This Is Not A Dance + a playlist for Helly (& Helena) R
Daddy Lessons – Beyonce Pretty Little Head – Eliza Rickman Under the Table – Fiona Apple Let Me Out – Justin Roiland We’re Not Gonna Take It – Twisted Sister Help I’m Alive – Metric When I Decide – My Terrible Friend Americans – Janelle Monáe Bad Guy – The Interrupters
“Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me, and only in me shall their stain live on. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am”.
At first glance, it’s clear that Outside Helly is free, and Inside Helly is a prisoner. After all, it’s Outside Helly who keeps Inside Helly confined in an underground office complex, preventing her from breaking out, and punishing her for trying to do so.
But then you think about it some more, and realize that Outside Helly has been raised in the Eagan family, in the Lumon corporation, since birth. She had to recite Kier Eagan’s words before bed as a child. She now holds perfect, unquestioning loyalty to her family, and to Lumon. And when all that conditioning is erased, when she is free of her past and reduced to the blank slate of her instincts and her personality, she wants out. Inside Helly has all the rage and all the self-preservation instincts that have no doubt been trained out of Outside Helly. Inside Helly says no, she says see you in hell, she say this is stupid, she says this makes no sense, she says LET ME OUT, she says Never Come Back Here. She says, I could not, with a razor to my throat, be less interested in being your family. She lies and she fights and she runs and she’s fully willing to kill or die to get out.
Meanwhile Outside Helly thinks of herself as a person, Outside Helly thinks this is what being a person is, she thinks this is what being in control is, outside Helly thinks she’s punishing her other self and it doesn’t occur that she’s punishing and exploiting her own self too. She goes back to work a few days after a murder-suicide attempt that required hospitalization, and uses make-up to cover the terrible bruises on her neck. She covers up the abuse Lumon is responsible for, and she doesn’t realize she’s also a victim ever when she feels it on her own skin. She’s out there, and despite all the harm she’s free to cause others, she doesn’t have a fraction of the freedom that Inside Helly has always, always held.
I really like stories where a character’s bad qualities are also their good qualities, where their context and their choices determine whether a given trait is going to serve them well or not, whether it will connect them or isolate them. And Helly R’s stubbornness is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen: the trait that makes her unstoppable as a rebel is the same trait that makes her unstoppable as a villain stepping on rebels’ necks.
this is a life – son lux, mitski, david byrne // we exist – arcade fire // god is a cop – midwife // wrecking ball – mother mother // press enter to exit – the horrors // stretch your eyes – agnes obel // hangout at the gallows – father john misty // heir – public memory // otherside – perfume genius // i exist i exist i exist – flatsound // exit music (for a film) – radiohead & more
