While it’s a depressing movie (and book, of course - and I agree the book is if anything even better), the characters have every single possible reason to be depressed. Without getting into any spoilers you couldn’t get by reading the back cover, the main character is mourning the loss of his wife, the end of civilization, and knowing his child will only inherit a bleak world of ashes.
Just finished reading the book and I wouldn’t say the bleakness has no purpose. The bleakness contrasts those brief moments of un-bleakness (hope feels like too strong a word in this context). Those moments like drinking coke or finding shrivelled apples on the brink of starvation became so much more meaningful because of how bleak their situation is.
I was just having a conversation with my neighbor about how I don’t have time anymore for conversations, relationships, art, etc. if it isn’t inspiring or leaves you better for having experienced it.
I think we can’t overstress the importance of the stories that are in the zeitgeist. This film came up. We need more stories of a hopeful future. Not just because so much in the world is bleak, but because I believe the stories we tell and hear affect the world we build.
You’re telling me the woman whose tragedy was sensationalized as she was weirdly sexualized and demonized and judged in the court of public opinion doesn’t like the true crime industry? Weird.
“It’s the entitlement that really gets me. The feeling that someone else’s life, their mistakes, their trauma, their STORY is just free for the taking because it was in the news,”
This. So. Much.
Entitlement is the perfect word for it. In all the sensationalism of modern news reporting, we are guilty of conflating news and entertainment. We forget that there are actual human beings at the center of these stories, people who deserve to be able to decide whether or not their stories get exploited to further enrich someone else.
It’s either machete or I have to watch him again in Desperado. I feel like in Desperado I was like “Oh yeah that is a murderer.” But he had to maintain that for the whole of machete.
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