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Jun. 18th, 2011 10:35 pm
Where the heart is
One of the movies I watched recently had a plot involving the common trope of a country boy gone city, whose family resents him for it. There's the typical accusation of how he undoubtedly thinks he's too good for his country folks now, never visits, etc.
In a lot of stories with this plot, it resolves by the city boy learning the value of family, and that his city life has robbed him of his soul, blah blah. This one? Not so much. In fact, it was entirely the other way around. It was made clear that the reason the city boy left in the first place was because family drama pushed him away, and when he returned, he returned only to that drama, which almost ruined the relatively calm city life he'd had. The experience of "going home" again only reminded him that he made the better choice by leaving, and reinvested him in the life he'd built for himself beyond his roots.
While the movie was kinda cheesy in general, I was actually impressed by how the plot went there, since I'm so used to being shamed for having left my hometown/family, and it also got me to thinking about how inherently dysfunctional small-town life--or indeed, any sort of insular community--can be.
( Sameness =/= safety )
If you scratch the surface of any seemingly prosaic world, you'll find potential dangers. Which is why the only real safety is in leaving your front porch and seeing the rest of the world and all the people in it, and giving yourself at least one other place to go if the place you are now fails you somehow.
Taking these ventures outside your door doesn't mean you're leaving everything else behind for good. It doesn't mean you don't like the old life, the old people, the old hobbies and cultures and familiar places. It just means that you understand that a life built on eternal sameness doesn't guarantee happiness. The fewer options you leave yourself, the more likely you are to be bereft if/when the only thing you have goes away. I have felt that profound sense of emptiness before, and I don't ever want to feel it again. I will, of course mourn if the big things in my life go away, but I don't want to have a sense that they are the ONLY things in my life, and thus if they go away, I'll have nothing left.
In a lot of stories with this plot, it resolves by the city boy learning the value of family, and that his city life has robbed him of his soul, blah blah. This one? Not so much. In fact, it was entirely the other way around. It was made clear that the reason the city boy left in the first place was because family drama pushed him away, and when he returned, he returned only to that drama, which almost ruined the relatively calm city life he'd had. The experience of "going home" again only reminded him that he made the better choice by leaving, and reinvested him in the life he'd built for himself beyond his roots.
While the movie was kinda cheesy in general, I was actually impressed by how the plot went there, since I'm so used to being shamed for having left my hometown/family, and it also got me to thinking about how inherently dysfunctional small-town life--or indeed, any sort of insular community--can be.
( Sameness =/= safety )
If you scratch the surface of any seemingly prosaic world, you'll find potential dangers. Which is why the only real safety is in leaving your front porch and seeing the rest of the world and all the people in it, and giving yourself at least one other place to go if the place you are now fails you somehow.
Taking these ventures outside your door doesn't mean you're leaving everything else behind for good. It doesn't mean you don't like the old life, the old people, the old hobbies and cultures and familiar places. It just means that you understand that a life built on eternal sameness doesn't guarantee happiness. The fewer options you leave yourself, the more likely you are to be bereft if/when the only thing you have goes away. I have felt that profound sense of emptiness before, and I don't ever want to feel it again. I will, of course mourn if the big things in my life go away, but I don't want to have a sense that they are the ONLY things in my life, and thus if they go away, I'll have nothing left.
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