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breakinglight11) wrote2022-08-11 08:03 am
breakinglight11) wrote2022-08-11 08:03 am
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31 Plays in 31 Days, #11 - “Get in the Door”
An idea I’m exploring with Leah in Dream Machine is the tension between the pressure and desire to be pretty with how it affects your ability to be and do other things. It’s something I find myself wrestling with personally, and it seemed like a good fit for a character who was driven by the desire to do art, but had to deal with the pressures of working in Hollywood, plus a bunch of internalized impulses that had to be unpacked, examined, and possibly unlearned. I started this getting dealt with in episode 5 of Dream Machine, but here’s a lot of expansion on it.
I don’t usually like the monologue form, but it seemed appropriate here.
Day #11 - Get in the Door
From Dream Machine
From Dream Machine
By Phoebe Roberts
Los Angeles, 2020
LEAH LUCCHESI, showrunner for Offcomer at Dream Machine, mid thirties
~~~
LEAH: They don’t tell it to you in so many words— at least, not so much anymore. But you still see it everywhere. In every book, every film, every plot— baked into the very fabric. That you can be smart, tough, funny, talented. All that helps. But if a woman is woman enough, and a man is man enough… nothing else matters. And by woman enough, let’s be clear. I mean beautiful enough, because to really be one, you have to be the other. And by man enough, I mean he won’t be able to think straight. You can run a man that way. Men are stupid, after all. Everybody says so. It won’t be hard to run them once they’re caught. And even if you can’t, it’s only because you’ve got him too stupid to be of use to anyone.
But the truth is, it doesn’t. It doesn’t work that way; it’s not enough. You might blame it on yourself; most of us do for a while. That you just aren’t pretty enough, and if you were you’d have them. But even if you are, it doesn’t really work… not because they don’t care about it. But because they’re not the dumb animals TV told you they were. They’re men. And the failing of men is that they’re more cruel than they are dumb.
Because it does matter; it matters a ton. They want it as bad as they’ve told you. But by convincing you it will give you power, they’ve got you becoming what they want you to. Putting in the world, constantly worrying whether it’ll be enough. And most of the time, all you get in return is… you’re noticed. That’s the bare minimum for a man to listen to you, acknowledge you… let alone want you, or give you what you want.
The truth is, it doesn’t beat the house. It just lets you in the door. But you do it anyway, even when you can see it barely pays, just so you keep your head above water, just to keep in out of the cold. What are you going to do, just quit? How could you— when you’ve see the other women, who don’t have it like you do, who get stuck on the outside looking in. Old women. Fat women. Women who did get the bone structure God for some reason gave you. How they’re mocked. Ignored. Invisible. And it scares you back into line, lest you get banished to that same woods.
And if that fear weren’t enough… for some of us, every now and then, it happens. A man looks at you the way the world promised— like he doesn’t have another thought in his head. The world gives you what it promised you, and the power of it staggers you. Hits you like heroin in your veins. And like that heroin, that taste is enough to keep you hooked. You could not give up the chase if you tried, the hope of feeling that powerful someday again.
So, yeah. You have to be pretty. Or you don’t get to be anything else.
I don’t usually like the monologue form, but it seemed appropriate here.
Day #11 - Get in the Door
From Dream Machine
From Dream Machine
By Phoebe Roberts
Los Angeles, 2020
LEAH LUCCHESI, showrunner for Offcomer at Dream Machine, mid thirties
~~~
LEAH: They don’t tell it to you in so many words— at least, not so much anymore. But you still see it everywhere. In every book, every film, every plot— baked into the very fabric. That you can be smart, tough, funny, talented. All that helps. But if a woman is woman enough, and a man is man enough… nothing else matters. And by woman enough, let’s be clear. I mean beautiful enough, because to really be one, you have to be the other. And by man enough, I mean he won’t be able to think straight. You can run a man that way. Men are stupid, after all. Everybody says so. It won’t be hard to run them once they’re caught. And even if you can’t, it’s only because you’ve got him too stupid to be of use to anyone.
But the truth is, it doesn’t. It doesn’t work that way; it’s not enough. You might blame it on yourself; most of us do for a while. That you just aren’t pretty enough, and if you were you’d have them. But even if you are, it doesn’t really work… not because they don’t care about it. But because they’re not the dumb animals TV told you they were. They’re men. And the failing of men is that they’re more cruel than they are dumb.
Because it does matter; it matters a ton. They want it as bad as they’ve told you. But by convincing you it will give you power, they’ve got you becoming what they want you to. Putting in the world, constantly worrying whether it’ll be enough. And most of the time, all you get in return is… you’re noticed. That’s the bare minimum for a man to listen to you, acknowledge you… let alone want you, or give you what you want.
The truth is, it doesn’t beat the house. It just lets you in the door. But you do it anyway, even when you can see it barely pays, just so you keep your head above water, just to keep in out of the cold. What are you going to do, just quit? How could you— when you’ve see the other women, who don’t have it like you do, who get stuck on the outside looking in. Old women. Fat women. Women who did get the bone structure God for some reason gave you. How they’re mocked. Ignored. Invisible. And it scares you back into line, lest you get banished to that same woods.
And if that fear weren’t enough… for some of us, every now and then, it happens. A man looks at you the way the world promised— like he doesn’t have another thought in his head. The world gives you what it promised you, and the power of it staggers you. Hits you like heroin in your veins. And like that heroin, that taste is enough to keep you hooked. You could not give up the chase if you tried, the hope of feeling that powerful someday again.
So, yeah. You have to be pretty. Or you don’t get to be anything else.