analysing angela & frida

I had been wanting to watch My So-Called Life for a while now, so I was pretty stoked to find it under the tree this year. I started watching it, and the first 10 minutes were okay but I was a bit disappointed. But as I continued watching, the second episode and the third I was blown away. I was completely glued to my computer and fascinated by the quality of the acting and by the resemblance to my life. 

Angela's bickering parents kind of tick me off sometimes (their conversations are always along the lines of: the mum: "omg Angela doesn't love me" the dad: "omg she does, she doesn't love me", together: "i guess she needs to push us away to understand how important we are to her"… or like, the mum: "ah i miss it when i was angela's age, i feel so ugly, honey am i ugly?"). So that can get annoying. BUT THE TEENAGERS. 

They are so raw, and real, and inconsistent, and unpredictable, and funny and I just have so much love for them. Take Angela for example. If you look at most TV shows or movies geared toward teenage girls (even one's that are actually quite cool such as Juno or Easy A or The Hunger Games), they describe a protagonist who KNOWS who she is. She might stuff up a couple of times and make the wrong choices or feel sort of confused but ultimately she makes what the viewer sees as the "right" choice. But throughout all this process she HAS A SET PERSONALITY that is very clear and labelable (is that even a word?). And that can be a bit daunting for someone like me who doesn't have anything figured out. 

Angela could be me or you my dear reader (that is if you are a teen, you like the Smashing Pumpkins and you have trouble fitting in, we have quite the criterion here) because she ISN'T EASILY DEFINED. 

You see her trying to wade through high school, sometimes quite passively following Rayanne other times making her own way. In class you see her fidgety and distracted (to her defence the teachers seem pretty monotone and boring) but out of the blue she will raise her hand and say something super intelligent tying perfectly with the subject but also drawing a parallel with her life and teenagerhood in general.

As well as analysing Angela Chase and literally consuming the episodes (IN WHAT WORLD ARE THERE THIRTEEN SEASONS OF FAMILY GUY BUT ONLY ONE MEAGRE SEASON OF FREAKS & GEEKS AND MY SO CALLED LIFE, WHY IS LIFE SO UNFAIR?) I've been very fascinated by Frida Kahlo.

My friend lent me The Diary of Frida Kahlo (and it's translation because yeah not quite the pro in spanish yet) and it's actually scary. There's more to Frida than a mono-brow and jewels, she is the symbol of obsessive love, of pain (she has 37 surgeries throughout her life) and of nature.

Here are a couple of sentences that she wrote that portray this:

Through the round numbers
and the colored nerves
the stars are made
and the worlds are sounds.

 -

I would not wish to harbour
the slightest hope,
everything moves to the beat
of what's enclosed in the belly

 and my favourite:

You too know that all
my eyes see, all
I touch with myself, from
any distance, is
Diego. The caress of
fabrics, the color of colors, the
wires, the nerves, the pencils,
the leaves, the dust, the cells,
the war and the sun, everything
experienced in the minutes of the
non-clocks and the non-calandars
and the empty non-glances,
is him.

Frida literally self-destructs and the traces of this in her diary is very confronting. She mixes the ugly and the beautiful in all her work. (Also on a superficial note, you'd think, after reading her poems that Diego is a looker or at least charismatic but oh my, see for yourself..)

(I guess Frida really saw something in him…)