I'm really tired and wanted to sleep,
but I found myself writing a paragraph into an excel sheet so I
wouldn't forget, and now figure it's better just to get it all
out.
We want to believe we have standards. We want to believe we have OUR ideas. We want to have a story of our morality or ability to achieve or the reasons for things beyond our control. It's convenient to ignore the subconscious machinery. There's too much history to try and contextualize and make sense of it all. Find the slogan, find the partner, find the subject in school, stick to the narrative.
I want to speak to one of the longest relationships and narratives in my life again; I watch a ton of TV. Sometimes I forget just how much TV I watch until I'm looking for a show and type in “Netflix shows” only to discover I've seen every episode of 95% of them. As my docket grows and amount of things to watch sped up in tandem, I find myself often skipping over the “why.”
I used to think I had standards for TV. I used to think the shows I picked were the good ones and it was a giant waste of my time to watch anything else. I used to have a “why.” My time was valuable, after all. I wanted to show a level of respect and appreciation for writers and directors and actors that worked the hardest to make me feel. I couldn't imagine my standards and likes were shopped around focus groups for months or years. I couldn't possibly be a demographic that would watch some 24 year old starlet in next to anything as long as she's most often in next to nothing.
I started reading reviews. I started opening the window the let the bluster of other peoples' wind blow into my opinionated house. They hated my favorite character. They thought the plot didn't move quick enough. They never found enough representation for women, black people, or the disabled. They, seemingly unanimously, agreed that things really went bad during the 7th episode of the 5th season. As if I had just lost what was becoming a good friend from a prolonged period of acquaintance, I started to get sad.
“My show” wasn't my show anymore. It was at the mercy of the mob. It was being up and down voted for a million reasons that had nothing to do with my investment. The whole was getting swallowed up by a clumsy line or bad shot. The meaningful worthwhile message it was sending or positive feeling and suspense were just cliché tropes. I could pop over to an ad on a movie website that would teach me how to review them like the professionals! “Another Cop Show” premiers to roaring applause with your favorite actors from “The Last Family Drama.”
Then you add the sick dose of modernity that over-exaggerates hype and jumps to commercialize nostalgia. WHAT DOES THE DAD DIE OF!? Who fucking cares? Shut up and watch the fucking show. Learn how to enjoy the ride. Have you read the rules for watching “The Room”? It's like the new Rocky Horror without all of the artistry, sincerity, or joy. You know what I want when I go see a movie? A bookmark with instructions. That's way better than picking up the cues from the room after the 12th time I've seen it.
More often than not, “why” is a difficult question because it gives you the opportunity to learn that you don't know anything. Why did I go see the shitty movie? In my case, I have too much time, too much money, and no one to help me do anything meaningful, so I do a lot of dumb shit under that umbrella. Also, it was free. When I question why someone hates so much something that I feel has fairly objective means to not call it shit, in a way, my entire world is thrown into question. As with most people in that scenario, it's a lot easier to invent reasons I can remain correct, or resolve to the cliches, than ever persuade myself to feel as angry at Mad Men for not being black enough.
Modernity seems to suggest that if you have a medium, it's your job to speak to everything at once. You're a white man living in a white man's world? You better have colorblind casting in writing the script about your upbringing in 1950s suburbia, or at the very least force in sympathetic ethnicities. Why? Because there's too much of you already. We've heard your story and begrudge you your trope. You're boring, you're basic, we're the marginalized dreamers who've salivated too long at the prospect of dishing as we've received.
But art lives or dies by its ability to form a relationship with the audience. That relationship is influenced by a hundred different things changing in real time. Trends and complimentary needs rise in tandem as superheroes complimented war efforts. The death of the nuclear family has dozens of happy upper and middle class white people renewed indefinitely. The vigor for fantasy and space isn't nerds winning more than it's the rest of the world feeling as sad, lonely, and depressed as the nerds did in trying to escape their worlds.
Part of what I'll always find fascinating about TV is when you don't realize you're in that relationship. There's a hard and fast change that happens when you start watching a show sped up, and an even more jarring one when you choose to slow it back down. It's different when you're mid episode and notice the show's been on for 6 years but you and your friends are still quoting the first season.
Here I want to jump into how any relationship forms the same way. You don't pick your dorm neighbors or roommates, and yet can have some of the most influential memories and foundational claims of your sense of self in relation to them. You don't pick your family and work into your skin whatever insecurities or attachment disorders they gave to you as early as they could. You're tuned into the “Fucked Up Story of My Life” and didn't notice 25 seasons in that your relationship to it has gone through so many changes despite looking basically the same. It doesn't seem very often along the way people bother to ask why.
I find it a point of desperate sadness that I'll always find it easier, and be proven right more often, in my predictions and assessments of different people than I could ever be about the plot line of a TV show. People who claim to know where a show is going or who've seen it all before aren't actually talking about the show anymore than somehow who waves off “women” is talking about your wife or girlfriend. People stick to their habits and lessons as a default. They can't escape them. A writer anticipating getting canceled or a showrunner who catches a mild stroke can devote an entire season to the joys of shark jumping.
If you're willing to ask yourself why, that's when you set yourself on the road to genuine appreciation for different styles, personalities, or even truly and perfectly bizarre creations. If you ever manage to land on a constant in spite of the whys, now you've got a voice and a story that might be worth telling instead of selling. I picked up the habit of watching a ton of television because I felt myself losing literally everything I might have shared with anyone. If they didn't move, they stopped going out, they stopped caring about discussing the things we used to, they stopped texting. But hey! They mentioned this anime or this new show was one of their favorites, so I'll check it out too. Jesus Christ, that sounds pathetic.
As with everything, over time, it changed. I need to keep my mind even marginally engaged or bad things happen. I started to discover more and varied tastes I never would have explored otherwise. I found myself compelled to write reviews or argue with people on the quality of something. This imaginary supplementary world evolved into a rich medium with rules and expectations worth talking about. I've entertained ideas about writing screenplays, or at least laying out basic plot points. Lines from Jordan Peele like, “I wanted to make my favorite movie I haven't seen yet,” start to ring a little louder. The reviews matter! Following the hole in your being that needs to see THAT can be not only profitable, but proud and life-affirming.
I'm always trying to speak to a w/hole. I tell people I'm after what I thought I've already had. No amount of growing resentment erases the fun I had at my parties. No amount of forlorn and crusted over memories have me confused about why I've gotten into the relationships I have or attempted the friendships I thought worth it. The vast majority of stories I watch or read I've no intention of seeing again, but I keep them stored away. I know they could mean different things in different eras. I know they could be a point of connection with someone when everything else has been lost. They occupy some space about some thing in my memory I'll want to hunt down again one day.
We want to believe we have standards. We want to believe we have OUR ideas. We want to have a story of our morality or ability to achieve or the reasons for things beyond our control. It's convenient to ignore the subconscious machinery. There's too much history to try and contextualize and make sense of it all. Find the slogan, find the partner, find the subject in school, stick to the narrative.
I want to speak to one of the longest relationships and narratives in my life again; I watch a ton of TV. Sometimes I forget just how much TV I watch until I'm looking for a show and type in “Netflix shows” only to discover I've seen every episode of 95% of them. As my docket grows and amount of things to watch sped up in tandem, I find myself often skipping over the “why.”
I used to think I had standards for TV. I used to think the shows I picked were the good ones and it was a giant waste of my time to watch anything else. I used to have a “why.” My time was valuable, after all. I wanted to show a level of respect and appreciation for writers and directors and actors that worked the hardest to make me feel. I couldn't imagine my standards and likes were shopped around focus groups for months or years. I couldn't possibly be a demographic that would watch some 24 year old starlet in next to anything as long as she's most often in next to nothing.
I started reading reviews. I started opening the window the let the bluster of other peoples' wind blow into my opinionated house. They hated my favorite character. They thought the plot didn't move quick enough. They never found enough representation for women, black people, or the disabled. They, seemingly unanimously, agreed that things really went bad during the 7th episode of the 5th season. As if I had just lost what was becoming a good friend from a prolonged period of acquaintance, I started to get sad.
“My show” wasn't my show anymore. It was at the mercy of the mob. It was being up and down voted for a million reasons that had nothing to do with my investment. The whole was getting swallowed up by a clumsy line or bad shot. The meaningful worthwhile message it was sending or positive feeling and suspense were just cliché tropes. I could pop over to an ad on a movie website that would teach me how to review them like the professionals! “Another Cop Show” premiers to roaring applause with your favorite actors from “The Last Family Drama.”
Then you add the sick dose of modernity that over-exaggerates hype and jumps to commercialize nostalgia. WHAT DOES THE DAD DIE OF!? Who fucking cares? Shut up and watch the fucking show. Learn how to enjoy the ride. Have you read the rules for watching “The Room”? It's like the new Rocky Horror without all of the artistry, sincerity, or joy. You know what I want when I go see a movie? A bookmark with instructions. That's way better than picking up the cues from the room after the 12th time I've seen it.
More often than not, “why” is a difficult question because it gives you the opportunity to learn that you don't know anything. Why did I go see the shitty movie? In my case, I have too much time, too much money, and no one to help me do anything meaningful, so I do a lot of dumb shit under that umbrella. Also, it was free. When I question why someone hates so much something that I feel has fairly objective means to not call it shit, in a way, my entire world is thrown into question. As with most people in that scenario, it's a lot easier to invent reasons I can remain correct, or resolve to the cliches, than ever persuade myself to feel as angry at Mad Men for not being black enough.
Modernity seems to suggest that if you have a medium, it's your job to speak to everything at once. You're a white man living in a white man's world? You better have colorblind casting in writing the script about your upbringing in 1950s suburbia, or at the very least force in sympathetic ethnicities. Why? Because there's too much of you already. We've heard your story and begrudge you your trope. You're boring, you're basic, we're the marginalized dreamers who've salivated too long at the prospect of dishing as we've received.
But art lives or dies by its ability to form a relationship with the audience. That relationship is influenced by a hundred different things changing in real time. Trends and complimentary needs rise in tandem as superheroes complimented war efforts. The death of the nuclear family has dozens of happy upper and middle class white people renewed indefinitely. The vigor for fantasy and space isn't nerds winning more than it's the rest of the world feeling as sad, lonely, and depressed as the nerds did in trying to escape their worlds.
Part of what I'll always find fascinating about TV is when you don't realize you're in that relationship. There's a hard and fast change that happens when you start watching a show sped up, and an even more jarring one when you choose to slow it back down. It's different when you're mid episode and notice the show's been on for 6 years but you and your friends are still quoting the first season.
Here I want to jump into how any relationship forms the same way. You don't pick your dorm neighbors or roommates, and yet can have some of the most influential memories and foundational claims of your sense of self in relation to them. You don't pick your family and work into your skin whatever insecurities or attachment disorders they gave to you as early as they could. You're tuned into the “Fucked Up Story of My Life” and didn't notice 25 seasons in that your relationship to it has gone through so many changes despite looking basically the same. It doesn't seem very often along the way people bother to ask why.
I find it a point of desperate sadness that I'll always find it easier, and be proven right more often, in my predictions and assessments of different people than I could ever be about the plot line of a TV show. People who claim to know where a show is going or who've seen it all before aren't actually talking about the show anymore than somehow who waves off “women” is talking about your wife or girlfriend. People stick to their habits and lessons as a default. They can't escape them. A writer anticipating getting canceled or a showrunner who catches a mild stroke can devote an entire season to the joys of shark jumping.
If you're willing to ask yourself why, that's when you set yourself on the road to genuine appreciation for different styles, personalities, or even truly and perfectly bizarre creations. If you ever manage to land on a constant in spite of the whys, now you've got a voice and a story that might be worth telling instead of selling. I picked up the habit of watching a ton of television because I felt myself losing literally everything I might have shared with anyone. If they didn't move, they stopped going out, they stopped caring about discussing the things we used to, they stopped texting. But hey! They mentioned this anime or this new show was one of their favorites, so I'll check it out too. Jesus Christ, that sounds pathetic.
As with everything, over time, it changed. I need to keep my mind even marginally engaged or bad things happen. I started to discover more and varied tastes I never would have explored otherwise. I found myself compelled to write reviews or argue with people on the quality of something. This imaginary supplementary world evolved into a rich medium with rules and expectations worth talking about. I've entertained ideas about writing screenplays, or at least laying out basic plot points. Lines from Jordan Peele like, “I wanted to make my favorite movie I haven't seen yet,” start to ring a little louder. The reviews matter! Following the hole in your being that needs to see THAT can be not only profitable, but proud and life-affirming.
I'm always trying to speak to a w/hole. I tell people I'm after what I thought I've already had. No amount of growing resentment erases the fun I had at my parties. No amount of forlorn and crusted over memories have me confused about why I've gotten into the relationships I have or attempted the friendships I thought worth it. The vast majority of stories I watch or read I've no intention of seeing again, but I keep them stored away. I know they could mean different things in different eras. I know they could be a point of connection with someone when everything else has been lost. They occupy some space about some thing in my memory I'll want to hunt down again one day.
