The Cleaning Lady and Wanting to Feel Clean
The moral case for trying to deal with the fact that you did the wrong thing.
Sooner or later, we all get dirty.
Pretty much since we're kids, dirt is a problem that we have to deal with. When we're young, we like the dirt. It's new and interesting and something of a contrast between the cleanliness we get from those around us. The insistence that we clean ourselves creates the idea that clean is better. There are legitimate reasons why this is the case. Dirt has all kinds of problems that comes with it, like being in contact with bacteria and viruses that could kill you even at a young age. It's part of why we think that cleanliness is next to godliness. Being clean is seen as giving you the power of life and strength whereas dirt is potentially lethal. Over time, we go from being okay with being dirty to wanting to feel clean all the time.
We also tend to think this way when it comes to people. There are clean people and there are dirty people. People we'd like to associate with us because they're clean and also morally upstanding. Doing terrible things like stealing or lying or trying to hurt someone else is the opposite. These things are considered dirty and with good reason. Being dirty in this way makes for less trust and the potential to get even worse if you're not careful. In particular, when you get dirty on a moral level, it's very hard to clean yourself off. It's not like ordinary dirt that you can wash off with enough water and some soap if you get really dirty. When you get dirty by committing a crime, that stain doesn't always go away. You can become the kind of person who's willing to get more dirt on them. At least if that happens, you're more consistent.
People come to believe that dirty is their natural state of being and not the clean way most people would prefer to feel. Until the point that the dirt will never wash off. Even if you start doing the kinds of things that make you able to wash the dirt off. Like helping those who are clean wash dirt off themselves or society as a whole. You still end up feeling dirty. Especially because when you feel like being dirty is the way you're supposed to be, cleaning it off feels like a betrayal of those who are also dirty like you.
The Cleaning Lady is very much about wanting to feel clean. Thony De La Rosa, as played brilliantly by Elodie Yung, never quite feels clean enough. She's had to do so many different things to maintain what she has. Things that people who are morally clean don't tend to do. She keeps trying to wash it off, trying to make up for what she's done, but it never feels like enough. No matter how much cleaning she tries to do, there's always more dirt. Always more ways for her to get dirty. Whether it's working with the mob and committing crimes or trying to save her son from his health problems. None of it ever feels like enough.
Explore the problem of wanting to feel clean by watching The Cleaning Lady.
Season 1 and 2 is available on Amazon and season 2 is available on Hulu, CTV and Fox.
Darn, not on Amazon Canada. But I do think many, politicians in particular, are now willing to accept a new norm of just what being clean means. A few smudges, crumbs, and dust bunnies are fine.
BTW - I did enjoy The Cleaner, with Greg Davies, via Britbox.