Everyone has heard the expression. You've no doubt used it yourself. You hear it come out in extreme circumstances or when you're watching something unbelievable on the news. It was used often to describe the images of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. You might now know what I'm getting at. The expression is, "It looks just like the movies."
A few months back I had a student pick me up from the airport in New Orleans. On our way back to Baton Rouge I told him to be careful with his speed as I know cops like to lurk around curves. He slowed down and sure enough, as we rounded the corner, there sat a perched police officer. Thankful that I warned him and a bit baffled at my prediction, he used the expression. "Man, it was just like the movies."
Here is my problem with that expression. Media images have so saturated our culture and swallowed our perception of reality that we now appeal to them as the standard. Movies are more real to us than reality and so when we encounter something in our real experience, we compare it to what we know best - the movies. We know movies better than we do our own experience. We are more in tune with fantasy than we are with reality.
Does anyone else see the problem here? Movies are supposed to reflect reality, not replace it. When we see explosions on the big screen, we should say, "That looked just like 9-11." Not the other way around. When we see relationships either crumble or piece back together on film, we should note how that reminds us of our own experience. See, we have replaced our normal, every day encounters of life with the more exciting pseudo-reality of movies.
Real life is more exciting than the movies anyway. There is never going to be anything "ordinary" on the big screen. You'll never watch someone sleeping (well, unless you rent Andy Warhol's 8 hour long film entitled "Sleeping"). You'll never watch someone take the pebble out of their shoe. Or show the whole 30 minute long segment it takes to drive to work. Real life involves real people with real emotions and real experiences. It is simply a shame that we evaluate our experiences through the lens of fiction, and not reality.
This blog post was just like a novel.
Two becoming onerous...
2 comments:
I just can't resist this irony...
While reading your post, I thought of a quote from "You've Got Mail," where the Meg Ryan character makes a very similar observation: "So much of what I see in life reminds me of something I've read in a book, when in reality, shouldn't it be the other way around?"
PT Anderson's Magnolia hints at the other side of this point. Films are still regulated by reality--perhaps too much. In the film, an event occurs toward the end of the story that seems unbelievable but this event has actually occurred multiple times in reality. Whilst the unlikely event occurs, Anderson even points this out by using a meta-narrative shot that zooms in on a small piece of paper in the corner of a picture frame that reads "but it really happened." Referred to as the "deus ex machina" and almost always frowned down upon as a clumsy literary tool, this event catalyzes the story and brings about resolution to the film.
As movie-goers and book-readers, we would be very disappointed if our movies truly reflected reality. "Deus ex machinas" happen all the time in reality. People do things that break narrative structure all the time, and people make exciting, life-changing realizations under circumstances that would make a terribly boring film. Life is not nearly as explicitly ironic as movies. Life is far more messy and unkempt, leaving much unexplained and lacking conclusion. Films and books are largely based on an expected, culturally-understood structure that, once you get down to it, doesn't bare a great deal of resemblance to how things flow in reality. There is a language of story-telling that we understand and expect.
So, one point is that when we say,"that's just like the movies," perhaps we are not necessarily viewing life through the lens of movies. Perhaps, instead, we are just seeing an event the is reminiscent of the classical narrative structure of explicit action/re-action, explicit irony, comedic timing, or, well, an event that had striking aesthetic similarities to a favorite film. We are seeing something that reminds us of how stories are told--stated basically.
Is there shame in this? I guess that depends. I enjoy films and I enjoy literature. Huxley's Brave New World has shaped an aspect of my worldview, ergo I am reminded of it in certain situations. Magnolia, since I have already mentioned it, has profound statements/dialogue/emotion about regret to which I can relate. Certain songs remind of certain locations. Certain fragrances remind me of certain people.
Pardon the hyperbole.
The fact of the matter is that media (in all its forms) has indeed shaped our understanding of reality. I don't think it is possible to hold a worldview that is not shaped by it. Can this be dangerous? Yes. But, I think this problem surfaces more when we want reality to be exciting, when we want stuff to blow up, when we want relationship problems to be solved in 22.5 minutes [average length of a sitcom], when we expect people to be entertaining. The list goes on.
There is also issue in that, since we have seen something occur in a movie or (especially) in a sit-com, we feel that, should we experience something that bares any similarity, we feel cheezy. We feel mediated. We feel as though we are experiencing fiction. This may make us try to shrug it off with sarcastic cheeziness--not allowing ourselves (or those with us) to enjoy or feel a moment that we think belongs to the realm of the cornball-dom of the entertainment/advertising industry.
Anyways, I don't think I am at odds necessarily, but I think the issue needs deeper analyzation. There are a lot of people out there who "don't watch TV" and think their perspective is automatically purer or more 'real' on account of this, and I think this needs addressing.
Excuse the length.
-Clint
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