Two conversations I had this weekend

[effex]

Talking to my roommate (to be know henceforth as 'Dee') about the Rock Your Body Politic event:

Dee: You know, I didn't realize how far inside the gay bubble we are.
Me: What?
Dee: There were a lot of people at the show that were confused by Something Fabulous and Jenna Sky [a queer dance group led by a drag queen] - kept asking me if she was a transvestite, what was going on, etc.
Me: That's... that's strange.
Us: [blah blah queer community, blah blah gender performance]
Dee: Oh, but the best part! There was this indie music blog that reviewed the show - they wrapped up the article with something like 'and who knew gay crossdressing entertainers liked Lady Gaga?'
Me: AHAHAHAHA
Dee: I know!

And today I had a chat about movies with the checkout guy at the grocery store - he asked me if I'd seen anything good lately and I told him I'd seen Sherlock Holmes a couple of times.

Checkout Guy: Oh, but that's a terrible movie!
Me: What?
CG: It's all wrong! It's all explosions and action when it's supposed to be a mystery. And Holmes is supposed to be addicted to cocaine, not to women.
Me: ...have you seen the movie?

He had not! I told him that there was, in fact, a mystery, that Holmes is seen drinking cocaine and is high on a number of occasions, and does not actually sleep with multiple women. Then I asked him if he'd seen anything he'd liked.

CG: My favorite movie out right now is Avatar. Have you seen it?
Me: Oh. Um, no - I'm not really interested.
CG: It won a Golden Globe award. It's good!
Me: I... I hear the graphics are very shiny.
CG: It's more then the graphics - it has a really compelling plot, too.
Me: I hear it compared to Ferngully a lot.
CG: Oh no, it's more like Dances With Wolves or Last of the Mohicans.
Me: Yeah, the whole 'white dude joins the tribe to save the natives' narrative really doesn't do anything for me.
CG: It's not like that at all! I mean, he goes in to destroy the aliens. Really, the movie it's most like is Princess Mononoke. But most people haven't heard of that one.
Me: I've seen it.
Me: ...
Me: ...and there's just no way that can possibly be true.

And then I paid and left, before things got really awkward.

Comments

[kaigou]

I don't think he saw the same Princess Mononoke that I saw. Or maybe in his reality, Princess Mononoke was a very very different movie.

[effex]

He said something about forest spirits and a 'guy coming into a mining town' but I was too stunned to pay closer attention. You could write a book on the ways they are totally different movies. For instance, *one* of them is a good film!

[mllesays]

I amused myself quite a bit the other day by running around the halls at work loudly intoning, "Dances with Wolves IN SPAAAAACE."

But seriously, I'm glad to hear there's someone else out there who hasn't seen Avatar for the same reason I haven't seen it.

[effex]

You are not alone! There are lots of us, particularly in the feminist/social justice/people with taste blogosphere who called it out for the train wreak it is... just not enough to stop it from getting a Golden Globe.

[zvi]

Gah. It is quite distressing when people can make the connection to other problematic narratives and go whoosh right past the part where what they have in common are their problems.

[effex]

It was a very surreal moment - just, yes! It is just like those movies. And that is not a good thing.

[cimorene]

Well... it did have a disproportionate amount of action, I guess? I mean, there's actually plenty of fighting in canon, but in the stories it usually occurs offscreen page. The explosions, though, that wasn't disproportionate at all! Explosions are totally canon. It's just usually Holmes causing all of them himself. By accident.

Although there obviously is quite a lot of mystery in the movie, I guess it's easy enough to see how you could have failed to realize that if you'd only heard the pop culture hype about it.

Hahhahaha, also, it's not like Ferngully, but it is like Dances With Wolves and Last of the Mohicans? Again... how is that possible?

[effex]

Yeah, I will not deny that it was chock-full of actiony goodness. And mostly it serves the plot, but not always (ship scene, I'm looking at you). And maybe the trailers don't play up the mystery aspect, I don't remember, I was too distracted by the shiny. But 'Holmes is supposed to be addicted to cocaine, not women!' took me totally off guard (and is possibly one of my new favorite sentences).

Maybe he doesn't remember Ferngully clearly? Because they're pretty much exactly the same movie.

[elspethdixon]

It's more then the graphics - it has a really compelling plot, too.

Clearly, he did not see the same painfully predictable, cliche-laden Dances With Smurfs movie my family seriously contemplated walking out of. Because "compelling plot" is not how I'd describe it.

He also didn't see the same Princess Mononoke that I saw. (And what does he mean, it wasn't like Ferngully? It had exactly the same humans come and destroy tropical paradise because of greed, but sensitive white guy main character learns how evil that is and tries to stop them plot. Except without the inexplicably white faries living in Australia aspect or the talking bat. Or the female lead character with agency).

[effex]

...maybe he lives in a different universe, one where Avatar really is a masterpiece and comparable to Princess Mononoke. And Ferngully was about, idk, killer plants.