Narrative and Ideology (& Recess)

In college, I took a senior seminar called "Narrative and Ideology," a typically generic liberal arts college title belying a typically iconoclastic liberal arts college curriculum: watching 80s movies and analyzing them for the hidden ideologies buried in the narratives.

It was the kind of course that had undergraduates swooning: using the tools of semiology to dissect cultural artifacts that didn't seem like they should be on the syllabus. Why bother reading Karl Marx when you can just use Ferris Buller as the embodiment of the logic of late capitalism?

Not to say that our professor was a bloodless academic.

After we spent three hours interrogating Pretty Woman for its trafficking in the hoary cliche of the whore with a heart [hoart?] of gold, our professor told us that his dad, a well-educated emigrant doctor, still like the movie because it was a nice fairy tale. The director Gary Marhsall seemed to be admit as much when he confessed, "I [do] recess."

Which brings me to two recent Ryan Gosling films: Drive and Crazy Stupid Love. Both strike as two sides to the same coin of why we watch movies.

Drive is the sleek subversion of the masquerade of the Hollywood fairytale. It almost demands to be added to the curricula of future film studies courses. It is also quite good, I might add. The kind of movie that has you thinking about it weeks later.

In contrast, Crazy Stupid Love is… well, stupid. Everything about it feels false. The plot is filled with implausible contrivances. Nobody speaks like actual human beings. During the emotional nadir of the film it actually rains on the main protagonist. Even the actors seemed to being playing un-parodying parodies of themselves

Yet despite all of this, it is entertaining. You get to watch pretty people saying dumb but emotional satisfying words. Throw in beer and popcorn, and it is not a bad way to pass a couple of hours.

Sometimes you just want a little recess.