"This place is bringing low to a new high,"--Klinger
My family is watching M*A*S*H, and I'm so impressed with the writing that I'm not watching it. A little while ago my mom started procuring the DVDs for the M*A*S*H series and my family has been watching them and I've been awestruck by the sheer humor, poignancy, seriousness, lightness, and massy cleverness of the writing. Each episode is great by itself, and there's an evolutionary arc that's great as well. Everything about it strikes me more or less into humility and awe.
But I don't watch it. I sit a room away and guess at the plot, or write something else, or nap, or do school. Most anything else. Out of the seven some odd seasons my family has watched of it so far I've seen maybe ten or twelve episodes. Probably eleven. I'm not drawn to immersing myself in the vocabulary and world of it, for some reason. X-files, Firefly, Buffy, the Alien movies, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean, kung fu movies...all the other random stuff I've been impressed with I'll devote hours together of attention to, become nauseated through the absorption, and then walk around like an over-rested and bored zombie for hours.
My buddy saw Coraline! He said it was good...
That wasn't meant to be related.
I haven't been able to discern the emotional motivation behind my not being attracted to actually watching M*A*S*H. It's an incredibly educational show, from a story telling view. For days now I've been curious why I'm so happy with being two or three rooms away from the television and just listening to snippets of it, and not curious to go see the depth and prosperity of the show. I still don't know they I'm sitting over here typing this instead of sitting over there watching that apparently palsaic wounded soldier with possible brain damage make fascinating piano music while the camp annoying, pretentious bastard looks on in awe... I'm confused.
2 comments:
Do you perhaps notice any connecting thread with the shows/movies you listed? They are all fantasy. Yes, they look at real live but through a lens, a filter.
MASH is real life and death and war. No aliens or ghosts or krakken to blame for the carnage. Just people. The humor is there because that's how real people cope with horrific situations. But it is a horrific situation. That may be why you feel the need to be a couple rooms away.
Fascinating. There is truth to the words you say. There is a perfect lack of fantasy element to M*A*S*H... I think there must be a connection there; a connection between that and my bias against the work of Flannery O'Connor and that one other guy.
Spock moment over.
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