Life Consumption
So there’s this weird dichotomy between the life we live and the ones we consume. The ones we consume are fake. Movies are not like real life. TV is not like real life. Snapchat stories are not like real life. Facebook is not like real life. Reality shows are not even like real life, ironically. But somehow, these are the things we use to guide our knowledge and expectations of how real life should be and I don’t know but that seems a little bit fucked to me.
For your grandparents, there was no way to consume lives. No TV, no Internet. The only lives to be consumed were real lives. Now most of our entertainment is consuming fake lives. It seems like there’s some deep innate desire for us humans to consume lives. What is all this fake life consuming coming to though? How much fake life consuming does it take for our expectations of real life to be so far altered that something bad happens?
You know, that’s why I liked the movie When Harry Met Sally. Because it was like real life. People come in and out of your life based on random coincidence. A lot of boring stuff happens. A lot of bad stuff happens. And when good stuff happens, it happens in this kind of wobbling and imperfect way that is the signature of real life. It was the kind of movie where they easily could have phoned it in and made a classic romance storyline that they knew people would consume hungrily, but they just said fuck that and made it like real life. Movies like that aren’t made anymore.
This piece is an “Idea” — a short, unfinished, stream-of-consciousness piece that may later be spun out into an article or fiction piece. Please leave some feedback to help me get it there!
