The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Seen Seeing

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or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Admit I’m That Person Who Reads Too Much Into Things

There’s this thing I do when I write about film, where I’ll finish an essay about some director’s use of negative space or whatever, and then I’ll stop and ask myself: “Does this have ‘PLEASE NOTICE ME SENPAI’ vibes?”¹

Here’s the thing—I grew up in a household where art criticism was like breathing. My mom taught us to develop an eye for things, to look at paintings and see not just pretty colors but choices. Composition. Light. The deliberate way a brushstroke destroys or creates meaning.

She also dragged me to film lectures when I was barely out of diapers—partly because we didn’t have a babysitter, partly because she needed to intervene on my obsessive diet of action films and Sunday cartoons. So there I was, a toddler, watching Cinema Paradiso, Raise the Red Lantern, The Scent of Green Papaya. My brain was getting rewired in real time.²

I can fangirl about Hieronymus Bosch until the heat death of the universe.³ I can write paragraphs about how Magritte’s “The Lovers II”—those two figures kissing with cloth wrapped around their heads—isn’t just about obscured faces, it’s about intimacy and distance happening simultaneously, about how you can be closest to someone and still completely unknown to them, and nobody bats an eye.

You know why? Because Bosch is dead. Magritte is dead. They’re not going to read my essay and think I’m some obsessive weirdo who’s projected an entire personality onto their work based on brushstroke patterns and color theory.

But living filmmakers? Living writers? Oh, that’s when it gets weird.

The Dead Artist Loophole

There’s this beautiful freedom in analyzing dead people’s art. You can go full conspiracy theorist on a Renaissance painting— “Notice how the subject’s hand is positioned at exactly 23 degrees, which in the context of 15th-century Florence would have signified a secret allegiance to the Medici banking faction”—and people just nod and go, “Hmm, yes, scholarly.”

Nobody’s going to call you parasocial about Caravaggio. You can write passionate defenses of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits without worrying that you’re being too much. The artist isn’t going to stumble upon your Tumblr deep dive and feel uncomfortable.

Death is the ultimate buffer between passionate appreciation and stalker vibes.

But then you watch a film by someone who’s, you know, alive. Still making things. Probably on Twitter (aka X). Maybe even the kind of person who might—hypothetically, in some cursed timeline—actually read what people write about their work.

And suddenly you’re doing this calculation:

Is this insight profound… or is it deranged?

Am I demonstrating sophisticated analysis… or am I reading tea leaves?

Is this criticism… or is this a parasocial relationship with a person I’ve never met but whose artistic choices I’ve memorized like they’re holy texts?

The Mortifying Ordeal of Actually Seeing

Here’s what nobody tells you about developing “an eye” for art: once you have it, you can’t turn it off. You start seeing patterns. Recurring motifs. The way a director uses silence. How a writer structures their act breaks. The specific quality of light they choose for moments of vulnerability.

Maybe that’s why I ended up in tech, in coding—pattern-recognition with clear answers, where the patterns are either there or they’re not, where you can run the program and know if you were right.⁴

And sometimes—often—you see things you’re not sure were intentional.⁵

You start connecting dots. You notice that this director always frames isolation with specific spatial relationships. That this writer always puts their characters’ moments of truth in bathrooms or cars or other liminal spaces. That there’s this thing they do with sound design that makes you feel like you’re being let in on a secret.

And you write about it. Because what else are you going to do with all these observations rattling around your brain like pinballs? You write about how the five-second pause before a character speaks tells you everything about their interior life. You write about how the blocking in that one scene reveals power dynamics that the dialogue is actively denying. You write about shit that probably took the filmmaker months to calibrate, even if they couldn’t articulate why they made those specific choices.

You write about it with attention. With care. With the kind of granular focus that comes from actually giving a shit about craft.

And then you pause and think: “This sounds like I’m trying to get their attention, doesn’t it?”

The Self-Censorship Question

So you start self-censoring. You cut the parts that feel too enthusiastic. You tone down the analysis that feels too detailed. You make yourself sound more casual. “Yeah, it was good, I guess. Nice cinematography or whatever.”

You perform being cool about it.

Because there’s something mortifying about being seen seeing. About having someone know that you paid that much attention. That you cared that much. That you noticed the thing they might not have even meant to put there.

It’s vulnerable in a way that makes you want to crawl out of your skin.

Especially if you’re someone who grew up learning to read art like text, to decode every choice, to understand that nothing in a composition is accidental—or if it is accidental, it’s still revealing. You can’t help but see everything. You can’t help but make connections. Your brain just does this shit automatically now.

But expressing all of that? That’s where it gets complicated.

Because somewhere along the line, we decided that passionate analysis equals unseemly obsession. That noticing details means you’re reading too much into things. That caring about craft in specific, articulable ways is somehow cringe.

When The Writer’s Eyes Light Up (Or: That One Time I Accidentally Proved I’m Not Completely Making Shit Up)

Okay so here’s a story that fucks with everything I just said about self-censorship and worrying about reading too much into things.

I have a friend—well, my mom’s friend, a screenwriter who’s had films screened at Cannes, Venice, the whole circuit. Proper credentials. One time over dinner, we were discussing one of his films. Heavy subject matter—a family dealing with incest, an exploitative film company wanting to remake their trauma, reality bleeding into the film-within-the-film until you can’t tell what’s documentation and what’s violation anymore.⁶

So my friend mentions that some viewers complained the ending of the film-within-the-film wasn’t shown. What actually happens is the family leaves the screening before it ends—they can’t take watching their own trauma dramatized, so they drive off back to the province. The movie ends with them leaving.

And I said, without really thinking about it: “Well yeah, we don’t see the ending of that film because we’re not the audience for it. The people IN the movie are the audience, and they left. We’re seeing the world through them, so of course we don’t get to see the ending. We’re not watching that film—we’re watching them trying to watch that film.”

My friend’s eyes lit up.

He just stared at me for a second and said: “I never thought of it that way. That’s a very different way of seeing it, but it makes sense.”

This is the actual writer. Of the actual screenplay. Having a small revelation about his own structural choice because I pointed out the perspective mechanics.

Now here’s where it gets complicated in my head: Did he consciously plan that POV restriction? Maybe, maybe not. Did it work that way whether he planned it or not? Absolutely. Was my observation valid even if he hadn’t articulated it to himself that way? His reaction suggests yes.

But also: I spent the rest of that dinner second-guessing whether I’d sounded like an insufferable film student. Whether my observation was obvious and I’d just stated the painfully self-evident. Whether I’d been too analytical about someone’s work right to their face.

The man literally told me I’d given him a new way to think about his own film, and I STILL spent the drive home wondering if I’d been cringe about it.

This is the brain disease we’re dealing with here.

The Tea Leaves Problem

But okay, that’s one time where the reading was apparently not tea leaves. One time where the pattern I saw was real enough that even the creator went “huh, yeah, that tracks.”

But I think about this a lot: am I reading tea leaves the other 99% of the time?

Am I seeing patterns that don’t exist? Am I projecting meaning onto random aesthetic choices because my brain is a pattern-recognition machine that can’t shut the fuck up? Am I that person who thinks every stoplight is a metaphor?

Maybe. Sometimes. Probably.⁷

Case in point: I recently wrote about Chad Powers—that Glen Powell show where he takes on a fake persona as a college quarterback—like it was some deeply philosophical meditation on identity and performance. Spent days analyzing the framing choices and narrative structure. Then spent weeks afterwards wondering if I’d just projected all that meaning onto what was actually Glen Powell wanting to wear prosthetics and a wig for shits and giggles. The essay’s still up. I still don’t know if I was right. This is my life now.

But also: sometimes the tea leaves are right. Sometimes you see the pattern because the pattern is there. Sometimes the filmmaker DID think about the spatial relationship between characters in that frame. Sometimes the writer DID carefully calibrate that pause. Sometimes your observation isn’t projection—it’s just paying attention.

The uncomfortable part is: you often can’t tell the difference.

And even if you could, expressing what you see means revealing how much you’ve looked. How much you’ve cared. How much attention you’ve paid to someone else’s work.

That’s the vulnerable part. That’s the “notice me” part.

What We’re Really Asking For

Here’s the thing about “PLEASE NOTICE ME SENPAI” energy in criticism: it’s not really about wanting the filmmaker to notice you personally (okay, maybe a little, we’re only human). It’s about wanting confirmation that you saw correctly.

That the thing you noticed was real. That your reading was valid. That all those hours of close attention weren’t you just making shit up in your head like some kind of deranged conspiracy theorist connecting red string on a corkboard.

It’s wanting the artist to say: “Yes. That’s what I was doing. You saw it.”

Which is its own kind of mortifying to admit! Because it reveals that underneath all the analysis and the sophisticated vocabulary and the theoretical frameworks, you’re just… hoping you understood. Hoping your attention mattered. Hoping you weren’t alone in that moment of seeing.

It’s the same impulse that makes people want to meet their favorite authors and tell them “your book changed my life”—not because they expect the author to care about them personally, but because they want to close the circuit. To confirm that the connection they felt wasn’t just them talking to themselves in an empty room.⁸

The Living Artist Anxiety

But with living artists, there’s always that chance that they could see what you wrote. And that possibility changes everything.

Suddenly you’re not just analyzing craft—you’re potentially communicating directly with the person who made the thing. And what if they think you’re:

• Reading too much into it
• Completely wrong about their intentions
• Weird for noticing that specific thing
• Too intense
• That person they need to softblock for their own mental health

What if your careful analysis comes across as “I’ve memorized your work in a way that’s definitely normal and not concerning at all”?

What if your passionate appreciation reads as “I’ve built a parasocial relationship with you based entirely on your artistic choices and probably need to log off”?

So you tone it down. You act casual. You pretend you didn’t spend six hours thinking about one scene. You definitely don’t mention that you’ve noticed their recurring themes across multiple works because that sounds like you’ve been tracking them.

You perform coolness instead of admitting enthusiasm.

And in doing so, you rob your analysis of the very thing that makes it valuable: genuine attention.

The Fuck It Adjustment

I’m going to tell you something my therapist would probably charge me for:⁹ the self-censorship helps nobody.

The filmmaker doesn’t benefit from you pretending you didn’t notice their craft. The critic in you doesn’t grow from suppressing genuine observations. And the audience doesn’t get to learn from your insights because you were too worried about seeming thirsty.

Yeah, some criticism does tip over into parasocial territory. Some analysis IS projection. Some close reading is just… reading too close, until you’re seeing things that aren’t there.

But you know what? That’s still more interesting than pretending you don’t give a shit.

I’d rather read someone’s unhinged deep dive into directorial choices than another review that’s like “yeah it was pretty good, nice cinematography.” I’d rather read the essay that risks being too enthusiastic than the one that’s performed detachment all the way down.

Because here’s what I’ve realized: the “PLEASE NOTICE ME SENPAI” vibe only feels cringe when you’re trying to hide it. When you’re doing that thing where you’re CLEARLY very invested but pretending you’re not, and everyone can feel the weird tension between what you’re saying and how much you obviously care.

But if you just… own it? If you write the analysis with full commitment? If you let yourself be earnest about craft and attention and the specific ways this piece of art does its thing?

That’s not cringe. That’s criticism.

The Permission Structure (That I Will Immediately Revoke From Myself)

So here’s my thesis, I guess: we need to give ourselves permission to pay attention without apologizing for it.

To write about living artists with the same analytical intensity we bring to dead ones—not because we want them to notice us personally, but because their work deserves that level of attention.

To acknowledge when we’re making connections that might be projection without completely discounting those connections.

To be specific about craft without worrying that specificity equals obsession.

To care about details without performing casual indifference.

To sometimes be wrong about our readings without that invalidating the attempt to read closely.

And maybe—maybe—to occasionally let ourselves hope that the filmmaker might someday read what we wrote and think “huh, yeah, that person actually looked at what I made.”

Not because we need their validation to make our analysis real.

But because that moment of recognition—that “you saw what I did”—would just be nice.

Is that “PLEASE NOTICE ME SENPAI” energy?

Yeah, probably.

And have I made peace with it?

Absolutely fucking NOT.

I’ll post this essay publicly. Then I’ll make it private three hours later because what if it’s too much. Then I’ll make it public again because fuck it, I wrote it, might as well own it. Then in a few weeks I’ll reread it and cringe at seventeen different word choices and think about editing it but won’t because what’s the point, it’s already out there. Then I’ll forget about it.

Then I’ll wake up at 3 AM in a few months in cold sweat remembering that one paragraph where I definitely revealed too much about how my brain works, and I’ll grab my phone to reread it, and I’ll lie there in the dark thinking “why am I like this” while my brain helpfully replays every potentially cringe moment.

Then I’ll do it all again with the next essay.¹⁰

Because here’s the actual truth: I don’t think you ever really make peace with the mortifying ordeal of being seen seeing. You just… keep doing it anyway. Keep paying attention. Keep writing about what you notice. Keep second-guessing yourself. Keep posting and unposting and reposting. Keep waking up at midnight wondering if you were too earnest, too detailed, too much.

The alternative is to stop looking closely. To stop caring. To perform indifference until you actually become indifferent.

And I can’t do that. My mom already broke my brain with all those art lessons. I’m stuck seeing everything now. I’m stuck caring about craft and noticing details and making connections that may or may not be real.

So I guess I’d rather be the person who cares too much and analyzes too deeply and occasionally reads tea leaves that aren’t there and definitely overthinks every single thing they publish than the person who pretends not to see what’s right in front of them.

But I’m not going to pretend I’m comfortable with it.

I’m just going to keep doing it while being continuously uncomfortable about it.

That’s the real mortifying ordeal: knowing you’ll never stop being mortified, and doing it anyway.

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P.S. — I bet Bosch would have loved knowing that centuries later, people are still losing their minds over his hell demons. I bet Magritte would be delighted that we’re still arguing about his fucking pipe. They’re dead, so we’ll never know. But maybe that uncertainty is the point.

P.P.S. — If you’re a living filmmaker and you stumbled on this essay: I promise I’m normal about things. Mostly normal. Normal-adjacent. I’m working on it.

P.P.P.S. — My mom’s art lessons ruined me for casual viewing. I can’t watch a movie without seeing the choices now. I can’t turn it off. This is what you’ve all done to me. I’m just trying to process it through writing. Please don’t perceive me.

P.P.P.P.S. — Okay I do want to be perceived a little bit. But like, in a cool way. A normal amount of perception. An amount of perception that doesn’t require anyone to call security.

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The universe, watching me write this essay: “Oh honey. HONEY. Just admit you want your film criticism to be good enough that a filmmaker you admire might read it and nod. It’s not that deep. Well, it is that deep, but also it’s not. You contain multitudes. They’re all anxious. Go get some pandesal.”