FORUM
An Ode to Ambivalence: Reflections of a Documentary Filmmaker
Ofra BLOCH In the beginning there was a sea of endless blue in my mother’s eyes, and I drowned in it. When she would shut her eyes hoping for an afternoon nap, I would gently pull her eyelashes and separate her lids so that the blue would reappear, and I could continue to be. On rainy days she would suggest that we leave our umbrellas at home and take a walk between the drops, so we wouldn’t get wet. She was a magician and I believed everything she said. The biggest gift a parent can give her child is the permission to go. She never did and when she developed an illness that impaired her cognition, I felt I didn’t have the right to go on with the act of living without her. This is how I landed in analysis and embarked on the long struggle of differentiating. I often wondered about what prevented my mother from allowing me to fly the nest. Probably her mothering was influenced by the loss of her own mother at the age of two, along with the experience years later of being told by a stranger that the woman she called mom was actually her stepmom. It wasn’t just a case of her becoming the mother she thought she needed to be for me. It was more about what she lacked and about what I needed to be for her. The seven years it took to make my documentary Afterward allowed me the opportunity to radically listen to those I was raised to regard as an other - the Germans and the Palestinians. In my encounters, I experienced being in the role of both victim and victimizer and was forced to face my own implication in the Occupation, even after living for 40 years in the diaspora. However, it was the reactions to my film in the last four years, since its completion, that made me think of my mother’s experience and its impact on me through a different lens. When I discuss the reactions to my documentary, I don’t focus on the people who liked the film or those who didn’t. I focus instead on a distinct group of people who would ordinarily be drawn to the topic of the documentary but who refused to watch it as if “on principle.” This group of individuals isn’t confined to one nationality, gender, religion or race. I have wondered for some time about what it is that unified them. It seems to me that the common denominator was their difficulty in handling ambivalence. Afterward is all about ambivalence. The film points to a future—an “afterward”—that attempts, without polemics or false equivalencies, to live with the truths of history in order to make sense of the present. Without being able to tolerate conflicting feelings, to hold more than one emotion at a time, or to live with uncertainties, confusion and hesitation, there is no space in which to invite the other to begin a dialogue.
What is it about the experience of feeling ambivalent that makes it into an unbearable endeavor? The poet Adrienne Rich described the suffering of ambivalence as “the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.” (Rich 1976). While the opinion columnist Anna Quindlen wrote, “We don’t do ambivalence well in America. We do courage for our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.” (Quindlen, 2010). I felt a wave of fresh air when I read this quote from the writer Erica Jong, “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.” Growing up, my mother didn’t experience being on the mind of her mother, or any other for that matter. During her childhood no one took an interest in her internal life or showed the capacity to understand her feelings and wishes, and it was left to me to repair her eroded epistemic trust. Being deprived of ongoing mentalization likely shaped her attachment style and impaired her capacity to be alone. When she had a daughter, it was as if she discovered her own essence or perhaps got to have an identity beyond being an orphan. She needed me in order to have meaning and identity, and I in return, felt as if we were one. We shared a world of radical dependency, in which we belonged to each other. Absent was the sense of having a secure base to which I could return if I dared to individuate and explore the world. In the confines of such a straitjacket, there was no space for me to experience her contemplation of me, without which I couldn’t differentiate from her, and therefore was never able to internalize her. The unconscious rigid structure that was formed between my mother and me was an example of our instinctual need for belonging. The process of becoming a defined group is similarly based on a particular bond among group members who share identity or adhere to similar beliefs and social structures. However, when a group is characterized by a total enmeshment with a strict definition of their belief system, it can generate feelings of insecurity and anxiety within the group. The group then reacts by establishing strictly delineated, external boundaries in order to protect itself from being exposed to the outside world. This rigidity can lead to the development of a false world where there is a space for only one truth and a profound fear of the germ of any other truths. It consists of ‘good-us’ and ‘bad-them’ and people, ideas and actions aren’t judged on their own merit, but whether they represent them or us. The 28
DIVISION | R E V I E W
SUMMER 2023
absence of any other perspectives furthers isolation, so working through and using mentalization to transform and change become impossible. Recently, a German member of a non-governmental peace organization arranged a virtual screening of Afterward. The organization trains German, Palestinian, and Israeli young adults to work together to promote peace by providing them with opportunities for encounters. The hope is that by experiencing mutual understanding, respect and acceptance, they will become agents of peace in their respective societies. The audience that attended consisted of Germans, two Israelis and no Palestinians. Most of the Israelis and all the Palestinian members refused to attend the screening and the discussion that followed. I assume that their entangled traumatic past orients them to react with anxiety, avoidance and dissociation in response to exposures to particular triggers. This avoidance occurs despite the fact that the members of this organization had committed themselves to dialogue with each other and they have been listening to each other for many years. A similar experience occurred when Afterward was screened at Solidarity – Tel Aviv Human Rights Film Festival. Some of my friends who identify with both extremes of the political map in Israel mysteriously declined invitations to attend. Though they differ in their political viewpoints, they were united in their fear of being presented with a personal documentary that doesn’t take sides, that isn’t pro-or-against, but rather attempts to navigate the labyrinth of conflicting emotions when faced with reality on the ground. However, I can clearly remember times when I didn’t take on the effort to understand the other, when I too the felt comfort in belonging to a cohesive group that firmly believed that their truth was the only just one, and how the goal of holding many perspectives was difficult for me as well. There is a moment in Afterward in which I can be seen walking in the Old City of Jerusalem as Muslims were thronging the narrow streets towards the Al Aqsa Mosque for the Friday prayer. The Friday before we filmed that scene, an Israeli Jew walking the same path was knifed. I vividly remember asking the Palestinian assistant producer to speak to me in English, feeling some trepidation about being identified as an Israeli Jew if we conversed in Hebrew. A moment before, I felt appalled and enraged by the presence of so many armed soldiers, and at the same time I caught myself thinking that I did not want to die and that perhaps it was a good thing that the soldiers were there to protect me. I
