Julie Powell and Redemption

When Julie and Julia came out a few years ago, I watched the movie and loved it very much. I liked the spunky can-do attitudes of the main characters and the pornographic presentations of French food (I love food, and I really love French food). They lifted my spirits at a fabulously low point in my life and inspired a hilarious, shortlived photo series on my Facebook page, in which I took pictures of ridiculously complicated holiday foods I was making, and then put them alongside ridiculously easy comfort food, like Amy's soups in a can or Annie's organic mac and cheese. But living without a regular internet connection makes such things hard, and I abandoned it.

Then I decided to do some research on Julie Powell and was kind of creeped out.

Before I even read Julie and Julia, I was struck by the implied selfishness and exhibitionism that would go into her book Cleaving. I still haven't read it, mostly because I don't like the idea behind it. A lot of reviews say it lacks perspective. At that point, there's not much for a reader to experience other than voyeurism, something I'm not into. Then I read Julie and Julia, and was struck by Powell's bizarre frequent meltdowns and histrionics. However, it inspired me to do several things, include start drinking gimlets (but with gin, not vodka) and buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking, mainly for the purpose of cooking Brussels Sprouts with 3/4 stick of butter and 1/2 cup of cream (DELICIOUS). It's hilarious enough to pick up when you need something funny to brighten your spirits. It's also brave enough to call people out on the asinine policies and politics of the years just after 9/11. So really, I still recommend Julie and Julia as a book.

But let's get to the heart of the matter. I was thinking about how one review of Cleaving said that it skipped the whole Rise, Stumble, Fall, Redemption of most memoirs, and that made it unusual, but also less boring as a concept (not less boring as a read, according to some other reviewers). I thought about that for a while. I thought about the fact that, from all appearances and no reports I can find to the contrary, Julie and Eric Powell are still married. I thought about the fact that she hasn't appeared much in media since 2010. And I thought about redemption.

In the public eye, Julie Powell hasn't done much to officially 'redeem' herself. Redemption being a powerful narrative in our culture, even politicians who screw up royally go through the motions of being apologetic and then try to go on to do something somewhat redeeming (like resigning in shame, or going on Wife Swap). The whole falling down and pulling yourself back up by your bootstraps has a pretty strong hold on our collective imaginations. It's pervasive in Christianity; St. Paul says repeatedly that people become new creations in Christ. You don't have to let the past dictate your future. God can wipe the slate clean with something called grace. Some people manipulate that beautiful gift, true. But Easter Sunday is the triumph of Christianity. Not even death gets the final say.

However, most of us don't live in a place where the slate gets magically wiped clean. We live with our mistakes, and the nightmares that others have inflicted on us even after we have moved on. Things haunt us. In Shelly Rambo's book Spirit and Trauma, a deacon at a church in New Orleans speaks about how the storm of Hurricane Katrina is 'always with us'. There aren't always neat categories of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, of death and resurrection, of fall and redemption. We keep on living, memories and consequences trailing behind us.

Julie Powell occupies that messy state that doesn't allow us neat and simple categories. Have her actions been, well, appalling? Yes. But somehow, she has moved through it, and moved on. She has even managed to keep her marriage together, God bless her (and her husband). She is like the rest of us, some of us who have made huge mistakes, some of us who have not. She is human. And she lives on, even with the mistakes she has made available to all of us who sit in judgment against her. And she does it with a man who she has sinned against in horrible fashion, and who, according to her, did something similar (just not at the same level).

Maybe that is the terrible, weird truth about what grace and redemption are. We may be new creations, but we are still living in broken old vessels. That's the strange beauty and power of Jesus, who came down and was made flesh. It defies definitions and retains its beauty all the more for being incomprehensible. The church isn't good at teaching anything other than triumphalism, and most people inside and outside don't see this as anything more than to let bad people go free after their crimes. But it's not black and white, as much as we've always been taught it is. Sin is hard and painful. Grace isn't easy for us poor sinning creatures. That's what makes its gift all the more meaningful. Life goes on, even after we have been 'born again' and fucked up and been 'born again' once more. How do you deal? Maybe Julie Powell knows.