pray or prey: the starling girl

In her white dancing costume, Jem says a prayer. Flapping fabrics, barefoot, a dance performance, alluding to freedom. A freedom that cuts short when the camera pans to the wider setting of a church. 

The Starling Girl, by Laurel Parmet, is a story about a girl crippling with the grip of her Christian community on her, and how as this dominance builds and builds, it comes crashing down. 

We follow our protagonist Jem, a 17-year-old girl living in a fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky. Jem can be seen dancing with other dancers, wearing all white in front of everyone in the church, with sunlight penetrating through the glass windows; the scene itself seemed too pure and holy. After the dance, as everyone was socializing, Jem was introduced to the pastor's younger son, and the two, along with the parents, discussed marriage. A woman approached Jem and told her that her bra was visible through her shirt and that she should be more careful about it. Jem, eyes filled with tears, excused herself and ran out of the church, sobbing on the side steps of the building. 

(Before continuing, I would just like to say how relatable her reaction was because, yes, sometimes someone's goodwill causes the most embarrassment out of you.)

Coincidentally standing some steps away was Owen, the pastor's older son, smoking a cig. And this is where the first step of manipulation plays out. Owen, having seen Jem's sobs, asks if she is okay, and, because he is caught smoking (which is something he probably shouldn't be doing), asks her to keep it a secret, just between the two of them. This favor right here opens up a whole new dynamic, one that makes Jem feel valuable and special (especially after she experienced such a vulnerable and embarrassing situation), that she is, out of everyone, including his wife, the only one to know this rebellious thing of him. It makes her feel like she could trust him, because he trusts her. 

Around the same time, a leadership position opens up in the dance troupe, and Jem, having been in the dance troupe for a long time and with her passion for dancing, uses this secret as a way to get close and convince Owen to let her take the lead. He agrees to it, and it feels as if for the first time in her life she has control over something. 

Jem begins to get closer to Owen, and Owen reciprocates it, though I can't help but be disgusted by this. Jem, like many of us before, develops a seemingly childish crush on an older guy. We come to understand that the nature of this crush is due to a bountiful of reasons, that he is a 28 years old man who has just came back from a missionary trip in Puerto Rico (which makes him vastly different, in a way bathing him in this exotic essence, than the other pastors and head men in the church), that she very much doesn't want to get marry especially to the younger brother; this pull to the older brother is rebellious and angsty in of itself, that for her whole life up until this point she has lived in conformity, to her mom, to the men, and to the church. But this innocent crush turned into something more sinister because Owen capitalized on it. Finding himself in an unfulfilling marriage and perhaps doubts about his faith, he finds an outlet to release all of this frustration; he finds a suitable prey in Jem; Jem, who is also going through a time of uncertainties, Jem, who is young and naive but lawless as a teenage girl; Jem, who is full of misplaced faith. 

Dancing becomes the space, repeated throughout the film, where Jem confronts the unspoken. For instance, after getting ever closer to Owen, Owen's wife becomes the temporary supervisor, doing a periodic check-up on Jem's dance troupe.  This brewed tension between Jem and the woman as she interrupted the dance midway to comment on how individualistic the choreography feels, subtly accusing Jem of making the performance about herself, the way she had everyone kneeling on the floor as she did a solo part. Jem is told that she is dancing for herself, not for Him. Being accused of acting selfish (and of course, the affair plays a factor into this), our protagonist lashes out at this comment, getting a remark regarding how "out of the blue" Jem's annoyance seems. Jem can't say anything that won't cost her everything. Thus, she succumbed in the end and altered the movements. 

Now, the only thing that she was in control of, the only outlet for her expression and creativity, was shut down. How raging it must feel for it to be stirred by the wife of the man you are in a secret relationship with.  

Being implied as selfish in a public space, shunned and made quiet, Jem is seen to be repressing her raw, albeit ugly (but real), emotions. All of her bottled-up frustrations from her parents, the church, and perhaps her lover's wife, are unleashed in the habitual sneak-outs with Owen when the night covers them whole. Oh, the adrenaline she must have felt. 

Naturally enough, they had their first kiss, and then sex, Jem's first time. Interestingly in this scene, the camera fixated itself onto Jem, showing her expressions of hurt and discomfort. It should make the audience wonder why this is the artistic choice, perhaps because they did not want to showcase Owen's pleasure, as that would render the message of the film and satisfy the nauseating manipulation of his. Through this specific camera angle choice, the film is as if confronting the church as well as the watchers: do you see how the system that you built up and manage lets abusers and preachers slip loose and hurt your own members, how shameful you must feel to let this occur. 

In the second part of the movie, we start to get a closer peek at Jem's home life. Her dad, Paul, has a drinking problem and found/joined the church as a means of redemption. Jem and her siblings got born into the church. At home, Jem is constantly hammered with thoughts of religious and homely responsibilities, having to be a second mother to her younger siblings, and it doesn't help that her mom doesn't see any good of dancing. Here, Jem fights a war of the life expected of her and a different, "forbidden path" that calls her name. Jem doesn't know what to do, where to start if she chooses the latter path, and amidst this confusing time she bonded with her dad, learning about his life before religion. In a conversation with a drunk Paul, he told her about his music career, how he was in a band playing in bars, and that he loved that life until it all came collapsing onto him when one of the band's members committed suicide. As life caved in on him, alcohol was his way of escaping the painful reality. Thereafter, this bridge between Jem and the path to freedom solidifies partly, obviously not without tension coming from Heidi (Jem's mom). It was also in this conversation that Paul apologized to Jem about how he had mistreated her, which is a rare act that no adult in her life had done to her up until this point. 

2/3 into the movie, their relationship got caught, and this is where the real themes come in. After the words spread and everyone found out, the pastor went to Jem's house and had a talk with her and her mom, which ended with his recommendation (meaning an order) for her to be taken to King's Valley, a place for troubled Christian kids. It is obvious that whatever kind of reputation King's Valley had, it was not a good one, as we see Jem physically protesting against it. To this, Heidi threatened Jem that if she didn't go to King's Valley, she would be excluded from the family and the church, the only network of people she had ever known. This tactic, knowing that the community itself is isolated and offers its members no other social groups, is effective as a threat and punishment to the members because they won't have another place to depend on. As if mentally and physically torturing her with the talking and trip of King's Valley wasn't enough, the pastor asked Jem to write a forgiveness letter, which would be read to the whole church. 

What happened to Owen, you might ask? Nothing, except resign his position as a youth pastor, which he did willingly. Jem went into the relationship thinking they were equal partners, but in the end, she is the only one being punished for something that wasn't even her wrongdoing. Owen is the embodiment of the patriarchy, here through the church's lens, how women and men are treated differently, how the members of the church deemed it to be a 17-year-old girl's fault that a 28-year-old married man got into a relationship with her, and influenced her to do things she shouldn't have done. They see her as unmarried and having an affair with a married man. We see how the church would rather put the blame on a young girl than the son of the pastor, with worries of tainting the image of the church, but it has never been more red. 

The most impactful scene in my opinion, is that of when she stood in front of the whole church and read out loud her apology letter, asking for forgiveness. The sight of a vulnerable young girl, who was manipulated by an older man, was betrayed by her own community into shame, and having to beg for their grace is beyond disgusting. Worse, after she finished, people started coming up one by one, looking into her eyes and telling her, "I forgive you". That was such a slap in the face. How dare they come up and dismiss this girl's guilt just like that? What are you forgiving her of? What has she done wrong? What gave you the authority to look into her eyes and accept her like a criminal? And Owen came up too, saying the same thing as he avoided eye contact. To have the person who did this to you go up and say that they forgive you for something that both of you know that they did wrong. Is God this evil? 

And it is paradoxical in the way that even though Owen is the symbol of the way the patriarchy treats men in comparison to women, he is also the reason Jem fought back against the system. He encouraged her to dance, contrary to her mother's opinion of it as vain. When they had their first kiss, he pierced her ear, again rebellious in this context. So even though the relationship itself isn't right, it sparks something in Jem, and she fully stops submitting to the system she was in as she runs away with Owen. 

The hot and moist Kentucky air, shadowed by the nauseating sunlight, mirrors Owen and Jem's relationship. It's sticky and uncomfortable and unbearable, like their relationship. But the summer heat is also necessary for the transition into the cool autumn days. The summer heat seems to be inevitable for Jem's growth. 

Intrigued perhaps by the transformatory magic of Puerto Rico on Owen, the two make their way to this destination, stopping on the first night at a motel. In the early morning hours before Owen woke up, Jem took his car keys and drove herself to Arleen's bar, the place where her father once stood with his band, before life happened. 

The movie ended with Jem dancing in the bar, swaying to the music, to a rhythm that is so entirely different than the rhythm she swayed to in the opening scene. But a rhythm nonetheless. Dancing in this bar, since the first time we saw her in the church's dance performance, Jem is truly free. 

A quote from Conclave (2024) reminds me of Jem's harrowing journey of a teenage girl against a backdrop of religion, love, doubts, hope, and fear: Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. "My god my god why have you abandoned me?" he cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there were only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. 

Jem doubted her beliefs, and that means doubting the entire life that she knows of. The church calls her sinful and un-Christian, but it is clear that her doubts were the most Christ-like thing, because doubt walks hand in hand with faith, for if you are certain, there would no longer be a need for faith. 

Jem's faith, combined with the natural confusion as she grows up, is a delicate thing that sways like a candle in the wind, to whatever direction they want it to.