Rewatching Jennifer Coolidge in Austenland feels like the emotional opposite of doomscrolling—a return to safe and comforting rather than a digital conveyor belt of brand-new bad news.
PositionColumnist
JoinedOctober 2, 2023
Articles9
Abigail Oswald is a detective investigating life. She writes Microfascination, a newsletter on pop culture rabbit holes, and edits the Lost/Found imprint at Split/Lip Press, which gives out-of-print books a new home. Her work has appeared in places like Best Microfiction, Memoir Mixtapes, The Rumpus, and a memory vending machine. Abigail earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and can be found at the movie theater in at least one parallel universe at any given time. More online at abigailwashere.com.
Everything has a story—love, betrayal, justice. Some might discount the tremendous power of language, yet narrative shapes every aspect of daily life. The truth is just one more story—the one we must search for, that must be unearthed, that is sometimes the hardest to tell.
So much of what John Keating does in Dead Poets Society has to do with shifting one’s perspective. Believing we hold all of life’s answers heralds the death of curiosity, which feels to me like the antithesis of joy. Better, then, to keep searching. Stand on the desk and say what you can see.
Labor often calls forth another version of the self; the working version of Maureen in Personal Shopper is competent and well-spoken, and what’s more, she seems to make decisions with ease—even while her own personal life has stuttered so thoroughly to a halt.
The Mothman Prophecies illustrates anxiety’s steady build of dread. The deeper John tunnels into his investigation, the more he becomes convinced that some terrible event is fast approaching. He becomes consumed by the dream of knowing what will happen before it happens, the idea that if you simply knew the collision was coming, you could be the one to set the train on a different course.
In The Night House (2020), Beth (Rebecca Hall) has spent fourteen years believing her life told a certain kind of love story. And then, just as quickly, we discover this narrative has changed.
The Descent is a story of surfaces—what we see at a glance, and what lies below.
The character of Heather Donahue may not have found her way out of the woods in The Blair Witch Project, but the woman who played her did.
Memento is not an exact mirror of Leonard’s lived experience, but its structure forces the viewer to confront the ephemerality of memory on a loop, just as he does. The constant losing battle of trying to hold on to distinct moments, even as they slip beyond our reach.