TV, Movies, and There
Affect On our Lives
By
Thomas Brooke
Movies As Literature Student Writer
In the past few months, I have been struck by the amount of references my siblings and I make to the movies and TV shows we watched while growing up. It seems inconceivable to be with my family and not reference the Princess Bride, Monty Python, or The Simpson's. My family has been molded to a degree by these shows in their entertainment and their educational value as well as their practical value in our daily lives.
You may think it’s not creative to copy and insert someone else’s lines into your own family conversation but the creativity is found in the timing and the repetition. Even while thinking about my dad, who has been in Tampa for the past ten days, I felt connected to Inigo in the Princess Bride when his famous line flashed through my mind, “I want my father back you….” Well, you know the line. Although the Princess Bride is not a book based on sports, its thrilling fights, wit and escapes encompassed many hours of my family’s time. But perhaps more time was spent in quoting and reminiscing then in the actual watching of the film.
While these movies were entertaining to our family, they were very educational too. From Monty Python, we learned that some systems of government are favored above others.
“Listen strange women, lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”
We learned it was possible to free climb a rope up a sheer cliff, have that rope cut and still manage to hang on and complete the climb. You can be “some dead” but not “all dead” and miracles can be bought. While you may have been taught to revere the legend of the Knights of the Round Table, for choosing right rather than might, you should know that Camelot is a silly place.
But it’s not only about the educational and entertaining value, it also provided ideas for staple meals. One of my favorite family dinners is fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and salad. This is Bob’s dinner from What about Bob?. We know the whole conversation during the meal and after when Leo is saved by Bob’s quick reaction, and the family’s encouragement, “higher, with your knee more!” (He lives; you looked worried.)
As you can see there are a few movies and shows that have affected my family, from what we eat to our views on proper authority, to simple entertainment. So the question I pose to you is this: name three movies/TV shows that have affected you growing up and how they still affect you today?
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2 comments:
I only really watched two shows that somewhat affected me and my childhood growing up were The Simpsons and Power Rangers. The Simpsons taught me bad habits, such as burping and other things. and the power rangers thought I could fight others and it be okay, but it wasn't. So I learned a lot what not to do by these shows.
I recently watched 2001, and as Kubrick movies are knowned to do, it completely screwed with my mind in every way imaginable. I found myself questioning the things i had always accepted as true, like sand. Sure, sand is sand. But under the socioeconomic lens of quantum relativity i understood that sand was made of tiny grains of sand, which in turn were made up of even more sand, and so on and so on until you realize that these tiny quarks, which exist beyond the barriers of life and death, are constantly moving, constantly changing, creating and expending energy for thousands upon thousands of years, yet they have and always will be non-existant to the concious natural world. And even though we know this, our boundaries have yet to be pushed to their fullest extent. Perhaps the meaning of life is that you feel you are always at the end of it, the boring years after all this amazing invention and innovation, and though you sit idly in a chair at a computer, wishing for something truly exciting to happen in the world, the forces that be are constantly moving and churning beneath us, yet we are impervious to the revolutionary thoughts and ideas that sit like eggs in an incubator throughout the minds of the human race, yet we are oblivious. Totally oblivious to what amazing things are to come. Oblivious like the Sumerians once were to the things the Greeks knew. Oblivious like the Greeks were to what the Reformists knew. Oblivious like the Reformists to what we know now, and someday a futuristic civilization will look back at our institutions of politics and academia and we will be yet another stepping stone in the path of humanity, oblivious to the shaping powers like the electrons and protons that spin even in ourselves.
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