Be Mine?

I was watching an MTV show the other day that reminded me of my last entry in the suspended Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs* saga, and it inspired me to pick the ball back up on that. The show was called My Life as Liz -- it appeared to be a documentary-ish project by a high school girl in a cookie cutter Texas town -- but then it turned out to be a disappointingly dramaticized variation on that theme, heavily scripted and influenced by what I'll assume are the musings of a twentysomething girl who perhaps lived (or imagined) a similar theme within the context of the recent era of high-school-movie social indoctrination.

What am I talking about? That's a great question. I think I'm getting to that... Right, so: ValVillage girl with edgy haircut in town of vapid Texan beauty queens aspires to escape drone culture with the aid of her loyal band of witty/geeky guy friends by making controversial film class projects, etc etc ... it's an interesting concept that I'll maybe save for a different entry, 'cause the tie-in to this entry is -- are you with me still? -- turns out that one of her geeky guy friends is in love with her. Of course, right! How can you possibly hang out with a fellow human and not fall in love with them!?

I think the last SDCP* entry set this up for a foray into the (now ancient) realm of When Harry Met Sally. I never actually saw this (1989) movie until I was in college, but as Chuck confirms (pg.8): I didn't really need to see it to know it.

If you haven't seen it, allow me to summarize: guy and girl meet, have discussion that lays down the thesis "men and women can never be 'just friends'," go their separate ways, meet back up, exist "as friends" through series of life events, and inevitably end up destined for each other (with a bunch of dramatic junk in between). Familiar, right? Basically every movie since this one has been a spin on that concept, with the exception of some horror movies I guess. (<-- maybe an exaggeration)(but maybe not)

Maybe this is a great time to write this entry -- Valentine's Day is fast approaching, which, when combined with this cinematically endorsed worldview, perhaps produces heightened levels of delusion in the friend-love cortex. Hmm..yes...

"When Harry Met Sally...gave a lot of desperate people hope. It made it realistic to suspect your best friend may be your soul mate, and it made wanting such a scenario comfortably conventional. The problem is that the Harry-Met-Sally situation is almost always tragically unbalanced. Most of the time, the two involved parties are not really 'best friends.' Inevitably, one of the people has been in love with the other from the first day they met, while the other person is either (a) wracked with guilt and pressure, or (b) completely oblivious to the espoused attraction. Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less. But When Harry Met Sally gives the powerless, unrequited lover a reason to live," (pg.9)

I suspect that the propogation of this notion is one of the core contributing factors of our current state of melodramatic narcissism. We are all walking around starring in our own personal reality shows, and this is the perfect torturous subplot. If we aren't seeking out "friendships" either to (a) comfort ourselves with (or practice on) a "friend" who admires us or to (b) get our foot in the door to become "the friend" someone we desire ultimately ends up destined to be with, chances are good our "friends" are secretly doing this to us. Whaaat?! I know, right?! A terrible thing to acknowledge.

I'm not saying all friendships fall under these shady umbrellas, but I think a lot of them do or will to some extent. But besides that, the main point Chuck and I are heading towards isn't that we all need to be suspicious of our friends' intentions, or that we need to gear up this week/end to overanalyze everything that happens (and doesn't) on Valentine's Day.

The point is: we need to stop and realize where our daily relational agendas are rooted and informed.

(see also: are you heading into your days subconsciously intending to hold the world and its inhabitants up against the plot of an 80s movie you never saw in hopes it all aligns?)

I've always loved fairy tales, and one of the great things about them is the practical social instruction inherent in them. Humans learn best through story, and what better way to learn it's a bad idea to wander into the woods alone and to trust strangers with sweets than to have the terror of a cannibalistic witch in a candy house branded into your brain?

Some folks suspect these types of tales are inappropriate or irrelevant, or even socially misguiding, including one of Chuck's college professors who accused them of being "part of a latent social code that hoped to suppress women and minorities," (pg.9) He and I will agree here that adults being concerned about the social damage fairy tales have the capacity to inflict on children isn't an issue.

"'The Three Little Pigs' is not the story that is fucking people up. Stories like Say Anything are fucking people up. We don't need to worry about people unconsciously 'absorbing' archaic secret messages when they're six years old; we need to worry about all the entertaining messages people are consciously accepting when they're twenty-six. They're the ones that get us, because they're the ones we try to turn into life," (pg.10)