How soon is too soon to start studying the nineties?

....as a decade of cultural failure?

Let's look at this for a moment: brought to you by BuzzFeed, 48 Pictures that Perfectly Capture the 90's.

These pictures are a lot of things--they are funny. They are dorky. They are very, very accurate in capturing the decade none of us could ever forget, because we grew up there.

Besides this--quirky, kind of silly, mismatched, weird--there aren't a lot of adjectives that come to mind when you imagine the 90's. There are a lot of nouns, mostly proper nouns--Lisa Frank! Will Smith! Full House!--but it doesn't seem to have the same niche in our cultural consciousness as many other decades from the 21st century. 1990 was more than 20 years ago, but you aren't going to see anybody throwing 90's themed parties.

It's kind of an indescribable era--one can tell, one can feel, if you will, when something is "90's," but it's nearly impossible to explain why. It was a strange transitional period between the so-bad-it's-good style and media from the 80's, but not quite the shiny tech-laced era we spent the past ten years in. For this reason, as well as others, I contend that the 1990's was a decade of cultural failure.

People will protest this statement--Krista, they will say, what about Rugrats? What about Madonna? And they are correct! There are a variety of good things that came out of the nineties. Let's take a look:

• Children's television
• The nineties is characterized by television, namely animated shows on Nickelodeon, and animated Disney films, that were aimed at children but have the vitality to still be enjoyable to those same children today, as they become adults. Finding the balance between subtle adult humor and plots and characters that children would also enjoy was a masterful accomplishment of the decade.
• Surrealist Music: 

What is happening in any of these? Who knows? What caused the nineties to contain this surrealism? Who knows?

• Some good movies.
• Pulp Fiction.
• Good rap music
• And for all the good rap, there is some ridiculously bad rap, too. Exhibit A: 

I'm not talking about things that are so-bad-they're-good, because people's opinions on that differ, and to be fair, the nineties is full of things like that. Even so, the quantity of so-bad-it's-good media and fashion in the nineties doesn't nearly reach that of the eighties, and much of it is good for the novelty and the nostalgia, but how much can you actually take? I'm not saying I don't love Saved by the Bell because of how ridiculous it is, and I'm not contending that I didn't watch every episode of Full House when it was on reruns on ABC family--but they aren't quite ridiculous enough to enjoy the way you can enjoy slasher-boom films of the eighties. The Backstreet Boys and NSync are over the top and crazy, but can they even aspire to the over-the-top craziness of their boy-band predecessors like Drop Dead Fred or, more subtly, Tears for Fears? Nineties fashion is hideous, but can it be rocked the way hideous eighties fashion can? 

These women know how crazy they are.

These women think they are normal. 

Further evidence:

Molly Ringwald looks great, and almost elegant! And young!

Candace Cameron, on the other hand, looks sad and old. 

Something that's really significant about the nineties is that the way we see it today is very much characterized by nostalgia--not any sort of longing nostalgia, just a sort of reflective, laughing nostalgia at how ridiculous we were. How ridiculous we just were, less than twenty years ago.

Before I make my next point, let's not rule out that perhaps there is nostalgia for many decades like this, that I can't relate to because I wasn't there. I do desperately wish that I were alive in the eighties, or the fifties, or the twenties...but I can't feel it like I can with the nineties.

Even so! It seems like we have a lot of nostalgia for the nineties, and not a lot else. The reason there is so much nostalgia, and it is so plentiful, is because we didn't actually take anything from the decade. Sitcoms have been drastically changed since then, children's television isn't anywhere near as good, we moved away from the terrible fashion as much as possible, pop has changed entirely. The only thing we really got from the nineties is...

Oh, right. That.

My friends, hipsters came from the nineties.

You know this. I know this. Fred Armisen knows this. For all the Lisa Frank, for all the cheesy, cheesy movies and fluffy rap, all the good natured, value preachin' sitcoms, we took the sad music and strange clothing from Seattle. 

I mean no disrespect to grunge, don't get me wrong. I love grunge, I really do. And I'm sure Seattle is great. 

Let's break it down a bit.

Grunge came about as a reaction to a lot of bad things that were going on in the 90's. Current events of the decade are marked by domestic bombings and civil war--Columbine, the Oklahoma City Boming, the Rwandan Genocide all happened in the nineties. Our military attention switched from Soviet Russia to the Middle East, where we began fighting a culture that we understood even less. Politics are marred by sex scandals and economic problems, resulting in a mistrust of authority. So what does it say about our improvement as a society that the cultural reaction to these negative things is what endured into the millenium? Forget how obnoxious we may find hipsters to be, their cultural basis is sad, and that says some sad things about us.

QED, the nineties was a decade of cultural failure.

BATMANTICIPATION

In case you all didn't know, I am a nerd girl.
True life: I'm a nerd girl. Confessions of a Nerd Girl. Hello, my name is Krista, and I am a female nerd.
This is a part of myself that I've been dealing with for some time now, but it's time to share it with the world. I should be proud.
That's right. I'm a dork. I read tons of very culty and strange webcomics. I am excited by video game themed crafts. I listen to They Might Be Giants, Pride, Predjudice, and Zombies is at the top of my reading list, and I can quote Firefly in my sleep.

And I am very, very excited for all the incredibly quirky, campy, nerdy movies that are hitting theaters this summer.

So it's time for a little SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW. No better way to cure the winter blues, right?

(Nerdy) Summer Movie Preview--2012--Filmpocalypse

April

This April, the movie I am most excited about ever is happening. The Cabin in The Woods. Watch the trailer: 

As far as I can tell from that video, this is a self aware slasher movie (my favorite genre) but it's also somehow also a science fiction movie, has something to do with terrifying government surveillance, zombies (?) a monster in the lake (?) and a curse that happens in the pagan-esque chamber that is apparently in the basement (???)

There really is no way to explain what is happening there. It seems to have all the elements of a good old fashioned cabin-in-the-woods slasher, which it better, considering the title: a group of very stereotypical and unbearable teenagers, a small remote house, a keg, some aspect of zombie or mind control film (a la Evil Dead) and a very creepy gas station with a horrifying hillbilly. 

Side note: creepy gas stations are the only fear I believe I obtained directly from Slasher movies. I drive past about a million run-down convenience stores on my way home from college to get to a Cumberland Farms or a Hess Express, no matter how much I need to use the bathroom or how hungry my car is. Go figure. 

I would be happy enough with a meta-teens in the woods horror film, but this turns that completely on it's head. 

The traditional slasher trailer is about surprise--you begin thinking it's about happy teenagers, at some point, we realize they're getting killed. We aren't surprised by that, we know the tricks. Thus, the traditional meta-trailer: we see the happy teens, we predict the killer, soon after comes some aspect of comedy or a line of dialogue about the self awareness of the film, and we know it's a trailer for the next Scream or Scary Movie (which, unfortunately, is also gracing the screens this April). 

This trailer even turns that convention on it's head--fairly quickly we go through the steps--happy teens, going to a cabin in the woods, dialogue too obvious to believe that we're supposed to take this seriously. And then, without warning--some sort of electrical matrix fence? Girl kissing a deer head? Scary masked men?

And, as if it could get more perfect--Joss Whedon wrote it. The brilliant, nerd-god, Joss Whedon. 

SPEAKING of Joss Whedon....

May: 
Drumroll, please--

To a certain degree, the excitement of this movie coming out goes without saying.

Normally, I'm opposed to contrived sequels, but this, (along with another movie on this list,) is a bit of an exception. Instead of being a sequel it's like the last clue in a crazy filmic treasure hunt, where the first five clues were wonderful in and of themselves.

It took me a long time to gain appreciation for comic book and super hero films, but in a lot of ways they are just like slasher films. The cult following and the campy-ness that they are allowed charms me in the same way that those qualities in horror do. Superhero movies have the character development that the more low-quality slasher movies tend to let slip, and of course, character development is my favorite part of any film. The Avengers will have characters that we've already seen develop, that we, the insane, culty, nerdy audience, will know very well at the beginning of the movie, whether from the earlier films, or from the comics (and the cartoon, which I enjoy.) This leaves room for an entire new level of character development as well as relationship development between the different heroes, which seems to be the focus of the film.

A good friend of mine has told me about how this could set a precedent for other films, to have films take place in the same universe and then perhaps conclude in a massive film which combines the different story lines, which, though I am not educated enough on the subject to get into right now, sounds like an awesome direction for Hollywood to go in right now. Joss Whedon directed this movie, which was a brilliant move on Marvel's part. Those people know their fanbase.

Another note on this film: Robert Downey Jr. is in it. SO. Even if superheros aren't your thing, Robert Downey Jr. probably is.

June: 
In the new grand tradition of totally insane movie titles comes Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. 


As previously discussed here on the blog, there seems to be a new trend of having films with titles that communicate immediately that the film is going to be amazing for one of two possible reasons: it will legitimately kick some nerdy movie ass, or will be so completely nonsensical and crazy that it can become a cult classic for his accidental hilarity. Nerdy ass-kicking movies and accidentally hilarious cult classics are two favorite genres of many, many people, most of whom reside inside of the internet.

Unfortunately, not a lot of information is out right now about this film, but come on. Abraham Lincoln slaying vampires. Produced by Tim Burton, hero of dark and strange films, and social commentary. Starring the stunningly beautiful Mary Elizabeth Winstead, my personal celebrity crush.

Three great things that go great together, killing an annoying cultural icon. 

Definitely seeing this one at midnight if at all possible. By myself. Like a creep. A history/horror/nerd creep.

As a side note, Rock of Ages is also coming out this month. This is the only musical I've ever seen on Broadway. I convinced my family to go, because they would know all the songs and they served drinks in the audience. The lead singer of White Snake came on the microphone at the beginning and said only dicks took out their phones during shows. 

The movie is going to either be horrible or amazing. Most likely, horrible in an amazing way. But I'm excited.

July: 

This deserves even more than a drumroll. We need the intro to the Rocky theme for this one. 

Please only listen to the first ten seconds. Ok, we're good.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. 

I just watched Batman Begins last week, and I saw The Dark Knight in theaters, and I love them both so much. Christopher Nolan may very well be my favorite mainstream director right now. He should be, and I believe, is, at the forefront of the progression of modern cinema. The man is a genius. His dedication to being as real as possible in his films, and avoiding CGI at all costs, is immensely admirable, and shows through not only in the special effects but also in the overall tone of the movies. Not to mention how intense it is that in Dark Knight, they actually flip an 18 wheeler, they actually blow up a hospital shaped building. It creates a situation where there is no room for gratuitous explosions, which makes all of his blockbusters stand out from other action films. Nolan is also one of the pioneers of the emerging action/romance genre, which is a very important aspect of current cinema, and has taken the idea of a mind-blowing twist at the end of every movie to a new level. 

It is only fitting that Nolan, with all of his dedication to realism, directs the Batman films, with the hero who is really only human. Perhaps it is also the realistic, non-supernatural aspects of the Batman franchise that allow it to be so successful and iconic, and represent cultural ills so well! Batman Begins has some serious undertones of mistrust in the government, very appropriate for 2005, smack in the middle of the Bush administration. The Dark Knight is all about terrorism that we cannot understand, and how properly to fight it (I think, I should look into it more). And here we have the stunningly beautiful Cat Woman, translating the shouts from Occupy Wall Street into whispers to Christian Bale. Lately I've been helping out with some high school English classes, and that's the example I use when I need to explain to them why knowing the political and social events surrounding a story is an important part of understanding literature--"You know sexy Anne Hathaway in the Dark Knight Rises trailer? She's talking about Occupy Wall Street! Doesn't that make the movie more interesting?"

Speaking of sexy characters in Batman, in this we have, as always Christian Bale. 

Forgive me for the side note, but this man deserves some attention. Christian Bale has, in his life, has played Demetrius from A Midsummer Night's Dream, (my favorite Shakespeare,) Patrick Bateman, everyone's favorite serial killer, Howl from Howl's Moving Castle, possibly the most dreamy anime character I have ever encountered, the awesome guy from The Prestige, John Connor in The Terminator, Thomas, the adorable friend of John Smith in Pochahontas, JESUS, in a made for TV Jesus movie, and Batman. The guy is Jesus and Batman. Seriously. 

Aside from the inhumanly attractive Bale, we also have Joseph Gordon Levitt, possibly the only one who can match Bale in attractiveness. These superhero movies are certainly playing to the ladies. Not that they need to. Even if we go for the hearthrobs, but we stay for the realistic special effects, sociopolitical commentary, character development, and cultural satire. 

In conclusion: I'm going to the movies every day this summer. Yes, it is certainly a good time to be a nerd girl.

A Treatise on Harry Potter

I was five years old when I read the first Harry Potter book, and to this day I picture Hogwarts as the house in which it was read to me; the house belonged to my friend, and it was a significant part of my childhood. It was an amazing house, and reading The Sorcerer's Stone in her yellow-painted bedroom of the three-story, renovated barn is one of the many happy memories I have from the house.

For a long time every book release was quite a bonding experience for her and her mother and my mother and I. When she grew out of it, it became an event that some other close family friends of ours and my brother and I did together, and it was the only time we'd get together. Book, and later movie releases, were bright spots in my mundane summers, where I could have an excuse to sit down and read for a week straight then reunite with childhood friends and stay up late talking and reading and analyzing every aspect of the series.

I was, for sure, as obsessed as anyone--and it's easy to see why. Harry Potter defined much of my childhood, and even to this day, as an "adult" to some degree, who can recognize the literary and filmic downfalls of the franchise, I cried when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two in Imax 3D closed with a three-shot of Ron, Hermione, and Harry. For me, and for thousands of other people in my generation, Harry Potter has been a constant--as, for the class of 2011, who started Kindergarten the year the first book was released and who just graduated, has been school. The painfully obvious tagline--"It all ends Summer 2011--" poetically punctuates not only the end of a series I have grown up with, but the end of my time living in the little town where I was born and going to school with the same group of people.

Regardless of my emotional connections to the story, I wasn't as psyched about this release as other people were, and until I was actually sitting in the enormous IMAX theater, after having waited in line for an hour when I could have been home doing something productive, I didn't care to see the film at all--in fact, I never saw Deathly Hallows Part One. People have been going on and on about how a huge chunk of their childhood is ending, about how a little part of them died, about how it is, in fact, all over, and how much of an effect that is going to have on their lives.

For me, that feeling has long passed. While a lot of people--especially those a little bit younger (current sophomores, my brother's age,) who were five when the first movie came out--have grown up with the films as much as with the books, if not more, definitely see the movies as entirely a part of Harry Potter, I still can't.  I felt the way so many people are feeling now when we got the seventh book at midnight, and when I closed the back cover at one in the afternoon the next day. Equally poetically, it was the summer before I began high school--in a parallel to the story, I was ready to move on.

Of course, not many other people were--HP continued to define our generation, most clearly shown in a pep rally skit performed by my class, the theme of which was, of course, Harry Potter. I saw the sixth movie at midnight, and I, like everyone else, still find the best way to explain many things is to use Harry Potter analogies. ("you know, he said it like...like Ron says to Hermione in the sixth book," or, "Maybe the little boy at the end of Turn of the Screw wasn't killed, it was just a Harry Potter kinda thing," or, "The only parallel to the rise of Hitler is Voldemort.") All in all, though, the franchise and the fandom became sort of a nuisance to me. I have things to do. I am a grown up lady and I won't bother myself anymore with this nonsense.

Not true, of course. But my cynicism of all things enjoyed by the masses has led me to be a lot more critical of the series, and, in turn, the movies.

Part of the brilliance of Harry Potter  is that, for my generation, the books aged with us perfectly. The Sorcerer's Stone is like a gateway book to a lifetime of reading for so many young kids, and The Deathly Hallows is a dark, dramatic, and complicated fantasy. This brilliance also becomes a bit of a downfall for the series, and especially for the poor characters. There's a massive disconnect that comes in the end of the fourth book. The first three stories are whimsical, spooky, and fantastic for children. There's a clear good vs. evil, the plot follows a formulaic, episodic model that's already familiar to the audience (summer, school, Halloween, Christmas, Spring sports, finals, and so on.)

By the end of the fourth book, I was eight, and kind of ready for the shock of an almost main character getting killed by the big bad guy. By the fifth, I was ten, and, even though it was traumatic, almost ready for the angst and death that marks Order of the Phoenix. Almost. What had been a fun and whimsical tale set in a fun and whimsical location was suddenly a story of political intrigue, of abandoned houses and prophecies and such, but still sprinkled with fun and whimsical things like pixies and bogarts and the like. Harry's frustrating and inexplicable angst was somewhat incongruent with the stories we knew.

The sixth book continued with the drama, but at least still at Hogwarts, to some degree; the seventh book could be part of a completely different series. There are two ways to look at this: one, the audience got to old for the fun and whimsy, the universe got so big that there had to be an epic fantasy/war book in order to get things wrapped up, and Rowling wrote the book long after the directors of the films had switched from the lighthearted Christopher Columbus to much darker directors and was being influenced by the style somewhat. This is one of many criticisms, and opens up a discussion about the simplicity of the plot and characters and the simplistic, unchallenging writing, the dependence on a franchise and strong fanbase, and the lack of vitality that the story has.

Alternatively, one can look at the entirety of Harry Potter as following a similar pattern--if with a more Disney ending--as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, or Greek Tragedies, or Film Noir--because, by the seventh book/movie, the entire world of the three main characters has completely crumbled. As in Things Fall Apart, the majority of the first part of the story is marked by episodic plots controlled by specific dates, dotted with dramatic adventures that make the characters grow some, but in the end, it is an outside force that the characters feel they need to singlehandedly defeat that entirely destroys their way of life.

This is an emotional moment for those of us who are emotionally attached to Harry&company. It mimics our own realization that the world is not necessarily all whimsy and fun, and somethings things to fall apart entirely. Ultimately, the whimsical, wizarding setting of the series is incidental; the stories are about death, what happens after death, dealing with the after life and with mourning; it is about a group of non-muggles who are still mortals, who cannot beat death even though they have infinite luxuries of magic and such. This is philosophically somewhat simplistic, but it hits home for the audience of adolescence who, developmentally, are realizing the idea of mortality themselves. Not only that, but it emphasizes the fleeting nature of adolescense and school; no matter how dramatic it may be, you may only be one white page labeled "epilogue" or one black screen titled "19 years later" away from a pleasant adulthood. Harry's life reflects our own in many ways, and while he says the well acted line that so easily could have been cheesey, to Voldemort, "Let's finish this the way we started it--together!" he says to us, the crazy high schoolers who so many times have banged our heads against a keyboard in sincere imiation of his puppet self, chanting "angst, angst, angst, " who grew up with JK Rowling and Harry&Co fixing our problems:"Let's finish this, the nonsense battle with the world that is puberty and public education, the way we started it way back on the first day of first grade--together!

Overall, the movie itself greatly exceeded my fairly low expectations. IMAX 3D was much more impressive than I expected, and I can now see it as being a tool for innovation in cinematography rather than a novelty tech toy. The combination of light and dark  and long and close-up shots was much better and more balanced than the usual (dark field. dark castle. black dragon. Emma watson. Field. Dragon. Castle. Emma. More Emma. Some castle. Field. Castle. Emma.) They didn't dwell too long on many things, the movie didn't feel drawn out as some of the others in the series do. Helena Bonham Carter had to act like Hermione, which was brilliant. The battle scenes and the epilogue, were, dare I say it, better for me in film form than in the book--again, possibly because Rowling had the films in mind when she wrote the seventh book (all the unecessary description in the epilogue does make it read somewhat like  a script.) The casting for the whole franchise is quite brilliant. I really enjoyed the whole audience clapping when Ron and Hermione kissed, and when Molly Weasley yells, "Not my daughter, you bitch!" I wasn't  even too bothered by the fact that Daniel Radcliffe is 22 and not 17, and that Harry Potter is the most pretentious character in modern film.

Actually, Harry Potter's pretentiousness did bother me, some. I suppose that's something that also plays to teenagers developmental tendency to be as egocentric as a four year old--three characters, your age, who probably fill enough types that you can relate to at least one of them, who are literally the center of the universe. The movies, especially, are very Harry-centric. Fair enough, he is the eponymous character, and, again, the center of the whole wizarding world. But still, there are some scenes--such as snapping the elder wand in half and throwing it into the lake as his average friends stare in disgust--where his haughtiness is just overwhelming. My favorite part of the movie may very well have been when Neville stepped in after Voldemort had allegedly killed Harry and said something along the lines of, "The forces of good don't simply cease to exist because Harry Potter is dead, you guys..." and everyone was like "wait, what....oh yeah! Stuff happened here before the kid was born too!" (Even though, to be honest, as soon as Voldemort said, "I've killed Harry Potter!" I really wanted  Radcliffe to just stand up and yell something like "Think again, bitch! Avada Kadavera!" [or, Voldemort style, ahhvahdah kadahhha!"])

 In my opinion, the most interesting part of the series is the backstory of Voldemort--again, and seriously, it is very close to the rise of Hitler, and feels similar to study--how is it that these villians that we hold in this special, "he who must not be named" spot, in reality or literature, come to be as evil and as powerful as they are? I'd like to see a film directed more around Tom Riddle, personally. I did love in the seventh movie when Harry called Voldemort Tom to his face...that was quite the scene.

The hype is still a little much for me, but again, I do have an emotional attachment. I'm glad that, in the future, even though I won't be able to say I saw any classic bands playing live, I will be able to say that I saw Harry Potter in theaters when it first came out,and got the seventh book at midnight, and lived through a phase of fandom that was, at the time, rivaled only by Elvis and The Beatles.  And I did cry during the film, not only at seeing Ron cry over his brother's body or at the first shot of Dobby's grave, but also when Olivander echoed his line from the first story, "The wand chooses the wizard," and whenever the main theme came in, and in the last shot of the three friends holding hands.

In an emotion that, again, poetically mimics that of Harry himself as he walks into the forbidden forest, I realized walking out of the gluttonous theater that while I am sad, I am ready for this part of mys life to be over--but I also know that it will not be. Literature and film are written about in the present tense, so any day that I want to relive a sleepover in my best friends bedroom in her old house, or the night I stayed up all night with an old pal finishing the series, I can pick up one of the easiest books to read, and Dumbledore and Dobby and Voldemort will still be alive, it will still be up in the air whether Hermione ends up with Ron or Harry, and the terrible epilogue will not yet have occured.

Also, does anybody really believe that WB and JK Rowling are going to stop sitting on that comfy pile of ever-growing cash created by the franchise? I think not.

Writing in the media. What is happening.

You know what's terrible right now?
Ok, bad question. Lots of things are terrible right now. The economy and the war are terrible. Corrupt dictators are terrible. Disease is terrible. Stuff is not looking so good.

Here's what I think is the most terrible: the media.

The state of journalism right now is just sad stuff. Of course, this is why I'm going into journalism as a career--I have an incredible urge to fix it. The whole thing. Fix it all.

Really, though, every day I go into my kitchen and watch Fox News with my father, and as he's laughing at the "clever" commentary or "groundbreaking" discoveries, I just die inside. Every moment that those silly blonde women or the silly man who stands in front of the capital building in Massachusetts and yells about stuff says something else I just see the art that I love descending down the steps to hell.

My thoughts on this are stirred by a conversation I just had after I was accused of getting all my news from Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. First of all, not true. I am a regular news junkie. I get news from those two, but also my Google News Feed, NPR....Wait Wait Don't Tell Me...SNL....The Week...


You may see my problem here--five out of seven of those things are, in fact, news satires. Therein lies the question--where else am I supposed to get news? Satire is the only place where people, instead of talking about all the strange and irrelevant horrible things that are happening, talk about what is happening and how horrible all the people reporting on it are.. Everything right now is a distraction for our bigger problems--we seem to be stuck in an endless loop. Think of the biggest news stories from the past few months. The Royal Wedding? Anthony Weiner and friends? The End of the World?

Short answer--nothing important. Nothing long term. So much is going on right now, and these are the things we've decided we care most about. The big problems, everything from the corrupt medical system to the war to climate change and our depleting oil supply, is pushed into the background. Which, as far as I'm concerned, adds the media right onto that list of big problems we don't want to think about.

Until I was thirteen, I wanted to be the president of the United States. I've since decided journalists are much more powerful. Where on earth would the Tea Party movement be without Fox News or Rush Limbaugh? How many democratic bills do you think would have passed if the conservative media hadn't been so upset and critical? Everywhere we can see evidence of the media--television, specifically--being used in ways that it never has been used before. Look at the perfect case study, Sarah Palin--a governor turned vice presidential candidate turned reality show star who may run for president or vice president again. Better yet, we have Donald Trump, who the country braced itself against/embraced the idea of him as a presidential candidate, even though he has been a television icon for the past decade. Rumor has it that Alec Baldwin, a movie star, is considering running for mayor of New York--hilariously, since he himself is a political satirist. Not even to mention Colbert's Superpac, and his run for president last year jokingly, etc.

The point is, the country is being more influenced by the media than ever before, I might say, and we are influenced by it quite a bit. And if the media most of us were getting was accurate or unbiased, that'd be great. If you're getting your news from the television though, which most of us undoubtedly are, it's almost impossible to do that. You can't check the sources, they are the sources. You can't form your own opinions, the opinions are right in there. Fox isn't going to cover a story of a democratic senator doing something awesome or successful, they're just going to give us twenty four hour coverage of an irrelevant sexting scandal.

And, as much as I hate to get political here (a bit late for THAT now, Krista,) there's an interesting thing about Anthony Weiner and all of his nonsense--would any of that happened if he were a republican?

The reason I watch Colbert and Stewart is because they back up what they're saying. They point out the contradictory things that the other news stations do--which makes it nearly impossible to take the other stations seriously--ironically, since they are literally the serious ones compared to Stewart's comedy.

This is my personal favorite example of a comedian backing up something that they say and contradicting the news giant's own commentary--when Stewart totally destroyed Fox news when they got mad that a senator had compared one of his conservative opponents a Nazi.

Here's where I get to my point--the most important thing, at least to me currently, about being a good journalist with a strong opinion is using your facts. Find them. Put them in your articles. Make it easy for your readers to believe that they are true, even make it easy for them to find those facts themselves. I'm all for fancy rhetoric and style, but you are nowhere, you are nothing more than an arrogant internet troll, if you don't have facts.

There is one website that I read with embarrassing regularity that is actually the best example of journalism that I think is around right now. Nowhere am I more inspired or can I learn more from for both my blogging and my more serious journalism than this site. And that site is--you ready for this?--cracked.com.

I'm not saying, of course, that you should get all your news or trust everything on Cracked, but there's no argument that they provide interesting information in an accessible, hilarious, and intelligent way. I've borrowed a lot from their style in terms of incorporating facts and pictures and captions, which you'll probably notice if you read my blog as well as theirs.

The reason they are so smart is because they do their research and they use technology to tell you about it. One of the reasons I love blogging so much as a journalistic medium is because it's so easy to just throw links into your writing to just about anything. This means that instead of having to present your facts in lengthy paragraphs about statistics that people will just skip over/not necessarily believe, or having to choose what statistics and facts are best from piles and piles of data that support the statement you're trying to make, you can just bring your readers right to the source and they can figure it out for themselves. I've always been impressed with the way Cracked does this, and they're starting to do it in creative ways: take this article for instance, which has a sentence with every word being a link to another piece of evidence. Or this one, which is a perfect example of how much they back up what they're saying with legitimate sources.

A lot of people write Cracked off as a crude humor site, which, don't get me wrong, it certainly is and totally intends to be. Because they have an excessive amount of pictures of scantily clad ladies and NSFW text, they aren't considered to be a very intellectual site. But what are you supposed to do but swear when the state of journalism is so sad that the most innovative and intelligent source of information is a crude humor site?

Perhaps the only other thing to do is get a liberal arts degree with a concentration in journalism and try to fix it myself.

Classic movies--priceless?

I just bought one of my favorite movies, one of the most influential movies of all time, Bonnie and Clyde, for five dollars. My friend and I were at Wally World, buying some blank DVD's on which to put our latest slasher creation (more on that later,) and there was a big bin of movies for five dollars--the best place for finding terrible low budget horror films, which I love. The bin was not organized in any particular way; simply a three foot wide, royal-blue, mesh cylinder filled to the brim with cheap entertainment. And buried somewhere in the pile was the classic, Bonnie and Clyde.

The good thing about this is, I now own and hour and a half of Faye Dunaway and I didn't even spend as much as I would have to buy a small sandwich. The bad thing is, this terribly important movie was tossed away into this bin and that isn't how movies should be treated.

This makes me displeased about, well, the way movies are presented to us that so many people just accept. A lot of things make me displeased about this, but this particular incident is a nice punctuation to my thought sentence that warranted a blog post about it.

According to my very intelligent film studies teacher, as well as, well, film studies in general, Bonnie and Clyde is a pretty important film. A super important film. It changed how violence was depicted, it cemented the place of two legendary cultural icons, it launched Fay Dunaways career (guys, I LOVE Faye Dunaway. She was the most beautiful woman in the world in 1968,) it won too many awards to count, it changed cinema (and America? yes?) forever. It is not only a classic, it is one of the few movies that I think can be considered one of the classics. But more on that later.
Is it right for this movie to be thrown in a bin while other, more recent movies like Red Riding Hood or Gnomeo and Juliet are displayed and played on display televisions? What message does that give?

Considering how many mainstream audiences seem to feel about old movies, in that, they refuse to watch them or understand them in context, it gives the message that old movies are unimportant and new movies are important. It's amazing how many of my very intelligent friends believe that many movies coming out today are brilliant and amazing, but also refuse to watch or respect anything made before their lifetime--where, I think, many of the best movies were made.

Obviously, this is a necessary marketing technique to keep the movie industry running--arguably we should sometimes end up with a movie that has the potential to be a Bonnie and Clyde forty seven years from now, and without all the stagnant movies in between that wouldn't be able to happen.

However, classic films such as Bonnie and Clyde are a part of our culture--nearly just as much as classic literature--or, as much as I'd hate to see this, more in upcoming generations. So much so, I believe, that major cultural and educational changes in the way we look at film are warranted: at the very least, stores selling films should have a "classics" section where films like this are displayed and treated with the respect they deserve. Really, they should be displayed with other films and noted as being more important--slap Bonnie and Clyde next to Fast Five on the shelf with a note: Vin Diesel wouldn't be allowed to carry a gun if this movie didn't happen. At the most extreme level of treating these movies as culturally significant, I think film should start holding more weight in regular school curricula. Not only would this connect to literature--it is hard to find a modern cultural facet more influenced by literature than film--it would provide a basis for understanding so much about our popular culture and social culture, just as literature does. I'm certainly not saying that traditional English classes should be replaced by film studies classes, (even though I do have my own issues with traditional high school English classes,) but I think we're going to begin seeing, if we haven't seen already, film becoming an even more massively important part of our culture--it is very possibly already as important to us as books were important to the centuries before us (please, oh culture lord in media heaven, do not let films replace books.) Film is also a fantastic way to learn about history--there needs to be more emphasis on modern history in schools, as well, and there is no better way to learn about life in a specific time than to watch a film, fictional or non fictional, from then. There are so many cultural references and segments of history that I understand because I had the opportunity to take a film studies class and therefore watch a lot of great films that I may not have watched otherwise--however, not everyone has that opportunity.

Which brings me to my last point, another good thing about Bonnie and Clyde being on sale for five dollars at Wal-Mart. If movies are just as culturally relevant and important as books, then they should be readily available to everyone--even though being buried at the bottom of the five dollar film bin isn't exactly readily available. I'm somewhat appaled that this fantastic film was selling for so little while standing next to some Katherine Heigle formla film being sold for probably four times as much. However, part of me feels like movies this important should be available for free--like classics on Kindle. We are only three years away from the 100 year anniversary of the first full length feature film, meaning, I believe, if it were in book form, it would enter the public domain. It's only so long before lots of influential films gain that status--and should the same idea be applied? Should Itunes advertise free classic flims, to encourage young people to watch them? Should they just advertise them anyways? (yes.) Does making these films cheap make them more accessible or simply lower them to a status below new unimpressive films and next to low budget horror movies? Can any price be put on viewing a piece of culture that affects much of our media today? Is culture truly priceless?

I'm conflicted about it, but regardless: Bonnie and Clyde. In a five dollar bin. Seriously? Get with it, Wal mart and customers.

Also, Faye Dunaway in the sixties. So beautiful. 

MTV Movie awards.../why on earth does this happen

I haven't posted in forever, I'm a terrible blogger, etc, etc, etc.

But the MTV Movie awards just happened, and I have some stuff to say.

I did not watch the movie awards, but while it was happening I happened to look at a live feed online of what movies were winning. And I was upset.

Granted, some good things did happen--for instance, my favorite actress Chloe Grace Moretz winning Best Breakout Star as well as Biggest Badass, two things that are incredibly true. Yay! Also, Emma Stone won for best comedic performance in Easy A, and I love her and that movie as well so that was also good.

HOWEVER.  The thing that really upset me was that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse won Best Movie of the Year.

Wait: it gets worse.

Kristen Stewart also won for best female performance, beating out fellow nominees Emma Stone, Emma Watson, Jennifer Aniston, and Natalie Portman who WON THE OSCAR in case anybody missed that. Just to fill out the prom court in as stereotypical a way as possible, Robert Pattinson also won Best Male Performance,  over his fellow supernatural beings Taylor Lautner and Daniel Radcliffe, but also his fellow teen hearthrob Zac Effron, and, most surprisingly (though should it be?) Jesse Eisenberg. Pattinson and Stewart also won Best Kiss, (triumphing over Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, among others,) and, most upsettingly, Pattinson, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Xavier Samuels won Best Fight. Seriously? Not Chloe Grace Moretz beating the living daylights out of a grown man drug dealer? Not Joseph Gordon-Levitt beating the living daylights out of some guy while upside down? Are you kidding me?

Confession time, I have not seen Eclipse, so I don't know anything about it's merit or lack thereof, but I think it says something very strange about MTV Movie awards. With nominees including multiple Oscar winners as well as two of the most money making themes of the film decade--Harry Potter and Christopher Nolan--it's incomprehensible that Eclipse won nearly fifty percent of the awards. (38%, to be exact, 5 out of 13.)

Some questions come up, one in particular--who decides who wins these things? Who is voting? Is it the MTV audiences? Is it the washed up celebrities who attend the evening?

According to Wikipedia, the "general public" is voting through a link on the MTV website, which now is rather difficult to get to but before the show was probably on display on the  home page. So...it is indeed people who watch MTV who voted for this, but more importantly, people who spend their free time browsin' around the MTV website. ...yeah.  (Note: the nominees are chosen by some apparently arbitrary excecutives at MTV.)

Time to make grand assumptions! I know when I had time to browse around television networks websites, I was about thirteen years old. Maybe fourteen. I know that those years were also the only time in my life where I watched MTV regularly, (oh geez. Not especially regularly. I watched "Next" sometimes on Saturday mornings. I'm not proud. Don't judge me,) and the same goes for my little brother. I also know, or can infer, that it is mostly middle school girls who like Twilight so much, because, as I've said, that is when I liked Twilight.

So...can we extrapolate that MTV's main audience is, in fact, middle school girls? Yes?

Further research should be done on this subject, for MTV's sake, because they mostly advertise to what I can only imagine some statistics have shown is their target audience--college aged people, mostly men, who are not, in fact, in college. Their commercials are mostly for late-night flavored Doritos and Axe that makes you smell like you don't have a hangover and colleges that you can go to online if you pay them hundreds of billions of dollars.

We have some indiscrepancies here. The people voting for these movie things, (the "Golden Popcorn Awards) are so clearly middle schoolers, and yet MTV is perfectly successful targeting its programming towards older people. And I haven't even mentioned TV shows, but perhaps if I look into that i can find a common theme.....

On MTV on any given day (today), we have a healthy helping of "hot" and "Killer" music videos, followed by the Reese Witherspoon chick flick, Uptown Girls (on Sunday, Witherspoon one the MTVMA's equivalent of a lifetime acheivement award.) After that we get into our daily dose of teen pregnancy, with some Teen Mom followed by some Sixteen and Pregnant: Where are they now? (which I thought was the premise of Teen Mom, but whatever.) Next is what appears to be some reruns of Teen Wolf, then a re-run of the awards, then a mixture of Real World XXX, Jackass, That 70's Show,  and just a little bit more Sixteen and Pregnant until midnight.

MTV. Such classy programming for our 12-24 year olds.

The question now is, who is watching these shows? And the answer is easy, but unfortunately leads us in an unpleasant circle of teen romance: the same people who watch twilight, for the most part. Teen Wolf is an immediate Twilight parallel, which was worth giving two hours of afternoon time, and the teen pregnancy shows, more subtly, share the common themes of acting like you're an adult when you're in high school and also having terrible creepy boyfriends. Twlight fans watch MTV, Twilight fans vote for award.

Who are they? I don't know....

also, this is a pretty great and relevant article from the (I think usually) wonderful Film School Rejects. He swears a little bit but articulates his point well...MTV is catering to their target audience, which clearly has to be sixteen year old girls. Regardless, this is upsetting, because not long ago I was a sixteen year old girl and the smart ones should not have the misfortune of being surrounded by people with such dreadful tastes in pop culture and media.

In my opinion.

Just how much can Leonardo di Caprio hallucinate in one year?

Newspaper-style review for my Journalism class: 

It seemed that, in 2010, the bar was set fairly high for films to shock their audiences with extreme realism in animation and special effects or over-the-top plot twists. This, of course, is a brilliant way to have a film become “what everybody is talking about.”

            The best example of this is Christopher Nolan’s Inception, where the audience is left wondering what parts of the movie were simply figments of main character Leonardo DiCaprio’s imagination. But before audiences were left to wonder what scenes in Inception took place in DiCaprio’s head, they were left to wonder which scenes in Shutter Island took place…in DiCaprio’s head.

            Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese, came out in January of 2010, five months before Inception’s high-grossing release. It follows the story of Marshall Teddy Daniels, (played by DiCaprio,) who is sent to an isolated island off the coast of Boston to investigate the escape of a mental patient from a somewhat experimental criminal institution. He is given a new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo,) for the job, and the men trudge through the gray weather of the Atlantic while discussing their military history in thick Bostonian accents. Soon after reaching the island, they learn that things have gone amiss.

            The thing that people talked about most in this movie was the plot twist in the end, which is almost Shyamalan-esque. Scorsese very effectively leads up to this, and setting the audience just a bit off balance throughout the film. Within thirty seconds of reaching the island, DiCaprio and Ruffalo are greeted by guards armed with loaded machine guns. The escaped patient leaves both pairs of her shoes in her room when she flees. All of the patients in the asylum are very clearly reciting their testimonies from a script. And when our dynamic duo tries to leave the island, DiCaprio’s hallucinations of his dead wife, and then a severe hurricane, stop them.

Unfortunately, regardless of the build up, the twist is quite disappointing—in my opinion, the disconnect from the main story is too great and it ends a foul taste to the end of the film. The point of view even changes; throughout the film, we follow along with the adventures of DiCaprio in a series of flashbacks and intense close-ups, but when the twist occurs, the camera turns on a dime and we spend the rest of the film looking, confused and almost accusatorily at the main character.

            The plot arc in the rest of the film is that of a typical psychological horror downward spiral, with his hallucinations of his wife and gory, grainy flashbacks to the German war camps becoming more and more severe as the movie progresses. This is brilliantly foreshadowed, and the central theme of the movie embodied, in a single line: when the local sheriff describes how rigorous the security measures are for “Ward C,” the building for especially violent patients, DiCaprio replies, “You would think insanity was contagious.”

            This, as well as the paranoia that comes with a film taking place in 1954, is what I consider to be the best part of the film. The plot is threaded through with straight-up Cold War crazy, which interacts beautifully with the themes of insanity intrinsic to a film taking place in an asylum. About half way through the film, DiCaprio essentially abandons the task of finding the escaped patient and instead focuses on uncovering the government conspiracy and medical experiments he is convinced are taking place on the island. His lunacy is fed by his post war paranoia that Nazi like experiments are happening at the hospital, and uncited evidence that HUAC is funding the project. Juxtaposed with this is the unwavering hallucinated image of the wife, dressed in a perfectly housewifely yellow dress, and the marshal’s occasional descriptions of and flashbacks to their picturesque suburban life together. The subtext of the movie, which I consider to be much more fascinating than the puzzley plot, exposes the ugly underbelly of paranoia and fear that is such an important part of the era that we remember as I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver.

            Even though Shutter Island and Inception have similarly twisty plots, Leonardo DiCaprio, beautiful cinematography, and hallucinations of tragically dead wives, the former made about half as much money as Nolan’s blockbuster hit. This has a lot to do with the marketing of Shutter Island, and the fact that it’s somewhat in between genres; it has the romance that directors are trying to work into “masculine” movies to appeal to a female audience (plus Leo), it has the plot characteristic of a psychological horror, almost (but just almost,) enough guns and explosions to be an action movie, and enough historical references and implications to be historical fiction—and it was marketed as a slasher.

            However, considering the reputation of Scorsese and the quality of this film, it certainly deserves more credit than it was given when it was released—though the failed attempt at mind-blowing plot twist does take away significantly from the film, it redeems itself with the thoughtful themes of insanity and paranoia. It was over shadowed by Inception, but in terms of plot, visuals, and especially the nearly identical performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, this movie should have earned just as much credit as the Oscar winning box office hit. With the plot twist, this film gets a three out of five stars, but if we were just rating the first hour and forty five minutes, I’d give it a solid four. 

Proma?

My mother should know better than to mention vintage dresses available for my use at eleven thirty on a Wednesday night....

Ohhh yeah

I've heard a lot about this dress--it's one of the favorites that my mother ever wore. We were talking about it this evening (for some reason? Tafetta came up?) and she mentioned, even though I was already making a prom dress, that she and the other bridesmaids who wore this at a wedding had picked out the dress thinking of what it could be used for in the future. 

It is a beautiful dress, and was especially in the eighties--it's a lovely iridescent blue with a triangley waist and a very full skirt. The bodice fits me perfectly. The sleeves, as you can see, are a little ridiculous...but I was given permission to fix them.

Time for an all night sewing fest.

(But first, a bit of irony. Yesterday we recieved the invitation for the second marriage of the man whose first wedding my mom wore this dress too...what? Crazy coincidence.)

Anyways, luckily, the ridiculous sleeves were already on their way out.

That is, indeed, my beautifully manicured thumb...

Pretty much all I had to do was take my handy dandy seam ripper and take those babies off. It was quite nervewracking, taking a seam ripper to a dress that was at one time very expensive...but I did it. For a good cause. My mom gave me permission (though I do worry she will regret it come morning...)

Even more luck came my way regarding the sleeves!

Remember those ridiculous bows on the side? Perhaps you didn't notice. Let me refresh your memory:

Fortunately! They were just strips of fabric sewn on rather flimsily, and I was, again, with the help of my handy dandy seam ripper, able to remove them and turn them into..straps!!

Now, I may take of the bottom, non poofy part of the sleeves and attach them, because I love the idea of a prom dress with sleeves, especially for a girl my size. If you google "prom dress with sleeves," there are approximately .5 results, and any results you do find are only at plus size stores, because apparently the only reason not to expose as much of your skin is possible is if you don't fit societally laudable weight standards...

...Anyways!! Here's the result of my evening labor:

C'est bonne? I like it, it makes me feel very Victorian and elegant. The whole thing needs a little ironing, and I need to find the right sized crioline to put under it, but I think it's a go for prom, aka the only excuse in most people's lives to wear a formal gown besides a wedding. The dress I was making was sophisticated, but not quite over-the-top enough for prom. There's a certain amount of leeway you get as an eighteen year old at an outdated, stereotypical, coming-of-age formal, and I would like to take full advantage of that by wearing a beautiful, but slightly satirical, poofy iridescent dress. Also, my presumed date and I will have been dating for three years at that point, so it's not as if I'm trying to woo anyone...meaning, I can basically wear whatever I want. Nobody to impress here. I will save the classy, red-carpet-esque dresses for professional formals and dinners where I need to make a good impression on potential employers or something. Prom is an opportunity to be a little bit ridiculous. 

Opinions on the gown, s'il vous plait....


Warning: Here are some pictures of me modeling a taffeta sleeve from the eighties as a silly hat.

Happy Valentines Day!--and the evils of the established relationship

As is normally the case with my seasonal blogs, I should absolutely not be writing this right now. I cannot even tell you how many anti establishment compositions I need to be working on right now. My little town is in crisis, and I also picked this week (for some reason?) to create major projects criticizing FIRST Robotics and CollegeBoard.

But you can't be an activist all the time...

I've been planning on writing this since November but saved it specially for today...

Ah well, here it goes!

I can watch slasher movie after slasher movie, watch group after stereotypical group of teenaged characters snuffed off in the prime of their lives, and never does it bother me emotionally. I am able enough, I suppose, to separate myself from them that I don't associate them with myself or my friends at all. It simply doesn't get to me, the characters are too fake and too annoying, the special effects in the deaths are just too interesting for me to be preoccupied with who is actually getting killed and how it will affect the plot.

But sit me down in front of a romantic comedy, and I'm a mess. I constantly vicariously fall for the quirky friend, the inevitable formulaic fight or break up always has me in tears. You can have the most stereotypical characters in the world; if that boyfriend dies, I'm sobbing and sending unnecessarily sappy text messages to my own. 

I've psychoanalyzed myself a lot over this one, because I think it's wicked stupid, but I can't figure it out--I'm in a wonderful relationship. Perhaps it is because relationships are like squirrels, and though I've only been in approximately one and a half relationships, I've basically been in all relationships, so I can't help relate to the characters in romantic movies....? No, that's nonsense. Maybe because I have so many guy friends, they cover all the archetypes, so any character I subconsciously relate to one of them, and their sadness makes me sad? Also stupid. 

Regardless, for this reason, I don't watch a ton of movies with a ton of romance. But I have noticed a serious trend. I could be wrong...but I'm not. No I'm not. 

(Name that anti-love song!)

The trend is, to be in a relationship, you must face each other and form a diagonal line across the screen from left to right.

The established relationship is never good. The established boyfriend, or girlfriend, is always, always the bad guy, whether they are bad or not.

Innumerable movies have used this trick. When Harry Met Sally is the prime example of this, with Harry's girlfriend being kind of trashy in the beginning, his wife (?) leaving him unfairly, Sally's fiancee leaving her...all very tragic. Enchanted is the second movie that comes to mind, since I watched it last week--Patrick Demsey's fiancee at the beginning of this movie is played as an antagonist throughout the film. Legally Blonde--same situation, or should I say "sitch," while I'm talking about painfully sororitorial (made up that word) movies. Reese Witherspoon's fiancee at the beginning of the movie is, again, played as a bad guy. The Exploding Girl (which I've only watched the first fifteen minutes of, the friends becoming romantically inclined situation was so overwhelming,) is based around it entirely. They use it in Over Her Dead Body, which, I have, shamefully watched. Life Without Dick, a fantastic comedy that I highly recommend, has the fiancée-to-be as a less moral character than the mobster who Sarah Jessica Parker falls in love with. Mean Girls does it. Last week I watched The Postman Always Rings Twice (bonus points to whoever can explain that movie to me,) where the husband is controlling and repressive, the only thing keeping the gorgouses Lara Turner and John Garfield apart. You Can Count On Me uses it as a sub plot. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World uses it. Even my very favorite movie besides Behind the Mask, But I'm a Cheerleader, uses it by having the main character's boyfriends be one of the things holding her back from discovering her sexuality (but that one's a little different.) Horror movies use it a lot, but mainly to different ends and lesser degrees: House of Wax, Grace, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010,) and, most notably, Scream. "There's always some stupid bullsh*t reason to kill your girlfriend."

The diagonal line can start at any point on the screen, as long as it moves down and to the right

Books do it too--last week I read The Great Gatsby, with the villian as the main girl's husband. They use it on TV, in horribly written and painfully acted sitcoms and soap operas  like Full House (DJ/Nelson/Viper love triangle,) Saved By the Bell (the costume party episode that I've only seen the last fifteen minutes of,) Secret Life of the American Teenager, (every season, every episode,) Greek, Eight Simple Rules, One Tree Hill, Family Matters, as well as fantastic, stand out shows like The Office, Gilmore Girls, Soap, Party Down, Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, Dexter, That 70's Show House, Scrubs...the list goes on. I haven't got around to watching every sitcom. There are probably, at the very least, over a hundred examples. There are also a lot of movies I haven't seen that I know use it--Leap Day, Sex and the City Two, Made of Honor, The Truth About Love....

It's pretty obvious as to why this is such a common formula. Change is sexy. Your life is boring. People are going to want to watch two people overcome a stifling relationship to get together than just get together. People don't want to see a happy couple stay happy, or overcome some challenges then get happy again. Boooooring. Stuff like that  happens in real life, why should we care if it happens in movies? It's not like fiction reflects life, or anything like that...

If the relationship is more light, you may stand a maximum of four feet apart, providing you still form the diagonal line

I think it's pretty detrimental to our society's perception of relationships in a lot of ways. First, look at the descriptions of those movies up there--and look at how many of them have the established significant other engaged to the main character. Engagement is no small potatoes. When you're engaged, it's not a good thing, it's not romantic to suddenly re-meet your high school fling or flirt with your co-workers to the point that you're madly in love with them instead. 

To make this acceptable, movies have to turn the established fiancee into a bad guy, usually by taking normal traits that come from a personality in a long term relationship and blowing them out of proportion or putting them in a negative light. They are practical and safe, (boring, unadventurous, dull,) they are protective (controlling, jealous, overprotective,) they are relaxed and comfortable in the relationship, (they no longer care enough to shave their legs or give constant compliments.) They are normal. You are used to them. They are easy and accessible--we only want what we can't have. And, of course, they're usually perfect for your best friend.

Alternatively, standing far apart could add more dramatic sexual tension

By doing this, I believe that movies and other media give people the idea that when they see these traits in their significant others, they are bad. I don't think that's true at all, even though I fall for their trickery myself all the time. I've recognized that it is, indeed, trickery, so I can see it coming and not fight with my boyfriend when he wants more attention from me than the random hot girl in one of my classes who I don't know, or he tries less hard to impress me than someone who I'm not dating who may think I'm cute. But do those of us who don't analyze the effects of media on society and societal expectations avoid this successfully? The world may never know. 

Unless it listens to me. I don't think they do. 

Not to mention, the time that movies usually aim at--the engagement--is, (source needed,) usually the most vulnerable part of a long term relationship, I'd imagine. People get doubts and cold feet, and it's kind of terrible for this plot formula to reinforce it. Heck, I'd be willing to say that people get doubts and cold feet at least in part because of stories like this. Romantic comedy says that by proposing, your boyfriend forced you into marriage before you were ready; they say the fact that your fiancee is a little neurotic about wedding planning means she's too up tight for you; they say that it is okay to kiss that guy in the coffee shop, because your evil fiancee exists to keep you away from his pretty eyes.

If the colors on opposite sides of the screen contrast, you get bonus points

That is the next way I think these movies negatively impact our perception of relationships--it emphasizes our societal expectation that men and women can't be friends. I'm not making this up, even--I just read an article from Psychology Today not an two hours ago saying that When Harry Met Sally was one of the major setbacks in the societal acceptance of cross-sex relationships in our society. Movies that use this formula really emphasize the fact that men and women can only have sexual relationships, and that is something I just don't agree with at all. Harry met Sally is obviously the most important example of this, (I think it's just the most important romantic comedy,) but almost everybody does it--Legally Blonde, Life Without Dick, You Can Count On Me, Secret Life of the American Teenager, The Office, Party Down, Parks and Recreation, Scrubs, House, and That 70's Show (Eric is in a long term relationship--Jackie Berkheart dates every single male main character by the end of the series. [yes I do watch that much 70's show don't judge me.]) In the movieverse, attractive men and attractive women must always have sex, always. Also in the movieverse, you cannot date someone, break up, and then "Just be friends." Which makes you wonder what happens after the movie ends--once the girl breaks things off with her husband-to-be and settles in to a relationship with new pretty eyes...does the original long term relationship just end entirely? Is a friendship that lasted, presumably, months or years simply over forever and ever? Or does the movie simply replay it self in reverse once pretty eyes starts leaving the cap off the toothpaste and original established relationship starts trying to woo again? 

These are some of my favorite movies and tv shows, but come on guys--really? Have you never had a friend of the opposite gender?

In rare situations, if you are in a clever indie movie, the girl may be on the higher end of the diagonal line

In my very limited relationship experience, which I don't entirely want to explain, I have proved and disproved many of these movieverse concepts.The fact that I know that says a lot about how much these formulas reflect our perceptions of relationship. As I mentioned, I often fall victim to seeing good, normal traits in my long-term boyfriend as negative traits. However, I also have a plethora of good looking and sensitive male friends who I have no desire to have any sort of romantic relationship with. 

On the other hand, my first boyfriend or...whatever was a close friend of mine who I swore, from as early as first grade (that is how far down in age these concepts permeate,) that I would never date or like like because not all girls and boys had to like like each other just to normally like each other. Just to prove another movieverse concept, in our short relationship I managed to coincidentally meet another guy who I started dating immediately after my first boyfriend or...whatever and I broke up. 

However, I have now managed to escape the wiliness of the romantic comedy concept. My friend and I have recovered from our small, weird stint as boyfriend and girlfriend, and now have a lovely, non awkward relationship that would probably make for a really terrible movie. My current boyfriend and I are celebrating our third valentines day together (except we don't ever celebrate valentines day because it's stupid, like formulaic plots,) and our only place in mass media would be as Donna and Eric on 70's Show. Except without pot and with more legos. But I do have to consciously avoid thinking I'm in a romantic comedy: no, just because that girl asked you for help on her math homework doesn't mean she likes you; no, your boyfriend is not preventing you from doing whatever you want to, you just made up that entire conversation; no, you are not falling in love at minute seven of the movie you aren't in just because that guy has some quirky thing in common with you.

If you REALLY want to be out there, the line may go THE OTHER DIRECTION!

 The screenwriter of some terrible romcom is in my brain, and if you're a seventeen-year-old eighteen-year-old girl who's been exposed to any pop culture, I bet there's one in your brain, too.

Gracious, with this and the Twilight principle, our generation is pretty ruined on relationships.....

Happy Valentines Day!

<3<3<3<3