this has been bothering me all week...
I was at work one day, innocently doing a grammar check through google, when I came across a youtube video, about a man who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. He,
as you probably think you can imagine, goes right nuts. This video totally traumatized me. I'm absolutely serious, I haven't been this traumatized since I read that Iceberg Slim novel a few years back, which (in very graphic detail) gave me all the gruesome details about ghetto life in Chicago, post-slavery. That book told me horror stories about forced abortions and abuse and prostitution and all sorts of nasty shit, and I'm telling you that this elevator video stands right on par with that.
It was so heartbreaking I couldn't even finish watching it. And someone was kind enough to set it to music, which made the whole thing all cinematic n shit, but still, so traumatizingly real. That's the absolute horror of it, of both the book and this video, is that they're so irreducibly real. I can't shake that out of my conscience.
The fucked up thing is, part of my mind wants to go back and see the rest. Not that I expect no fucking sunshine-lollipops-tickertape parade or no shit. Far from it. But there is this masochistic, voyeuristic instinct in me that... wants to know. If he does more crazy shit, how he looks when he's rescued, if he kills himself... sick eh?
So what's that all about? I don't feel good from watching him suffer, I feel bad, really really really bad. So why do I want to make myself feel bad? This is different from film. I can justify films making me feel bad because it's art, it's pretending a type of reality to manipulate my feelings; it's using something fake to produce something real in me, and that's awesome and interesting. Like, watching a good movie, I can step back from my tears or fear or anger or whatever, and give props to the director, like "ooh, that was a good one. that one got me good". But this... I don't know why I want to see a real man suffer. I don't. I wish the masochist in me would just shut the hell up.
Now let's all cheer ourselves up by watching slugs have sex:
Ahhh... that's better.
I was at work one day, innocently doing a grammar check through google, when I came across a youtube video, about a man who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. He,
as you probably think you can imagine, goes right nuts. This video totally traumatized me. I'm absolutely serious, I haven't been this traumatized since I read that Iceberg Slim novel a few years back, which (in very graphic detail) gave me all the gruesome details about ghetto life in Chicago, post-slavery. That book told me horror stories about forced abortions and abuse and prostitution and all sorts of nasty shit, and I'm telling you that this elevator video stands right on par with that.
It was so heartbreaking I couldn't even finish watching it. And someone was kind enough to set it to music, which made the whole thing all cinematic n shit, but still, so traumatizingly real. That's the absolute horror of it, of both the book and this video, is that they're so irreducibly real. I can't shake that out of my conscience.
The fucked up thing is, part of my mind wants to go back and see the rest. Not that I expect no fucking sunshine-lollipops-tickertape parade or no shit. Far from it. But there is this masochistic, voyeuristic instinct in me that... wants to know. If he does more crazy shit, how he looks when he's rescued, if he kills himself... sick eh?
So what's that all about? I don't feel good from watching him suffer, I feel bad, really really really bad. So why do I want to make myself feel bad? This is different from film. I can justify films making me feel bad because it's art, it's pretending a type of reality to manipulate my feelings; it's using something fake to produce something real in me, and that's awesome and interesting. Like, watching a good movie, I can step back from my tears or fear or anger or whatever, and give props to the director, like "ooh, that was a good one. that one got me good". But this... I don't know why I want to see a real man suffer. I don't. I wish the masochist in me would just shut the hell up.
Now let's all cheer ourselves up by watching slugs have sex:
Ahhh... that's better.
June 4, 2008 at 10:57 p.m.
I find watching sleepy kittens always does it for me (the cheer-ups that is)