Escapism

I watch movies for the same reason that I read books - to be taken away to another world.

I had a friend who was so analytical about everything, he could take the fun out of it without really trying. For example, Barbie. Yeah, I know, there is so much material there to shred that it isn't even a challenge. But me being a biology and him being uber-analytical, there was, I am ashamed to admit, a 20 minute conversation on the dimensions and unreal image of Barbie.

Why, I am still unsure just how we got on that topic, or why we followed through with it, and I don't remember where we went from there.

But I remember all too well the way he systematically shredded everything to do with Barbie, one piece at a time, and my own contributions to the conversation. It was like a verbal horror movie. In auditory technicolor.

Now how does that relate to movies? Hang with me, I am getting there.

As I said, I like movies to escape, to relax, to just be.

To understand, you really have to know me. See, I am high strung on the best of days. I live on stress and chaos. Which, lucky for me, my household provides all too well. (Read: Teenage daughter!)

So when I watch a movie, I don't want to sit and pick apart every aspect of it, reducing it to a mental pile of flesh color plastic like that poor Barbie. Instead, I want a story to be told in such a way that I can just relax in to it, allow it to captivate me, and when it ends, I want to have the wish for a sequel, maybe not to the same storyline, but set in the same universe. Because I want to go there again. And again.

That doesn't mean that I will ignore plotholes and issues. But sometimes, if they are not so glaring that I have to stop watching because I am turning into a Barbie analyzer, I can gloss over them.

To me, that is how movies should influence books, and vice versa, and how both play into the art of storytelling. With a good book, I can gloss over some faint issues. So they didn't really bathe daily in historical Scotland, and they probably smelled much like their horses and sheep. So what ... I can ignore that bit of fancy that the author put in to make their characters more likable. But putting a machine gun in the hands of a 1600's highland cheiftain? Um ... no.

I think that is why I am struggling to hard with the idea of Steampunk. I know it is the latest craze, but I am finding it too much of a suspension of disbelief. I know it is an "alternate" reality, but I just can't get in to. The storytelling of the novels I have read so far hasn't been enough to draw me in, with one exception.

Which is why as much as I love some genres of story-telling, there are some movies I shy away from. I know, just from the prebiews, comments, and reviews, that it will but right up against my suspension of disbelief wall and crash and burn.

So it is better than I not waste my time.

The storytelling of the writer, direction, whatever, just isn't a type that I mesh well with.

But man alive, give me a movie or a book that I can loose myself in, and I willing to let it happen. I love to emerse myself into the storyteller's universe and let them sweep me away.