Ep 5: Law and Disorder: Article 730
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Ep 5: Law and Disorder: Article 730
Narrated by:
Lily Baldwin
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Narrated by:
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Lily Baldwin
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By:
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Lily Baldwin
The full force of the law is poised to fall on X. Will he escape or will it put him away?
©2022 Audible, Ltd (P)2022 Audible, Ltd
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So, this was my 4th Audible title of late, and the last one that I had set aside, initially wanting to complete by the end of the year; but there's only so much interminable drivel I can put myself through on a daily basis.
To begin with, I thoroughly disliked Baldwin from the outset. She has that smugly ironic way of making things that - if we are to believe her reaction to this tale - ought not to be portrayed in a way that makes an alleged victim, sound like a largely emotionless, flatly uninspiring and unserious individual. Yes, I know I'm probably going to elicit all the usual buzzwords around "victim blaming" and whatever. I don't really care. Yes I know that there is rarely such a thing as a "perfect" victim, but we live in the real world, where personal branding is now everything - something Baldwin is all to familiar with, largely in part to her being a minor celebrity who makes money out of her own own face and body, either onstage or on camera. I would have thought she might have at least chosen to sore selectively curate some of her own idiosyncratic responses to her alleged ordeal - as detailed in this Audible production - if she wanted to garner more sympathy from those she wants to hear about her experience.
Throughout this title, we receive almost all of the information directly from Baldwin herself, who cannot help but narrate her tale in an oddly superficial fashion; seemingly determined to make a melodrama out of her real life...almost as if the reality just wasn't anywhere near as interesting or terrifying as she would have us believe. I'm not trying to say that she wasn't at all unsettled by the relentless communication from 'X' (she says she refuses to name him so as not to give him any attention or publicity, but part of me thinks she just doesn't want anyone to be able to find him, correspond with him, and allow him to give his own side of the story) it's just that when you take it all into consideration, she wasn't in as vulnerable position as many other people would be, if they themselves were being stalked.
At no point does 'X' declare any intent to hurt/maim/sexually assault/kill Baldwin. We're given some allegedly psychologically sound advice from one of the many people who became involved in this case, stipulating that it's the ones who don't tell you they're going to kill you, who are more likely to actually attempt to murder the object of their obsessions. "Howlers" (who talk a good game, but whose bark is worse than their bite) apparently don't kill, whilst "Hunters" will remain quieter about their intentions but go on to attempt to murder the object of their misplaced "affections". I get what this is supposed to break down in a very basic fashion, but in reality, I think that there is a greater amount of overlap with these categories, and I think the likelihood of a stalker to go on to violently assault their target, will depend largely on what else is going on in their lives: their altering/deteriorating mental wellness, the way their target interacts with them/does not interact with them, the way their target announces certain emotionally provocative aspects of their life and or career to the wider world, the ability of each party to move to another location, as well as any form of interception by law enforcement - in conjunction with some subsequent medical and mental health review and resource allocation. "Howlers - v - Hunters" might sound snappy and easy to just divide folk up into without any other real assessment of the situation of both stalker and the stalked...in reality I just think it's a far more complex situation at play.
But what do I know? I'm not a certified mental health professional, law enforcement officer, or anyone who might ever be pulled in to give some useful little sound-bites to flesh out my boringly uneventful Audible release.
And if I sound somewhat bitter and cynical there, that's because I am. Not because I don't get called upon to give my opinions to those who want to add credence to their twatwaffle, but because so much twatwaffle exists in the first place...and I keep seeming to come across it with depressing frequency.
The thing that grated on me the most about this book, was the way in which it constantly felt as though Baldwin was desperate to try and make it look and sound as though the stakes were far higher than then actually were. This wasn't a woman who had no family, friends, boyfriend or resources she could rely upon. She had a coterie of people all willing to listen to her, help her out any way they could, offering her advice, resources, support, places to stay, the ability to move across the country and go work or do whatever it is that her "art" involved. The police didn't just believe her, they opened up a case file on 'X', helped her to build a collection of evidence that would count in her favour, told her whenever this guy was on the move. She also had David Byrne (yes, he of 'Talking Heads' and an idiosyncratic fascination with all things bicycle related) send a Cease & Desist letter to 'X' via his own personal lawyer...which I'm pretty sure isn't a service he offers to just anyone who is having to deal with an annoying twerp who keeps sending them incessant emails and a few packages.
Baldwin tries to tell us how she worked herself up into a bit of a state, not eating and behaving erratically, but it's hard to feel all that sorry for someone who can just get on a plane from New York to L.A. and check into the 'Chateau Marmont' whenever she feels like things are starting to get a little too close for comfort. 'X' lives in Europe and only flies over to the US twice. Yes, that's twice more than he ought to have done, but when Baldwin talks with the people dealing with her case in New York and they suggest she get out of town for a bit, she has no trouble doing so. And whilst she's cosplaying as a Hollywood starlet (losing her shit with her boyfriend for having the audacity to turn up for dinner early) she's told that they've picked up 'X' and he has to appear in court. Once he's evaluated for a trial or whatever it is that he's supposed to attend, he's deemed to be a bit tapped in the head and made to go spend a few months as an inpatient at a psychiatric facility, before being shipped back home to Europe.
Which he does.
Then she doesn't hear about him again for years and years.
We get some weird aside about how she starts to suffer with some mobility problems and is diagnosed with a spinal issue, and apparently this is all to do with her "holding onto her trauma" or some other hippy-dippy garbage. And I call it garbage, not because I don't believe in somatic trauma symptoms, but because despite this pointless little aside (which really just feels more like a need to pad her script out a bit more than anything else), at no point is her having been a dancer for decades looked upon as something that might be contributing to her current health problems. Dancers put their bodies through hell over the years and often end up almost crippled in their later years, having put their "art" before their physical wellbeing. But this isn't considered at all, so instead we get to hear from another hippy-dippy person who rambles on about how holding onto fear gives your soul AIDS or something...IDK, I started to tune out at that point.
Then she tells us she had a hip transplant and is fine now. No more discussion about how she was holding onto all the trauma Thetans that 'X' had psychically infected her musculoskeletal system with from the other side of the Atlantic. But she did get to go to a Berlin film festival where her feature film 'Glass' about her super-harrowing experience with being stalked, was either being shown or getting an award...again, don't care. Just wanted to get to the end of this drivel.
But before we can turn the final page on Baldwin's self-indulgent, not remotely scary story about why 'X' was the reason she gave herself an eating disorder (again, she's a dancer, it's not that uncommon in their world to be obsessed with their bodies, their food intake, the way they look on camera, and to develop AN and/or BN as a result) she explains how she was then featured in Grazia magazine, where (again) she was given more time to tell everyone about her stalker, and what was most important was that she focused on how she looked on the cover image. Wanting to appear strong, cool, attractive, feminine, androgynous, powerful, vulnerable and a bunch of other things that had the opening bars to "I'm Every Woman" start to echo in my ears, she ended up deciding to go blond and pose in an obnoxiously self-aware manner that made me wonder why anyone would see her on a single passing moment and decide to fixate on her for so long, to the point of calling her his wife. Well, he was mentally ill, so...yeah...
After appearing on the cover of an internationally distributed magazine, in which she talks at length about having had a stalker, as well as releasing a film all about having a stalker, and creating a bunch of other videos on her YouTube channel about...yeah...having a stalker, she tries to act as though this wasn't a form of bait to the long silent 'X', who inevitably gets back in touch after all these years. We're supposed to care and to think that she shouldn't have had to think about such a thing...as she rehashes the same old story, again and again, via every medium known to mankind, like a broken freaking record. He might have been unhealthily obsessed with her, but Baldwin is obviously also unhealthily obsessed with the notion of being obsessed over. They're locked into a perpetual symbiotic dance of mutually retarded reliance on the other to remain relevant. They're one another's raison d'etre at this point.
Anyway, I can't remember how it ended exactly, only that it did shortly after that. He's still out there ostensibly living for the moment when he can finally actually meet her in person, and she's still dining out on this boring little story, because it's the most exciting thing to have ever happened to her and she seems to think it makes her appear human or likeable or relatable. It does not. Shortly before typing this up, I went to see just what her "dancing" looked like, despite already knowing exactly what it was going to comprise, because it's the same shit that everyone in the modern dance world seems to do and receive unmitigated asspats for, despite being neither good nor unique. If you want to see what I mean you can go check out her 'Juice Box Afternoon' video on YouTube. And you'll see exactly what I mean with regards her dancing. She just sort of flings herself around with a graceless, ungainly gait, having intentionally uglified herself with a hideous dress, scruffy hair and no attempt to cover up her atrocious skin. She'd probably defend all these choices as intentional; as her conscious decision to push the boundaries of what is perceived as feminine or acceptable or whatever else it is that self-described "queer" artists think is edgy and transgressive and cool.
As with this audiobook, she simply comes across as drab, self-absorbed and desperate to be an artsy cool-girl, with the kind of faux nonchalance about her looks that belies exactly how much time she actually spends obsessing about them. If your life is so uninteresting and your writing so devoid of substance that even the recollection of an allegedly terrifying time spent living with a stalker, cannot make you appear interesting, attractive or in any way a sympathetic character, it might be an idea to just STFU about it.
Wherever in the world 'X' happens to be right now, I hope he's at least getting the mental help he needs. Quite how Baldwin will deal with the fact that he might one day stop contacting her for good, no matter how many times she tries to coax him out of the shadows with yet another piece of her art about being stalked, is anyone's guess though.
1 star. Don't bother. Don't encourage her. And don't contact her to tell her how awful her dancing/films/writing/podcasting is. She'll only use it as a means of trying to generate more victim-bux from it all.
Self-Absorbed, Grating, Excruciating Bilge
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