right and instead of recognizing like like statistically it doesn't work, it truly
does not work. And where I can add on from like a therapeutic perspective
is I've worked with kids and teenagers where they did some shit that was out
of pocket and there were what I would call emotional consequences to that where people
weren't super happy with them, and you can have conversations around being honest with
people. Basically is what I'm saying about where they fucked up and not saving
them from that. I think people also conflate that if you're not actively humiliating
or like, if you're not actively like educating or coaching in this way,
that you're like making your enabling or you're too accommodating, and they don't understand
that there is another there's a third option, which is when I work with
kids, I'd be like wow. I would even say sometimes like I'm feeling
really disappointed in you because you chose to do that, and we talked about
that and that wasn't cool. I had a kid once and he was like
seven, and he this is like a traumatic memory. So when I worked
at a partial day program and he eloped and no one noticed because we had
another kid trying to jump off of a bleacher, this is kind of what
that job was like, and we didn't. So we didn't notice until a
neighbor brought him back to the building because he walked to their house and asked
to use their telephone to his grandparents. Oh god. And the next day
in groove, I said to that kid, but kindly, you know,
but firmly, I said, I was, so, you know, I
was really upset, like I wanted to throw up. I think that's what
I said, Like when I found out you had left, I want to
throw up because I was so upset. And we have to sit with what
happened. And and honestly, you have to be age appropriate with this.
He might have been a little too young to be quite honest. This is
when I was an intern to go with him that hard, but I was
screaming at him. I didn't take out my upsetness on him, where I
was like, how could delay that on like screaming at him, which is
I think what we're talking about older generations would think would be appropriate is you
have to make him feel really bad. He didn't feel great when I said,
and because I said that, and then we sat in the silence of
me saying that, so he still experienced the consequence of his choice. And
when I said, when I were preteenagers, they still experienced the consequence of
their choices and that doesn't feel good. And like I said, that was
what will create like that internal experience which will stay with them and hopefully they
won't repeat whatever behavior we're discussing, whether they're like it didn't feel good to
have that conversation with Brittany about what I did and that can be enough,
which people don't get. It's like we don't trust people enough almost to not
get on their ass and like lecture and get in their face and break them
down and all that stuff. And I just want to highlight that there is
a third way, not just that either we're like buttering everybody up and like
patting their head, or we're screaming in their face and like teaching them a
lesson. And I think going to what we're talking about in terms of educating
and coaching and mentoring is that you are also not cultivating an individual self that
feels that internal motivation as well, because what Fletcher is also enforcing is that
external motivation of are you working that hard because you genuinely want this? Are
you working that hard because you don't want me to scream in your fucking face,
ding ding ding? Which one of those will extinguish as soon as distressor
is removed, and one will not the reality of the music business and industry,
just like many other things, is there not for everyone, and they're
not for everything, and not everyone will find a pathway to success. And
in performing arts, it was in an acting class once after well after college,
and somebody, you know, a director who had done movies that no
one heard of, even which are far more than we ever do, but
you like your chance of making it is like holding up his fingers, like
just almost no space in between. Is this big h But as a teacher,
it's not your job to decide that. It's your job, like Testa
said, to give students the tools because you don't know any better than anybody
else. And this director was kind about it. It wasn't being a prick
and like shooting his own horn like quite many a lot do. Like the
owner of the dicting school. It's a different discussion. Who was kind of
like this guy and absolutely would yell at you if you did breathed wrong.
This type of thing exists where the world will weed people out for what they're
not going to be good at, and people will find their own way to
actualize and what will work for them. But the role of the teacher isn't
to do that for the world. The role of the teacher is to empower
the student to face the world with all that they have and find out for
themselves if they can make it with what they bring, not what the teacher
decides it takes to bring. Now, there does need to be a standard.
And this is where this line gets tricky, is there does need to
be a degree of reality check. There needs to be a degree of Look,
man, you gotta practice, Yeah, gotta practice. You have talent,
but what you're doing ain't good enough. And there will be someone else
who will practice, who will not be as good as you, but will
practice and learn the part, and they will get the job. And like
that director said to us, like holding his fingers up, there are this
many jobs. There are this many jobs, and if you don't do your
work, you will not get them. You will not be in the position
to get the job. When it comes that you still might not get but
you will have no chance. You will go from having little chance to no
chance. But there has to be a difference between reality checking people and crushing
their soul. And that's important. And the thing is what you're talking about
then, is that will shake out. And what I mean by that is
like if you come to rehearsal and you haven't practice and you don't got it,
then you just get You don't get to perform, you know what I
mean? Like the way that he does this ulf with the competitive stuff and
you're going to play until your hands plead, and we're going to play till
two am before we even get to like the actual rehearsal itself. Right,
that stuff, to me is where that is just him getting his kicks,
because yes, there's no defense of that. If they didn't have it,
then just say like we can't. You can't be the first chair or whatever
on this. You can't be the core, you know, like like I
said, like there isn't a reliance on natural consequences, no, which is
like part of that third path, right, and said it's more like I'm
going to just berate and abuse and all that stuff. Well, and that's
where I want you to hear. What I'm saying is it's the role of
the teacher to hold accountability. Yeah right, that's true. The role of
the teacher is to teach the world that you're walking into. We can't let
Brittany, you're a supervisor now, you can't sign off on people's paperwork that
aren't doing their shit. Yeah right, Like if you're notes wrong, I'm
not signing it, redo it. I'm not ever going to tell you you're
a stupid fucking slur moron because you did your note wrong. I'm going to
sit with you and like, this note is wrong and this is why,
and you need to do it better. Persistently not getting it, not doing
it, etc. Or they're losing clients because of behavior or whatever is happening.
There's going to be more discussions, but it doesn't need to rise to
that level. And with things like performing arts, you're dealing with people whose
egos are already so fragile and they're already trying to create something out of their
soul to bring forth into the world that they just want someone to tell them
that was good enough. And I'm saying that from the soul of a performer.
Try to do that for money that's beyond the twelve dollars the bar claims
they can afford to pay the big end. But I do do it because
I love it and I need it. And the line from Gladiator where tells
Maximus, you begin to do it all for this, and they will love
you for this. You may begin to love them for that. Maybe why
that's my favorite movie is because it speaks to me is that you have to
understand that that is who you have as a student, and what you're trying
to help them grow is their ability to seek what they need. But you
can't justify crushing their soul out of them in an unrelenting brutal business. Yeah,
because music is possible to do at multiple levels. No, everyone's not
good enough to be a professional. They're not. As a guitar player.
I probably tow that line. As a singer, probably not, And I'm
okay with that. The thing that's true is that you can't crush out of
somebody what they need for your own ego. What you have to do is
cultivate and grow. And there is never a universe where it's justified to beat
some one and so into a pulp that they're avoiding your punishment and thinking that
that is you teaching them to be better. Agreed. I think something else
that I wanted to make sure I talked about too, is that when we
mentioned the age of the kids that are in undergrad or maybe the age of
kids who go to these kinds of schools, the age of onset for mental
illness is between the ages of seventeen and twenty four. So not only are
they a almost protected group of people because they are so young and their brains
aren't fully developed. Like, there's so many different reasons why so, not
only are they protected because they're just young and their brains are more impressionable and
they don't know who they are yet, and then also the possibility that they
may experience the onset of a mental illness during this time as well just makes
the recipe for disaster in this case. Again, I just don't think people
understand the true vulnerability of people who are this age. No, they don't.
Yeah, this is an area of interest for me. When I did
ROTC, I wanted to go into the adjutant core with the army, which
is the one that where they kind of preserve the sociology and psychology of soldier
life. They oversee training, they oversee based life, They oversee these kinds
of things and basic training methods are part of that. And back in two
thousand and four, two thousand and five when I was doing this, this
is what I really took to is watching the change take place in the military
away from the world we were in where we all were brought up. All
of us millennials were brought up by people who were brought up by World War
Two vets and our parents could never live up to the glory of the stories
of their parents. They then in turn wanted their kids to be the best
because they could never be the best because they could never live the Great War.
And then they had Vietnam and that wasn't the same. And then they
gave us participation trophies, but then got mad at us for well, they
can't the ones that asked for the participation trophies. Yeah, the ones,
So they can suck it. That's what I mean, that's exactly. They
can suck it because they're the ones that needed it, because they're the ones
that had the holes in them they were trying to fill. And then they
get mad at us because we want a trophy for everything that they gave to
us for everything. So how are we socialized? But anyway, looking at
the military was starting to change their training methods, like that that idea of
the breakdown before the build up, realizing the returns on that aren't what people
thought. But everybody adheres to that idea because that's what they see in tough
guy movies and they just ignore everyone's like, oh, Arley Ermy did such
a good job in Full Metal Jacket. And yet again with films. You
missed the fucking point yeah of the movie. Okay, yeah, Arlei,
Ermie did such a good job because he was a drill sergeant, would thunk.
But you can't fully break them down. You need to conduct stress inoculation
for people that will be doing stressful things, people that will be military,
people that will be first responders, people that will be performing musicians on stage.
You want to find out real fucking quick that nothing is gonna go no
battle pans, sarrice, contact with the enemy, get on stage, something's
gonna go wrong. You're gonna unplug your guitar, your mic stand's gonna fall
down, and your drummer's gonna put a video of the on social media and
then make little cartoon things of whoop. But stuff's gonna happen, and you're
gonna have to learn to get used to that, and you're gonna have to
get used to getting thick skin because people are gonna have opinions about your work
and critics and everything, and there's some reality to that. That is I
think teachers you need to provide to students that they can prepare themselves for that,
like, look, this is what you're gonna face. And you need
to be able to help them understand that that's going to happen. Military like,
people are going to be shooting it. You're trying to kill you.
Whatever world you thought you were walking into where you get an extra life and
from a video game ain't real. One bullet can kill you. And you
need to get people to be able to function onto the environment so that they
survive. Musicians are going to need be able to perform in small auditoriums where
every mistake is audible, and they aren't to be able to get in their
head and they're going to have to get used to that director going like get
back in time. However, that doesn't mean it gets to come with someone
slapping you in the face. Yeah, at protests, have your felt compelled
to slap a student directly in the face? No, so disgusting. No,
I I've been compelled to drink after a hard l But like you brought
up a great, great idea, Hannah about brain development, because right now,
I mean, I teach all ages, I have adult students, I
have freshmen in high school. And I think that's something that's obvious in the
film too, is that Fletcher is expecting such an impossible level of professionalism or
skill that just isn't attainable at a certain point, just straight up physiologically,
scientifically, Like I have to have kind of the same lesson every couple of
days with some of my students, because it's it's not their fault. They
don't get it. It's a weird concept. And I really think, and
this is something that I'm so passionate about. And one of the sayings I
hate the most is see the or you can't see the art for the artists,
And I think that is absolutely the opposite of what art is. You've
got to know the artist to see how the art was created. And in
my philosophy, like, yes, this art could be created as a result
of horrific abuse, and subjectively, we can get a lot of things out
of it. But because artists subjective, and because all people have the propensity
and the ability to be creative, honoring abuse takes potential away from non abusive
artists to grow as well. You know, I don't need to listen to
Kanye. I don't enjoy the way that he works around mental health issues,
the way that he treats the people that he works with. I can say
that, yeah, music is great. I can understand when people compare him
to a modern day Mozart in a certain sense, but having great music does
not take away from being a person I don't vibe with, you know.
So we spend so much time glorifying these abusers because we have been told as
a society that's what great music is. When I think it would be cool
if we lived in a society where we honor people for who they are and
what they create. Oh one hundred percent. I mean, I don't think
genius quote unquote is worth this kind of torturous, abusive behavior. And you're
right in that we forgive a lot because someone is or is not a genius.
And I think what's pointed and I'm sure this was meant they did this
on purpose with the writing of this movie. Is he says at the end,
Fletcher, I have not created a Charlie Parker, so he can acknowledge
that his tactics are not even creating the genius the art that he is justifying
his behavior around. If I had to hear that motherfucker repeat that Charlie Parker
symbol story one more time, it's just such a classic case of someone justifying
or like retrofitting their abuse to rationalize it, right, And it kind of
goes back to sort of the general idea of this topic, which is,
is this really worthwhile to create this outcome or are people who are more prone
to this behavior find this industry or find these kinds of industries to justify,
rationalize, act out, even be rewarded for abusive tendencies that they might have
always exhibited, but they get to find this perfect place where they can exploit
it. They can exploit it on people who are in disempowered positions, disempowered
ages, and then they can, you know, write a love story about
it in terms of isn't that great? Wasn't it great that Charlie Parker got
almost say with the symbols that made him who he is, he might have
always been who he was? I would also argue, I like that.
There's the argument that Andrew makes you know, as much as this behavior quote
unquote might create greatness, it also probably stifles and prevents greatness. Just because
you're naturally talented does not mean you're naturally ambitious enough to overcome this situations that
you're being put in. And also that that reframe, like Fletcher puts around
people being discouraged, they must not have it. Some people have it,
they just are discouraged as well. Those two things aren't exclusive. You can
have it and it could have been ruined for you by someone like Fletcher.
And so the gymnastics you get to watch Fletcher do to justify and recontextualize how
his behavior might have For every one gifted musician he lifted up, there might
have been a hundred that he destroyed. That is a reality, That is
a thought that Fletcher will never be able to hold, and I think it's
so it's such an interesting concept because it I think adds a little bit of
laziness to the industry too, Like I'm just going to bourne identity through trauma
and you're going to be the world's greatest drummer. That's just not the reality
of how that, at least it's so far from my experience. You're not.
You can't bully someone into being perfect because perfection doesn't exist. And that's
something that I use a lot in my studio. I don't know if I
use this on event, but it's this idea that practice doesn't make perfect,
it makes permanent. However you're approaching your practice that is what's going to be
solidified, which is also a way I go back to Andrew needed to have
a private teacher because he could be making his hands bloody and punching drum kits
all day. But do we know if that's actually helping as skills or is
he just practicing and correct rhythms, you know. So I just think it's
lazy creativity to think that because abuse and trauma feed into, and I guess
ignite our emotions, that those are like healthful or good options to use.
So on that note, I think we should take a break there and we
will come back to talk about Andrew and ambition. All right, So I
wanted to pick up there at the ambition thing since we're starting there. I
think Tessa's point is important, and you did definitely use that. I'd forgotten
it till you just said it. Hahaha. I'll tell you what I think
about you every day, and i'll tell you why later. But my clients
all know about you too, for breathing. Ah yeah, So your messages
have transcended. But I'll talk about that more in final thoughts. The importance
of recognizing that ambition alone and determination and focus like we see Andrew go through
where he's like torturing himself. Yeah. Just this's point is vitally important.
And with music you can practice till permanence, a absolutely incorrect technique. And
then, because it's so ingrained, if you are not aware and have not
had someone kind enough to help you understand what you are doing wrong in a
way that is safe enough for you to be within your window of tolerance,
that you can learn instead of so over activated that you just fawn as part
of your fight or flight fawn or freeze system to do whatever the person who's
yelling at you and making you feel bad about yourself is saying, but really
learn it and digest it, which is part of why I can use my
diaphragm now. So we have learned that, but understanding that people can't learn
when they're in survival mode. You cannot thrive and survive at the same time.
And what we see with Andrew's ambition in this movie is that he is
pushing himself far beyond his reasonable human limits to a point that he's injuring himself.
Yeah. I even kind of wrote in my notes like could you classify
this a self harm? Yes, the bleeding, the punching, the not
stopping when it heard. My assumption is is you I never played the drums,
but you know you probably go through a period where you have to devolve
callouses and that will cause a bleeding in that process. But to like continuously
be in this position where it is hurting you. And his drum much his
at home drum kit, the one that he uses to practice on or whatever
is stained with blood. Like they show that they pull away at some point
when he's in that process and you can see like everything has a little bit
of blood on it, and it's like, this is this is too much?
This is too far? I think about what about him eating? What
about him going outside? Is he drinking any water? Because he's sweating a
lot in this movie. Is there like like just like again like going back
to that idea of blind ambition and how it can lead you to not take
very good care of yourself because you think that's what makes that I'm a real
musician. Whatever, right, Yeah, The idea that you have to be
suffering in some capacity to be great I wholly disagree with. And when I
do this work with clients, it's almost always male clients, male presenting clients.
And who get kind of caught up in sort of how this kind of
ambition also gets entangled with capitalism, hustle culture, talks of masculinity, all
that kind of stuff, and how there is much more of a pressure.
It seems to be. I have to I can only speak as a woman
observing the pre but the pressure of as a man it seems to be that
like you can only get praise, be seen, be loved, be cared
for if you've achieved something that someone can touch or see or taste or hold.
And why I really want to make sure we talked about Andrew is you
can see that dinner with his family told me everything I need to know in
terms of why he's doing this to himself. He well, one, he's
a kid where his mom has left, so that can't be understated in terms
of how he feels about him else and his value and his self worth.
And then he has a dad that seems like he's trying to be supportive and
can kind of do it, but kind of not that dinner table scene,
you see Andrew try to share his positive news at first, and it gets
no one hears him right, and then as soon as he shares again which
I was proud of him for getting the gumption to like share again his positive
news because in a lot of people they would just not say anything. It's
immediately challenged, diminished, minimized, almost made fun of or made fun of
by his cousin. Everyone is redirecting the praise to his other cousin who is
in sport. And this is when I say, like his dad, there's
a lot of things right, but also a lot of things wrong. And
I hated that his dad, mister Paul Reiser, did not assert himself in
that moment and kind of skirt where the conversation was going, Hey, that's
great, A da da Where I can give Paul Riise with bene for the
doubt his dad is if if the dad is nervous maybe to encourage this part
of Andrew's life because he's seeing the not so great behaviors Andrew's doing maybe to
achieve it. Maybe he's already seeing like the isolation and the self harmony behaviors
and all that harmful qualities, and maybe that's why he doesn't want to pump
it up too much. But outside of that, you see right away that
Andrew's doing all this because he wants to be noticed, he wants to be
praised, he wants to be valued, he wants to be taken seriously,
and his family does not do that. So within one dinner scene, the
director did a really great job of giving me all I needs to know in
terms of why Andrew is doing this to himself. How I think about this
in my own language, and Ben used it earlier, is when someone has
like a hole inside of them. Sometimes people call it like the wound,
the mother wound or the father wound or whatever. Oh, it's in terms
are not familiar with, but yes, and trying to fill that up with
something external, right, And when I work with people on their sense of
self, like people who struggle with perfectionism, stuff like that, which Andrew
definitely does, we have to have a conversation around like filling yourself up from
the inside out and of from the outside in. And Andrew is someone and
it's very age appropriate too, So I don't want to hate on him because
it's very age appropriate. He who has been deserted by one of his parents,
you know, and so of course it's outside oiated for what He's better
that most people alive have ever been in. Yeah, So it makes sense
why he acts out. It makes sense why he acts out against his cousins,
why he acts out ish towards his dad. It all lines up as
of why Andrew is doing what he's doing. And like I said, how
it pulls into like my real life experiences is what I kind of ask cis
who come in because they're not having a good time, even if they still
feel connected to this higher goal. Is how are you feeling day to day?
Like, how is your quality of life? And does that still feel
worse this bigger goal you have for yourself And if you really want to tell
me to my face that it is keep on keeping on. You get to
define what the quality of your life is and what that feels like to you.
And when I work with people, obviously they're going to therapy and so
like, I have that card to play where I'm like, then why are
you here? Why you can't do both of these things at once, which
is keep on this path to this the way you're doing it, to this
highly ambitious goal and feeling so connected to that and at the same time be
coming into my office and being like, why do I feel so bad?
They want In those situations, they usually want me to tell them to fix
them. What they mean by that is make it so that this doesn't bother
me so much, and then I can keep doing what I'm already doing without
acknowledging it's not working. Make it better, make me better, so that
I can get past the barriers that aren't making me good enough. Make me
make me so I don't have anxiety or so I don't so I thinking better?
How do I not care? Almost? Yeah, that's what that's what
I hear. How do I not How do I or how do I heal
from this as fast as possible? It's still through so they can keep doing
the same ship. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's trying to put therapy
through that same productivity US culture, external validation perspective, which I have to
break down for people, and I just have to say, like, we
just have to acknowledge the reality situation, which is you can't put therapy through
the same filter as these other things. And also, Babe, you feel
like shit, you feel like shit, you look like shit. Let's be
real. Yeah. Absolutely. Something else I noticed that in that scene where
with the family and the eating, was that his dad actually then gives a
dig at him in the end to kind of reprimand him I think for saying
something shitty about the football when he says, if you heard back from Lincoln
Center yet, And I'm just like, that is unhelpful in this moment.
And if you want to put your son in his place, you should be
doing that face to face, not out in front of everybody. That's not
okay. And there's so much in there to address and so many things,
Brittany, I mean, so many things are true, right. I think
the uncle was taking that dig only after he started being a dick, but
the rest of it was. It's so on point that for male presenting folks,
people identify as male and how we're socialized by the world, speaking as
one who's about as cis male as it gets, and able to acknowledge that
that is not the only experience, no, or the correct one. It's
just a one that exists, right. But the way that socialized from the
time of your little kid is cry on the playground and it's over for you,
and that starts shutting you down from a whole healthy range of experiences.
Like I was said that made me feel bad. I should probably learn from
that and either do better or don't do it. But all they learn instead
socialized is you should be better than you are, and that can manifest into
this like completely toxic idea that if you just do everything at the highest level
possible, at the level that everybody's talking about, like Charlie Rich does this
drummer right, then then you will be seen for the glory of a man
that you are, or you'll be loved like Andrew loved wants to be loved
by his family. He wants to be loved in general. Yes, and
he's confusing understandably. So this achievement based love with internal love that comes from
ideally your parents and then gets becomes you to yourself. Yes, And that's
what I'm saying is it's that's how we're socialized, Yes, to believe that
these great men that played sports ball better than you ever could, or were
these great soldiers or musicians or whatever, and that everybody's still talking about even
if it's sixty years later. Like speaking is like my instrument of choice guitar.
Right, if I hear one more new fucking guitarist, talk to me
about Jimmy Hendrix, who's listened to one song by Jimmy, I'm gonna scream
or one more fucking guitar magazine right, that Jimmy Hendrix was the greatest guitarist
of all time, not to take away from the accomplishments or the innovation of
the man's brilliance, but he died at twenty seven. There are guys in
basements that are better than Jimmy Hendrix ever was. And again not to take
away his social relevance, his skill, his the things that he did,
but there have been more things that have happened since the seventies, and if
we just continue to build these people's legends, we confuse, especially how we
socialize young men. We just lost one of these people that would be equivalent
to Jimmy Hendrix and Dick Bukis as a linebacker who was so good at what
he did, but we don't talk about what the man did to his body
to do it, and we don't talk about what he did to his brain,
and just people keep talking about that. Well, nobody can ever be
as good as Buckets, nobody can ever be as good as Hendrix, nobody
can ever be good as an actor. Is Jimmy Stewart or as good as
singer as Ma Rainium. It teaches people that like in order to become somebody
worthy of love, who is not getting that at home, like Andrew,
that his ambition replaces falsely, like you're saying, Grittey, this idea that
you can become loved for all time, and he flat says that I want
to be one of the grades. Great, I want to be one of
the grades. It breaks up with that girl that is the only thing that
he is going on that is outside of this world that is healthy, right
last an age appropriate, yeah, and age appropriate. But people replace this
idea that you can if you become one of those things, you'll be loved,
and we miss out on things like the dad hits on. The story
of Charlie Parker sticks in my head because of the history of jazz and rock
class. I took an undergrad Charlie Parker got horribly addicted to opioids and heroin
and died at thirty four. And he was in such bad shape the corner
I thought he was sixty and it's a brilliant musician. But he got into
a car accident, broke his spine, and got addicted to pain pills,
which is a story those of us have been around in this old current OPI
pandemic can be all too familiar with. But people don't talk about the cost
of becoming that and then realize that these people died alone in pools of their
own vomit or some other horrible way too young, and then think that because
people still speak their name because they were taught to speak a name like Tesla's,
alleging to right, you're taught to speak these people's names. I was
taught in a class to speak this man's name with respect on it because of
what he accomplished as a musician. But we don't acknowledge in these way men
are socialized, especially of who was this person, Who were they able to
be? Did they achieve their life goals and dreams? None of that matters
because you'll be loved by everybody forever and they'll speak your name, but you
won't be around to feel it or see it or hear it, and that
whole inside of you will never be filled it. In fact, it will
get deeper. Well, it'll fuck you up because if you get it.
There's a lot of stories we know now of like actors and people like that,
where they get the thing, whatever the thing is, and they still
feel empty, and that's his own existential fuck up, where then you're like,
oh shit, that actually didn't fix me. I thought it would,
And now I have to really reckon with what is actually going on inside of
me that's not clicking right, and that is horrible because it's just it's suffering,
right. And also I can't imagine the mind fuck of like the things
like in the story, what you put yourself through and rationalize to get to
that point. You get to that point, you get the surface level reward,
but yet you don't feel any different. And I can't imagine what people
have to go through to reckon with that. I'm sure a lot of times
they don't, which is why there are a lot of successful people who still
die by suicide, who still get addicted to drugs, who have everything going
from that. I think it's why, like for instance, with Anthony Boordain
died and I think why it puzzles people like him and Kate Spade because that
happened around the same time by the same method. Is like, why would
they kill themselves? They had everything quote unquote right. And I really like
to when I work with clients really break down and honestly destroy this idea that
if I reach the top of this mountain, whatever this mountain is, that
I will feel perfect, that I will feel happy, that I will have
no problems, And it's so toxic, so simplistic, and I get it
for that reason. I think it says something about how stubborn we can be
internally to the truth is, we have all this evidence that fame doesn't cure
you, if you want to think of it like that, And yet still
people will wholeheartedly believe this, like this idea of legacy, Like you're right,
then you'll be dead. You know, if heaven's real, maybe you
can feel in heaven, but like that, if it isn't, if there
is no after life, right then you you won't know who cares, right,
what if you're a warm food? The life is the life you're living
now. You know today isn't a Charlie Parker history Day, but you know,
look up the liberty is taken with his story and I guess symbol is
thrown at his feet. But the point stands right that like had he never
become that and he got to live his life. What do you have been?
Okay? Yeah, you know what do you have been? Had?
I not had to die like that of like pneumonia and like drug addiction had
like horrible tragedies, might have traded that and you know we see that over
and over like and we don't even grant people the adoration they deserve while they're
alive. He his ledger Win his oscar talk about method acting like the man
like adopted method acting to become so many things and then probably never filled that
hole inside himself. And when did he get his oscar posthumously when he was
dead? When he was dead, I mean, van goes another classic story,
right, there's all these stories of people who they they couldn't reach that
hilltop or whatever, and it doesn't matter. So is there anything else that
I know I've been talking a lot, but is there anything anyone else wants
to add to about Andrew or ambition? I think just in general and thinking
of trying to think of like any career in my brain where you reach like
one point and then that's it, Like that's the rest of your life,
that's who you are, nothing ever changes, that doesn't exist. And like,
yes, in the industry, we have of what's called the star is
born moment, like you get introduced to a crazy casting director, or you
get a small feature in this film which leads to like fifteen more projects down
the line, which that is how things happen at certain points. But to
think about art in the sense of like this project or this performance is really
I think the antithesis of what creation is. And this is why I think
it's hard to be a teacher sometimes and hard to be a performer as well,
because obviously we want every audition, every performance to be as good as
we can do it, and so we think that we have to punish ourselves
into performing at our best, when in reality, if we were just practicing
a little bit more patiently and a little bit more health focused, we wouldn't
have that anxiety or that desire to force ourselves into performance because all the tools
you need you already have. And I think as a society we really need
to look at how good is this art we're allowing to be made anyway objectively,
Like if someone has to die, if someone has to be traumatized in
order for this to be created, is it really worth a creation? Yeah?
I talk with clients about who are creatives when they are feeling better and
how they'll have panic sort of anxiety that they can't create the same art because
they're not as sad or depressed or as anxious as they used to be.
And so I talk a lot with clients, ironically, weirdly enough about or
certinipitously, this conversation about like how we don't give enough space for joy as
a motivator and beauty and contentment. And so sometimes I will give those clients
homework to create, which is maybe it sounds like homework about creating, but
to like, write me a poem about feeling good, or write me a
poem about just day to day life, make something creative that is based in
positivity, and let's get away from this toxic narrative that depression is good for
you because it makes you a better writer or better a musician. That's also
feels like a way of people like retrofit their reality to fit to make it
more meaningful. It's I think it's this romanticization or however say that word.
It romanticizes the act, and I think it takes agency away from artists because
it's like, oh, I'm not as depressed these days, so my art
just can't be as good. And it's like, no, dude, it's
art, it's imagination. We use our perspectives and we use our truths to
inform the art. But like, at the end of the day, we're
creating. This is imaginative. You can make anything. It doesn't have to
just be your trauma or your like heart going to the bone. Every time
you try to create, you're just gonna exhaust and numb yourself. Yeah.
Robert Pattinson has a funny quote where he says, you know, method acting
only works when someone's playing an asshole. Yes, I never hear anybody.
I never hear anybody method acting being a nice guy. Yeah, And I'm
like, what a good true he doesn't method act. But we'll take another
break here and we'll come right back for treatment. So what are we gonna
do with these people? Anna, I'm gonna throw to you first, who
would you pick out of this movie to treat? I was thinking of that
motherfucker would drop dead before he went to therapy. Yeah, he's not walking
into anybody's fucking office. He thinks he's great. He's Hannah, you're gonna
you didn't even use your catchphrase? What is he a piece of ship?
Oh? Well, damn? Just I mean, yes, but he's fine.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's fine. He's whatever,
He's fucking fine. But anyway, but I was thinking about working with
the dad whose name I don't know if we ever find out, but it's
Paul Reiser. I'm just gonna say Paul dad, because I think something that
Andrew is gonna need is he is gonna need somebody who can be more flexible
than his father currently can be. And I think his dad also needs some
help having a better sense of what can happen when somebody doesn't feel loved,
or when somebody has an experience of their parent leaving when they're very, very
young, it never comes back. I would also want to talk to him
about how much did they talk about that. Is that something that happened when
he was a little boy and it's never been spoken of as like him as
old as he is now. Is it something that or is it something that
they ignore? In some ways, it feels more like it's something they ignore.
Yeah, And so I think a big part of helping Andrew get to
where he needs to be is really helping the dad be able to be a
little bit more understanding of where Andrew was coming from. I think something that
we really witness in the film is the dad really not quite getting it and
not quite understanding that, yes, the way that Andrew is engaging in this
and is being treated in this is not good, right, It's not okay,
And he can only see that it's not good and can't see why Andrew
is so driven to do this thing, like he really misses. He really
seems to miss that point. And maybe that's a part of being a parent.
And maybe he's just missing it because he's so worried about his son,
and that could be a part of it too. But I think something that
I would really want to do with his dad is really help him put himself
in Andrew's shoes, to help him understand the drive and why and why his
son is so obsessed with being the best that there ever was, and helping
him get on that page. And I think, you know, I think
some of those conversations would be There'd be some about attachment, there'd be some
stuff about flexibility as a parent. There would be stuff in there about how
do we talk about something that's hard with our caid who's already had a terrible
thing happen to him. Right, So I feel like I could really help
with some psycho education also with d to help him also understand some of those
pieces as well. Is like Andrew's self harm, Andrew's what I would say,
disconnection from life. He seems a little bit dissociative throughout the movie to
me, Oh God, yeah, like helping again, helping his dad have
a better really being able to stand at Andrew's shoes. And I think that
that would be really helpful because clearly Andrew needs support and help and therapy himself.
But I think a big part of Andrew being able to get there is
having somebody who he can really trust, who understands him. So I'm gonna
piggyback on your treatment, Hannah and think about doing therapy with Andrew and his
dad together. I think Andrew definitely needs his individual therapy. And why I
think therapy with his dad would be so beneficial one for the reasons you're bringing
up dad, even maybe bringing those things into to family therapy. And then
my job can be to help Dad in the moment communicate what he's learning to
Andrew and also practice adapting that information and how he's engaging with Andrew. Because
yeah, you're right, he does seem like a dad that is genuinely caring
and obviously supportive of his son, but doesn't get it like him, Like
such a classic parent who's emotionally removed. Is like getting him housing and stocking
up his covered with gushers. That's such a classic. Like I can't talk
about how how much I worry and love you, but I will give you
like a year's supply of candy, like I'll you know, give you food,
and like setting up the lawsuit thing. You know. I think I
really love that his dad isn't feeding into the dynamic that we're seeing with Andrew
and Fletcher. Yeah, And because I think it would be easy. His
dad seems to be someone who tried to be a writer and couldn't and so
now he teaches school. So I think that there's a really easy way for
that to become the story where Dad is like living through Andrew and pushing him
because of his story. And I think that could be something to bring into
family therapy. You know, well, I think that, and I think
we'd have to just have it out and family therapy about that, where Dad
maybe tells the story of his artistic ambition and how it didn't work out and
just have it out process about Andrew's story of how that impacts his relationship with
his mom and how his mom stayed or left. And I think there needs
to be just they need to talk about that if we can get there,
you know what I mean, that story help them find common ground with each
other about that they both were hurt and acknowledge that, and like helping the
dad understand also where Andrew's coming from, and so part of that job would
be me helping Andrew articulate in less combative ways or passive aggressive ways or passive
ways. This is why I care about this, That's why support so I
probably do like couples dialogue kind of stuff where I make them both just sit
and repeat what they're hearing the other one say without editorializing or defending. And
I think a lot of the work in the beginning would be just processing them
both kind of saying their experience, and me holding the space for them to
process together and coach them as they as they talk to each other about how
to have better communication because the dad is trying, like what I almost purst
into tears when at the end scene when Andrew comes off the stage after he's
been humiliated and I'm going to cry talk the right now. And the first
thing his dad does is hug him, no discussion, Like, couldn't have
been a better response, Yeah, just like for him with love. Yeah,
I am tearing up, Gauzy. It's also almost been nights, so
but I'm vulnerable, and so I think that's such a great response that he
had. It wasn't like humiliating him or like being like, what's wrong with
you? It was just like, I don't care, Let's go. And
so I know that Dad's got the goods, which is why I want to
work with them both. But I think they just need a safe space not
to be corny, to talk about their history and talk about why they can't
seem to connect. Now, you know, are there points of connection they're
trying to make to each other currently that they're missing, Like when his dad
says he doesn't make eye contact, what's his function with doing that? Telling
Andrew that is it? Because he wants to help him. But Andrew only
hears his those criticism. So you have to break down all those like barriers
that are getting in the way of hearing what the other one's actually trying to
say. And Andrew, like you said, probably has a whole narrative about
his dad and why his dad says this because of unders seeing everything's more critical
lens, then he can't hear his dad's feedback in a neutral to helpful way.
So part of my job would be with that repeating thing I was talking
about, like where you repeat with the other ones is verbatim? Is to
clock where Andrew is inserting a critical narrative. Well, you're saying that I
can't make any friends, and I'm like, no, no, no,
no. What he said was that he's worried that you broke up with your
girlfriend, you know what I mean. And so I think they need to
do that work of uncovering where they're putting meaning on conversations that isn't actually there.
So that's the work I would like to do. So Tessa Ben sure,
Tessa, do you want to go first as how you might teach this
person and these individual lessons? Ah? Sure. So everyone needs therapy,
Everyone needs therapy. Fletcher needs to be fired, a whole conservatory needs to
be under investigation, because even in the scene with Fletcher and the other music
conductor, it's pretty obvious to see that this is just the fox and the
Henhouse. Yeah, oh yeah, the way he storms into that room and
basically bosses the whole room absolutely, and the conductor just steps aside the side,
doesn't even say it, doesn't even look at anybody in the room.
He steps aside, he looks away. Yeah, and everyone's complicit. Everyone's
complicit to the abuse. I would just say there needs to be more separation
between the individual students and the people with the power aka the conductor, especially
in a conservatory environment. Andrew needs to be with a private drum teacher outside
of the school or within the school, but completely detached from the performance aspect
of it all. Definitely needs to be in therapy, and he just needs
some not music friends and not music experiences, because when it becomes your whole
life one, how can you tell you're actually getting any better? And to
how do you keep the joy in love in it? Yeah, I will
say I cried a lot about the dad too. Oh we we were big
Dad fans in this house, and just seeing him, even from his place
of little understanding, constantly fighting for his kid was really, really, really
inspiring to see. Fletcher needs to be in jail. That's what I was
going to say, you know, and I will say one of the first
things I noticed is that there were no fem presenting individuals in his rehearsal room.
I think the first fem musician we see is the very last performance his
like I got kicked out at university Quie band, that one person when he
barges into that room because I wrote this down where he says, oh,
I see your first chair. Let's see if it's because you're so cute yep,
yeah, Well he immediately discounts them and makes the sexist remark as if
I don't even know if you're good. Maybe you're just attractives just because you're
cute. Yeah, cute, And then we don't see another female musician the
entire movie, do we do not? This movie does not pass the Bechdel
test. Yeah, have a private teacher who's not a psycho and who can
actually help you objectively and make friends and go to therapy. All right,
I love it. And for anybody looking for a music teacher, test is
not a psycho. I will firsthand, so I'll go here. I will
not speak to at length, which if my wife is listening looking over my
shoulder here, because she'll look at me with the eyes of like, uh
huh. But the thing I want to thing here is if I would get
a client like Andrew, which I likely would, because dealing with people's traumas
and the worst things that have happened to them is where I want to be
and the kind of work that I want to do and the work that I
spent a lot of time learning how to do, and where someone like Andrew
is going to need a lot of help is through a relational approach first,
before we even start getting into the deep stuff, before we start name dropping
techniques, We're going to need to build a relationship and were going to need
to be able to connect, and I think for someone like Andrew, that's
where I'm going to start helping him connect to the joy of why he's playing
music and if that's even something he wants. Really after going through all of
this helping him figure out who he's going to be, I'm going to assume
that I'm going to get him after this big explosion where he's gone through and
like had this huge kick ass drum solo and is now dealing with the post
fallout of trying to apply to new schools and get into another conservatory and likely
running into another person just like this and helping him create a pathway to success
for himself that acknowledges the post traumatic growth that would have happened spontaneously in that
moment where he decided to instead of crumble and fall into the trap that Fletcher
set for him, that he stepped out and stepped into himself and said,
fuck you, sir, I'm gonna play this solo so fucking loud, and
I'm going to play it so long, and I'm gonna make this about me
and my skill and every bit of things that you tried to drill into me.
I'm going to actualize all of them. Now. I always ad it
anyway, But where do we need to build that from him? So that
he can take that as a moment of growth, moment of actualization, that
he steps into his own shoes, and that he continues to listen to those
Charlie Rich albums and any other jazz drummer and drummers throughout history that have inspired
him, but he does it from a place of joy and inspiration instead of
mimicry, because figuring out who he's going to build himself into is the therapeutic
work that needs to be done with this person, let alone the wound healing.
But he needs to have a why so that he can go through the
how. And the how will be very hard, but he won't do any
of it without a why. Yeah, right, very succinct, Ben,
Proud of you, buddy. All right, we will take one final break
here and then come back for final thoughts. I'll go first. Here's what
I'll say is I think this is I get why people like this movie.
I think it's a good movie in that it's well crafted. The director is
great. He also wrote it, you know. I know he's gone on
to do many other things like Land and Babylon. I will ever watch this
movie again. I thought it was really hard to watch. It bummed me
out. It made me sad, kind of similar to Moonlight in that I
don't need to watch someone just like suffering no reprieve for two hours. I
hate the ending. I was getting nervous the whole time I was watching it
about where this movie was going in terms of what it's saying about art and
torturing yourself for art. I hate that it ends on this note where he
gets this nod of approval and then he smiles, and then it cuts to
black. I hate that so much. I think I texted Hannah and Ben
as I was watching and said, if this movie doesn't end with this guy
eying a slow and torturous death, I'm not going to be satisfied with it,
because I hate that this movie allows the possibility of like perpetuating that narrative
with that ending, as if it was all worth it because you got a
little nod from that asshole. Very toxic. Makes it nervous for people who
watch it and interpret it that way, AnyWho like people who still don't get
Fight Club yep, yep. So I will never watch this movie again,
but not because I think it's a bad movie, just because it's a movie
that doesn't bring me joy, as we've just been talking about, and so
I don't think I ever need to revisit it. And I knew I feel
this way. I've been avoiding this movie since twenty fourteen for a reason because
I knew I would feel this way when I watched it, and I was
right. So though I can respect it as a movie, I don't ever
feel the need to revisit it. And that's how I feel about that.
I'll go next. I would just like to say that. I don't want
Damien what is his last name, Chazelle or Chavelle Chazelle to write another fucking
movie where we see white people talking about jazz. This motherfucker needs to take
his shit and go home. Number one. Number two, I'm never gonna
watch this movie again. There's no reason to. It was already imprinted on
my brain the first time I watched it, so watching it this time for
the recording, I was brutal. I don't it sucks. I don't know
how else to say it. Maybe it's a good movie, like in terms
of like the way it's directed and blah blah blah. It's acted pretty well.
I think Miles does a good job of being dissociative and being disconnected,
and we see everything on his face, and I think that's really that's a
big part of the film. But I'm never gonna watch it again. And
I hope that no one who wants to be a musician watches it, because
I don't think it gives you any indication of anything good. I also don't
like the ending. A part of me really felt like Andrew was gonna prove
to him himself that he could do it and that's why he walked back up
on that stage. But my hope was that he was doing it for himself
and that he wasn't doing it just to get the nod. It's what I
was hoping was what the ending could be, which I think they could have
demonstrated better. All right, fair enough to test, you want to go,
Yan me to go, I can go. I also at the very
end I thought I wish the cinematography had been more clear, because I think
if you're very optimistic, you can see that final scene as Andrew like coming
into his own and telling Fletcher to fuck off like this is my band now,
which as a musician is such a funny concept to like go onto a
stage and be like I'll cue you, I'll tell you when to come in,
I'm in charge now. Hilarious anarchy. It is really hard to watch.
It is really hard to watch because there is so much truth in it.
I would say I'm not going to try to watch it again, but
unless I can talk through the whole thing, that's my rule. I have
to be able to talk through. But I think it's an important film because
JK. Simmons earned that. Oscar Baby earn that, but also I hope
in a way it can help people identify that these behaviors are not acceptable,
because when you watch that first rehearsal and he's getting slept in the face and
he's getting drilled on music questions like that, not the slapping in the face
part, but like the drill, the being put on the spot, the
uncomfortable nature of ensemble work is true. And I hope that if people can
view this film and get good things out of it or reflective things out of
it, it's these type of behaviors aren't acceptable, and we need to as
a society adjust the way we view art and the journey through which we create
it is they're not Everything can be justified, and everyone should go to therapy.
Everyone on this earth should be in therapy. And like music lessons if
you're interested, but definitely therapy as it must all right, well said,
yeah, the movie. I picked it. I picked it and I subjected
you all to it because of the truth he did in it. I did,
and I did so knowing it's hard because it's true, m h.
And because it's a depiction of watching what so many people go through as they
try to live their dreams. Where some person just like this stands in their
way and crushes their joy out of their soul, which results in them coming
to see us. Yeah, and maybe they give someone like Tessa chance,
you know, to correct if I have a corrective experience with someone who'll be
kind to them with what's happened when someone else tried to crush their goal.
Which is why she's saying the importance of being with an individual teacher who may
have an impromptu therapy session with you that can walk you through like, Okay,
what are we going to work through? Oh? Today, today we're
working through where you are still holding in your body or someone made you feel
so bad about yourself that you can't breathe. And when you see that on
film depicted so excellently, it makes films like this important even though they're tragic,
they're very hard, very hard to watch. And whether it's through like
music is just a particular evil, it's elusive. It's impossible. You are
brought up like I was talking about, kind of alluding to a Jimi Hendrix
and other people, even Charlie Parker, like you're brought up idolizing these people
who created things out of talent, out of trauma, out of a unique
way of seeing the world, out of a unique way of being themselves.
And quite often, by the time we're talking about their greatest records and hits,
some of those things were created in dissociative mindsets that aren't replicable sober.
But people demand that as a high level of achievement that's unattainable. So now
you have to do it perfectly every time, and do it in a way
that someone did by accident in a dissociative altered mindset, using a combination of
factors that are unattainable, and that becomes a standard. And I think this
movie captured all of that well. And I agree wholeheartedly that the like I
know, I said it so I indicated I am one of those people who've
used it a little optimistically. Is the fuck you to him as taking like
spotlights on me now, motherfucker. So you have to acknowledge it because now
what you're doing for the applause and your own thing I just took away from
you. That is definitely a banned person's fantasy of like, fuck this director,
this shows about us. Maybe true, maybe not, but they didn't
hit it hard enough in the cinematography. As evidence by. We got three
people here who saw it a little differently than I did, and that's okay.
It's important. That's why we discussed it, right artist objective, we
all see different stuff. I saw it that way, but obviously not everybody
did. The importance and power of this film is it shows us we need
to listen more to people's experiences because there are terrors like this that exist everywhere,
that are empowered, that take things away from people, and we need
to listen. And I will say, Ben, I'm glad we talked about
this movie because I hope that people who listen to this episode, who maybe
have more of the perspective that this is okay the way that he behaved and
that this is how you write a passage kind of shit. I hope that
people. I'm glad we did it, So I hope people listen and hear
us challenge all of that stuff. So I am glad we did it,
even though I've never watched this in the day again anyway, the one thing
that I wanted to say is I know there are people that see me that
that listen to this, and I want you all to know who to think,
because Tessa tell you that I think there was quite a while when I
was working with Tessa or I be on Tessa being like an ungodly kind teacher
and very patient and willing to work with me in a genre that I know
is not hers and helped me very much. But the thing that I could
not do is get my body to breathe. I just could not fucking do
it. And I'm hoping that one of those times you had to go drink
wasn't because I wouldn't breathe. No, but the I try not to be
a pain in the ass, but my body would not cooperate. But the
uh I learned, I did learn and I got it and it really helped
me eventually figured it out, and your patients was incredible for that. But
now I sit in therapy with people every time and learning to diaframatically breathe and
create space in their body to breathe is paramount to healing from trauma. And
without your lessons on that, I wouldn't be able to teach people the same
way. So thank you, Oh my god, oh Cora. On that
note, Tessa, where can people find you? Great question? So I
teach adults both industry and not privately. Seven days a week depending. You
can find me on my Instagram Tessa Marie Huffman. I have a website Tessamrii
Huffman dot net. But find me on Instagram. That's the easiest, and
you can send me a direct message and we can get an email going.
You can also email me at Tessa dot Marie dot Huffman at gmail dot com
or vocal Volition dot com. All right, and we will put all that
information in the description of this episode. And as always, you can find
us a Popcorn Psychology on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. You can find
us at Popcorn Underscore psych at Twitter, slash x. You can always email
us at Popcorn psychologyt gmail dot com. And if you would like to support
us, which we always appreciate, you can find us on a Patreon.
The link is in our Instagram bio where you can support us if you are
a fifty dollars or more patron. You can even pick the topic of an
episode, and if you would like to get merched, you can find us
on tepublic dot com. All right, everybody, go find some joy.
Go find some joy. Everybody