The Smartest Women I Know Are All Trying to Find Beauty in the Mundane.
& why I hate the term 'dissociative feminism'.
“Femcel” “Dissociative feminism” “Sad White Girls” “Spoiled Protagonist” Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one woman play turned tv series, has sparked a lot of debate. Namely, what do we do with unlikeable, sad young women? For those of you who haven’t seen it (where have you been??), the series follows a young women, who’s name is never revealed. She is grieving her mother and more recently, her best friend who committed suicide (“as a joke” the protagonist is quick to reassure us). She fucks up her romantic relationships, disappoints her older sister and is barely managing to keep her guinea pig themed café open. Practically speaking, there are two things that make the show very good: the use of the fourth wall and how hilarious it is. I’m going to talk about both and why they are better than just good but in fact tell us something about the human experience.
The show deals with extremely sad subject matters, the fact that these are treated as comedy is not unique or interesting. It’s almost impossible to make art about death and mental illness that isn’t comedic. What’s difficult is making it genuinely funny and genuinely sad at the same time. It manages to do this by breaking the fourth wall. Fleabag is constantly disputing what is in front of her to the camera. She says mean things about people to us, she laments her “bad feminism”, she tries to reason why she likes having sex with strangers. Try to imagine the show sans Fleabag’s asides; it would be unbearably depressing. It would resemble real life too much. All of my favourite shows use absurd tools so they can explore the very edge of what a person can handle while still entertaining us. For example, BoJack Horseman uses colourful cartoon animals to tell stories about addiction and lonliness.
This is intelligent, good art.
Fleabag is one of my favourite pieces of art, and truly is present in every piece of fiction I write. When I first watched the show, I was interested in the relationship with Fleabag and her sister Claire, this was the central knot of the plot for me. The unique, beautiful thing about it. And whilst I still love how their relationship develops, this time round, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the two central men in the show: Harry and the Hot Priest.
Perhaps in 2016 when the show first aired, or earlier in 2013, when it was first performed, it was easy to laugh at how pathetic and snivelling and childish Harry is. When I first watched the show, I scoffed in disgust when he asks Fleabag to stop masturbating, and laughed my ass off when she scares him in the shower and he starts crying. But this time round, I found myself crying too. He’s so desperately trying to love someone who hates herself.
A similar story arc occurs with her accountant. In the beginning of the show, Fleabag accidentally flashes him which he interprets as her trying to get money via sexual favours. The interactions ends with him calling her a “slut” and we laugh, never expecting to see him again. Towards the end of season one, she is on a retreat with Claire manages to find a center for men who hate women. They stand in a room yelling “bitch” and female blow up dolls, Fleabag smiles to herself before noticing her accountant. They share a cigarette outside and he apologises. He gives the famous (or at least, famous in my mind) “I want to unload the dishwasher speech” . She doesn’t look to the camera at all in this moment, she is totally present.
The show sets up these ironic encounters; guy at work who gets offended at woman showing her tits, turns out to hate women!! Or; wimpy boyfriend cries in the shower because he’s scared of his girlfriend and doesn’t want her to masturbate. But then turns them into something with much more depth, to the point where we feel guilty for laughing in the first place, we feel almost culpable.
At the end of season one, we find out that Harry has a new girlfriend, Elaine. And by season two, he’s a dad. We realise how happy and boring and normal he is. And Fleabag doesn’t know how to turn his growth into a funny sarcastic comment.
An article that I don’t agree with, talks about the term “dissociative feminism”, focusing mainly on 3 characters; Marianne from Normal People, the protagonist from My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Fleabag. In the media at large there has been a pushback against “Sad White Girls”, reducing these pieces of art to being about Bad Selfish Women, who are Privileged. Although Fleabag is privileged in many ways, this doesn’t a) make her a bad person and b) mean her problems aren’t real. The show breaks the fourth wall so that Fleabag can lighten the mood, make the audience laugh and fall in love with her character. But the asides to the camera are Fleabag’s own assurances to herself rather than the reality of the situation.
Why is BoJack Horseman not accused of doing the same thing? Or as Broey Deschanel points out in her excellent video Fleabag is Not a Femcel, why is Julie, the main character in the film The Worst Person in the World not featured in think pieces about white female privilege and despondency? Because both of these pieces of art were created by men. I hate the term ‘dissociative feminism’ because I don’t believe it exists. And I think it seeks to throw many diverse pieces of art into one big illegitimised pile of ‘sad girl crap’. Listen, I hate the Red Scare podcast, I hate it almost as much as I hate Girls, but that doesn’t mean they’re actively making the world a worse place. I’d prefer a think piece about the ever complex Lena Dunham than another fucking listicle about the best white t shirt Amazon has to offer.
In terms of art that I actually like, to describe it as ‘dissociative’ means that you’ve actually missed the entire message of the piece. At the end of the series, Fleabag gives one last smile into the camera before walking off into the distance. Here we have The Transformative Power of Love: a theme that forms the core of both Phoebe Waller Bridge’s and Sally Rooney’s work. Love can change a person. Claire transforms Fleabag, who in turn transforms Claire right back. And it is ultimately the non-judgemental care and affection from the Hot Priest that causes Fleabag to move on from her past…and her dissociation.
The girls in Sally Rooney’s novels are genuinely traumatised by horrible events. The same goes for Fleabag. These women are not sad for no reason and they’re certainly not unaware of their position within the world. They haven’t ‘given up’, deciding to be distant and ironic about their pain for the rest of their lives. They continue to try and fall in love, they speak openly and honestly with their family members, they make bad jokes. For all intents and purporses, if Waller-Bridge and Rooney weren’t such great artists, we might consider their character’s arcs to be…(dare I say it?) cringe.
How does My Year of Rest and Relaxation end? Despite her cold upbringing and loss of her parents, the main character, decides it’s time to believe in love, time to try and be happy. She decides to heal.
So does Fleabag.
All the smartest women I know dissociate, they make fun of awful things that have happened to them, sometimes hey give up on the world. This is a human response. But after a week or so, they always decide that it’s time to start caring about shit again. It’s time to remember how precious all of this is.