'Love Actually' was on television the other day - one of the ultimate disasters of the movie industry, an almost unwatchable 'triumph' of the Romantic Comedy genre. Every now and then, I'm not averse to indulging in an afternoon of 'Pretty Woman', sniffling along to the, 'it must have been love...' lyrics.
The problem - the curse - of such movies (aside from a regular dose of seriously bad acting and appalling lines gracing our television sets) is that they create impossible expectations. Everything works out: the guy gets the girl, the violins play at appropriate moments, and major character defects can be set aside without a second thought. A film should be made with the reality taking centre stage: the girl will always be too shy to speak to the guy and will not suddenly have an epiphany one hour in and gain boundless confidence; the guy will be incapable of kissing without emulating a vacuum cleaner and the 'moment' will be shattered; the guy who 'knew' and 'bonded' with the very soul of the woman actually did so via a few comments that by chance were the right ones to make, not because of any particular understanding on his part.
And so we wander around the planet, looking for an ideal that cannot be found. Ignoring the parts of people we don't like in a bid to find 'the one' - ignoring a gut feeling that tells us something is wrong, because we don't want it to be wrong. Someone can come so close to what we believe we want and yet not be 'quite right' - and here is the dilemma. Do we believe in the suggestion proposed by countless movies, that it will 'all work out in the end', and thus labour on with a relationship that is ultimately flawed? Or do we cut short the good times, the wonderful moments, because we choose not to ignore the writing on the wall and rather we act on it.
Is it not more true to say that throughout your life, as your ideas and expectations change, so will the person who you want to share it with? All other traditions of social orders have been eradicated in the last decades - women are on a more or less equal footing with men in the work place (please, nobody bother with the statements against that; I read 'women's studies' after all and know all the arguments back to front), borders and boundaries are continually being smashed. Why is the 'nuclear family' still that to which most people aspire? Just because it has been tradition that one male and one female have a group of whippersnappers and all stay together in some merry masquerade or other, does this mean it is the correct - the most appropriate - option?
I don't ascribe to this view of 'children need a stable environment', not in the sense that most people mean when they say it. Children need someone who is prepared to be an adult and teach them how to cope with the world; they don't need the 'best friend' so many parents try to be these days, or to be given the latest gaming machine every Christmas. Children need the security of knowing they can 'try life on', as it were, and if they make a mistake there will be someone to help put them back together again. This stability and security they need can only be found within, not by spending their childhood in the same house and being dressed in the fashionable clothes, liking the right music and knowing the right people.
Because I have learned this lesson - that my security lies only within me - I find it difficult to surrender any part of myself to a relationship. To share a world with somebody else is to take a risk, to have to believe that it is as important to them as it is to you. You are trusting that the other wont shatter your construction - and that means relinquishing a hold on individual security.
But Mushy Movies don't consider all of this.
Mushy Movies especially ignore the problem of a person who is afraid to be himself. How am I supposed to trust someone who doesn't trust himself to BE himself? Who, after years of careful training, has forced himself to be neutral, impartial, and ultimately safe. Am I supposed to wait and hope that he finally cracks and becomes permanently the person I've seen on fleeting occasions when he forgets to employ neutrality? Or do I acknowledge the writing on the wall and walk away?
Why is it I'm so sure about everything else, but can't quite get this issue sorted out. Later tonight, I imagine I'll watch Leona perform in outstanding fashion on the 'X Factor', I'll see her streaking towards a now inevitable stardom. 'Reality TV' - so unreal, such an illusion. Baudrillard is The Guy when it comes to illusion/reality - a review of 'The Vital Illusion' states that:
'Baudrillard considers how human cloning—as well as the "cloning" of ideas and social identities—heralds an end to sex and death and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish, putting an end to our own species as we know it. '
Mushy Movies have caused a potential reality to be an illusion; the attempt to encapsulate a human emotion destroys the possibility of it's existence. The layers of illusion piled on illusion mean that nothing is as it seems - and furthermore that nothing is real. Perhaps the 'studied neutrality' I referred to earlier is at least an acknowledgement that anything else would be unreal, a replica.
I think I've answered my own question. Much as I agree with Baudrillard - I don't want to. I need someone who is fighting the illusion, turning aside the mirror, who believes in the resurrection of a reality. I wrote once that man was inevitably doomed once he created paintings on the walls of caves in an attempt to replicate his world. But it is possible to escape the illusion we have made of this world - I have to believe that. Something nobody has been able to capture, but centuries of poets and artists have attempted to, is the essence of humanity - for argument's sake let us call it 'the soul.' Poetry has touched my soul, has reached out to me, made me feel alive. But nobody has been able to replicate that which we do not fully understand. And therefore I need a guy who is willing to bare his soul to the world, isn't afraid to move beyond the illusion, to feel everything as an extreme, to be wholly alive. Anyone who neutralises their emotions doesn't want this, and is content to be surrounded by the reality of illusions.
Maybe nobody reading will quite follow my points there, but I've sorted something out in my mind at least. Hopefully it will make a reader consider their position - if only in regards to the curse of the mountain of mushy movies.
The problem - the curse - of such movies (aside from a regular dose of seriously bad acting and appalling lines gracing our television sets) is that they create impossible expectations. Everything works out: the guy gets the girl, the violins play at appropriate moments, and major character defects can be set aside without a second thought. A film should be made with the reality taking centre stage: the girl will always be too shy to speak to the guy and will not suddenly have an epiphany one hour in and gain boundless confidence; the guy will be incapable of kissing without emulating a vacuum cleaner and the 'moment' will be shattered; the guy who 'knew' and 'bonded' with the very soul of the woman actually did so via a few comments that by chance were the right ones to make, not because of any particular understanding on his part.
And so we wander around the planet, looking for an ideal that cannot be found. Ignoring the parts of people we don't like in a bid to find 'the one' - ignoring a gut feeling that tells us something is wrong, because we don't want it to be wrong. Someone can come so close to what we believe we want and yet not be 'quite right' - and here is the dilemma. Do we believe in the suggestion proposed by countless movies, that it will 'all work out in the end', and thus labour on with a relationship that is ultimately flawed? Or do we cut short the good times, the wonderful moments, because we choose not to ignore the writing on the wall and rather we act on it.
Is it not more true to say that throughout your life, as your ideas and expectations change, so will the person who you want to share it with? All other traditions of social orders have been eradicated in the last decades - women are on a more or less equal footing with men in the work place (please, nobody bother with the statements against that; I read 'women's studies' after all and know all the arguments back to front), borders and boundaries are continually being smashed. Why is the 'nuclear family' still that to which most people aspire? Just because it has been tradition that one male and one female have a group of whippersnappers and all stay together in some merry masquerade or other, does this mean it is the correct - the most appropriate - option?
I don't ascribe to this view of 'children need a stable environment', not in the sense that most people mean when they say it. Children need someone who is prepared to be an adult and teach them how to cope with the world; they don't need the 'best friend' so many parents try to be these days, or to be given the latest gaming machine every Christmas. Children need the security of knowing they can 'try life on', as it were, and if they make a mistake there will be someone to help put them back together again. This stability and security they need can only be found within, not by spending their childhood in the same house and being dressed in the fashionable clothes, liking the right music and knowing the right people.
Because I have learned this lesson - that my security lies only within me - I find it difficult to surrender any part of myself to a relationship. To share a world with somebody else is to take a risk, to have to believe that it is as important to them as it is to you. You are trusting that the other wont shatter your construction - and that means relinquishing a hold on individual security.
But Mushy Movies don't consider all of this.
Mushy Movies especially ignore the problem of a person who is afraid to be himself. How am I supposed to trust someone who doesn't trust himself to BE himself? Who, after years of careful training, has forced himself to be neutral, impartial, and ultimately safe. Am I supposed to wait and hope that he finally cracks and becomes permanently the person I've seen on fleeting occasions when he forgets to employ neutrality? Or do I acknowledge the writing on the wall and walk away?
Why is it I'm so sure about everything else, but can't quite get this issue sorted out. Later tonight, I imagine I'll watch Leona perform in outstanding fashion on the 'X Factor', I'll see her streaking towards a now inevitable stardom. 'Reality TV' - so unreal, such an illusion. Baudrillard is The Guy when it comes to illusion/reality - a review of 'The Vital Illusion' states that:
'Baudrillard considers how human cloning—as well as the "cloning" of ideas and social identities—heralds an end to sex and death and the divagations of living by instituting a realm of the Same, beyond the struggles of individuation. In this day and age when everything can be cloned, simulated, programmed, and genetically and neurologically managed, humanity shows itself unable to brave its own diversity, preferring instead to regress to the pathological eternity of self-replicating cells. By reverting to our viral origins as sexless immortal beings, we are, ironically, fulfilling a death wish, putting an end to our own species as we know it. '
Mushy Movies have caused a potential reality to be an illusion; the attempt to encapsulate a human emotion destroys the possibility of it's existence. The layers of illusion piled on illusion mean that nothing is as it seems - and furthermore that nothing is real. Perhaps the 'studied neutrality' I referred to earlier is at least an acknowledgement that anything else would be unreal, a replica.
I think I've answered my own question. Much as I agree with Baudrillard - I don't want to. I need someone who is fighting the illusion, turning aside the mirror, who believes in the resurrection of a reality. I wrote once that man was inevitably doomed once he created paintings on the walls of caves in an attempt to replicate his world. But it is possible to escape the illusion we have made of this world - I have to believe that. Something nobody has been able to capture, but centuries of poets and artists have attempted to, is the essence of humanity - for argument's sake let us call it 'the soul.' Poetry has touched my soul, has reached out to me, made me feel alive. But nobody has been able to replicate that which we do not fully understand. And therefore I need a guy who is willing to bare his soul to the world, isn't afraid to move beyond the illusion, to feel everything as an extreme, to be wholly alive. Anyone who neutralises their emotions doesn't want this, and is content to be surrounded by the reality of illusions.
Maybe nobody reading will quite follow my points there, but I've sorted something out in my mind at least. Hopefully it will make a reader consider their position - if only in regards to the curse of the mountain of mushy movies.
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