Angst. Life. The way things are. The way we wish they were. The way they’ll never be.
In “Lucas,” Kerri Green asks Lucas to tell him why she is attracted to Charlie Sheen instead of him. He brings up Darwin, and says it’s survival of the fittest. The fittest in any species are driven to each other to ensure survival the species. And yet, at the end, the underdog is applauded by the fittest as if he belonged to their closed society.
Emily Dickinson wrote “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door – to the majority. Present no more.” I will always remember that line and how I personally understood it. How the door gets closed to the secret membership of who is hip in your world…
I teared up at the end of Lucas, seeing how they wanted me to believe. I figured the writer had been the underdog and wanted to write life with a better ending.
“The Truth About Cats and Dogs.” It wasn’t the truth, really. “Hairspray.” Not the truth. “Meatballs.” Not the truth. The list goes on and on from “The Breakfast Club” to “Some Kind of Wonderful” to “Pretty in Pink” to “Sixteen Candles.” And, then, there’s “The Goonies,” “The Princess Diaries,” “What A Girl Wants” and “Grease.”
I guess everybody could add one or two that I’ve missed: movies that inspired the unfit to think they they could aspire to popular, to sexy, to cool, to hip. Movies that left me realizing the unfit became writers and the fittest acted the parts, leaving to few among them to outsiders who would play the fat girl, the science geek, or the awkward, late bloomer in a high school or world that was in full bloom and leaving them behind.
Perhaps there is a secret society that propels the underdogs to aspire to greatness. Perhaps, I’ll write a movie about it, and cry at the end…
(((Inspired by my friend’s blog about her teenager.)))
