Film: Reality Bites (1994)
Screenwriter: Helen Childress
Director: Ben Stiller
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn
Dear Angels-in-the-Making,
What is it we all really need? Do you know?
Before I get too far into my take on the next film and all the importance of romance in relationships, and why women choose the bad men, and why nice guys—in some parts of MovieLand—"finish last,” I just want to establish one new rule for the film club.
Don’t call women “bitches” anymore when they hurt your sensibilities or tell you things you don’t want to hear.
Call them “witches.”
The word “witch” causes fear in our culture not because witches—or women—are inherently evil, but because some wise women are intelligent, magnetic, and mysterious. They know things. They have power. They don’t back down. And that can be scary to our egocentric world.
So when a woman pisses you off, say, “Witch!” You might be right. Just keep in mind there are good witches and wicked witches, and they come in all gender expressions. How can you really know if someone is a good witch or a wicked witch until you do some deep-dive-inner-work on yourself, and know your own motivations, your own demons? That witch might have just given you a big dose of enlightenment you needed. It is all about energy, and there are a lot of people casting spells.
When a woman sasses up a storm, we’re calling that “Witchin’ it.” Wouldn’t you be so lucky for a lovely lady to be “witchin’ it witchu” in the best of ways? Woo, whew. You’d better get your act together and get your butt on a meditation pillow. All truth will eventually come to be known.
(Navigating fear and the unknown is often the path to some of the greatest enlightenment and joy.)
I am here today, witchin’ it witchu to speak about the 1994 film Reality Bites, directed by Ben Stiller and written by Helen Childress. Ben Stiller also stars in the film. He is Michael, a media entrepreneur producer/television pioneer, or something. He has some awesome lines, and his wisdom and heart has stood out to me for a long time, ever since I first saw this movie in the 9th grade.
Reality Bites poses the traditional love triangle. Lelaina—played by Winona Ryder in all her adorableness—is trying to make a living at a television station while also creating what she sees as a powerful documentary to help define her generation. She’s cute and reasonable and heartfelt and even valedictorian of her graduating class. Shortly in her post-graduate life, she meets Michael because her carelessness causes him to get into a car accident. He forgives her after talking to her for 5 minutes, and he pays for his car repairs himself rather than making her figure out her insurance plan. Next he takes her out to dinner. Isn’t this guy generous? He’s also pretty sweet. He wants to help her with her career and he just becomes a total puddle of mush looking at her. They have deep, heartfelt conversations and he cherishes their time together.
Meanwhile, she has a friend Troy Dyer (played by Ethan Hawke), a 90’s-era beat poet with a chip on his shoulder. Troy plays his guitar, sports greasy hair, and spreads the infection of his terribly large ego. He is just better than everyone, don’t you know? The reason he doesn’t have a decent job is because he’s so annoyed by capitalism that he needs to rebel by sleeping with women, throwing away their phone numbers and stomping on their hearts, and then living on his friends’ couch while making nasty comments about everyone’s hopes and dreams. Add to that recipe of failure, his intermittent bouts of getting high and quoting Shakespeare when someone treats him to weed.
Well, it seems so obvious who the better choice is for Lelaina’s heart and life and career, doesn’t it? Michael (Ben Stiller’s character) just wins on all fronts here.
Yet Lelaina has this tug, this entanglement, with Troy. Deep down, she is insecure, and she wonders if he is right about everything. This rebel without a cause, to some women, is sexy. And Lelaina has daddy issues and divorced parents who never made her feel cherished and secure. This lack of security is why she is drawn to Troy, because he is something/someone she knows and recognizes. Troy is so complicated and complex and won’t treat her very well, and he is wildly attracted to her, too. It is as though Troy is obviously so bad for her that she believes bad for her is a good thing. He feels like family, in a way. Perhaps Kind Michael is too simple and sweet, too easy? Perhaps life has to be harder, and more frustrating, and she has to struggle and suffer for the greater good? Perhaps this is the deep-seated belief she has? That life is about the struggle and the eventual, un-promised reward?
Except, there is really no reward with Troy Dyer. All she gets, or ever will get, is taking care of him and his ego, like a mother, for the rest of her 20s. What she gets with Troy is a lack of trust, some good times, and the smell of pot smoke and underarm sweat in every apartment they’ll ever live in. Hmm.
Hmm.
Surely, Lelaina is a huge gift for Troy, a man who cannot fully value gifts, because he does not value himself. Troy will likely stomp on every gift Lelaina (or any woman) offers, with his righteous bitterness. And she will get lost in his pattern of thinking, and assume that her sacrifices help him, when all she is really doing is coddling his ego and treating him like a God.
In reality, Troy would need radical transformation to be worth time for any woman. His suppositions of wisdom are just coded language for bitterness, lying, and remorse. Most of the time, he lacks hope and honesty.
And so, all technical aspects of the filmmaking of Reality Bites aside, I think its story is an excellent example of women’s need to step up a little more for themselves and stop bowing down to anger and false power that shows itself again and again through men like Troy. Troy is not special. He is not unique. He is very, very typical. He does not know how to relate to women with authenticity, and even though he will occasionally show up with some great one-liner, or a heart-felt phrase, and he can sing and play a guitar and make a funny joke, he will keep disappointing Lelaina long into that relationship.
How a relationship starts is often how it lives and breathes. Drama, sexual tension, and physical affection get old if there is no ground of consistency and care and trust, of prioritizing the needs of the other person over your own desire to “win” something. Some people convince the other they are valuable by acting cold or removed or unkind or uncaring, and this “hard to get” ethos loses intrigue fast. Love is not a game—it is the spark of life. There can be play and fun and eros, but people have the full responsibility do their own inner work to limit drama and mind-gaming with love’s fire.
So my takeaway from Reality Bites is, work on yourself if you want to be in a relationship. Work on yourself by getting to know who you really are, and spending time alone, and also by being in relationships. Know your wounds, your pitfalls, and catch yourself when you’re falling into a ditch. Don’t get entangled by nastiness and mistake it for wisdom. Let your ego step aside. It is only when Troy expresses his love and his failings that he gets his woman, even though Kind Michael was treating her right the whole time.
Meanwhile, if we are to imagine what happens to Kind Michael, who does not get the girl (true to 90s-era Hollywood formula) I suspect he will sigh, and remember his heart, and forge ahead, and meet some lovely woman with fewer demons and artistic hang-ups. Eventually. He will marry her. He will buy some gorgeous house in the Hamptons, and he will sit in his Adirondack chair outside with a nice glass of port after dinner, or something. He will look off into the trees, or the beach, and make a couple of important phone calls, and keep lifting people up because that is how Kind Michael is made. It is just his manner of existence.
And his kitchen is probably awesome. And he and his wife are the type who have nice people over to dinner all the time. I bet someone even writes about them in a magazine.
I just adore this sweet Ben-Stiller-Kind-Michael.
Namaste,
Ms. Wonderful Witch
*If you don’t like my film reviews, or if they are too long for you, you are still allowed to watch me dance for a moment or two.