We all know the situation: too tired to do anything challenging or engaging, but not quite ready to toddle off to bed. That was me last night. I solved the problem the usual way, by flipping through the TV channels and finally consulting the on-demand free movie selection.
I chose a flick from the late 1980s that was described as telling the story of a young man who rescues a young woman from a dastardly cad and then discovers her to be something other than he thought. The movie quickly revealed itself as barely removed from a made-for-TV job. The “star” was Tim Daly, from the popular TV sitcom “Wings”, a pleasant actor with a good figure, a crinkly smile, spiffy hair, and a rather oversized jaw. The young woman who turns out to be something other than he thought was played by a young woman, I didn’t catch the name, with globoid boobs, a thin-lipped smile, frizzy hair, and a regular-sized jaw.
I lasted about 20 minutes before heading for the sack.
The movie elicited only one reaction from me: Tim Daly was wearing too much pancake makeup. Perhaps his pretty-boy complexion wasn’t silky enough for the camera, or perhaps he hadn’t been getting out in the sun enough. His shirt collar must have been a gucky mess after five minutes.
Actually, I had another reaction as well: how economical the film was, consisting of one set (Tim Daly’s suburban house) and exteriors courtesy of some nameless modern city.
But I had no reactions concerning 1) the plot, 2) the characters, or 3) the eventual outcome, because 1) it’s just a story that somebody made up and 2) those are just paid actors reciting lines and hitting their marks and 3) the outcome is made up so I can make up my own version if I want. Furthermore, there isn’t anything actually there — no people, no characters, no nothing. It’s an arrangement of light accompanied by sounds. Nothing wrong with that, to be sure, but nothing to become involved with, either.
As I get older, I am less able to tolerate fiction in any form — written or visual. That’s not because I don’t like it, but because my mind has become ever more resistant to the willing suspension of disbelief (WSOB) that is essential for fiction of any sort to work. The onscreen (or onstage) characters don’t acquire that spurious reality that makes fictional folk so compelling. I’m always aware that they’re actors, that they’re on a set or in front of a blue screen, that they have memorized the words they’re speaking, that they’re moving as the director has told them to move, that they’re repeating the scene for the twentieth or more time, that their speaking voices were recorded months later in a soundproofed room, that they’re slathered in makeup and/or prosthetics, that underneath their costumes are jockey shorts, sweat guards, and/or maxi-pads, that just out of camera range is a Levis-and-hoodie-clad crew and a bunch of electronics and a side table sporting a coffeemaker, mugs, sugar, non-dairy creamer, and little plastic stir-straw-thingies. I’m always coughing up objections, not because I’m a nitpicker per se but because the story remains stubbornly artificial to my mind, a made-up something written by somebody or somebodies. A zombie should bite off her hands BEFORE ripping out her throat, I think, otherwise she’ll use her hands to protect herself. Or even worse: Sheeesh, just have Emilia tell Othello that SHE has the damn handkerchief! I suppose that provides me with a bit of entertainment in its own way, but it isn’t really what the filmmakers had in mind.
I just finished reading Roger Ebert’s Your Movie Sucks, a collection of his negative reviews since about the year 2000. Ebert is one of those rare critics who brings a robust sense of humor to his pans, maybe not quite in the same league as Dorothy Parker (“This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly — it should be thrown with great force”) but respectably witty nonetheless. He frequently bewails the notion of some poor unsuspecting sap wasting two hours of life on a piece of cinematic dreck. I can well understand how that might motivate Mr. Ebert to steer people away from a particular stinker of a movie.
But I have an even better idea: avoid the risk altogether and just don’t go to the damn things at all. Nobody forces you to see a movie, either in a theater or on TV. It is presumed to be a pleasurable act but more often than not serves to fill time that might be otherwise empty. But what happens if one removes that option? No fiction whatsoever: no movies, no TV shows, no novels, no comic books. Why fill your mind with silly, made-up stories? Can one just swear it all off?
I should think so. Consider that I am utterly and completely unenthusiastic about stand-up comedy. I find it depressing. So comedy clubs aren’t on my radar for an evening’s entertainment, nor are comedians on TV. I don’t go, I don’t watch, I have never missed it and I never will. Or opera: I could easily refrain from seeing or hearing another opera for the rest of my life. I haven’t seen a TV sitcom since I was a teenager and so obviously I wouldn’t miss those. Nor have I ever watched a reality TV show. I saw about 30 seconds of a bitch-judge show (“real” people bring their “real” cases before a “real” judge) and turned it off with a quick shudder of revulsion. Crime shows, popular again as they were when I was a kid, are OK I suppose, but there’s nothing really there worth bothering with. It isn’t crime, criminals, crime scene investigation, or punishment: it’s all just made up out of thin air.
The upshot is that I’m considering a personal experiment: no fiction of any sort for, say, one full year. Only non-fiction books — fully allowing that “non-fiction” can be more blatant moonshine than the latest teenage-vampire crap — and news, public affairs, cooking & nature & science shows, etc., on TV. No movies, on TV or in theaters. (That last is a piece of cake given that I step foot in a movie theater maybe twice a year, if that.) No theater, not that I go very much anyway, and no opera, ditto.
I’m a bit reluctant to take the plunge — it will be pointless without thorough commitment — but the idea continues to percolate and entice. Consider it a kind of purification, or purge. The entire notion smacks of dour Puritanism, or monasticism. But it could bear fruit, nonetheless, including a rekindling of that old-time WSOB.