A Quick Note to Self...and some other stuff

Graham,

You are not Dr. Who. You don't want to be Dr. Who. You have never watched a full episode of Dr. Who. in your life. Hell, you don't even like Dr. Who. Therefore, you should never wear neon blue socks with a grey suit and black shoes. Ever! Dr. Who shouldn't even do it, because it looks awful. You are the master of your own soul, you are not a sad act, or a charity case (regardless of all the evidence supporting this idea); so, just don't do it, alright? Cool? Good.

It's July, it sorta feels like July outside, but aesthetically it looks more like a February. It's certainly not beautiful. Grey sky's become mundane after so many days...right now I think we're sitting at roughly 9'996 days of cloud; nothing but overcast grayness. I don't think the sun has shone since 1998...since the first time I saw Scream.


Tonight I watched Scream for the first time since 1998. I remember watching this movie as an 8 year old and having my perception of reality altered forever. Here was art imitating life, all the while referencing art as an extension of reality. Simply, in the movie the "real" people played by actors spend huge chunks of time referring to other movies that exist in both our reality and the movie reality; these old horror movies effect their reality. Art imitating life relying on art as an imitation of life to highlight the central themes and ideas of the movie. As a result of all this self reference and all this reality altering, our ideas and our beliefs about what a horror movie can actually do change.

Obviously this is a complicated idea to put down into words, but when you watch the movie you just get it (well, I did anyway). Maybe your not supposed to look that far into it. Maybe your just supposed to watch it as what it is, a slasher movie that highlights the cliche's of the horror genre. 
As an 8 year old I was prone to looking to deeply into things that didn't have a deeper meaning. I used to philosophize about episodes of Pingu with my friends. I would hypothesize that Pingu's relationship problems with his father stemmed from his fathers strict and unloving relationship with his father. My main theory being that his father was possibly abused by his father...that's why when Pingu wet himself on the floor of the igloos toilet his father gave him a verbal beat down, (and possible whupped him off camera)...obviously my friends ignored me. I was a weird kid. That's why when I watched Scream I became obsessed with reality.


I couldn't twist my head around these supposedly real people using movies made twenty years previously to survive their current situation. Using "The Rules" of the horror genre to survive their lives as a though they were in a horror movie in a freaking horror movie! That blew my freaking mind! By that logic I felt I could use Babe to help myself understand the relationship that farmers have with livestock. Believing that farmers actually use Babe as a frame of reference for their particular line of work. That all over the world farmers were feeding pigs, quietly muttering "That'll do Pig, that'll do" as they watched the piglets sup. 

I think that's where my obsession with movies and TV started. Right there, with Scream! It also scared the hell out of me. I was terrified of these lunatics in long gowns...and strangely, their massive mobile phones. I was scared of mobile phones! Everyone became obsessed with that movie when it first came out.  I remember watching the move with my own Ghostface mask sitting beside me. On Halloween in 1997 for as far as the eye could see, the streets of my neighborhood were teeming with mini serial killers in training...or at least little kids dressed as serial killers. Everyone had one of those masks! Everyone! Now, I hadn't seen the move that Halloween, but I was a bit tripped out by all the Ghostface wannabes strolling around with fake knives covered in fake blood. By the time I did see Scream the fad hadn't died down, everyone was still wearing those damn masks. I didn't spend much time outside that Halloween.


Anyway, I never looked at a movie, or life in the same way ever again. After that, movies became a way for me to relate to any situation that I've ever found myself in. Now, I've never been chased by a homicidal maniac and used the "Jamie Lee Curtis Survival Method" (blissful unawareness followed by sheer dumb luck) to help me get through it alive. I have however broken up with a girlfriend then ran into her with her new boyfriend and used the When Harry Met Sally "Harry Burns Method" (insult someones table) to tough it out. I've also on more than one occasion thought to myself "Wow, y'know this is kind of like what happened to --- in ----". Movies became a way to understand life after Scream.

From watching Scream I realized that I should:

1. Never trust my boyfriend (which is easy, because I don't like men.)


2. Memorize horror movie trivia so that when psycho's come calling I can out wit them with my slasher movie savvy.

3. A television can be used as an effective weapon in the right situation

4. Never try to crawl through the cat flap of a raising garage door...ever! If it starts raising the for goodness sake get out and go under the door! Go under it damn it! #dumbblondegirlsalwaysdoingdumbthingstosurvive

5. Never have an affair! If you have an affair, then four movies worth of hell will rain down on you and possibly your children. (This realization only dawned on me now...damn you Maureen Prescott! She's the real villain of all this!)


6. Never sleep with someone who's father had an affair with your mother! It's like crapping where you eat...or where your boyfriend/girlfriend's father eats...or something.

I'm now watching Scream 2 which from what I can gather is Scream, only with more Black people...There are exactly zero Black people in Scream and exactly four black people in Scream 2. Between the first and second movie in the Scream franchise Sydney Prescott discovered racial equality. 

I guess horror movies really do affect you...however Scream's only effect on me was that it turned me into a reality second guessing child who philosophized Pingu and who was afraid of mobile phones. I don't think that this was Wes Craven's vision for the Scream franchise...

And to think...I was going to rant about Wimbledon again tonight...thanks to Netflix and heavy rain in England I ended up here...wherever here is.

OH! MY! GOODNESS! The black guy survived! He made it! One out of four black people survive Scream 2! After this he had a thriving television career. Just kidding...he probably dies in Scream 3. The Rules of horror taught me that.