Trip to Disneyland Paris

 

The dream started off as a result of me watching an episode of Bad Sisters, an Irish series about a group of sisters plotting to kill their abusive, controlling man baby of a brother in law. The other result was of me hate reading some articles on Autostraddle, a website I have a love hate relationship with. 

I was in my grandmothers house, with my grandfather still present. I walk in my family casually watching a film with Jennifer Aniston. She confronts a conman who took advantage of her family and he responded by backhanding her, leaving a bloody wound on her forehead. I go upstairs and start hitting myself, angry that there was no warning. My grandfather caught me and asked why I was hitting myself with a hairbrush. 

In the same room, I was on a date with a trans man, Jason, formally Amelie, the butch girl I used to date. And I was very self conscious about the bruising on my face. But Jason didn’t seem to notice. I exchange numbers with him, noticing that his name is not the same as his Facebook profile.

9:02

I’m on the train on my way to Disneyland. I’m excited but also very tired. There is a reason I insist on trying to get back to sleep after his nibs, AKA my cat Inky, taps me awake at around 6 or 7 every morning with his razor tipped claws. The train ride is peaceful in first class, and the silence is uninterrupted apart from the pit stops. Usually decks would be filled with screaming and crying children, enough to grate firmly on one’s nerves.

I am often anxious and depressed, which I am forced to quench with bottles of rum and coke a couple of times every week. I think about attending Alcoholics Anonymous, but apart from being hungover for work, tired out and craving junk food, I don’t see it being a big enough reason to attend the meetings. 

There are other factors in my binge drinking that are more troublesome: the self harm. Scratches, slaps, punches, cutting and using my hands as toys for Inky to use. 

The pains of growing older, the struggles of my autism, the difficult navigation being queer in a world that is slowly but surely drifting away from its initial comfort has left a bitterness in my chest that leaves me deeply, deeply unhappy.

So with that in mind, trips away from home, and this one especially, is sorely needed. 

I am able to leave my kitty with my fellow pet sitters, and not have to worry about whether or not he’s gobbled up a piece of plastic. Twice he has had to be taken to hospital to remove the unwanted objects from his stomach. The first operation one being the most expensive, given his consumption of plastic knobs from his toys had accumulated over time.

He’s currently a little annoyed at my absences, complaining loudly at me viewing a Netflix show rather than playing with him. The problem is, he is often bored by the activity of the toy, and is only active after a meal or a trip to the litter box.

Cats are demanding, fickle creatures, and mine is scared and shy of newcomers in my apartment.

But I don’t believe I’ve loved something as much as I’ve loved this little fellow.  Thinking of it being any other way is agonizing. I paid 300 Swiss francs for him to be delivered and it was the best 300 I ever spent. Initially, my mother was horrified that I would have to pay that much for a little kitten, worried I was getting scammed. But it turned out the first batch Inky’s mother’s kittens had been given away for free, and the owner discovered that one of the kittens was severely neglected due to the woman being an alcoholic. She decided that if a value would be placed on these new kittens, people would make the effort to really take care of them. 

It also turned out that Inky’s pica, the condition in which animals and some humans eat indigestible objects out of stress or something else, is heredity. The mother also had to be taken to the vets for the same thing. 

The trip took a rocky start when, starved and light-head, and rushed off my feet, forgot my case just as I passed the ticket gates, forcing me to go back through another guy exiting, retrieved it and buy another ticket. 

Had my mother and I simply stopped over for a small lunch, got our heads screwed on, and then went hunting for the RER machines, the near crises would have been avoided. If I were here alone, that is exactly what I would have done.

When we finally get there, it is every bit as phenomenal as I thought. The room wasn’t ready yet so we decided to head to the Disney studios.

My mum and I went on the on the flying carpet ride, one of the few she could really stomach go on, and the carpet didn’t even fly up high like the others. 

I managed to go on several rides and make the most of it, including riding the new Avengers roller coaster, Flight Force. Formally the Aerosmith roller coaster. 

It was intensely thrilling and I got a buzz off it.

I am still drinking still a bit, but no more than two per meal. The thrill I get from the rhum and music I get here, in the parks, and on the rides. It’s a strange, yet wondrous feeling.

Attending a theme park is an escape from the horrors of the world. The night before, as we settled down to watch Ratatouille, mum told me not take what we had for granted as the hotel we were staying was proper luxury. I couldn’t help but feel that doubt whether I deserve it or not. It was all paid by mum after all. But it was a birthday present.

Day 2

A big part of the park is queuing queuing queuing. And sometimes you can queue only for the ride to break down just as you’ve reached the end of the line. In the case of Crush’s Coaster, which given the ride being associated with the ever popular Finding Nemo, is always the longest queue of them all.

Still, safety first is paramount. And sadly, safety measures are written in blood. As somewhere sometime in the past, there have been mutilations and deaths

Indeed big thunder mountain, an outside roller coaster shaped like a train, zig-zagging inside and outside of a man made mounting at extreme speed. 

The mood here is thoroughly jolly. Families dancing in the street, giggling in delight, outside and inside the park. It truly is like being in a Disney film. 

Mum is not feeling well. She is faint and her stomach is incredibly queasy, which makes her shut her eyes at the Star Tours ride. She had been feeling off and on on our recent trips due to the things she ate or drank.

I quickly notice a queue piling up outside Hyperspace Mountain, formally space mountain but re-designed as a Star Wars ride. Many of the famous rides go through redesigns in order to include new characters. Star Tours featured C3PO guiding us though instead of a random robot, and also featured an appearance from Dark Vader. HyperSpace Mountain was closed up until that point and I rush in to join the line. The disappointment of not having gone on Crush's Coaster is eviserated after I manage to only wait less than 25 min to get on, which is not long to wait for a ride like this. 

There are some rides I will not go on. Peter Pan's flight is out of the question as, like Crush's Coaster, is a long wait in the queue. Only this is no roller coaster, but only a mild ride in a box that only lasts about a minute. The Hollywood Tower of Terror is not a roller coaster, but a giant elevator that you get strapped on and fall from a great height. I had done something similar with Toy Story's parachute drop, but I don't have to wait as long, and it's outside. 

Then there is the Haunted Mansion. I was obsessed with the place since a young age and I loved it every I went on it. Its horror themes and creepy animatronics fascinated and frightened me as a child. The reason I don't go on it this time around, is because I am kind of exhausted by its concept at that point. I had watched the Muppets Haunted Mansion special on Disney+, and I found it to be a bit meh. The magic for me had gone, as I knew the ride by heart. Even though I had gone on several other rides many times before, if I had to skip one ride to go another, this would be it.

At night, after a long, tired day of walking, mum and I kick off our shoes and relax until we want to go out for dinner. I take advantage of the hotel pool and go for a swim. During dinner and drinks, mum quizzes me about the psychiatrist I'm now seeing. Then the conversation turns to my Aspergers, which I'm always uncomfortable talking about to her, as she knows all the less than perfect shenanigans I did when I was a child.

Day 3

We go back to the Studios to visit places we hadn't gone on before, and I myself have another go on Avengers Flight Force. As well as the redesigned train ride which at one point was meant to show how movie stunts were co-ordinated, a well as famous props from movies. Now it was renamed Cars Road Trip, after the Pixar movies.

Several re-designed rides, in order to incorporate known characters from both Star Wars and Disney films, works for the better, such as Star Tours. Others such as Cars Road Trip, not so much. A good part of the excitement of Disney Studios is being shown how stunts are created. Those attractions have now been replaced by other Disney characters telling stories, which doesn't do well in their favour. 

We make one last stop at the Disneyland Park to go on the last few attractions before heading back to the hotel to retrieve our bags and head to the station. We mount attractions such as the Molly Brown cruise in Frontier land, a ride on a Buzz Lightyear laser tag and pay a visit to Fantasyland, which I didn't really get to visit that much. Pinnochio's voyage and the dragon's den inside the castle is something I want to visit, but sadly there isn't enough time. Mum is always paranoid about missing appointments or plane or train rides, so we get end up arriving at the destinations at ridiculously early hours.

**********************

Overall, it was one of the best holidays I've had in a very long time. And it was nice to know that despite having depression, anxiety and any all other forms of mental illness, I could be happy for a few days in what's known as one of the happiest places in Europe. And that fills me with hope. 

:)

Will Smith: From fangirl to reluctant re-ignited interest.

It has been quite the year for Will Smith. In addition to his award-poised film King Richard, he has released an autobiography, one Youtube series tie in called Best Shape of My Life and a Disney + series Welcome to Earth, about the wonders of planet earth. 

Here is the thing about Will Smith. 

I’ve been a fan of his since I was a teen. It started with the Dreamworks animated film Shark Tale in 2004, and remember being blown away by it and counting the days until I could rent it on DVD. Thanks to that film and its various references to mafia movies, I discovered many other gems such as Goodfellas, Carlito's Way, Scarface and all the other Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese movies. 

I was aware of Smith since I saw Independence Day in the late nineties. My father had a VHS copy of it. After watching Shark Tale, I started researching Smith’s movies and I came to adore his work. I loved how sensitive he was and I loved his gusto, swagger and charisma. And for quite a while, I consumed all of his content as I do with Benedict Cumberbatch, my current celeb obsession (8 years to be exact lol)

Then came 2008. 

He had two movies come out that year. Hancock & Seven Pounds. I really enjoyed both of them. But then he didn’t work for four years. At the time, he said that he wanted to get into politics, but that didn’t seem to come about. I had no idea why he took a break and I heard rumours it was because his film Seven Pounds was badly received and he had expected an Oscar nomination. 

It turned out he was essentially being a stay at home dad while his wife Jada Pinkett Smith worked on her own movies and production companies and series.

So he was absent for four years. Then he made the second sequel to Men in Black, which I found to be completely useless, though it was a better film than the first sequel by a long shot - owing mostly to Josh Brolin’s performance as the younger Agent K. 

Then there was After Earth. Oh boy.

I’ve never seen the film, and I don’t plan to. Apparently Smith was responsible for much of the writing and directing on the film, M Night Shyamalan being credited as the helmer. There was a lot of influence in the script from the teachings of Scientology - which, if you’ve done your research on, is an abusive cult with a lot of power.

The film bombed super hard and it left Smith depressed. He also admitted that around this time, his marriage to Jada Pinkett was on the brink of ruin. 

He subsequently appeared in a cameo as the devil, named The Judge, in Winter’s Tale, but it just didn’t work. To play the devil, you need two things. One is charisma, that Smith absolutely has, and the other is the ability to scare the shit out of people, which he doesn’t have. 

Then came Suicide Squad and this time, he made a different choice in his roles. He plays one of the bad guys- a hitman named Deadshot. This was a step in the right direction. Playing someone who was very different than him, and whose morals didn’t aline with his. Sadly the film was terrible, despite its stellar casting and brilliant anti-heroes. 

In 2016 that year, he played the real life Nigerian pathologist Bennet Omalu, who becomes a whistleblower to the covering up of the damage done to NFL players when they repeatedly collide against eachother. 

This film was actually good, but nothing really special, as I was reminded too much of the anti tobacco film The Insider (which funnily enough is mentioned in the movie)

Smith was brilliant in it despite his shaky Nigerian accent. He said he was reluctant to take on the role as he and his family were big NFL fans and the film portrays the multi billion institution negatively.  He was nominated for a Golden Globe that year but not an Oscar, and he boycotted said ceremony along with several others due to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Which I found to be a little immature on on his part, since the Academy Awards that year weren’t as white as people claimed. Many people of colour won that year, just not in the acting categories.

He then starred in a film called Bright, where he plays an asshole cop in a fantasy world full of elves, orcs and magic wands. And the same year, Collateral Beauty - where he plays a grieving father who writes letters to Love, Time and Death.

Trust me when I say that Suicide Squad is a masterpiece compared to these two films. Bright has all of the bad decisions a fantasy film should make while Collateral Beauty appears to justify the psychological torture of a broken, grieving man as well as gaslighting. It was also cringingly melodramatic to the point that it actually made people laugh unintentionally rather than cry. 

I was beyond disappointed with how bad these two films were and I lost faith in his decisions as an actor. 

But Will then did something even braver than playing a bad guy - he took on the role of the Genie in the live action remake of Aladdin. This character was made famous by the late great Robin Williams. It was created for him and he became that character. So in order to take on that role in the remake, Smith would have to play himself. 

Which he did. Like a lot of the Disney live action remakes, this film fails in comparison to its animated counter part. Smith, however, managed to be the only thing in the movie that sparked energy and smiles. It must not have been easy bearing all of the weight of Robin William’s legacy on his shoulders. 

Two other movies came out after that that I skipped: Gemini Man and Spies in Disguise. I did however watch Bad Boys III in the cinemas, one of the few ones I actually got to see in theatres in 2020. And I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was relieved that Michael Bay wasn’t going to direct it. There are some jokes and situations in the first two movies, especially the second one, that are unforgivably bad. 

And now we come to King Richard, in which he stars in a biopic of Venus and Serena Williams’s father Richard, telling the story of how the two tennis champions started out and the struggles their father went through to lead them to success. 

After premiering at Telluride, there was an outpour of praise for Smith’s performance, calling it the best of his career and sure to win him his first Oscar. He was nominated in 2001 for playing Muhammed Ali in Michael man’s biopic Ali and for playing Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness. 

What I really wanted to see from this performance is once again something different. A flawed character with charisma. And it delivered. He captuured all the nuances, the flaws and the empowering moments of the character brilliantly. Not only is he great in it, the film is great too. And I’ve been waiting so long for Will Smith to be good in a film that is well written and directed.

My favorite scenes are actually when he gets confronted and called out for his overbearing, controlling attitude towards his children, especially the peanut butter sandwich scene with his wife Brandy. It’s here that we find out that he’s not the saint that his children and the audience thought. He has had several other children besides his daughters with Brandy. When he pushes her too far, she refuses to stay quiet - but remains on his side. Later he goes to his daughter and tells her a story about how, as a young teen, he was beaten in a racist attack for touching a white man accidentally. And he saw his father run away from him. He breaks down in tears saying that he’ll never do the same to Venus. 

I won’t lie, I was sobbing during this scene. It reminded me of my own father, how he wasn’t really too present in my life and he’s no longer with us.

The film won me over in that regard. But it sadly did not erase all of the other disappointments in his filmography. 

Now to his memoir, released at the same time as not one but two of his docu series Best Shape Of My Life and Welcome To Earth (ironically named after one of his lines from Independence Day)

And I have to say, I and many others out there know more about him, his wife and his family than I would probably have cared to know. Mostly because excepts of his various crazy sexcapades went viral online. 

The strongest parts are definitely in the beginning. His childhood was rough, growing up with an abusive, controlling father who regularly beat his mother and the children and was a control freak with the way he handled family life. 

Such was the way for many low income families back then. Will talks about how he used to comedy to not only gain sympathy but also survive. He labels himself a coward for not protecting his mother and other people from harm. 

There are also sections in which he contemplates the relationships he has with different people in his life - from his girlfriends, his wives, his father and other well known figures such as Nelson Mandela, James Avery and Muhammad Ali.

There are quite a few important details of his life and career that are missing. One of course is the Janet Hubert debacle. Hubert played Aunt Janice on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and was one of the reasons the show was so popular. During the third season however, she was pregnant and was going through a difficult time. She didn’t laugh at Will’s jokes and Will at the time was extremely immature and insecure. He went on to call her a difficult diva in the press. He didn’t realise the implications of what that could do to a woman like Janet, a dark-skinned woman in Hollywood at the time. She literally lost everything. Her family disowned her, Hollywood blackballed her. She had just gotten out of a very abusive marriage and had a newborn baby. She was completely alone. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for her. She was a talented Broadway actress on her own with no one to support her. While he became one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Not a good look.

There are also many films that he worked on that I would have liked a bit more insight on, such as refusing to kiss Anthony Michael Hall in Six Degrees of Separation out of fear of what the black community would think of him kissing another man on the lips. Or playing a doctor who whistle blew on the NFL when they covered up life-threatening head injuries of their players. He doesn’t really go into the social issues surrounding him or the films he’d been a part of. Or how other people are really feeling. Except when it directly affects him and when his family and friends confront him about it.

Then there is the Scientology school he and Jada set up in California that went bust. Though it’s clear that Will and Jada aren’t actual Scientologists, they were affiliated with it at some point. He was good friends with Tom Cruise after all, and even had Cruise’s adopted son play the younger version of Will’s character in Seven Pounds. After watching several documentaries and documentary series on the matter, and seeing the horrific practices they enforce on people and their families, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that he and Jada see it as a religion and not for what it really is: a cult. There is a moment in Leah Remini’s book Troublemaker in which she recalls the Smiths attending a party held by Tom Cruise - and Cruise insisted all of them, all grown adults, to play a game of hide and seek. Very weird. And it makes me uncomfortable that he doesn’t address it. 

Despite hating abuse against women due to what he witnessed in childhood, he not only doesn’t recognise feminism for what it is, or realise how it affects black women, he also engaged in chauvinistic behaviour in his youth, and continues to make questionable remarks about women both in this book and in real life.

In a few chapters, I was also put off by the amount of times he mentioned how much money each of his films made. Nothing about his co stars, his craft or the directors (apart from a select few such as Michael Mann, Gabriele Muccino and Stephen Spielberg). 

It’s clear that he’s a flawed guy who is really just trying his best. But he also wants be the best at everything (something I noticed in his docuseries best shape of my life) and that is impossible. 

He talks about how as a black man in Hollywood he felt he had to be super successful and chose all the right roles in order to be the perfect role model - or at least be super accessible to white audiences. He admits that he is an adrenaline junkie - incapable of sitting down and enjoying himself, due to what’s happened to him in his past.

It was definitely an interesting read, but I wanted a bit more from this memoir. Maybe in the future he’ll write another one and fill in some gaps.

With these two docuseries and the memoir, I feel that although I see an interesting, flawed yet very human character in Will Smith, it kind of cheapens the characters that he plays on screen. Because they all inhabit some force, a desire, a memory or a person in his life that we already know very well thanks to him revealing all of his secrets. Although that’s what a lot of actors do, most of them keep it private. and want to focus on the message and the story they are telling. 

Knowing so much about Will and Jada’s private lives and then watching them perform on screen is like opening a present on Christmas Day that is no longer a surprise. 

My 15 year old self loved Shark Tale and loved Will Smith. And when you’re that age you don’t really care what your fave does, as long as he entertains you. And while it maybe too late for him to be the ultimate role model for me now, a comeback that is both inspiring and tear-jerking will always be welcome in my books.

Despite rooting for Benedict Cumberbatch at the 2022 Oscars to win Best Actor for The Power of the Dog, I would ultimately accept that he deserved to win for King Richard. 

But then the slap happened. 

During an opening monologue for Best Documentary, stand up comedian Chris Rock poked fun at Jada’s haircut, calling her G.I Jane, possibly unaware that the actress suffered from alopecia. Will at first was seen laughing at the joke, but when he saw how upset Jada was, things escalated quickly. 

And I mean quickly.

He walked up to Rock and violently slapped him across the face, before calmly returning to his seat. Rock pulled it together, saying in surprise “Will just slapped the shit out of me!”

People thought it was staged - until Will screamed loudly twice from his seat “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!’

What followed was the most still, deadly silence ever, with tension that could be cut with a knife. He later went on to win Best Actor for his role in King Richard. In a teary speech, he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but then went on to justify his actions, saying “love can make you do crazy things.”

There was so much irony in that action - that Benedict Cumberbatch, who played a nasty, mean, abusive and toxic character in a film about the deconstruction of toxic masculinity, would lose to a man who on the night of the Oscars, displayed immense amount of toxic masculinity, and was cheered for it. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d slapped someone. He slapped and punched Charlize Theron by accident on two separate occasions. Both times was when he worked with her on the films Bagger Vance and Hancock. The second time he appeared to blame her for the incident when she didn’t perform the blocking right, and played it down to "two kids messing around on the playground." 

It told me three things: One was that he still hasn’t handled his issues with his marriage. Two that he’s still the entitled man-child who hasn’t yet grown up, and who doesn't think about what the consequences of his actions would have on other people. And three, that he still feels he needs to control those around him.

He had based his character Richard Williams (the caring yet infuriatingly controlling egomaniac), on his own father, the abusive tyrant. As well as himself. His unfortunate clinging on to his father’s approval, and defending his actions, no matter how horrible they were, is concerning.

In perhaps the same way that in the film, Richard stops his daughter Venus from training and turning pro, as well as adding pressure and promoting his own ego, Will defended his wife’s honour by committing violence against another person who dissed her. 

His version of love and his notion of what a man needs to be, is sadly very skewered and misplaced.

What should have been a lifetime achievement for him, turned out to be an embarrassing display of egotism and lack of self control. 

Denzel Washington told him after the incident that “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you. ”

Hm. If Mr Washington had such skills in foresight, maybe he should have told him beforehand?

Chris Rock may have been the recipient of the assault, but Will will have to contend with this incident for the rest of his life. 

A sad end to a legacy, indeed.