By Sarah Polley. Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2022.
In which the Oscar-nominated director inadvertently admits liberalism doesn't work.
First, let me say I truly did enjoy reading this book, doing so in audiobook form. Polley's narration added so much to her stories and it was great having her voice in the room with me.
Sarah Polley is one of those people whom, as a Canadian, I hear about all the time. However, when I do, I can never remember what she's done. Hearing the acclaimed actress, writer and director open up about some of the toughest times of her astounding life fixed her more firmly in my mind and gave me an appreciation for what a warm, intelligent, capable, strong, resilient, dedicated, and caring person Polley is.
Even more remarkably, like any good dramatist, she is able to inject many of these memoir essays with humour, especially the final one which tells the story that inspired the book's title.
I do not really subscribe to the left-right political paradigm and I have a feeling, maybe more of a hope, that if Sarah Polley and I met, we would find lots of things to talk about and get on really well.
That being said, it is not going to keep me from commenting on the aspect of this collection of six essays that got me the most: how the left-wing activist truly shows, without meaning too, why liberal values don't work in real life.
In the first essay, Polley talks about being in the Stratford Festival production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", also delving into the loss of her mother to cancer just before her eleventh birthday, the life virtually free of boundaries she had before and after this tragedy (about which more later), and Lewis Carroll's attraction to the real-life Alice upon whom his books were based.
Liberals constantly go on about sexual freedom. We are now living in a time when pedophiles are being referred to by the woke crowd as minor-attracted persons. If we carry this humanist sexual freedom philosophy to its logical conclusion, then why, ultimately, is what Lewis Carroll felt for Alice ultimately wrong?
This inadvertent push against left-wing sexual freedom is expounded in the second essay where Polley tells about being sexually assaulted by Gian Gomeshi and why she didn't come forward during the scandal or testify at his trial.
She intimates she was "shamed" into becoming monogamous after what the former CBC star did to her. However, given what we've just had related to us, maybe monogamy is a good thing. If one restricts oneself to sex within a committed relationship (as it says in Proverbs, answering the fool according to her argument) then aren't the chances of having experiences like the one Polley had with Gomeshi significantly decreased? Further, (not answering the fool according to her argument as it also says in Proverbs) should sex maybe not be kept within the bounds of the ultimate form of committed relationship, marriage?
The third essay, about Polley's high-risk pregnancy with her oldest child as well as her adventures in learning to breastfeed, truly underscores what an amazing woman Polley is, as well as what a mighty good man her husband is. The affirmation of the astonishing ability of a woman's body to do that which it is made to do blazes off every page. Polley's own lack of a supportive mother in this trying time comes through very strongly, as well. Granted, her mother was dead, but this essay nonetheless underscores the importance of the nuclear and extended family.
In the fourth essay, Polley gives us a vivid look into the harrowing experiences she had at eight years old on the set of Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", a film which by all rights should have been a money-drawing blockbuster. The lack of fathering and parental boundaries, as well as her dad's vicariousness, is evident in spades here.
One also can't help but think, at least from what's written about him here, that if the Monty Python alum filmmaker had had more boundaries as a child, then Gilliam would have, in turn, had more of same as an adult, thus, decades later, sparing a little girl lots of stuff an eight year old should never have had to go through, in the name of storytelling or otherwise.
Leftists tend to have a philosophy which puts kids in the driver's seat and exposes children to things to which they should not be exposed at their age. (LGBT activists in Florida, I'm looking in your direction.) The sound wisdom of going against this is made very clear in this essay.
The recounting of child showbiz trauma continues in the fifth essay where Polley tells of taking a spontaneous end-of-summer trip to PEI. (She does this with a nine week old baby and two other small children, further testament to the greatness of this renaissance woman.) The trip to the land of spuds and suds reminds the author of further terrible experiences on the set of her next big project after "Munchausen", "Road to Avonlea."
Polley goes through a litany of unpleasant situations from stuff we've heard about child actors before (long hours, staff yelling at kids, etc) to having to show up for work two days after her mother died. I believe every thing Polley says about her personal happenings, but then, Polley does what leftists tend to do and undermines her argument.
First, she says something to the effect of, "Well, besides, the show glossed over the unpleasant parts of Canada's past and I also didn't like that it took more of a family values turn once the Disney Channel picked it up."
When families sit down in front of their TV on a Sunday night before the hurly-burly of the week, they don't want to be confronted with the terrible aspects of Canada's past. They want escapism and, in the case of "Avonlea", nostalgia.
Further, paraphrasing C. S. Lewis in "The Four Loves", the story of your country should always be the best. Its not that you ignore the wrongs of the past, but instead, for example in the time period of the Montgomery universe, you say something like "Back at that time, people had values such as help your neighbour. Now, they may have been slower to help their neighbour depending on the neighbour's race, class or whether or not there was something shady in said neighbour's past or present, but we must carry on this good value and build upon it, extending it to willingly helping people despite their skin colour, economic status or other factors."
Second, Polley says children should not be in projects with a profit motive, going off into the abstract as liberals so often do, or rather, basically live in. Television, film and web productions with child actors aren't going to end anytime soon, so what practical solutions does Polley have for how children in these media could be better treated?
Also, while I am all for community theatre and many other ventures across the spectrum of society that are nonprofit or where money isn't the only top priority, the fact is that profit is what makes the world go round.
Two more comments before I move on to the final essay:
First, former Miss Sarah Stanley, it sure seems like you could have used some family values growing up.
Second, don't actively shut down your childrens' ambitions to the point of detriment. Don't be the horrible stage mother who demands her daughters follow in her footsteps, but neither be a childhood parent, as it were, who prioritizes her kids having the childhood you never had above their pursuing genuine dreams.
The sixth, titular essay tells the tale of how Polley suffered a concussion in a freak accident and the three and a half years of recovery that followed. Again, her husband's worthiness shines through and the importance of marriage, family and community is underscored, as well as two other inadvertent points.
First, Canada's so-called free and greatest healthcare system in the world sucks. Polley, and a few other women she knows who suffered concussions, had to see a doctor in Pitsburgh before exhibiting any true recovery. The Canadian specialist all but dismissed her desire to make a film again, whereas the American doctor staunchly affirmed its possibility, which is a pretty good summation of the difference between Canadians and Americans in general.
Second, feminism, at least the second and third wave kind, with its pronouncements against motherhood, doesn't work. Though being nominated for an Academy Award makes a lifetime memory, which will Polley cherish more in her old age: that, or her daughter telling her, "You really know how to play.?"
