Canadian Politics Today

trivial amusement

I think that a lot of movies that people think are "serious" or "real" are actually trivial.  A trivial story isn't made less trivial by putting it in a real-world setting or a historical setting.  Conversely I think that a fantastical premise can be a very effective tool for exploring themes that are non-trivial. The original Star Trek TV series of the late 1960s used science-fiction premises-- alien cultures, astounding technologies, and the like-- as a springboard to create commentary on human nature and a wide variety of social and cultural topics.  And between trivial and "serious" is a whole range.

Jurassic Park-- may have been primarily an excuse to put CGI dinosaurs on the screen (which was in itself a wonderful thing) but was also based in part on real-world science (as Michael Crichton stories tend to be.) It provided an eye-opening look at the possibilities and perils of the research being done in genetics and might be the reason that genetic engineering first appeared on the radar of public interest. 

Field of Dreams-- a farmer hears voices that tell him to build a baseball diamond in his corn field so that ghosts can play baseball.  Trivial?  Well, maybe, but if you start thinking beyond the literal about what the field represented for him, why he needed to do it, what he accomplished... maybe it's not trivial.

When Harry Met Sally... a romantic comedy/drama that I gather created a lot of conversation back in its day by exploring the question of whether men and women can be friends without sex becoming an obstacle. Trivial? Serious?  I'm not sure. It concluded with the idea that you can solve the dilemma by marrying your friend and having sex with them, I recall.

How about Forrest Gump?  Was that a "serious" movie? I think it was primarily escapism and an appeal to baby-boomer nostalgia. It glanced through a number of social issues-- racism, Jenny's abusive home... but I don't think it actually had anything very significant to say.

Aren't most of the tea-and-crumpets period-dramas that were all the rage among "serious" movie fans in the 2000's basically just trivial amusement for highbrow audiences?  Escapism for snobs?

I think there's an element of prejudice involved here... the assumption that a movie that isn't set in a "real" setting will inherently have nothing "real" to say.


 -k