Home

This is the name of a very good Swiss film by Ursula Meier. The whole movie is obviously supposed to be a metaphor, but you’re allowed to choose what you think it means. I watched it again with my partner last night. It’s not very gay, but it was on my mind lately because I’ve been in a turmoil recently with what “home” means to me.

In the film, there is a very happy family living in a house next to a highway that has never been in service. The couple has three kids, a young adult, maybe 19 years old, a teenager, maybe 15 and a young boy of around, say, 10. The house is cut off from all access to the town by the unused highway, and they cross it daily to go to work and school. The mother stays at home.

They get news that the highway is finally going to be put in service, cutting them off. The highway brings noise with it, and pollution, and every move they make induces honks and comments, especially the oldest daughter who enjoys sunbathing in the front yard in a bikini.

One by one their outdoor activities are curtailed, by the noise, the dirt, the danger of crossing the highway. The mother and father argue more and more, and there’s more and more tension and noise. The oldest daughter takes off.

At some point the father buys a bunch of insulation and cement blocks and begins to barricade them inside. The noise disappears, but with it all access to the outside world. They all start taking sleeping pills and fall into a stupor, all sleeping together in one room.

The oldest daughter comes back. She tries to get in, but the cement blocks prevent her from even knowing if there’s anyone still inside. She leaves.

In this film, I’m that daughter. I left the US and the whole country has fallen into stupor. From the outside, I can’t even see if there is anyone in there anymore. (I know there is because I have friends and family still, but it’s hard to reconcile that with all the hate and meanness, and I’ll say it– the short-sighted stupidity of some people– that I see).

I blame a lot of things for that, but mostly I blame the MAGA messaging that tells people that their lives are so shitty when I really haven’t seen anything fundamentally different there in 40 years. Ok, there are more service jobs and fewer manufacturing jobs. What has changed is that American’s have confused happiness for having more stuff because they are a consumer economy. I’ve never been to a place where so many so-called “poor” people have the latest cell phone, a wide-screen TV, and a car. (Which was actually one of the points of Hillbilly Elegy. Vance’s book was my book club’s read few years back.)

Obviously you’re going to be unhappy if your society tells you that you can only be happy with more stuff and you can’t buy more stuff because your credit cards are maxed from buying more stuff.

And to be honest, many service jobs are soul deadening. I personally would feel better at the end of the day if I’d helped make a fridge in a factory than if I’d fed already overweight people a bunch of Big Mac’s. However, American factories needed to modernize in the ’70’s and ’80’s, and it was cheaper for them to just build new ones overseas than modernize the US ones. Everyone was happy with the profits they generated and the cheaper products they produced.

So, like the girl, I’m going to go on with my way in life and give up on the US (there’s an admin part to that but that’s another story). It feels like a divorce. It hurts. It was my home, and now it no longer is.

I don’t even realize how much I’m hurting until I have the occasion to talk about it, and then I just spew. I haven’t been sleeping well and have had trouble eating. I don’t mean to be so dramatic about it, but I’m so proud of some parts of the US. They’ve made some wonderful art, movies, and music. There are some parts that are so physically beautiful that it’s awe inspiring. They sent men to the moon.

And I just went through my text and got rid of every “we” and changed it to “they”.