Anodyne

Frenta blackens the screen by placing her hand in front of the projector. One half of the class turns around and looks at her, the other half screams out “hey” and “oh” and throw their arms up.

Frenta whispers polite invectives. They know she is blocking out an offending buttocks that traipses before the screen headed frame left. She admits to herself it is a shapely buttocks, but it is gratuitous in this scene and certainly to the film overall.

Her earliest memory of watching television is piqued. The living room, in Tallahassee, watching her father reclining in his chair, with a Falstaff can precariously perched on his paunch, laughing and occasionally saying things like “looka’ that rack,” and “jeez, what an ass,” while watching Three’s Company. Then the aftermath. The afterimage. She tries not to think of the afterimage aftermath.

As it concerns this “art film,” she would have never conceived of such a mise en scène — it’s sexist and it’s fatuous. And she is neither of those things, nor does she wish to impart that sort of image to her charges.

“It may even be that some of us know what it is like to be actually hated—hated for things we have no control over and cannot change. When this happens, it is some consolation to know that the dislike or hatred is unjustified—that you don’t deserve it.”

— Toni Morrison / The Bluest Eye