After watching Tarnation, I was anxious to tell my roommates all about the struggles that Jonathon Caouette faced during his childhood. When I got home, I tried as hard as I could to describe the documentary. My roommate, Andrianna, did not have the same reaction that I did to the film. She wondered why a person would make a documentary about their life and she got the impression that Tarnation was self-indulgent. I was intrigued by her comment because I never even thought of Tarnation as being a self-indulgent documentary. I saw Tarnation as a self-therapy documentary because its goal was “to change the person behind the camera.”(Arthur, 866) I believe self-therapy documentary’s goal is to help the director overcome an emotional injury rather than commercial profit. Jonathon Caouette’s film goes one step further and not only allows himself to overcome issues, but commercial exposure allows viewers to identify with Caouette’s story and also partake in a similar healing process.
In Marsha and Devin Orgeron’s Familial Pursuits, Editorial Acts: Documentaries after the Age of Home Video, the statement, “Where Renee’s life is depicted as a haphazard collection of barely successful attempts to survive, Cauoette depicts himself as struggling to create order in the chaos of his situation” (54) stuck with me because it reminds me of my cousins trying to create order in their lives while living with a bi-polar mother. My aunt was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder in 2000 and over the past ten years she has had multiple manic episodes and subsequent hospitalizations. During her manic episodes she usually leaves home and disowns her four children. While watching Tarnation, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between my cousins and Jonathon Caouette. I feel that like Jonathon, my cousins are trying to find order to their lives amid the chaos. Two of my cousins have turned to drugs and the other two have found an outlet in filmmaking to distract themselves from the reality of their mum’s condition. In the film, when Jonathon Caouette records himself in the bathroom saying, “I love my mother so much, as fucked up as it is. I can’t escape her. She lives inside me; she’s in my hair; she’s behind my eyes; she’s under my skin” (56) reminds me of a time when my cousin Natalie told me that “she loves her mum, but sometimes it is so hard to love her.” I was teary eyed the whole time watching this film because I couldn’t help empathizing with people who try to organize their life while dealing with a mental illness in their family.
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| Eleven year old Jonathon as a southern lower-class woman |
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| My cousin, Natalie, as Gandolf from Lord of the Rings |
I feel that my cousins would be comforted by watching Jonathon Caouette’s film because they would be able to relate to his story and feel that they are not alone in their struggle to find order amid their own chaos. I myself was able to heal a bit throughout the film because my sister also has bi-polar and right now our relationship is stranded due to her illness. Tarnation allowed me to realize that there is a special bond between family members that can be stretched but never broken. At the end of Tarnation, it seemed like Jonathon’s life had a semblance of order. This sense of order gives me hope that one day my cousins will be able to have order in their lives and that my sister and I can also reconnect. I feel that the power of self-therapy documentaries is that they not only heal the director, but they also reach out and help their audiences heal as well.
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