Sayre is hosting Fun Monday again. This time she wants us to think about a movie that made us think. Recently, we borrowed a few movies from the local library system. What we did was take when Keeley was born, and then used the google browser to discover the top movies from that year up until recent days. One of them was ‘World’s Greatest Dad’. The main character is Robin Williams. It is touted as a comedy. We found it anything but a comedy. In fact, we turned it off about 3/4 of the way through, and that was after looking at each other and commenting: wow, this is disturbing… quite a few times.
So what did we learn from this movie? Basically, not to waste our time on things that we find unenjoyable, pointless, boring, disturbing, or basically, wrong. A lot of us get sucked into sitting and watching TV don’t we? Even if there’s ‘nothing on’…and yet we just sit there, mindlessly in front of the tube, don’t we? A lot of times, my husband watches the same movie for the 15th time (transformers, iron man, lord of the rings,etc) that I don’t care about. Sometimes, it’s a movie he has on tape or DVD, and yet he’ll sit and watch it on regular tv as well. Except for the Harry Potter movies, I haven’t really condoned the purchasing of any movies lately because.. well eventually they end up on tv several times a year anyway, and we have a DVR, why not just record them? The Harry Potter movies are still 3 movies behind (about 6 years I think)– so I don’t mind that, the rest of the movies seem to appear within a year on tv and then come around again several times…I find it a big waste of his time on say a Saturday mid day to be watching a movie he has ‘taped’ already. Why not watch it at night when no one else is around instead and do something legitimate during the weekend? I know I’m guilty of this at times as well, but I often get bored of sitting still on the weekend, I want to be ‘up and at em’ most of the weekend, since it’s the only time I get a lot of ‘help’. Mind you, I’m not complaining that he watches tv, just because I find it a waste of time, doesn’t mean that he does, and he does leave the house all day, so he doesn’t have a lot of time to just hang out, so I usually refrain from saying anything. I have different priorities, so.. you know, it’s up to me to do things if I want them done. It does make me think, though, that if I start to find something pointless, that I need to step away from it. I find that I do that a lot more these days. Gun violence, bloody stuff that I have to explain to my 2 year old (thanks dead bodies on shows like CSI), and so on. A lot of times, I just end up turning it off, or requesting that it’s turned off while our kid(s) are awake. Some of it offends my Christian identity as well. I think that was a large part of why I didn’t like ‘world’s greatest dad’. It offended me on pretty much every level. I might add, that’s pretty hard to do. My dad and my husband were sailors. I have 2 older brothers and half a dozen nephews that are ‘grody’ in their comedic sense. It’s pretty innate in me to ignore a lot of things, but I guess it makes me think really hard about watch I watch, listen to, or experience. If a book stinks, I return it to the library and read something else instead. I don’t feel guilty about it. My time is worth more than finishing a book or movie, JUST because we started it. I have no obligation to anyone to finish some sort of media if I don’t like it. I guess that’s a good enough lesson isn’t it?
I agree with you. This past summer, we cancelled our satellite service. Not only was it getting too expensive, we would find ourselves watching stuff just because it was on. That’s not how I want to spend my life. I also turn off as much ugliness as possible. Why would I voluntarily put that stuff in my head? There’s plenty out there in the real world everyday. I don’t need to add to it in the guise of “entertainment.” I have found myself a much happier person since I started a news fast a few years ago. I keep up with local news and the occasional national story, but I get those from the paper rather than on TV.
I’ll add you to the list – thanks for playing!
I couldn’t agree with you more! and with Sayre! I read our local paper daily – we still have Friday night football on the front page!