Bets for 2024 – 01/01/2024 – Vera Iaconelli

In “Pedágio” (2023), a film by Carolina Markowicz, we see a mother struggling with the obstinate task of saving her son. The problem is that she intends to save him from his sexual orientation, perhaps even his gender. The film, which has its locations and photography as one of its high points, shows the intoxicated environment of false beliefs and expectations, without missing an opportunity to use humor. Inadvertent humor in the ridiculousness of imagining that there would be coherence, control or cure for human desire. And so we were presented with this pearl of cinema, with beautiful performances by Maeve Jinkings and newcomer Kauan Alvarenga, both of whom won awards at national and international festivals, as well as nominations and awards for best film and direction. While we continue to worry about other people’s sexuality, we turn a blind eye to a world in environmental and moral collapse – isn’t it the same thing, after all? The Cubatão ravines could not be a better choice to confront the topic.

After the hangover, the beginning of the year leads us to think about our bets for 2024, where our gaze stops, what we strive for to the point of summarizing our existence to its achievement.

With psychoanalysis we learn that if human desire is inflexible, this does not mean that we can always give vent to it, nor can we exempt ourselves from our responsibility for it. We continue negotiating between desire and its fulfillment based on the reality imposed by the world and the desires of others. Furthermore, alienation from the desire of the other, which is the foundation of the human psyche, requires a work of separation so that we become our desire as something of our own. Hence, much of what we consider to be personal aspirations may just be a way of trying to satisfy other people’s expectations.

“Ninja Baby”, a Norwegian film by Yngvild Sve Flikke, about a young woman who finds herself pregnant and has to decide what to do with it, we watch the painful process of recognizing one’s desire beyond the expectations of others and oneself. It’s not easy, as it always involves losses, you live with that. The definition of becoming an adult is at stake here: assuming the effects of one’s own actions, whether conscious or unconscious.

At the turn of 2022, we launched our arrows loaded with expectations and dreams for 2023. Now it is up to us to reflect on where they fell and whether they really represented what we wanted, because if desire is something that is only known after the fact, this is the time to consider the difference between achievements and the satisfaction they brought. Always partial satisfactions, as psychoanalysis teaches us, so that it remains necessary to relaunch the arrows in the direction of the life that remains.

Reflecting on the most memorable event of 2023 for each of us, we may be surprised by the simplicity of the answer. Or, we may discover that all the trips, encounters, loves, achievements and losses have become a great rushing mass of events that we have barely been able to recognize and experience.

Before launching the arrows towards 2024 and spending the next 12 months chasing its trail, it is interesting to take advantage of the hangover and heartburn to get a respite from the current imperative of productivity. Social dictates assumed without reflection are the mark of the alienation of our desire from the expectations of others. Being forced to participate in a supposed gay cure, for example, is a type of violence. Identifying with this imposition, however, is even more violent because it is when we alienate our desire to the other. The same applies to motherhood, work, social relationships when they are automatic and compulsory.

May 2024 be a year full of desire and the assumption of its consequences!

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