Director's Commentary, Sad Girls, and Reading a Movie

This month on Together, Alone

Spring is on its way. If you’re looking for a soundtrack to long walks in the newly green landscape, may we suggest…a movie commentary track. This month, Gabe wrote about the joys (and the perils) of listening to commentary tracks without the accompanying movie—while jogging, cooking, or doing just about anything other than watching.

Sofia Coppola’s latest film, Priscilla, is about the woman who, for years, was married to Elvis. But as Arielle wrote this month, the movie calls to mind another musician—Lana Del Rey, specifically the version of Lana Del Rey from the music video for “Video Games.”

Both Coppola and Del Rey offer a vision of femininity that is compelling precisely because it isn’t interested in selling us a plastic empowerment narrative. And yet, we are still being sold something: an aesthetic of “sad femininity” that has become so popularized that it has led to a rise of a veritable “sad girl” marketplace, one which has no doubt been buttressed by the evolution of social media, but also appears to be constructed by someone in a boardroom.

What’s your take on subtitles? Do you prefer to watch with captions on movies? Have you grown more accustomed to subtitles, to the point that you now watch more international films? This month’s conversation was all about text on screen.

Let us know what you thought of this month’s essays, and tell us what you’re watching.