Apollo 10 & 1/2, an Adoptee’s Perspective.
A Space Age Childhood (Netflix 2022)
I’d like to bring to your attention a small section of the film at around 15:15. The following 60 seconds or so has a lot to unpack from an adoptee’s perspective.
Narrated by Jack Black through his grow adult character Stan. Written and Directed by Richard Linklater | 1hr 38min
In the style of rotoscoped animation, this movie is similar to “A Scanner Darkly” starring Keanu Reeves which Linklater also directed.
Storyline
The story follows the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two interwoven perspectives. It both captures the astronaut and mission control view of the triumphant moment, and the lesser-seen bottom-up perspective of what it was like from an excited kid’s perspective, living near NASA but mostly watching it on TV like hundreds of millions of others. It’s ultimately both an exacting re-creation of this special moment in history and a kid’s fantasy about being plucked from his average life in suburbia to secretly train for a covert mission to the moon.
The Adoptee’s Perspective
From 15:15. The following 60 plus seconds for an adoptee is particularly concerning. The obligatory adoption joke, is it harmless? You may think so, but what’s really going on here? Why does society simultaneously declare that adoption is beautiful while using it as either a joke an insult or worse a threat from a parent in times of poor behaviour? What personal belief systems are these people violating to instil doubt, fear, and self-loathing for compliance or submission?
The scene goes like this:
It starts with the Photo reference, then bombshell drops, followed by the denial of the parents, and references to orphans, Stan, (Jack Black) goes on to say his mother got on the pill and never told her priest for fear of being excommunicated. Then he talked about his next-door neighbours who were clearly not using contraception because they were popping one kid out per year. The next scene cuts to a small child asleep in the middle of the road.
So you can appreciate how all this seems completely ironic from an adoptee's viewpoint!
A question to Richard Linklater. What were you addressing by having this in the film?
A question to society from all adoptees
How then does an adopted person, in very public settings such as social media get viciously attacked for declaring their truth?
When adoptees challenge the idea of the perfect scenario because of the trauma we suffer far out-ways the promise of a better life.
We are used as plot thickeners and villains in our own story!
People fight against the will of the very thing that they “should” have sworn to “love and protect”! The child! Us! It’s quite psychotic!
Adoption and similar surrounding issues have the scale and complexity of climate change. If these issues remain unaddressed, society will stay in denial and we’ll all slowly either kill ourselves or each other after climate change is solved. Or we could talk about this now! Shouldn’t we expect better from the world around us?
Society's expectations of adoption and the adoptee don’t align, why?
There seems to be a destabilisation of information in multiple areas that further impacts and divides the understanding of the true adoptive experience from the current social perception.
This divide seems to stem from collective denialism in societies and adoptive families' unwillingness to fully grasp the profound reach and depth of trauma throughout an adoptee's life.
I’m really impressed with anyone who gives themselves an honorary PhD in Developmental Psychology after an adoptee voices their lived experience. Stating “I’m sorry you had a bad experience”. They gaslight the harm of neonatal separation while praising adoption.
Because of you
I can’t feel my face. I can’t feel my heart. I can’t see you, I feel the real you. Most of you I don’t like. I really don’t know what to do, I never have. Shit, I’ve never known myself so how could I know you? It’s not because I don’t want to. It’s because my brain is broken, and flooded with toxic chemicals produced from a traumatic birth. Why? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. How it happened, well I can tell you it was a complete failure of empathy. Why that failure occurred I have no idea. At first, I thought it was my birth mother, but then I found it was from circumstances beyond her control. It was mainly pressuring from a society that deemed her an unfit mother simply for the crime of being unwed but it was much more than that. Sick coercive evil tactics seeped out the most holiest of places from people who sore it was their duty to protect and nurture the innocent.
How do you keep doing it?
Explaining these concepts can be hard. However, there is unusually an underlining narrative that paints a visual feast with the sweetest-ever rhyming storyline. People love to imagine their story, which reminds them of the hope they have for their children to become better than themselves. A whimsical adventure that unexpectedly inspires. These stories hope to end on a high note of togetherness. Each particular narrative is designed to encourage all parents and excite all children, the symbolism is created to depict particular meaningful outcomes for each adoptive, foster and other styles of family units alike.
Somehow you’ve been brainwashed into believing this bullshit.
Where the fuck does this social narcissism come from towards adoptees? What do you honestly get out of it?
Is it just because, deep down you can’t bring yourself to willingly, fully stand by an adoptee in their trauma?
Or would you rather turn it in their face by religiously declaring that adoption is beautiful?
Whatever this social behaviour is, it’s continuing psychologically harm the most at-risk marginalised, disenfranchised group on the planet.
Does this make you feel better?
And what of those who intensionally dump this on a real adoptee, imagine finding out through a vindictive attack in some bullshit family argument.
