I’ve always been a weirdo when it comes to pop culture. Most of it leaves me cold and it’s not just because I’m a contrarian. The more someone tells me I’ll like something, the less likely I am to like it. It’s not as if I’m telling myself, “I’m not going to like this to spite you”, but I have very specific tastes that are hard to cater to. Add to that, I don’t like movies and TV in general because my imagination can produce scenes vastly superior to anything concrete and that my brain doesn’t work the way most people’s do and the visual mediums of movies and TV shows leave me cold.
I was dating someone whose favorite movie was Pulp Fiction. This was years after the movie had been released and it was showing at a theater nearby. He was eager for me to see it and I knew nothing other than it was a Quentin Tarantino movie with a lot of violence. I didn’t love violence in my movies, but I could deal with it. I was eager to see what made my boyfriend tick so I agreed to see the movie.
Big mistake.
Now, remember, I went into this movie ready to be amazed and awed. I wanted to like it because it was important to my boyfriend. I was primed to like the movie is what I’m trying to say. It wasn’t like other examples I’m going to mention in a bit because I knew I wasn’t going to like that movie and went, anyway.
With Pulp Fiction, I wanted to like the movie, but I didn’t. I instantly hated it and its faux hipster/edgy vibe. I found it repellant, repugnant, and with no positive value. I gritted my teeth and sat through it, grimly determined to see the end of it. Afterwards, my boyfriend eagerly asked what I thought of it–and foolishly, I told him the unvarnished truth–which took me twenty minutes. Afterwards, he looked at me and said, “I can’t be with someone with that world view” and broke up with me on the spot.
We tried to remain friends and he wanted me to see Titanic. I knew I would hate it, but I ungraciously gave in, admittedly because I wanted to get him back. Did id hate it? I did, indeed. By the second hour of people running around the ship, screaming their heads off, I wanted to stand up and shout, “Just fucking die already!” Later, he wanted to take me to see Dangerous Beauty, a movie about a French courtesan who is in love with a French nobleman who loves her, too, but cannot marry her. I think it’s set during a war? Supposedly based on a true story and cast as a love story.