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no, i don't actually have an uncontrollable urge to exterminate teenage girls
Hi, i can be boring sometimes. And i often sound evil to conceal life's banalities. But i really am a kind and peace-loving creature. That despite the URL. |
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got neither analytical insights nor flashy pictures to offer just trying to make the mundane a little less mundane! tagboard
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 i have a confession to make. i relish every single cinema going experience, and adore my movies, more so for the envelope-pushing, statement-making and alternatives-embracing ones. i am proud of the tastes and distastes that differentiate if not alienate me from the blockbuster adoring crowds, because the last thing i want to be known for is cookie-cutter preferences that are shared by so many others that they almost lose their worth because individuality takes a backseat. a massively self-indulgent affair, that is, because it is after all a trait that you gloriously base your self-righteous joys upon. deludingly so in fact, when such joys are celebrated in the knowledge that they are something bystanders will likely pass off as weird and antisocial, "weird" or "antisocial" bearing the double connotations of being unique and being unacceptably off-centre to the self-indulgent and to the rest of the world respectively. simply put, in the eyes of many, there are hardly any grounds for glossing over being different, such that it is mostly dealt with attitudes of plain...indifference. today, i finally, for the first time for as long as i can recall, feel irritability and exasperation on my own part, for being utterly incapable of resonating with the masses upon watching the much feted colossal movie event of the year, the dark knight. posthumous oscar nomination buzz, overwhelmingly positive critical consensus, outstanding acting ensemble, check check check. it was a movie i was initially reluctant to watch given my penchant for more grounded reality, but was eventually persuaded to given the adjectives and superlatives-laden reviews that beckoned in every single magazine or newspaper article i flipped through this week. and even if people poked fun at this blockbuster moment of weakness, i could always take the heath ledger high ground, i thought. but no, even after compelling myself to go beyond the hero batman vs villian joker surface to go squeeze my brain juices dry to try look for subtext, my mental capacity, or lack thereof, disallowed. from the start, my senses were treated to, and subsequently compeletely desensitized by batman jargon, the perpetually darkness-shrouded gotham city, batman jargon, comicbook fanboy and alpha male tendencies, batman jargon, many strobes of flashing lights which could possibly have been batman chasing joker down the streets inside his bat pod plus many explosions, and batman jargon. all that interspersed with me checking out the really pretty purple curtains hanging atop the screen inside prince 1 cinema, strolling to the toilet, and staring at the cup holder peculiarly installed at the back of the seats in the front row. the prison cell scene, also shrouded in sombre darkness, had to be the last straw. it all culminated in me deciding to dump my poor movie partner in the cinema in search for brighter pastures outside. sure enough, the first thing that came to sight as i stepped out of the cinema at the 1h30min mark was the poster for this interesting upcoming movie called "quarantine". hmmm... it was the first time i walked out of a cinema mid-film. no, i think i lived to see the credits for the incredibles even... i really, really, really, was prepared to lay my prejudices to rest. and to try to align my sentiments in tandem with the wonderful, rich, and thoughtfully analysed critical consensus, to put down prejudices to see where all glowing praise heaped on the film was coming from. it was a miserable failure, and this one time, "antisocial" ceased to be synonymous to uniqueness. beneath the critical bitch of a facade i put on after the walk-out, i think i really am pondering over the diversity of things i am able and willing to embrace, the depth of intelligence i really hold, and if that has got to do with the really restrictive scope of things i am open to understanding and appreciating, and also if the inability to appreciate so many so called finer things in life stems from an embarrasingly and unjustifiably weak inability to understand the unfamiliar... bla bla bla. i don't know which i was more unimpressed by - that truncated 90mins worth of shitty dark knight i sat through or my sheer incapability of concurring with the masses. where do you draw the line between being cooly, bravely, proudly individualistic and being plain self-centered and worse, self-indulgent? sure, a teenage girl can sashay down orchard road clad in her little miss what-nots for all her pubescent insensibility's worth, and when under fire, proudly unleash girl power by proclaiming by default that, "i am what i am, i do what i like, and i do not care about the negative or baseless opinions of others". but being the social creatures that we are, can we really choose to shut out the opinions (nicely put across or not) of others, and yet not be reduced to a self-centered, unreceptive and socially inept moron that trusts himself too much for his own good? i don't think so. individualism will make you stand out, but not necessarily in a respectable way. respectable individualism really comes from a quality that will set you aside, yet not alienate you away from the rest, i think. it needs to be different, but it has to appease just as well. so, you're really not cool when you're well, flaccid, jaundiced, reed-thin, yet choose to prowl the streets with a tight singlet with a sexualized slogan imprinted on it, and then defend that fashion faux pas by saying something like, why should i care about the hurtful opinions of others? hey, even reed-thin guys are entitled to flashy seduction antics, be they futile or not, right? NO. looks like i'm finding myself on the other side of the argument, 5 months on. oh, the strange thoughts a shitty movie on a precious saturday afternoon can inspire.... |