I have too much to say. And the trouble is that since there is no defined audience, I honestly don't care whether this bores people or not. Reading is entirely optional, and I like to think that if you're actually reading this, then this is a conversation I am having with you and only you. Perhaps in a dorm late at night, perhaps on the way back to my dorm after a rehearsal at Intime, perhaps over late meal in Frist.
So. I started watching episodes of Gossip Girl back-to-back on Thursday. (I love how I can use the Princeton VPN netweork internet thingie to pretend I'm in America and watch TV that's only meant for American audiences. It is these little privileges that I am truly grateful for :P) I think I watched five episodes then and four on Saturday. Nine in all - and it was interesting at first. And then I looked up episodes and people on wiki and completely lost interest. I was beginning to tire of the whole thing anyway, for several reasons.
1. I don't really want to watch episode after episode about the filthy rich and their plans to marry their offspring to each other. It sounds too much like arranged marriages in Sri Lanka. The nasty ones.
2. All those broken families depress me. Clearly too many of these people have communication issues.
3. The plotline, when zoomed through in this fashion, rapidly becomes ridiculous. These love triangles and heart-flutterings make me want to throw something heavyish and sharpish at them.
4. All these parents seem to be imbeciles. Like Nate's sheep-eyed mother and her refusal to believe him about his father's drug problem. Serena's mother and Chuck's dad. please. do these people never grow up? Ever?
5. I think the only real person I know from the upper east side (should that be capitalised?) is Molly Silberberg. She is possibly one of the most adorable and concerned people I know (ACK have you SEEN the way Blair and Serena hug each other? It's like they think the other person is contagious.) and I believe in these people even less.
6. If people are truly like this, America has a problem. And instead of dealing with it, they turn it into a TV show. What madness.
7. It really is a waste of time. Blackadder and Black Books are actually funny, if you want entertainment. I like my entertainment funny, not depressing. and Animal Planet is actually TV worth watching because it is Simultaneously Entertaining and Educational.
8. I was beginning to get depressed after the end of each episode. It was like watching a downward spiral.
9. It was much easier to read the plot through on wikipedia and spend time watching it in agonising detail. I wasn't learning anything I particularly wanted to know.
The series did give me an interesting insight though. I often have isues with Princeton's liberally showering me with material trifles that I do not need, to the point that I now feel like free t-shirts and free Bent Spoon cupcakes and free tuition and free housing and free everything-else-covered-by-financial-aid are my divine right. And despite the fact that this is a university that claims in its motto that service is its prerogative (it's the reason I applied!) I feel like I am slowly becoming a much more materialistic and callous person than I was before. And I will be honest; I have always been more than slightly self-centred and self-absorbed. Gossip Girl showed me what a lifetime of being brainwashed like this does to people. It explains many things about Princeton I do not like, but also explains why they cannot be changed at least for a while. (It explains the ridiculous USG Lawnparties poll! And I thought that in the midle of a bloody recession, more people would want to give that money elsewhere to where it is desperately needed. Clearly not. I am almost spitefully glad there was a majority in favour of diverting that money to SVC, however slim. HA.)
All in all, nine episodes were enough to give me nine reasons not to watch it anymore. And while I am completely and utterly overjoyed that I am at college in America, at Princeton University, I am also completely and utterly overjoyed that my private school was located in Sri Lanka. And that my friends are really my friends.
On a smaller scale, it also makes me grateful for the fact that I live in a village and not in Colombo. Many people I know (and know of) are NOT well off, and life is often a struggle to make ends meet. Seeing them and hearing of them reminds me that all is not well in the world for many of its inhabitants, and keeps me from being complacent.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
moratuwa is quite far from a village =P, and i only have to look out my window to see people who are struggling to make ends meet. (or look inside my window for that matter. lol) then again, i guess u mean colombo 07 and the more fancy places, and not homely old kirilupana
ReplyDeletehaha I wrote that entry and knew it could be misconstrued :)
ReplyDeleteyes, Moratuwa is a town, but Lunawa can't really be defined as anything but a village. I couldn't think of a better word, although admittedly one tends to think 'gama' and rural Anuradhapura or something.
Poor people admittedly live everywhere (yes, I was thinking Colombo 7), but what I meant was that people I know and people who live next door to me are terribly poor - as opposed to the beggars I see outside MC :)
but yes, all in all, not put across entirely clearly on my part.