Some time in the very near future I will watch a movie. Breaking the streak of movie viewing failure I’ve managed since seeing Will Smith’s rendition of I Am Legend. Which is not so much a reflection of that movie’s quality as my apathy towards movies as of late.
As my free time becomes more limited I find myself culling out activities based on their cost versus their value. Actually, I don’t think the amount of free time I have is changing all that dramatically, so much as the value of my free time is increasing. I think I’m hitting the point where I am beginning to realize just how daunting the real word is. How the promise of week after week of monotonous work will drown out the rest of my life. Until I pray for the day retirement takes the last breath of my usefulness to society, or death takes it’s icy hold, whichever comes first.
So, with this cosmic view of life, it’s easy to see how wasteful it is to spend fractions of the few cosmic seconds we have left on a non-interactive experience that gives me very little in return. It is also easy to see how this describes 99% of all television programing and films.
I cannot tell you how irritated I can get over a news story on cable TV, especially because I can’t let the people on the show hear my voice. Growing up in an age of increasingly fast interpersonal communication makes watching regular programming feel somehow un-whole. I’m so used to being able to share my view with everyone on the planet at once via Internet message boards and forums that I feel emotionally stunted when I watch regular programing.
What’s the point of watching a debate when you don’t care what each panelist thinks. Watching a debate makes sense when trying to decide between political candidates (although this, too, feels futile sometimes).
Is this why I can’t watch movies anymore? I can’t have any input?
It seems like a poor excuse; but I feel disillusioned with the whole movie-going experience. Especially at nine bucks a pop.
I’ve felt this before, specifically with the music industry. There was a time a couple years back where I felt like there was no new music coming out, nothing of any value at least, and this may have been true at the time. There was always classic music to delve into, though.
I did this with reckless abandon and listening to a lot of older music that I hadn’t done my entire life seems to spark an interest in music for me. To that end, I’m going to try and jump-start my appreciation for movies by revisiting some classics I may have missed and going back to some older movies that I would never have thought to watch. Luckily for me, I know plenty of movie aficionados who can readily recommend a plethora of good films.
But I’m probably going to need Netflix.
Crap.
I’ll start by finishing the Bourne trilogy, since I conveniently own the third one. How anticlimactic.
I think it’s merely a matter of finding movies or television that you find intellectually stimulating. If we’re talking about turds like I am Legend (just saw it on DVD for 7 yuan and still felt ripped off), then I don’t blame you for your apathy. I personally hate when people tell me that I should “turn my brain off” when I go to see a film. What the hell is the point of that?* Worthwhile films (including action movies like the Bourne films – I’m not talking about high art here) may not be interactive per se, but they’re often open to some kind of interpretation to the viewer. And as for cable news, it’s a lost cause. If people were able to engage with these shysters, they’d be out of their jobs in a flash.
*I’m not trying to be a film snob – I’m just saying that my time is valuable to me and I’d rather not waste it seeing some shitty comic book adaptation. Sorry.