Feel Good - There is No Answer to Every Question
Recently whenever any kind of discourse has reared its ugly head, I've always felt frustrated at how little acknowledgment there is of the fact that everything isn't so black and white. Everything is so complicated and nobody knows what they are doing and no matter what you can't assume you know anything. Sure, it is brilliant to feel educated about something, but you can never quite be fully educated about everything, because we as a society don't know everything! This is what truly hit home with Feel Good for me, it is a show with a lot of dimensions and perspectives but there was something so unique about this general feeling of uncertainty and being overwhelmed by complexity thus finding comfort in simplicity. The show is on the surface about Mae, someone with drug abuse problems in their past that they are trying to overcome whilst appreciating their new relationship with George (Charlotte Ritchie). But I, to sound as pretentious as a New York Times writer, found the show to be about 'feeling good', those brief reliefs from the everyday complexity where you just prioritise feeling good. And in a way that's where Mae's drug addiction comes from, the need for relief, where life suddenly feels overwhelming there are certain things that we turn to. And for Mae it was her addiction and then it becomes her relationship with George, the first series deals a lot with exploring the reality that perhaps the connections provided in relationships aren't objectively healthy.
It has been a while since a piece of media has devoted this much time to one relationship and fully exploring the depths of it, most shows deal with the lead up to the relationship but this is much more about Mae and George's combating baggage and history that they both have to come to terms with. It can be quite a difficult show to watch with quite a few episodes being so brutally honest and often subverting our idea of romance, it isn't afraid to be ugly and perverse with how corrupting and difficult these character's lives are. But it never offers answers, it never needs to, it isn't the kind of show that would never end with a bow tied over it and promising its characters are fully healed and their baggage is over. There's no real simple answer to fixing your damage and it makes you who you are and contributes to all the good and bad within you. Mae's trauma from her addiction forms not only her negative traits but also a vast amount of her personality, there are patterns in her behaviour that are unique to addicts that make this character so realised. Its so nice to have characters that you understand why they act the way they do, without needing it spoon fed to you. Both Mae and George's personality and decisions comes from their past experiences and we understand those without them being only included as validation for their actions.
Political content is so ridiculously in right now, most films and TV seem to have a politically conscious inclusion, of course its usually incredibly mishandled and nothing more than a token moment that sparks outrage for no reason. As a result, I've always said that representation should always come with an angle of character, if you want to include a gay character make it an interesting character who just happens to be gay, or make the fact they are gay a part of who they are rather than an afterthought. This is where Feel Good once again stands out, it is a show that touches on issues of sexuality, gender and sexual assault yet never includes anything that isn't quintessential to these characters. Take George, a character who struggles with her sexuality and is scared of being open due to being surrounded by casual homophobia, this is something that forms a lot of who George is and addresses homosexuality in relation to her character and wider societal issues. If you don't include representation genuinely then it pleases no one, you can tell when representation is included to tick a diversity quota or when it is actually tied into the characters and themes.
That's the thing that draws me so much to Feel Good is a sense of honesty, but this sort of exasperated 'this show doesn't owe you anything honesty'. It isn't 12 episodes of lecturing about queer theory and gender politics, in fact it makes fun of those who separate these ideas from others by reducing it to political debate. It isn't a show about a perfect relationship forming after overcoming trauma, instead it is about understanding each others trauma and that endless fight for finding the balance between the two. And it isn't pretending to be anything big or universal, its small and personal, the show is basically semi-autobiographical and that means it gets to explore these issues in a way that never feels pandering or patronising. Mae's gender identity is used as a unique running joke as she refers to herself in these brilliant simile's, stereotypes and archetypes about the people that fall into these boxes are consistently played with and deconstructed. Common solutions and arguments surrounding addiction, sexual assault and trauma are explored in depth, offering this repeated answer that is so refreshing. The answer is that this isn't that simple.
Those who perhaps don't fit into gender conventions aren't immediately untraditional, those who are new to queer spaces aren't immediately vanilla and uneducated. Addiction isn't just a process of recovery, it is inherent in personality and unique to each person. Relationships aren't nessercarily perfect just because they feel good, they also aren't completely built on inter-personal conversations but much more than that. Sexual predators aren't easily brought down and are not always the most straightforward evil people, they are people that have done bad things and there is no easy and simple punishment. Needing other people isn't by definition healthy, wanting other people is an important factor in relationships. It isn't arts duty to give you answers to these questions, it is arts duty to raise and explore the discussion in a unique and entertaining way and Feel Good does that by managing to recreate a feeling I have felt for a while. I don't know the answers, I don't know the solutions to all these problems and the only thing for a fact is that no one really knows what's going on in each other's heads so lets all shut up and try our best to Feel Good.
Thanks for reading! Look after yourselves.