by Logan Ward<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Saturday, April 13, a group of Centre students (myself included) \u2013 who took the legendary Dr. Mark Lucas\u2019 Flannery O\u2019Connor course over CentreTerm \u2013 were treated to a dream opportunity: an advanced screening of the Flannery O\u2019Connor biopic Wildcat <\/em>at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington, followed by a Q&A session with director Ethan Hawke and actor Steve Zahn. Accurately described by Ethan Hawke as a \u201cfever dream,\u201d Wildcat <\/em>is not a film for the uninitiated, and is very clearly targeted towards fans of the Southern author\u2019s work. Wildcat <\/em>is a film that I think is worth talking about, so whether you\u2019re a devoted acolyte of Flannery or someone who I\u2019m risking sounding like gibberish to, I\u2019ll dive in — and do my best to share my thoughts on Wildcat <\/em>with you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My first introduction to Flannery\u2019s work came with Dr. Lucas\u2019 class. For the entire month of January, my primary academic obligation at Centre College was reading and analyzing her work. For someone who hadn\u2019t read much of her work before, I experienced some pretty serious system shock — but in a good way! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Born in Savannah, Georgia, Flannery spent most of her life living with her mother at their Milledgeville, Georgia farm after brief stints in New York and Iowa City trying to gain approval in the elite writing circles of her time. Spending almost the entirety of her adult life in Milledgeville was, however, not her first choice — she was confined there upon developing lupus, the same disease which took her father\u2019s life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Flannery\u2019s existence by no means went according to the expectations of her surroundings and time. She was a devoutly Catholic writer in what she called \u201cthe Protestant South.\u201d She sought to challenge the institution of segregation in her writings through savagely lampooning the racist and bigoted attitudes of those whom she was cooped up with for the rest of her life — close family members included. However, this only strengthened the impact of her writing in that these characters were in no way stock, cartoon racists and bigots: they were as human as any other characters in her work. However, this is all to be expected in a Flannery O\u2019Connor story. Flannery never shied away from portraying human nature in full \u2013 the ugly and morally grotesque elements included. That being said, the moral lessons of her stories don\u2019t end at \u201cLook how bad everything and everyone are!\u201d Her stories frequently end with the administration of grace upon her characters, generally non-believers and\/or Christians-in-name-only, guilty of a wide variety of sins, the aforementioned bigotry included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wildcat<\/em> is a brief portrait in Flannery\u2019s life following her return home to Milledgeville. While she initially plans on returning to New York City, she soon becomes ill. She later learns from a relative that she\u2019s contracted lupus, the same disease that killed her father, and that her mother, Regina, has been hiding it from her. As it becomes clear she\u2019ll remain in Milledgeville indefinitely, she keeps on doing the one thing she can: writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Interspersed throughout the film are adaptations of some of Flannery\u2019s work, the short stories \u201cThe Life You Save May Be Your Own,\u201d \u201cRevelation,\u201d \u201cParker\u2019s Back,\u201d \u201cEverything that Rises Must Converge,\u201d and \u201cGood Country People.\u201d All of the stories cover events ranging from the poignantly mundane to the downright absurd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I mentioned earlier, Flannery\u2019s stories all come with a \u201cgrace moment\u201d which Wildcat <\/em>doesn\u2019t adapt in some of its takes on her stories. That\u2019s not to say the theme of grace is absent from the movie, however. One of its best scenes is an extended conversation between Flannery and her priest — who, for some reason that I\u2019m not complaining about, is portrayed by Liam Neeson \u2013where Flannery desperately begs for her own grace from God. However, one of the strongest adaptations in the entire movie, \u201cRevelation,\u201d is missing its ending — its grace moment, and also one of the short story\u2019s most iconic scenes. \u201cRevelation\u201d follows Ms. Turpin, a deeply bigoted racist and classist, who gets some sense knocked into her after a young woman throws a book at her in a doctor\u2019s office, fed up by her racist ramblings. The story famously ends with Ms. Turpin receiving a vision demonstrating the classic Christian principle of \u201cthe last shall be first, and the first last\u201d as she watches black folk and \u201cwhite trash\u201d ascend to Heaven before her. The film adaptation ends at the doctor\u2019s office, though still portrays an earlier vision scene in the story where a depiction of Jesus Christ asks Ms. Turpin if she\u2019d rather be reborn as black or white trash. Though most of what makes Revelation the story it is is still there, the absence of its ending detracts from the power of the original story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another issue with the movie is that I feel those who aren\u2019t super familiar with the author\u2019s work will feel blindsided by what they\u2019re seeing. \u201cRevelation,\u201d again, is another good example of this. During the Q&A, Hawke and Maya expressed their worry about how modern audiences might react to the story\u2019s blunt and bizarre portrayal of racism. It\u2019s a provocative scene, to say the least. However, Jesus\u2019 deadpan, clearly-mocking tone coupled with Ms. Turpin\u2019s shell-shocked reaction I can\u2019t see leaving my mind any time soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All I can say is that I find catharsis in a movie that lets you laugh at people like Ms. Turpin \u2013 people who take themselves and their ignorant pretensions about the world far too seriously. In an era-defined by self-righteous rants on social media and on every twenty-four hour cable news network, it\u2019s a catharsis we all need. But, Ms. Turpin is still a person too. The movie doesn\u2019t for a second entertain her nonsense, but it acknowledges that like all of us, she has a capacity to learn her lesson the hard way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a lot I could say about Wildcat<\/em>, but at this point, I\u2019d compel you to watch the film yourself. All in all, Wildcat <\/em>was a wonderful filmgoing experience that was just as thought-provoking, intense, and absurd as the stories that inspired it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Logan Ward On Saturday, April 13, a group of Centre students (myself included) \u2013 who took the legendary Dr. Mark Lucas\u2019 Flannery O\u2019Connor course over CentreTerm \u2013 were treated to a dream opportunity: an advanced screening of the Flannery O\u2019Connor biopic Wildcat at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington, followed by a Q&A session with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-leisure","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cento.centre.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}