BILLIE EILISH
Her Fearless Short Film Pierces Shaming
Billie Eilish‘s brave short film, Not my Responsibility, puts a big crack in our society’s norm of shaming. It makes you stop and rethink everything about harmful opinions we share and turns what is normal upside down. Billie Eilish always has done that by her very nature. There is somewhere an inner confidence, self love and love of life shining through Billie. It might sound strange talking about Billie Eilish and an inner light, but her parents and brother have done the most amazing job loving her and supporting her and it kind of shines through. No matter how dark that thick black liquid is that she lowers herself slowly into in the film she is actually turning on a light. That’s not her artistic style, she seems to prefer the dark but in the end of the video you are reminded of having empathy and maybe changing the way you talk and the way you think of others.
The film is part of her now locked-down show that was on tour. Billie Eilish decided to share it this week and it is getting an overwhelming positive response everywhere. The short film is excellent and itself is simple, quiet yet strongly dramatic, so I suspect that you are forced to listen to her words. The words are the poetry driving the piece not that she sheds layers of clothes and immerses herself in squid black thick ink. That certainly gets your attention but it is Billie’s words that haunt you. She says in the film, “Would you like me to be smaller, weaker, softer, taller? Would you like me to be quiet?” Our resounding answer is “no.” She also says in the film or performance piece, “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.” I think that it is all about not judging people and needing to know them. As Atticus Finch said to Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” Visually that might make a cool Billie Eilish music video, climbing into someone else’s skin and trying it out, but all that is up to her and by now we can trust her gifted instincts. Thanks Billie for reminding us to build one another up and not tear down one another.
