I've been thinking about the mainstream these days and I've come to a conclusion. It is my belief that television serves to attempt to define normal to mainstream America, while movies try to spotlight that which is deemed unusual.
I was never really able to relate to much on television. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the shows that I watched, but never were they something that I could say "Yeah, I've been
there". Even movies, though, spotlighting those unusual people and unusual situations were few and far between that I could directly relate to.
I went to see
Off the Map this weekend. I told my mother that I like movies about kids with unique upbringings and this one certainly fit the bill. While I wasn't raised in New Mexico or on a farm, the similarities between Bo's young life and mine were rife and obvious. I found myself smiling and the early image in the movie of Bo, living with free spirit parents who had no money, reading Forbes magazine. I, personally, used to watch the stock reports. When you grow up without money, you want to know as much about it as you can.
The behaviors and situations in the movie were very close to my memories and I find myself nostalgic since seeing it. The review I read essentially panned the movie and as I read it, I found myself wondering if this woman was raised in a stable neighborhood, went to public school, had all the things kids take for granted like a television, an allowance, a
brand new bicycle on Christmas morning. These experiences are the sorts of things that most people assume just happen, but I can tell you from experience that there are more of us who were raised like Bo (or something similar) than anyone actually realizes.
You have to understand, I was raised in a VW bus by travelling street musicians. At least, that's the summation that I've come to embrace. Hippies... no, free spirits who helped to foster my imagination, a father who hitchhiked to work and a mother who preferred herbal remedies and never (to my memory) *bought* a birthday cake from the store.
Do you pity the idea that much of my childhood was uninfluenced by television? That the box was thrown out on a regular basis? Don't. I met people and had experiences that others can't even conceive of happening to someone as young as I was. My imagination was cultivated and encouraged so that I didn't NEED preformed images or the stylings of someone else's amusement.
I learned things before I was 8 years old that some people don't learn until their 30's or later. I knew things that have since become cultural icons to my generation, well before it was time for them to enter the spotlight. I was shunned and outcast as a teenager until people realized that I already was what they wanted to become - my own person. As an adult, now, I am often mocked and teased, but it's done in a friendly loving manner (most of the time anyway, rarely with malicious intent), and I can see that people appreciate hearing the stories of someone whose upbringing, whose life they can't even really conceive of.
For the most part, these are not even things that they cover in movies.
So I find myself looking for... not validation, but perhaps looking for empathy, looking for those others who are off the radar, who know the difficulty of taking the amazing childhood and the unique upbringing and becoming a sane, whole, healthy person. Maybe sometimes even one who is more whole, more sane, than those who are repressed like they were trained to be and deny themselves the joy of being fully their own person, whatever that may mean.
~FG };^>
