Thursday, June 30, 2005
Perfection Personified
These days the majority of movies, heck all of them bar a small collection, present perfect people. Well.. not perfect. Clearly I'm exaggerating here to prove a point. But the people presented are /more/ prefect than real people. By that I mean that, at least by the end of the movie, they are usually
better looking
Have less real problems
Have less (for want of a better term) defects.
And this is true not just in movies, but in adds, books(not so badly, but then the image they present is usually less complete) , and TV series. The majority of the fictional people that we see
Now this has two effects that I can immediately think of. I provides us an incredibly difficult standard to which we are expected to live up. Its an unattainable goal, but that doesn't stop us from wanting to attain it.
The second, and the one I want to talk about really, is that it provides is with a similarly unattainable level of expectation from the opposite sex. When I am looking for a partner, subconsciously, a part of my brain will be judging potential candidates by an incredibly unfair standard.
Similarly when I'm looking at my friends, and how they handle situations, I cant expect the standard ability to deal with things as seen in many movies. The "Able to solve any problem in 30 minutes (or 1 hour, or 2, depending on what kind of medium were talking about)" ability which seems prevalent in these shows is just unfair to expect from real-world people.
When we get to heaven, the people well be dealing with will be even better than those we see in the movies. Until then, I think I need to make surI'mim cutting them even more slack, since I'm going to have to accept that I have at least in part some unfair attitudes here. And, as is so often the case, Hollywoodod is to blame.
: Saturday, July 02, 2005 6:30:00 pm As a result of this, I have made it a particular goal not to do this- I dont look at looks when I am making friends or speaking to someone (some may be skeptical but I really dont) and though I know what Hollywood tells me is ideal- I usually favour the opposite. I think it is most important though that we remember God made us all and wants all people to know Him- no matter of looks, personality, disability, gender or race. It is a bit dumb to write that as I believe aalmost anyone wgo would read this (whether Christian or not) would agree with that in part.
And honestly - I don't mean to offend you here, but it's something I'm really angry about - people need to stop blaming Hollywood for their own superficiality, or inability to separate fantasy from reality. Hollywood doesn't make people superficial, it just feeds on their superficiality. Hollywood may fuel the silly notion that everybody is beautiful, but the only reason it ever started doing so is because that's what people /wanted/ to see.
Movies are fantasy. There is always an element of idealism in fantasy, if only in some small way - whether it's the physical attractiveness of the characters, or the heroic limitations of their actions, or the existence of true equality, or just a Hollywood-style happy ending. Honestly, what the fuck is so /bad/ about that? We shouldn't be blaming Holywood for making us have unrealistic expectations - we should be asking ourselves why we can't separate fantasy from reality, and work on doing so.
Lastly, if superficiality gets in the way of a relationship, it wasn't meant to be. When you meet the "right" person, you won't give a shit about appearance, regardless of whatever unrealistic expectations the nasty movie people have given you. Love really does surpass physicality.
: Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:05:00 am << Home
