Just a quick little heads up- I sat down to write today, with no particular agenda, just that I knew something needed to be purged- the resulting post is below, and will probably make little to no sense to anyone. I have taken in so much e-crack in the last few days it appears as though I am unable to relate cohesive thoughts! Feel free to skip it and come back another day!
So, I have been a bit TV obsessed lately. I'm one of those odd people who is easily amused but I also have a REALLY short attention span- so I do not generally get hooked on TV shows, rarely does a movie engage me enough that I will stay awake for the whole thing, comedies aren't generally as funny to me as they are to others, and I am what some might call a pop culture moron. What can I say, I live under a rock most of the time and I am good with that- even though it does seem highly annoying to my friends who are forever explaining things I guess I 'should know'.
I mentioned in my last post that I began watching the Star Wars movies- this was a serious shocker to those close to me, especially when I revealed that I had paid enough attention to have a general idea of the plot line and characters. While watching the first three movies (whatever the hell you call them, not the prequels) I got this feeling like I had seen the story line before. Where, where had I seen it? As I searched around the incredibly murky waters of my memory it hit me- Oedipus! Holy shit, I learned this story in undergrad. Those fucking Greeks. They pop up everywhere... the story line is so similar its laughable.
I remember wading through thousands of pages of reading when studying the Classics in undergrad- like thousands of pages a week. I also specifically remember wondering what in the holy fuck I was supposed to get out of all this information while sprinting through it at such a breakneck pace. My prof at the time (who later turned out to be an amazing mentor) kept telling me that I would find the themes of the stories we were studying everywhere for the rest of my life, I rolled my eyes at her and thought that she was full of shit.
As I have mentioned before, I stayed away from Star Wars for a long time, mainly because I thought it was some boring sci-fi movie with a cult nerd following. Through the convincing of one such nerd, I gave it a chance and found myself not only amused, but intrigued... once I put together the Oedipus commonality I started to realize that my prof may have been right- the themes of the Classics are everywhere, and depending on how they are presented and packaged, they seem to have a universal appeal.
My latest obsession is the FX series Sons of Anarchy. The appeal to this show is a bit more obvious for me, at least on the surface. Ever since I was a child I have been obsessed with all things mob related, and the outlaw deal fits perfectly in with that theme. SOA is modeled after Shakespear's Hamlet, this is no secret, even the show's writers will admit that. And I have to admit, just as Lucas was brilliant to select the Oedipus plot line for his Star Wars, the creators of SOA were ingenious in using Hamlet. There are elements to these story lines that made them classics to begin with- they hold universal appeal to the human psyche.
The universal themes are apparent- friendship, family, loyalty, but also a desire for certainty and one's own truth. What has always intrigued me is- how these appeal to the human psyche... In essence, how is it that I could connect and appreciate these stories while millions of others do the same... do we have the same connections? The Mr. Rogers mentality would have you believe not. If we are all unique individuals, how could millions of us possibly share the same connections- how could one storyline have such mass appeal? Let's be clear here, I know I am a weirdo. Many people watching these movies and shows have no idea why they are hooked- normal people probably do not sit around contemplating themes and meanings. I am guessing that most people take these things for what they are- entertainment. But, I have never claimed to be normal, these are the weird things that swim around in the fish bowl that is my brain on a day to day basis.
GET TO THE POINT ALREADY. I know, I am a rambler. But if you haven't got it by now, this is the place I record all my weird little ponderings in hopes that someday they will make even a bit of sense to me!
I think my point, for now at least, is that there is such thing as universal connection. There will always be commonalities to build from, as opposed to differences to splinter off from (both view points are expressed almost to the point of exhaustion in SOA). Focus on commonalities or differences is nothing new either- we have shifted back and forth from one to the other for literally thousands upon thousands of years... There comes a point where shattering one another for differences gets old and humanity goes through a period of unification, only to swing back around and try to categorize one another into boxes yet again. I think that is why I chose to study the history of everything back in undergrad, because I wanted to know what those patterns were in order to be more aware of them in present day. That is also why I ramble on with seemingly random thoughts... they are all interconnected somehow, but until I get those connections on the human, and even more so, on the personal level- I am doomed to repeat the same silly patterns of my own past.
