Guys, I hate to say this, but I think I may have to bow out of most movie nights now.
For one thing, I somehow stopped watching movies altogether while in Turkey. I saw exactly three movies in the theater there, all of which were with super analytical people who enjoyed long post-viewing debrief sessions in which we analyzed the selective portrayals of various cities and critiqued the political ideologies put forward in the movies. Yeah, fun right?
Romantic comedies were out. A couple cheesy musicals were in. Action and sci fi were altogether forgotten. And just like when I stopped drinking soda in college and discovered that it now makes me sick, Hollywood movies are something I no longer handle well.
I simply can't relax and enjoy them at face value anymore. Having sat through a fair number of screenings in foreign countries where I was the only one laughing at jokes, or memorably the only person in a Taiwanese theater who didn't gasp in shock when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at the beginning of National Treasure 2, I now watch every film through the lens of what someone in another country might learn about the United States from it. Trust me, most of it isn't stuff we really want to be advertising, and Hollywood paints a larger-than-life caricature of our country that horrifies anyone lacking the context of reality to highlight the exaggerations.
The last couple action flicks I sat through left me cold for other reasons besides the idea that everyone in the States carries guns. Maybe I'm getting old, but I see an increasing resemblance to video games in the disregard for human life and chaos, the ability to kill without consequence, deaths that draw cheers or laughs.
The thing is, I spent my time abroad intentionally attaching names and faces to statistics, building stories and images behind things that were just footnotes in my readings before. I've intentionally tried to break down my own stereotypes about other groups and learn to see people as individuals with complex backgrounds, motivations, and ideas instead of part of a faceless "other" group. I spent time with marginalized groups trying to understand who they were and train myself not to see people as expendable nobodies.
One pitfall of this is now at church when we pray for the military personnel in harm's way, I secretly add a prayer for the people on the other end of our military's guns. Maybe that's not a character flaw, but certainly not something I bring up often because it leads to political discussions I don't want.
The other downside is that I'm now a total buzzkill at the movies. Last night my brother poked me 2/3 of the way through Red 2 and said, "You aren't enjoying this, are you?" Not one bit. That movie was one of the most inhumane I can recall in recent memory. If there's one thing I can't stand in movies, it's collateral damage, and the movie seemed to have no problem killing off every single extra as the leads delivered one-liners eliciting chuckles from the audience. It galled me. I was still mourning the loss of the first three casualties so easily disposed of, wondering if they had families to support or plans to meet someone for dinner, when another ten were gunned down. A gunshot death was played for laughs when the incompetent heroine fired blindly and hit a guy in the background while another character said, "Of course she gets a gun. This is America!" Get it? Because we...uh...give guns to people who don't know how to use them?
The loss of human life can make people laugh. Seriously. Needless to say, by the time the heroes saved humanity from "terrorists" and blew up a nuclear weapon in the middle of a freaking city [cue happy music and Bruce Willis kissing his girl in celebration as radiation leaks everywhere], I think they'd already killed enough random civilians to be classified as terrorists themselves.
The protagonists tromped through four different countries, destroying hundreds of cars and buildings along the way. After watching them tear up a convenience store in Moscow and then walk away without any consequences, I actually got really sad thinking about the poor guy whose business they just ruined.
"That's what insurance is for!" my brother said afterwards, trying to get me to shut up.
"Maybe not in Russia!" I said.
Cricket chirp.
They probably caused more damage than the scene from Team America parodying how much damage American movie heroes do in the process of killing the bad guy.
I know, I know, I'm not supposed to think about this during a Hollywood blockbuster. But to me, that's exactly the problem. I have to shut off my empathy system and focus on how much fun Bruce Willis and Co. are having, not about all the human beings who lost their lives and property in the process.
And that's not a part of myself I want to shut off anymore. I'm done with action movies.
That'll probably make me a total downer to be around, taking stuff too seriously that's supposed to be mindless, bloody, violent fun.
Oh well. I'll find other ways to have fun.
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