Favorite 200-comment post of the year:
Fiction is a dangerous addiction, and I’m hooked.
Fiction warps our sense of reality, engenders a sense of entitlement and fosters narcissism.
I see this in the way everyone wants “closure”. Where did we get this concept of “closure”? 75 years ago, nobody ever even knew what it was, much less wanted it. Now our lives are a series of subplots that need to be wrapped up before the denouement.
We all see ourselves as the stars of our own movies, and the people around us as supporting characters. Some people are guiltier of this than others. I used to know an aspiring writer whom I couldn’t stand to be around, because I could see in his eyes the role he expected me to play in the story of his life. I’m not a minor character in his story! I’m the protagonist in mine!
We are so much more sophisticated now than we were before media saturation (pre-TV), but I’ll bet about 90% of them aren’t our own experiences. Think about the major events of the past 30 years, the assassination of JFK, the Challenger explosion, 9-11…we all know what we were doing or where we were when they happened, and we can describe how we felt, but very few of us were THERE. If something of that magnitude had happened in, say, 1900, it would have been at least a few days before we’d heard about it, and I doubt the visceral impact would have been the same.
I’m thinking about this because I don’t know how much of what my expectations out of life are actually based on what I see around me, or what I’ve assimilated from what I’ve read or seen. My expectations of high school were based on TV (hugely disappointed). There are several million women who’s romantic expectations are based on Meg Ryan movies: the “meet cute”, the pursuit, the “getting together” and living happily-ever-after, all the while hijinx ensue. How often does that really happen? Shockingly, I have little perspective on the matter.
I was never allowed to watch TV much as a kid, which meant I was obsessed with it. My mom knew which kids had the best home-entertainment setup based on how much and how often I wanted to go over to their houses (“Mom, can I go to Margie Nilsson’s house?” “Why, does she have a new VCR?”).
As a sidebar, now that I think about it, things haven’t changed that much over the years, have they, Pat and Daryl?.
Anyhow, as a result, I’ve become a big media nerd. I’ve rated over 250 films on NetFlix, and those are just the ones I’ve actually seen from beginning to end.
The most vivid image I remember from when I was little (a man running and stepping on a giant egg, smashing it) turns out to have been a scene from an old Tom Baker Dr. Who episode (I don’t remember the name, it’s the “I deny this reality!” one. Whovians, feel free to chime in on that.). My dad was a huge fan in his 30’s.
So, what if all the things I expect out of life are just based on old sitcoms? Someday, will the proverbial man at the back of the room stand up and yell, “That’s not a values system, that’s an old ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ episode!”?
Bonus question: what will play over the closing credits of your life? The top choices for me, depending on how the next 50-or-so years go: TMBG’s “Space Suit”, Billy Holiday singing “God Bless the Child”, Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” (instrumental only), something off Ornette Coleman’s 1959 “Something Else!” album, or (forgive me for being cheesy) Moby’s “Porcelain” (also instrumental only).
10:37:25 AM 
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