Script

Here's my script for Pearly Whites!

Click here: Pearly Whites

     Today I was approached by my teacher, where she told me that my subject was "good, but really dark." Hearing my classmate's stories about abusive parents and murderers, it felt a little strange that my project was singled out. 

     When I would talk to people about my own experiences, they seem grossed out, and it hurt. When I asked someone why, they said that the pure hatred of your body required to do something like that to yourself is hard to think about. It makes sense, but it made me feel pretty weird to think about my struggles in the light of someone hearing about them, and I realized for the first time that it really was a horrible thing to bear witness to.

     Through this light, I realize that viscerally showing a character's purges would rely too much on shock to get the point across, and focusing on the mental and physical aspect of it will humanize Marina and make her a character with an illness, not the embodiment of the illness itself.

     Since I don't just want to show some girl throwing up over and over (I'm not Lucifer Valentine), in order to make this film less centric about the physical purging aspect of bulimia, I will not show any vomit in the intro at all, nor would I show any in the rest of the movie were I to create it.
     While the movie centers around this aspect of her life, I want to show how it affects one's life outside of it. How it drives you away from gatherings, how you scan the menu for the lowest-calorie item, and how people comment on your body constantly. I also would want to show recovery- feeling like you can enjoy parties again, regaining strength and health, and the feeling when you eat something and realize you didn't even glance at the nutrition label. These seem like insignificant victories, but they're incredibly important.

     So, in conclusion, I want to clear up something. I did not pick this topic to be a shock factor, I do not want to create a disturbing film, and I don't want Marina to be a disturbing character. I don't want her illness to define her. I've noticed that, more than other eating disorders, bulimia is seen as something unspeakable, and there's hardly any solid representation in the media. As someone who's seen disordered eating firsthand in the people closest to me, this is a close topic to my heart, and I would not want to do it an injustice. Thank you!

     P.S. I'm good and the people close to me I mentioned are also completely fine!!!