Bottoms (2023)
trigger warnings: physical abuse, assault against Black women, black queer people BUT that second part is not in the movie lol
So I went to see Bottoms (2023) by myself in an empty theater this morning. It may seem like I’m trying to be like, cause I got it like that, but it’s really because everybody was probably at work and school and I was not. Anyways, I’m here to tell you thank God I was in there by myself because I was laughing, gasping, shouting , wincing SO LOUD that I would’ve tripled the already hefty amount of second-hand embarrassment I was feeling from on-screen.
This movie is a masterpiece.
In case you haven’t seen the trailer, we’re following around two gay seniors PJ (co-writer (along with Emma Seligman and executive producer, Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) who have decided this is going to be their year. The year where they talk to, make out with, and finally have sex with their crushes and it’s going to be amazing! Part of the plan has to lend itself to improv when things go wrong and they settle on creating a women’s fight club and inviting their crushes to join. In true lesbian fashion, our girls have avoided one problem by creating five bigger problems that could’ve probably been fixed with our communities’ archnemesis: direct communication.
I’ve said it before (and honestly most of my writing will be saying the same things because they didn’t suddenly stop being true, like indulge in your obsessions safely ya know? Life is short) and I will say it again: if I had this movie when I was a terrified semi-closeted religiously and also other ways traumatized teen, it would’ve been the fucking life raft that would’ve saved me from my Titanic (don’t quote me on that I haven’t seen it. I know somebody makes it. The board had enough room or something, idk).
If I had seen a black lesbian, with a lesbian best friend, talk openly about wanting to be with their crushes, stumble through the same awkward shit I thought I had to navigate alone, and learn to stand up for themselves in the face of violence in nearly all its forms? I legit could’ve saved myself years of therapy.
I know Ayo is in The Bear (which I hear is amazing and I know, it’s on the list) and in many things I love but I need you to know that I cannot watch those things right now as I am currently having a crush on all four people in Joy Ride, as well as several undisclosed others and there’s only so much love in my heart I can make and I know Ayo is going to take it all, I just feel it.
I need real quick to talk about Rachel. One thing I love about her is she is not here to play the kind of lesbian that can melt into the background and be palatable. When homegirl said we need to do this so we can writhe with one another through fighting, I was like: this is the one, Rachel gets it. Queerness has always been played down, nearly equated with straightness, in order to be palatable to the mainstream. But Rachel and Ayo said, actually no this entire thing is about us being lesbians and wanting to kiss and hold and fuck and fight and I salute them because every queer person needs this movie.
“Would the ugly, untalented gays come to the office, please?”
Growing up I knew the only ways to survive being queer in a world that demonizes then murders queerness and anyone attached to it—is to be straight in public and queer in secret or be queer but so successful that they can’t fuck with you. I failed at the first one because it just….wouldn’t go away. No matter how much I cut, bruised, stabbed, drank—it just wouldn’t go away. And I thought saying it out loud just might make my insides less loud. I said it, I regretted it, and then I was determined to go to Columbia or one of them damn schools just to prove that I could make up for the sin of me, that if I had to deal with this, I could make my own life and keep my life to myself and I’d never have to come home.
When I left high school, it didn’t get better. I suffered from autistic burnout (which, at the time, we just thought was a nervous breakdown so wasn’t properly treated until recently) and it just worse. I couldn’t do college (not for lack of trying), I got jobs and went to therapy. I was out, but not out. Everyone knew I was gay and I pretended like I was good with it. But I just wanted to die because I couldn’t be the type of gay who could escape, the type to make it out and never have to look back. And what was in front of me was a lot of pain, a lot of reminders that if I’m not being killed for being Black, perceived a Black woman, or disabled, then of course, queerness is happy to provide a reason. For a long time, things just got worse.
I’ve been thinking about gently torturing my abusers lately (for legal reasons, this is a joke). When I was at Panera Bread, my manager—a black man, an ex-Marine, a friend of cops, a man who held all my fucking personal information like my address and where my family lived—put a box cutter to my throat and asked me, “Do you want me to end it for you right now?” We weren’t hidden. I went to grab oatmeal from the back freezer. There are at least five people watching. He laughs and then walks away. There was more (isn’t there always?) but that’s what’s been sticking with me this week.
I’m sure you’ve heard of what happened with Rho Bashe earlier this month. Bashe, a black woman who was hit in the face with a brick after refusing to give a man her number and many men just watched. After she posted on TikTok, she’d asked people, “Center his face and then talk about it because he’s the one that got a choice. I didn’t get to make a fucking choice.”. Many people (black men included) dug through her socials to justify her assault and later got her account suspended.
I was fired from my job last week, started to feel the blade against my throat a lot. Makes me scared to breathe. What happened to Bashe reminds me that no one is here to protect us, the evidence plays on a loop. And even though it’s out of nowhere, it feels like it can’t possibly related, Bottoms (2023) is what got me out of that loop.
I love Bottoms (2023) for many reasons, but one of the greatest is the violence. It is bloody and painful and these girls are STRONG AS FUCK. They are the scum underneath the school’s shoe, they are useless because they are not talented and they aren’t conventionally pretty (I’m a bad judge of this because I’m in love so) so they are just like me, but they continue to get up again and again to protect themselves and those they care about. The people who threaten them do not get to slip back into normalcy and I do dream about it. Of the blood and the fear and making time stretch in one long unforgiving moment just like my abusers did with me. I dream of just people witnessing what they did and me standing up for myself being enough to make my insides quiet. I’d be in a much worse place I suppose if I had been able to do it, but I bet I wouldn’t be as haunted.
Bottoms (2023) is ridiculously funny, one of the greatest films of our time, and one of the few films that says when people fuck with you, when people attempt to harm you, you are allowed (encouraged even!) to punch them in the fucking face and hurt them back! I can’t wait to watch this every month for the rest of my life.
note: I keep saying Bottoms (2023) because I don’t want my friends to get confused, love youuuu