With my wife and kids in Japan, I have been spending a lot more time reading, watching movies and TV shows, etc. Although reading books is usually a personal experience, watching TV or movies is often a social experience. But when you’re a lone, it becomes personal again and I find that I have been exhibiting some strange behavior in that regard. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n
1. Reading the book The Name of the Wind<\/em>, recommended by my brother. So far seems to be an interesting and well-written fantasy novel. However about 1\/3 of the way through the book, where the main character is telling his life story (making the entire novel into a story-within-a-story, it seems), when he starts telling about his first attempt at romance, I find myself putting the book down and being unable to continue. I’m not sure why, but since I know it will not end well (since we know from the beginning of the novel that he is not with this girl that obviously it didn’t end well, even though I haven’t read the actual account yet), I find it difficult to continue reading the book. I’ll get back to it eventually, but in the meantime I’ve been reading some ‘lighter’ fare, such as David Edding’s fantasy series.<\/p>\n 2. Friday night I watched the brainless action movie ‘Dead or Alive’, based on the titular (that was a joke, get it?) video game of the same name. It’s utterly vapid in such a degree that I couldn’t even conceive of a better villain than Eric Roberts for the movie, but if you’re expecting a brainless and nearly plotless fighting movie that’s heavy on the fanservice, it’s pretty entertaining. However there is a scene where the hacker\/nerd character (fitting every Hollywood trope and stereotype of the hacker\/nerd) tries to woo one of the supermodel beauties that he has a crush on. I found myself pausing the movie and taking a break, because I knew<\/em> that he was going to get shot down hard, and I didn’t want to watch that.<\/p>\n Later I continued watching the movie, and it turned out that the writer subverted the trope in this case, and the nerd did<\/em> get the girl in the end. Probably a wise choice considering the target audience of this movie.<\/p>\n 3. Last night I started watching the 1982 movie The Challenge<\/a>, fish out of water tale where the hapless American protagonist in Japan gets stuck in the middle of the warring factions of a powerful family over the possession a priceless sword. It’s directed by John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate<\/em>, Ronin<\/em>), and the supporting actor is none other than bad-ass legend Toshiro Mifune (who so far hasn’t spoken a single line in English!) Mifune plays Toru Yoshida, the head of the ‘good’ branch of the family who runs a martial arts school. There is a scene where the protagonist Rick (played by Scott Glen), is at a formal dinner with Yoshida’s family and students. Rick gets drunk on sake and does a classic Ugly American<\/a>, shouting out inane and racist comments in English, completely ignoring the alienating and hostile atmosphere he himself has created, etc. Just watching the scene, I became very uncomfortable and embarrassed. Again I found myself stopping the movie and taking a break, reading a book for a little while.<\/p>\n I actually didn’t finish the movie last night, I ended up going to bed early. But I do intend to watch the rest of the movie this evening.<\/p>\n So what is the deal with me getting uncomfortable enough while watching a movie or reading a book that I actually put it down? It isn’t anything that I find distasteful, sickening, overly erotic, or that I’m simply not enjoying it, but because I find a scene to be embarrassing<\/em> for the character, and somehow I feel embarrassed by proxy and find it difficult to continue.<\/p>\n Perhaps I’m even projecting myself onto the characters, and recalling experiences in my past where I have been embarrassed or humiliated. Well, looking at the three examples above:<\/p>\n 1. First love ending badly? Check. Yes, all three are embarrassing things I have experienced int he past, and even now I don’t like to recall them. Although my experience with #3 was nowhere near as bad as the scene in the film, when I look back on some of the things I said and did back during my first time in Japan when I home-stayed with a family, I feel a lot of shame and embarrassment.<\/p>\n Is embarrassment and shame by proxy due to self-projection into characters and scenes from books and movies a common occurrence for other people?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With my wife and kids in Japan, I have been spending a lot more time reading, watching movies and TV shows, etc. Although reading books is usually a personal experience, watching TV or movies is often a social experience. But … Continue reading
\n2. Rejection when asking out a girl who is ‘out of your league’? Check.
\n3. Being a culturally-insensitive American in Japan? Check.<\/p>\n