Terrorized by our own technology

What Lydia Tár taught me about logging off

I started this newsletter in the middle of 2020, when doomscrolling was at a peak, because I wanted to provide useful information AND tell people how best to act based on the information given to them. Sometimes, this means that I have to ask readers to bear with me.

Please bear with me now!

I want to talk to about Tár, the movie. Tár is not for everyone. It’s long, strange, has a very particular palette, and can be very confusing on first viewing.

This movie becomes less confusing, however, when you consider the elements of horror that are present throughout the film and intensify in the last hour.

In many ways, Tár is a classic ghost story, updated for the digital age. Social media and smartphones become a conduit for a haunting that grows out of control. There are important lessons to be gleaned here, lessons that can be extrapolated even if you’re not a genius celebrity of the music world as portrayed by Cate Blanchett.

Here are just a few of those lessons (some spoilers for the movie below, if you care more about the art of the movie, you probably won’t mind them, but I have to warn you either way):

E-mail is forever

You’ll be surprised at how many smart people still don’t fully realize this. Just because you’re careful with your e-mails doesn’t mean that other people in your network are.

If you’re being stalked online, it’s far too easy to adopt the habits of your stalker

Online stalking creates weird, unholy bonds between people. This is why we must be careful not to become that which we are ostensibly fighting against.

A lot of the reviews of Tár rightly pointed out that the title character abused her power. But what I noticed is that Lydia thought she was protecting herself. At one point, she complains that her stalker/ghost, a former student named Krista, vandalized her Wikipedia page. In Lydia’s mind, therefore, she had every right to send nasty e-mails that effectively ruined Krista’s budding career.

It is heavily implied that Lydia Tár’s character could have taken the high road when it came to Krista. Simply put, Lydia could have logged off. Lydia did not log off. The rest was history.

Someone is always recording

A part of the scandal portrayed in the film involves statements that Lydia makes during a class at Juilliard, which are then spliced together and posted on Twitter to paint an extremely unflattering picture of her.

The class was supposed to be smartphone-free, a point that Lydia naively clings to when her world begins to crumble around her.

But there is also something else going on here. Smart viewers noticed the way the original Juilliard scene was shot. No one was visible filming from the angles that Lydia was filmed via. It’s almost as if she was filmed by a vengeful ghost.

This supports the theory that at its heart, Tár is a Gothic horror tale. It’s also a fundamental reminder about the ubiquity of technology. Even when we think it’s not there, we are kidding ourselves.

Don’t let your smartphone become a portal to hell

Much of Tár is open to interpretation, which I love.

I particularly love the implicit idea that smartphones have become doors in our lives, through which malign influence can crawl in if we’re not being careful, if we’re not watching ourselves.

In the film, Lydia is a powerful woman who can’t resist using her power in terrible, damaging ways. And it’s technology that aids and abets her — those damn e-mails — until it turns on her.

I really appreciated this part of the movie. When I was younger and dumber, I didn’t always use my platform for good (I thought I did, but good intentions, the road to hell, etc.). I have seen how a stupid mistake can come back to haunt you online. And how social media amplifies the haunting, and how hard it is to put away the phone in moments like that.

Social media infamy doesn’t have to destroy you

Maybe it will make you see something you haven’t seen before. Maybe it will open up another door for you to walk through, to confront yourself. Because of the way social media is structured, we cling to the notion that being canceled should be final. But, as we continue to grapple with the way technology affects our lives, we should probably begin to have a more nuanced approach.

Anyway, if you’ve seen the movie, let me know what you think. If you haven’t, I really recommend it. Especially if you love music and/or tech. It’s an old-fashioned tale and it’s also blisteringly new. I loved it even though it chilled me.