Week 12: Sensitivity and Pizza

I’ve been thinking a lot about sensitivity lately because of something that happened about a week and a half ago. Time for a story:

            I was sitting in the living room reading when I heard the doorbell ring followed by our dogs barking wildly. I was the only one of the seven people in the house on the lower level, so I had to get the door. After throwing the dogs out into our fenced yard, I went to open the door and I immediately apologized to the guy waiting on the front step for the insanity of my loyal “guard dogs”. Before I finished my apology, the guy at the door, who I recognized as a neighbor from across the street, said “You should put your recycling in bags next time.”

            His arms were filled with the contents of our recycling bin: water jugs, milk jugs, and water bottles. He expounded on his previous blunt statement, “Your trash was everywhere, so I picked it up.”

            “You didn’t have to do that! Thank you.” I responded, under the impression that he had picked up our wayward trash just because it was a windy day and he thought we needed help.

            “No, I picked it up because it was all over my yard.” He said.

            I apologized again and again. I didn’t know what else to say. He was still holding my family’s trash in his arms, and he looked as though he was waiting for me to take it all from him. I stepped forward and took each bottle and jug out of his arms one by one. I don’t think I ever stopped apologizing while he told me the best way to go about keeping our trash out of his yard.  He eventually left, having said what he needed to say. I walked down the driveway in my socks to get the recycling bin and put the jugs and bottles back inside. I also went to get some grocery bags, like the guy suggested.

            When I told my mom about what happened, I was in tears. Crying is my default response to everything. My mom told me I shouldn’t have answered the door at all, but what was I supposed to do? Leave him waiting on the front step with his arms full of our trash? The fact that he was holding all of our trash that had ended up in his yard due to the wind bothered me the most. Did he feel like he should display the evidence of our wrongdoing? He couldn’t just return the jugs and bottles to the recycling bin, he had to hold them up in front of me and force me to apologize for the wind’s actions?

            I just wanted to forget about the whole thing, but my parents wanted to do the opposite. My mom asked around for the guy’s wife’s phone number, and she sent a text to our neighbor detailing how “distressed” I was, and how any future problems should be discussed with her or her husband. My mom hasn’t realized I’m an adult yet so she fights all of my battles. The wife called my mom back and said that her husband never meant to upset me, he only wanted to express his frustration over the way our trash always ends up in their yard on trash day. She claimed that our trash was in their yard every single week, and they always picked it up. She ended the call by saying that she doesn’t want to have a bad relationship with her neighbors, but the constant trash in their yard was very trying.

            Though our neighbors wanted to discuss the matter further, we declined, and thought that was the end of it. A couple of hours later the doorbell rang again, and a Domino’s pizza guy was standing at the door. We hadn’t ordered a pizza, but the pizza guy insisted it was for us. We soon realized that our neighbors had bought us a pizza to apologize for what had happened that afternoon. I felt worse than ever. I felt awful that my sensitivity, the fact that I had cried in response to our neighbor’s request to put our bottles in bags, had made our neighbors feel obliged to make it up to us with pizza.  Once again I had been too sensitive, and I had made a big deal out of nothing.

            My sensitivity makes me cry, apologize, and worry 24/7. I condemn myself constantly for my sensitivity, and I have always hated the fact that I malfunction in the face of any and every situation. Why can't I talk to people and solve problems without crying? Why do I feel the need to apologize for every one of my actions? Hannah Gadsby asked, “Why is insensitivity something to strive for?” (36:20) in her Netflix special Nanette because she, like many people, is often told not to be so sensitive. Every time I degrade myself for being sensitive, I should try to remember what the opposite of sensitivity is. Gadsby emphasizes the fact that sensitivity isn’t a weakness, it’s powerful and human. My powerful and human sensitivity got us free pizza that night, so sensitivity can’t be all that bad.

 P.S. My dad wanted to put the empty pizza boxes in our neighbor's yard, but I didn't think that would improve our relationship with them.

Week 7: Masking Mental Illness (and Misogyny) as Male Genius

Although there were many layers to Hannah Gadsby's Nanette that varied in levels of seriousness, one particular aspect of her standup really stood out to me. Her frequent art history references and sheer knowledge of the topic added depth and weight to her argument. She very beautifully applied art history to current issues we face today. For example, the ridiculous roles of women were discussed through the depictions of them in paintings (Gadsby). Though we are no longer expected to run around partially nude, the idea that women cannot think for themselves is still a prominent issue in society today. With Gadsby's nods to art history, she indirectly comments on the gendered aspect in the relationship between art, mental illness, and genius. In this blog post, I will attempt to discuss how coining artists' mental illnesses as "genius" is somehow also a gendered idea. 

Hannah Gadsby cites Vincent van Gogh as an example of an artist suffering from mental illness being regarded as a "genius." To demonstrate this, she tells the story about how he only sold one painting and joked that it was probably because he was "crazy" (Gadsby). Similarly, Gadsby mentioned Pablo Picasso and the creepy relations he had with an underage girl. This injustice of course was overlooked by the public due to his genius. "But, cubism," was a common quip Gadsby incorporated mimicking the societal excuse given for Picasso (Gadsby). He clearly molested this woman, but it was alright because his genius created cubism, and he and his victim were both "at their prime" (Gadsby). Firstly, that statement could not be any more disgusting, but it is not surprising coming from an old, white dude. Old white men of power always seem to get away with these vile, sexist remarks anyway. Gadsby quoted that his mental illness, although he did suffer from some form of it, was actually "misogyny" (Gadsby). It seems as though the crown of "genius" will also disguise sexism, as the men and artists who abuse their fame and power are allowed to employ misogyny in the name of "higher intelligence." 

Women are excluded from this "genius" narrative in both Gadsby's standup and society. (What's new?) Of course, throughout history, there have been female artists and also geniuses (gasp) who may have been plagued by mental illness. That simple fact does not mean that they are actually discussed and given validity, though. There are endless examples of depressed male artists, van Gogh and Picasso, for one, and in music, Mozart, with his public outbursts and odd mannerisms, and Chopin, with his 24 Preludes written as he was slowly dying of tuberculosis. (I wrote a 20-page paper about Mozart and the suspicion that he had Tourette's Syndrome. Similarly, I also made a PowerPoint presentation on multiple artists and the psychology behind their music, in which I discussed Chopin.) How come all of this attention (i.e. 20-page reports) goes to the male artists who suffered mental illnesses? Why is this, of all topics, a gendered one? Perhaps it is because women could not possibly be regarded as geniuses. Maybe the men were the only ones focused on in history because women generally did not matter. (Side note: Women composers around Chopin's time and much later were condemned for creating music and seen as simply not brilliant enough to make valid works. Triggering, I know.) Whatever the reason, women and their genius and/or mental illness are not given the same publicity as their male counterparts. I would like to think that men are hiding behind their masks of genius, not only to disguise mental illness and misogyny, but to blind themselves from the overwhelming and obvious geniuses of women who are simply too afraid and societally suppressed to let them shine. 

*If anyone can think of a female artist whose mental illness is regarded as them being a "genius," please tell me about it. I would love to learn more about the female voices being overshadowed by men throughout history. 

Works Cited 

Gadsby, Hannah. Nanette. Directed by Madeleine Parry and Jon Olb. Performance by Hannah Gadsby, Netflix, 19 June 2018. 

What Takes Up More Room in My Closet: Me, or My Shoes?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.