I spend some of my “entertainment credits” to shore up my cultural understanding of the country I live in, the United States. It is still study… it is still doing my work.
I read books you had to read in high school, and I find that they are really good books.
I watch shows that you watched, read nursery rhymes.
I am watching Twin Peaks.
It’s a cult classic, and I am learning a lot from it.
I learn that to be a cult movie, it has to be consistently weird. Like The Big Lebowski or really many of the Coen Brothers movies. The movie, Being John Malkovich.
But Twin Peaks takes it to a whole new level of weird. I am not talking of the surreal elements, those are just silly props. I am talking about people being themselves. Stupid, naive, self-centered, living in their made up universe… illustrations to “you live in a world of your own design”, having very little of your map of reality and reality have in common… all very funny and all very commonplace… but here made weird, so you can see it.
Through adding weirdness it is now clearly visible, that most things we watch have a soothing, unreal corrective lens on them, because I have a hunch that Twin Peaks’ representation of reality, the reality of human behavior, is closer to how it is.
I am starting to see how ridiculous I was as a girl, how ridiculous our projects were, how narrow our cone of vision was, and how we had no idea how stupid we were.
Or are…
I have two mood phases to my life, alternating. It has always been this way.
It used to be: depressed/manic alternate. Both forceful and violent and restless.
Now it is “nothing is going on, all is ok”, and “everything is hilariously funny.”
I am in the funny phase. Twin Peaks is a good match for my mood. The series has been one of the most clarifying additions to my education. Helping me have the one side of my mouth laughing, the other is crying Janus face.
I can see the ridiculousness of it all. The futility of it all. Without the associated manic overtones, or depressed overtones.
It is just ridiculous and futile.
Some countries are more truthful in their depiction of their citizenry than others, like England is more likely to show ineptness, than an American movie.
Americans exaggerate to hide the truth, maybe, except, the movie makers I have already mentioned.
Other countries just lie. Whitewash. Ugly.
Humor, real humor, is showing what everyone could see but what is glossed over. That is very funny, in its unexpectedness.
Life the way we live it is so twisted, so warped, so unnatural, that if and when I am in my “funny” phase, I laugh a lot. Not a happy laughter, although laughing is very good. More like a laughter of being tickled… has pain on the bottom of it.
Just try to get tickled: you’ll know what I am talking about.
If I could bring my ability to see weird to and ability to show weird, I could have a cult following. This is now an area of learning for me.
I am becoming better in one-on-one conversations. The rest of life, my writing, for example, are still on the dead serious side.
I wonder if I could start looking for a mentor.
I am sure it would not make more people grow… but I suspect, I would have more fun… in addition to learning.
PS: Truth sayers, unless they are weird and make it funny, are not popular. Ayn Rand, a famous truth sayer is wildly unpopular. And even the people he puts on the pedestal in his books shy away from loving her, because being liked, accepted, popular, and not weird is so important…
Except our esteemed president who doesn’t know he is weird… and thus is the weirdest of all.
Half the world love him (the dumber ones) and the other half hates him (the ones a tad less dumb, but still very dumb ones).
I told you: it is hilarious and futile… all at the same time.
no. I abandoned the show…
Sophie have you seen the new season yet?