To the One I Love, Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides"
TGIF Contents Include Love Letter No. 2, The Audio Files, & More
Finding any pre-pandemic moments of “normalcy” during the ongoing pandemic isn’t as easy as one would hope. However, about two weeks ago, a visit from a friend was just the mental reset I needed.
My dear friend Ariel came over for a Sunday binge-watch, which we started right before the panini and haven’t kept up with because we both prefer to stay in our respective homes and far away from other people. As I was doing the hostess duties (charcuterie, drinks, and vape assorting), Ariel was eyeing my nearly overflowing bookshelves. His eagle eye spotted a fraying yellowing teen classic, The Virgin Suicides; my exact copy from high school, to be precise. A beloved book that I re-read many times over, especially in my junior year of high school. I haven’t read it since immersing myself in it during the more dramatic and complicated times of my life.
Like others, high school was a challenging time. We try to find who we are, let alone what we want for the rest of our futures, and are cluttered with insecurity and a need for validation— it sounds a lot like adulthood, and it is. Except now we have bank accounts we eventually learned to do on our own.
As previously mentioned, Lux Lisbon is a character who drew me in. I always related to characters with similar emotions, and while I only had four sisters comparably to the five Lisbon sisters, the sentiment resounded for me. I took in Jeffrey Eugenides’ words and related them to their dreams of fleeing and traveling worldwide.
The Virgin Suicides is a book and film that will forever mean so much to me. Thanks to my childhood familiarity with a similar sepia-toned aesthetic, the atmospheric nostalgia from the late ’70s from the movie seems vaguely familiar.
We meet the five Lisbon sisters through the eyes of the teenage boys who seemingly spend their entire lives trying to perceive them— never realizing the girls are humans struggling internally with no one paying attention. The girls didn’t stand a chance; not only were the Lisbon sisters wildly misunderstood, but they were also neglected and disregarded for being presumably ordinary, happy young people.
The parents are useless with an unbalanced force; Mrs. Lisbon is an overbearing and overtly strict mother, while Mr. Lisbon is spineless and cluelessly inept. The parents wish to keep the sisters safe from the outside world but instead entrap the Lisbon girls in their homes, leaving them feeling alienated and ostracized by two people meant to protect them from the outside world they so fiercely pushed away.
Coming from a strict, overbearing, religious home, expected to make the honor roll, and struggling with an undiagnosed mental double whopper in the form of anxiety and depression was almost too much to bear. Add in my parents’ doomed marriage, two older sisters who were always working, and an impressionable little sister with her mindfuck going on. The need for escape during this time was necessary but out of the question. My Mexican parents, at that time, didn’t believe in things like depression or anything relating to mental health; culturally, those are unspoken things. We only ignore it until it goes away. So, like a “good girl” and a first-generational kid, I tried to figure it out and assimilate a place at the table in a cruel country that bullied and mocked my heritage and the general mental health struggles of others— I repressed my emotions. Still, as we know, throughout time, feelings don’t go away. They fester, linger, manifest, and project into our lives in other ways.
Most kids growing up in similar households can hopefully relate, but this parental logic protects us from the outside; our warped, sheltered lives often experience a quick reality check. This situation precisely happened to me; the bubble formed around my home burst when I got out into the real world (deferring from college to help my struggling parents with money by immediately starting working retail as soon as I graduated high school).
As I got older, I began my mental health journey with the help of cognitive therapy, which I frequently mention. It’s been a process to break generational curses by confronting a big fear, having that overdue uncomfortable family confrontation. This familial breakdown made me finally realize that my parents are humans who fuck up; they grew up conditioned to believe similar strict rhetoric and are too afraid to shake the table. The monsters we don’t know are always scarier, and while my parents tried as they might, the gaslighting call came from inside my own home.
As awful and complicated as quarantine has been, it’s also been helpful with undoing the toxicity of the monsters I’m now fully aware of (my anxiety and depression) by dealing with them head-on (Youthquake has also helped). This shaking of the table hasn’t been my family’s favorite, but my need to confront my past childhood trauma is part of the process. It allows my parents to see outside of their once-conservative viewpoints. Being caught up in an all-consuming inner battle isn’t something on my schedule, so shout out to my therapist for calling out the broken bird trope/pattern I have. While I may struggle with my past nebulous turmoil, making the changes is hugely freeing.
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DARKER
Nicolas Godin: “We first met Sofia when we did our debut album Moon Safari and she told us about this movie she was doing and how she wanted us to score it. So we read the book and it was so dark, so we made music that was very deep and very dark to go with it. When Sofia sent us a videotape of the rushes, they seemed very dark also. But when I saw the final edit of the movie, I thought it was so much lighter. She had mixed it and completely transformed it. I was worried that the music was too dark for the film, but it seems to grow old well and people seem to appreciate the fact it has this quality.”
IT’S MEANT TO SOUND LIKE HOW DEATH FEELS
Jean-Benoit Dunckel: “I remember that when watched The Virgin Suicides at the cinema, I felt trapped. I think the real spirit of the soundtrack is this fascination with death and the fascination with having your spirit floating when you die and how you may suddenly feel free and liberated from the earth, from all you are and the adult world that you actually hate. I’ve never wanted to kill myself and I’ve never felt that bad, but I think the music in the film is a lot about this idea.”
IT CHANGED THEIR LIVES
Jean-Benoit Dunckel: “After we did the music for The Virgin Suicides, everything changed for the band so much. People thought we were white trash before, but when they heard the soundtrack it was so deep and magical that we gained more respect. I think it's also because we were associated with the name ‘Coppola’ and because in France we have this really strong cinema culture, so we suddenly gained a lot of respect from the French media. And, of course, the soundtrack became legendary.”
For your enjoyment, a musical youthquake moment in time with The Virgin Suicides, and since Air created a perfect score, I wasn’t touching perfection. Instead, I compiled a playlist soundtrack of the featured songs in the Sofia Coppola classic.
✨ For my fellow Apple Music listeners, I gotcha HERE.
Something that also happened in 1999? Napster. The online peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster is released in June by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. Its primary usage was file sharing, mainly MP3 music and digital audio files. The duo’s things were going well until Metallica got word that their secret song for Mission Impossible 2, I Disappear, started playing on twenty radio stations in America recants Lars. Finding the leak back to Napster, the band took action, and the results completely changed the music industry.
Things quickly got messy for the duo as file sharing and copyright laws regarding the internet were just newly established. It was causing copyright infringement for Napster, led by Lars Ulrich of Metallica, swiftly followed by Dr. Dre, The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), A&M Records, and several other record companies. By the end of the year, Napster’s downfall ultimately came to violating the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
The result of the suit was millions paid out to Metallica to the tune of $100,000 per song hosted on the site. Now, I respect art and creating, but this is where Metallica lost me; Metallica blocked access to Napster for students (not many file-sharing sites existed). Subjectively worst of all, Metallica also sued fans.
So my spotlight in pop culture past is when Napster co-creator Shawn Fanning masterfully trolled Lars Ulrich of Metallica at the 2000 MTV Music Video Awards. Carson Daly introduces a then-19-year-old Napster co-founder, Shawn Fanning (wearing a humble baseball cap and black Metallica t-shirt), to applause and Metallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls playing as Carson says, “Nice shirt!” The pair exchange looks and awkward laughs as the camera pans to Lars Ulrich looking bothered in the audience. As the camera quickly comes back, Fanning replies with a chill, “A friend of mine shared it with me, but I’m thinking of getting my own.” After another awkward exchange, the camera pans back to Lars only to feign sleep from boredom.
Later in the awards show, Metallica is onstage to introduce Blink 182, except too bad for Lars; the people were angry, and he was booed the entire time. Best of all, Carson and Shawn introduced Britney Spears’ iconic VMA performance mashup of …Oops! I Did It Again and her Rolling Stones cover of Satisfaction.
⚡ “There’s just not enough conversation around how sex should feel for young femmes.” -Amandla Stenberg.
As a CherryPicker, of course, I’m a fan of CherryPicks’ podcast CherryPop. The podcast, presented by BabyPhat Beauty, has new episodes every Tuesday.
Meg McCarthy hosts season two as she dives into various topics that include the portrayal of sex on screen, body positivity, and so much more. You can catch up on the premiere episode, which features Amandla Stenberg.
Now that it’s after-hours suffice it to say it’s time to pop some CBD gummy in and watch Sofia Coppola films in honor of her birthday today. This weekend, I’m keeping my mind busy with more screeners, Zoom Q&As, and even overpreparing for another industry interview.
Con Amor, your noughties girl. 💘
Awesome;))