[675] The Best Movie Ever Mad

I'm finding myself completely baffled by the ratings of different shows and movies of the guy I argued with about “Twin Peaks.”

First, he has 4000 of them, on individual episodes mostly, and saves his highest praise for “Lost,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Twin Peaks” as well as individual episodes of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “The Venture Bros.,” “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and “King of The Hill.” He hated “Titanic,” “Billy Madison,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Rugrats,” 2 of the best anime in “Death Note” and ”Attack on Titan,” and finds John Oliver smug, unfunny, and ignorant.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

I find myself increasingly disillusioned by the concept of an "opinion." They seem to be the sorts of things I felt I used to have very strong ideas about, and then as my experience with the world grew, they weren't so much needed or worthwhile. Of course, you may read me complaining about the litany of things I can't stand and I'll post a status praising artistic works I find compelling. How do we resolve this? Why would I write a ten page essay for fun on how terrible I think “Twin Peaks” is, and why do I find it so beyond confusing that someone couldn't see the merit in “Titanic?”

I think it boils down to "why." Why are you talking about a show? Do you have a terrible conception of "acting" and you just need to express how much you don't like someone's in particular? Does the show not jive with your terrible expectations going in? Have you invested yourself emotionally into coupling your identity with the words you might have for it? Why does it matter a show "makes sense" or "does better" or becomes a "timeless classic?"

The world is up for grabs. Maybe if you praise the wrong things for the wrong reasons, you change in destructive ways. Maybe if you fail to see the merit in the most confusing or difficult works, you'll never broaden like you need broadening. What is it that you're supposed to recognize and take away? Why do I trust Roger Ebert saying he loved a movie this guy also loved, but the second I read that the random guy loved it, I absolutely thought it would be shit? I don't trust they're seeing the same things. I don’t trust the tools for evaluating are properly calibrated.

I think the nature of this fine tuning can be most easily seen in what happens to movies that are “so bad they’re good.” Maybe it’s “Zombie Strippers” or “The Room.” These 2 differ though too, as one was made with a level of “sincerity” and perspective that author was oblivious as to how it would read, and the other was a zombie stripper movie. You can have an experienced filmmaker with a grasp of story-telling and how to intimately depict character relationships, who still gets off on the absurdity of the markedly low-rent. Can the person incapable of making anything but low-budget bullshit truly appreciate what makes The Greats great?

I used to have a very limited scope of what kind of movies I would consider watching. It might include a comedian my parents thought was funny. I could do action movies. Obviously, I wanted to watch what all of my friends were watching or if there was a specific prohibition or taboo associated with it (“American Pie,” “Deliverance”). Back when you walked the video store hallways, if it had a weird box cover, I wasn’t interested. Subtitles were out of the question. Black and white was horrible by default.

I thought I had “standards.” I thought I only watched “good things.” I had no concept of different devices and styles being used to speak to different things. A long pause on a sunset wasn’t a metaphor or balancing out or resolving a different part of the the movie, it was just a boring sunset where “nothing was happening.” Of course, much of this was the consequences of being younger and never being exposed to even the idea that there was “more” than what I could see. As such, today, I try to find the good in everything. Try. It doesn’t mean I can, but it does mean there is no comparing “Zombie Strippers” to “Titanic.” It means that even if something has had an intense impact on my life, like “Waking Life,” there is a considerably harder task ahead to try and claim it as objectively “the best movie of all time.” Saying something like that would be a reflection of/on me, not the movie. It’s a reflection that would change over time.

When someone offers that they like something about a show, I look for considerably more in their explanation than, “the acting was good.” I think it’s also pretty lazy to belabor the identification of tropes. I might offer something lazy like that about a show I’m not terribly invested in, and it probably doesn’t matter how good the acting is or which cliche device was employed, the show isn’t shooting that high. Camerawork and filters can flavor the mood and help with immersion when done well. The music can be so perfect you hardly even recognize it’s there.

But I only want my opinion to go so far. I have an incredibly hard time telling someone they should or shouldn’t watch something, as I actively pursue things that I thought I’d have absolutely no interest in. What business does a late 20’s guy have in marathoning “Gilmore Girls?” How did I turn anything coming from The CW into something remotely tolerable? You and the medium are both evolving, and I suppose if you can’t identify what it is someone else has transformed into, it feels wrong. My most earnest advocacy rests in things I’d watch more than once, which, even for things I’ve called my favorite, doesn’t happen that often.

I’m still missing something about the level of sophistication. It doesn’t feel right to equate “Pulp Fiction” with “The Room” because they might both offer you “a level of satisfaction” in watching them. As well, I frequently see a push for people defending, literally admitted arbitrary bullshit, as “complex” and “deep” or “beyond what you care to understand.” It is possible to waste yours and the audience’s time. It is possible to have taken myriad bad lessons and insights and slopped them together into a mess that offends the concepts related to communication. There isn’t an arts school in the world teaching you to “just be yourself!” and everything will fall into place career wise.

While this guy has nearly 4000 ratings on 95 days worth of material he’s watched, I have 550 ratings on 860 days. I feel I’m attempting to portray a level of discernment and experience that comes from most things striking you as, “it is what it is” or it’s “passable.” That seems more the reality of life, no? Most things are “good enough” or “fit the pattern.” Rarely is something a masterpiece or the worst thing you’ve ever seen. So when you’re eager to sling your ratings and your words, you seem cheap, you seem wrong, and incoherent. Your ability to recognize what’s good about something good is corrupt. And your propensity to defend something shit exposes your underlying insecurity that knows it.

[428] Do Or Do Not

I think there's an important distinction between types of people that isn't often talked about. When attempts are made to talk about it we tend to regard people as “optimists” who contrast with the “pessimists.” I think the distinction has less to do with your positive or negative outlook on life. I think the distinction lies in how you are socialized to think about your circumstances. That is, it's the difference between people who “want to live” and those who are “waiting to die.”

I get hung up on old movies, shows, and documentaries about bands and political theater. You get the impression that there is a genuine underlying cultural sensibility and understanding. Regardless of what you can say about misogynistic and civil rights failures, people seemed to “get it” in a way that I absolutely cannot find today. This is surely part media bias and rose colored glasses, but at the same time, I think it's the same reason I tend to get along with older people in general if not old women in particular.

Old women seemed to be socialized to “take care of the family.” A very life affirming, always on the go, navigate a million moving parts including your children's needs, husband's emotional distance, and whatever the neighborhood gossip or family secrets. Men were just expected to work and provide. Being tired at the end of the day and teaching a few life skills was tantamount to good parenting. While I was antiquing the other day, a couple of older women lamented that you can't just get into a fight now-a-days without getting sued or put in jail and, no exaggeration said, “in my day things were different.”

It's often talked about “the simpler times.” When what you knew you knew and what you didn't you didn't. Information wasn't being uploaded to the cloud to be checked and debated endlessly every minute. You didn't have a million TV channels and competing sources for your attention like the 1000 people you follow on twitter or the hundreds of friends and their meme pictures and statuses. I genuinely think from a psychological standpoint, this was a better circumstance than what we have today.

I think this because I consider myself an educated person without a fucking clue as to what I should be doing. I spend so much time “doing everything” and absolutely none of it has felt like the “right” thing to do in anything but philosophical or health terms. That is, I don't want to be a wage slave if I don't have to, and I respect my time to a greater degree than my money. I feel a genuine sense of responsibility towards the world because I chose to adopt a stake in it. How I got to a point of adopting that stake is a long and complicated picture that I don't think the modern era makes clear.

Today, if you can even define “friend,” when you don't like them you click an "x" and add a new one. We'll have more jobs by the time we're 25 than our parents had their entire lives. What does that do for your conception of a relationship? A relationship to your job, your town, neighbors, coworkers, or how you conceive of your work? I used to think the words “union” and “collective bargaining” went hand in hand, but with union membership at like...7? 8? percent, and if you poll people, you'd think 1900-1935ish didn't exist in this country. We've destroyed respect for your effort, time, and health.

I was listening to a Jack White song where he says something like “we're not entitled to a single damn thing.” If that's true, does that mean we don't owe anybody anything? Because surely someone is entitled to my basic respect for their being. Perhaps you only get the idea of entitlement when you subscribe to wanting to be alive in the first place. But what is it to entitle something? You are held in trust. You should be living up to said title or taking responsibility for claiming ownership of something. Do we just overwhelmingly abdicate responsibility and therefore feel like we don't deserve things?

I've been wanting to shit on myself for trying. And I feel like that has way more to do with the overall culture than with me. It's that no matter what you're doing, you're being punished. I got the degree, for an exorbitant amount of money. I'll let you talk to my fellow graduate and friend what it feels like to apply for 100+ jobs, in the same field, and get nothing for it because I skipped that headache and went for opening my own business. There again, punished for not being able to afford a lawyer with better advice, or a lawyer to sue when you were lied to and sunk costs, also by “the terrorists,” often mislabeled as Islamic extremists, who gouge you on insurance, rent, and of any scraps of self-respect you might have left. You're certainly being punished in a minimum wage anything. And now, I'm finding a way to punish myself in the stress of trying to rely on my blood pressure and drug studies to even begin something resembling savings or investment.

And I'm still supposed to remember that by not being in debt and having my bills paid for a year, I'm doing better than nearly everyone on the planet. At such point I'm supposed to what? Bend the knee and thank the gods? It isn't about me.

It's concordantly hard to deal with having, barely, examples of people who “represent me” in the public eye. As far as the political realm there's maybe 4; Warren, Sanders, the Seattle Green chick, and Nader. With celebrities, Michael Moore on a good day and I suppose Russell Brand is a little batty, but he speaks true shit and gets his hands dirty.(edit 2024. Oh, how people change.) Writers like Naomi Klein, Chomsky, Hedges (most of the time), and Taibbi. I can give as much shit about Bill Maher as your fundie uncle, but when he's lucid I can nod along. Mostly, I prefer Jon Stewart or Colbert, and increasingly Oliver if we have to leave real reporting up to comedians. Thankfully, albeit very recently, Vice's HBO show is filling such a massive void their facebook editorials should feel ashamed of sharing the same name.

But each name or organization I could point to feels like a pebble. They belong to the old women, and me, who have the time to read their books and “educated liberals” who can laugh more than cry about what's being reported. It's for the people who can afford HBO or aren't so baffled by technology they can figure out torrenting is easier than Yahoo Mail.

My world feels so small. It's why when I like my friends, I really like my friends, drunk “fuck everything” blogs aside. It's why I'm really sad when one of them gives up or becomes too busy or writes off my genuine concern as “just what Nick P. does or thinks.” I'm pushing a full stop when it comes to existential exploration and the exhaustion that comes with putting yourself out there so often to ill or non-defined ends. I don't want to be Nader publishing a book about all my letters that didn't get answered and call that not giving up.

Literally all I can do is wait and learn more. But even if I figure out something new to try, I feel like I'm going to be doing it alone, and setting myself up for a new punishment. Still none of those personal wins or promises to yourself are gonna matter. If I don't consider it about me, I can't endorse you making it about you. But, I want to choose life. That includes how our culture helps or hurts, even and especially for those who feel like they're stuck waiting around to die.