All according to Chuck Klosterman.
Coldplay and John Cusak are screwing us….
Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves
wanted that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobbler, and men want women to think like Aimee Mann, and everyone expects all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end, and they don’t stop believing, because Journey’s Steve Perry insists we should never do that. In the 19th century, teenagers merely aspired to have a marriage that would be better than that of their parents; personally i would never be satisfied unless my marriage was a good as Cliff and Clair Huxtable’s (or at least as enigmatic as Jack and Meg White)….
depressing. But there’s more, little did we know….
….If we have learned anything from mass media, it’s that only people who can make us happy are those who don’t strike us as particularly desirable. Whether it’s Jerry Maguire or Sixteen Candles or Who’s the Boss or Some Kind of Wonderful or Speed Racer, we are constantly reminded that the unattainable icons of perfection we lust after can never fulfill us like the platonic allies who have been there all along.
Crap – i’ve been barking up the wrong tree for a long time. Maybe there’s some hope. Apparently Woody Allen is a savior, or not….
Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume
there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And, it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived.
Amen, so is mine. But wait. Shit. This is disturbing.
This is all from the first chapter of Chuck Klosterman’s enjoyable read – Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. It reads very similar to a Sports Guy column but discusses popular culture instead of sports.