In the middle of a bridge, in the middle of the night, we can make out a giant cage, with, inside, a huge beast. We think we recognize a bear inside. The door of the cage opens in front of a young man who, white t-shirt and kitchen apron around his body, stands facing the bear, the grizzly itself, roaring with all his might.
Here is the first scene of the series The Bear, which marked my beginning of January, with its intelligence, its creativity and also this theme that is so dear to me: the space that we leave to certain aspects of ourselves, of ourselves, in a society that is both fragmented by its moral pluralism, but which also carries its rigidity, in other very normative aspects. Crowned at the top of the 50 best TV series of the year 2022, according to The Guardianand listed among the top 15 series of 2022, according to The duty, the series was also rewarded for the play of its actor who speaks with the eyes, Jeremy Allen White, at the last Golden Globes. And it’s not for nothing. Because art sometimes knows how to touch us much more than any speech from a shrink, to watch The Bear is perhaps the only prescription that I will allow myself to give you.
Facing the beast is what it will be about, you understood, in this small series of only eight episodes of 25 minutes each. What beast? The beast in itself, that of our losses, our traumas, our undigested mourning, our relational pains or that imposed by our passions which are sometimes devouring. But there will also be the beast that comes to us from outside: that of time and its pressure, that of lack, of the fear of not getting there. The kitchens of a family restaurant, the central location of the series, here become an augmented metaphor for our somewhat broken, somewhat intense, somewhat crazy, imperfect and sometimes immoral lives. But above all, it sends us back to this psychic task that belongs to all of us: that of “mentalizing” our animal.
There is some consensus in psychology, including that existing around the notion of “mentalization” – according to the expression of the Hungarian-British psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy – recognized as an essential psychic function, linked to a better internal “regulation” of our affects, impulses, actions. As I neither want to reduce a complex conceptualization to its simplest expression nor write an academic essay here, I invite you to browse the work of Miguel Terradas, professor of child and adolescent psychology at the University de Sherbrooke or the very well popularized article by psychologist Sébastien Trinh, on the blog Shoring.
Let’s just say that the more we develop the ability to represent to ourselves the states that inhabit us as well as those imagined in others, the more we manage to make links between our affects, our behaviors and our thoughts, the more we manage to “regulate” ourselves. in a way that is no longer strictly reactive, impulsive and embodied in “doing”.
In this series, all the moralizing advice on “recommended lifestyle” is quickly shattered on the ramparts of the need, for the main character, to live his crossing, his quest, which consists in finding, in him, the courage to hold on again, in this unbearable place from which he cannot escape. In doing so, however, he gradually mentalizes more and more all the states that inhabit him. The courage to be is often found elsewhere than in conforming to a series of normative behaviors deemed acceptable in our culture. It lodges much more on the side of this intimate elaboration of what devours us, in this mentalization of our beast.
And there is the restoration, a character of the series on its own, this space in which we play with fire until our fingers get burned, where we cut ourselves, metaphorically or really, where we try to create order in a renewed chaos, where we eternally wash what tomorrow will be soiled again, but also where we create beauty, delight, magic by playing alchemists and surviving all the ends of the world before a service. An exercise in empathy par excellence, you will no longer see your favorite restaurateur with the same eye after The Bear.
I asked my restaurateur friends to look at it. One of them started in the morning. At noon, he wrote to me: “I laughed, I cried, I felt anxious. My life, what! Over coffee, I asked him: “Why are you doing this, having a restaurant?” “Because I have the best clientele in the world. I would never do it otherwise, it’s horrible without them. It is unlivable! »
If that isn’t love!
Without wanting to reopen the debate here on the difficult working conditions of the catering sector, which is essential, moreover, I would like to reverberate a little love towards all those people who, every day, face the beast to deposit a little goodness on our plates. They allow us to drop off, often to receive much more than food, sometimes even to let a little of our beast exult. They are part of our neighborhoods and offer us their place of containment, their spaces where we sometimes run aground, where we come to seek reliance, benevolence, care or a community of counters.
In January, many of them regain their strength. So, to you, I say: good rest, happy new year, and thank you.