I've recently been treating the world as my very own personal decompression chamber. Decompression from what, though, is the question. I suppose that the obvious answer is my life as a grad student/slave-to-the-written word, but unlike most slaves, I chose my bondage. So I feel as if I can't really complain about that. And though it was a lot of reading and writing and thinking, more often than not, it was a good time. Good people were met. Good writing happened. Good drinks were drunk. Darn tootin'.
As a part of my learn-how-to-be-out-in-public-again-without-thinking-about-work rehibilitation, I went to see X-Men yesterday with Russ, Christina, and Emilio. It's a great movie, complete with momentous battles where the fate of humans and mutants alike balance on a very thin precipice and things could really go either way. What I like most is that I never know quite whom I'm rooting for to win these battles. On one hand, I, of course, want the X-men to win, since they're advocating that mutants and humans live in harmony and equality. And it'd be great for them not get a knock on their doors every 2-3 years, where a know-it-all Senator or Biologist stands on the other side, digging his toe into the ground and asking if the mutants can come out and play-aka-get-annhilated. That's just a pain. But on the other hand, I sympathize with the mutants who are tired of being persecuted and want their equality any way they can get it, even through violence. I know Magneto, the archvillian of the series, was a prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp when he was a child and is tortured by the thought of all the people he could've saved if he had just known his powers. I understand why he's so sensitive when the odious talking heads start blabbing on national TV about "curing the mutant problem" or "cataloguing and separating all mutants." I understand Professor X, too, who just wants to help the general population understand mutants. I understand his hope that a peaceful existance, and if necessary, resistance, is not just the dream of a daisy wielders and most Canadians.
There's nothing like getting lost in a good fantasy. I've been a fan ever since I picked up Grimm's Fairy Tales as a seven year old and read The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Could there be a more glamorous fairy tale, beautiful women secretly getting in rowboats and dancing all night until the soles of their shoes were worn clear through? Now I realize that it was only a fantastical version of night life in Spain, but at the time, this chubby Midwestern girl didn't know anyone who stayed out past 8:00 on school nights. But as with X-Men, I wasn't sure whether I was rooting for those rebellious dancing girls or the simple guy-off-the-street-turned-investigator, who not only wanted his life spared, but one of the King's comely dancing daughters as a wife. It wasn't an either/or proposition.
In both cases, evil isn't particularly "evil" (the daughters just like to dance; Magneto is trying to save the world, albeit in an imperfect way), nor is good without flaws and weaknesses. I like my fantasy tinged with a bit of reality; in a sense, the essence of flaws and moral ambiguity makes the particulars that much more fantastical. Brad Bird said something to that effect on disc 2 of The Incredibles (my current obsession), that animating characters isn't about recreating reality, but distilling it.
And, as I think about it, that's why I need to decompress a little bit. As the odds-and-ends people in my life find out that I've just graduated, they all want to know what's next. And I tell them that besides my plans to go to a movie or finish some writing, I don't really know. Maybe it's why I'm hungering for fantasy lately and feel the urge to watch The Incredibles for the fiftieth time or tumble into the upside-down worlds of Murakami. In those worlds, you don't have these strict seperations between grad school and real life, nor do you get either/or propositions. It's both/and propositions that rule. Now that I've graduated, I don't want to feel limited by my choices -- I want to explore and expand into places that I might not otherwise. This is my time to distill reality.
In fantasy, everything is possible. Even it doesn't happen, the possibility that it might still exists. Maybe that's what hope is -- the culmination of possibility, even if it means ignoring logic for a while. Because logic is the opposite of superheroes and mutants and women who dance through the soles of their shoes.
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