Love Virtually: Weeping For WandaVision
There’s a new Avengers show on Disney+ from Marvel Studios called WandaVision that after only four episodes, I already feel a deep emotional connection with, so naturally, like any self-respecting fanatic, I’ve been watching as much as I possibly can about the show and the people behind it.
It’s a special and rare kind of magic trick to be able to take characters from a comic book, stick them in a slap-happy, sometimes silly, but slickly-produced sitcom top hat, and to then pull out a very human story dealing with difficult and complex emotional themes.
Stories within stories within stories. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is, and I kind of can’t get enough.
So in my new thirst for all things WandaVision, I found myself on YouTube this morning watching every interview, promo, easter-egg-explained video I could find and came across this Virtual Launch Event I had missed, that I didn’t even know was happening, that was held two weeks ago, ahead of the show’s release— reality I was receiving virtually, and several times removed at that.
About nine minutes into the event, as a surprise, the host brought a couple of the other cast members onto the Zoom call to join the stars of the show, Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda) and Paul Bettany (Vision). As soon as the host brought them on, nothing could get in the way of the screams, and the squeals and screeches of delight as soon as they saw each other’s faces, and it struck me how incredible it is, especially during this pandemic where we can’t safely be together, for people to still be able to connect and reconnect even though we are physically very far apart. And you could immediately feel the affection they had for one another. Seeing them beam with joy at being reunited made my heart so happy for them, I began to cry.
More than a little bit. I had to pause the video. It was much more of a reaction than I expected to be having — getting so emotional seeing these people who I have never met and whose off-screen relationships and history I haven’t the slightest clue about, having this moment of reconnecting. Strange, I thought.
But when I stop to think about it, I know exactly why.
If you’ve seen the Avengers movies leading up to this series, you’d know that in the course of trying to save the world, the characters these actors play have gone through some terrible, traumatic events. But after the dust settles, “it was just a movie” and here they all are, reunited again, as if nothing had ever happened.
Like waking up from a nightmare, they can put the difficult bits away and move on with their lives. And in that moment, my happiness for them was tinged with envy.
You see, my mom got sick and died two years ago. Brain cancer. Her Mind Stone was stolen. And no one can bring her back.
My mom’s younger sister, my Aunt Junko, just called my dad last last night via Facebook messenger from Japan to tell him who was who in some very old family photos; something the ancestors she was identifying in the pictures couldn’t have possibly wrapped their heads around as being remotely possible, not in a million years: talking to someone in real-time halfway across the world (almost) just as clear as if they were in the same room. These people have been gone since before the turn of the last century, a time when the greatest technological achievement they lived to see was steam power!
The last time I heard my aunt’s voice or saw her face was over a year ago, when I joined my dad and my little brother on a pilgrimage of sorts to Japan to take care of some unfinished business and reconnect with our extended family over there.
When my aunt picked us up from the train station, she greeted us with hugs and tears. She wasn’t able to come to the States for the funeral because her husband, Takashi-san, was dying at the same time. Simultaneous, consecutive devastation.
When we got in the car, she turned to me and said, “You came out of the train station and you look so much like her. Was like I was seeing o-nay-chan” (which means “my dear big sister” in Japanese).
To own a face that is loved, and by no doing of my own…(sigh.) I had never been so happy to resemble another person in my life.
Last night, when my dad picked up the call, he had it on speakerphone, and the instant I heard her voice, my heart jumped. I could hear my mom in her voice. And like no time had passed, we talked about this and that and how much fun my dad and I have been having cooking together and spending time with each other, something I decided needed to happen while he (and I) are both in good health—something I didn’t get the chance to do with my mom, that I didn’t think I needed to plan in advance for, that I took for granted, and that I really regret not having, and I told her I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
We Americans throw “I love you’s” around a lot, much more than in some other cultures, like Japan. It’s definitely there, the love, in the Japanese people, very deeply in fact— it just isn’t announced as much. It’s displayed and enacted and shown but usually not mentioned by name. I had a hard time understanding that growing up, and I mistook the lack of hearing it from my mother as a lack of love for me, which was so not the case.
So we got the end of the call, I just couldn’t help myself and said to my aunt, who doesn’t speak English, “I love you” in Japanese (“Ai shitemasu!”) even though I know it’s not her custom. I wanted to say it. I wanted her to hear it, not expecting to hear it back. But to my surprise, she said in return, “Totemo ai shiteru yo!” (“I love you very much.”)
Tears came down that she couldn’t see through the phone, so I told her what she could no doubt hear in my voice anyway when I announced, “Naiteru yo!” (“I’m here crying!”) to which she said, “Watashi mo naiteru yo!” (“I’m crying, too!”)
A virtual bridge, born of unbearable grief, crossing continents and cultural barriers, carried through space and time to deliver a message, spoken in a universal language that needs no interpreter:
Love.
At the end of the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, we learn what Vision, virtually human, has to say about “real” humans in the final showdown with Ultron, a machine intelligence that wants to destroy the human race:
VISION
You’re afraid.
ULTRON
Of you?
VISION
Of death… You’re the last one.
ULTRON
You were supposed to be the last… Stark asked for a savior… He settled for a slave.
VISION
I suppose we were both disappointments.
ULTRON
[laughs] I suppose we are.
VISION
Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be.
But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that.
ULTRON
They’re doomed.
VISION
Yes. But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. It’s a privilege to be among them.
How right he was.
We will all die, but doom doesn’t leave only gloom. It grants us a vision of love deepened through loss that we couldn’t, we wouldn’t otherwise know. A vision you don’t need eyes to see.
So even though I can’t be with my mother anymore, can’t touch her face, and can’t hear her voice…I can see her with my heart, better than I could before.
And all I see is love.
