I have never seen Footloose
I have never seen Footloose. This seems important to me right now, although I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s that I’m finishing a manuscript, a novel, that’s a relatively disturbing story. I wrote it many years ago, and am editing some parts now, and may start sending it out to agents soon.
Few of the characters in the book, called Powdered Milk, would have ever been interested in seeing Footloose. Few of them would have watched Friends.
I’ve never seen an episode of Friends. I’ve never seen Top Gun. Most people my age have.
Maybe I’m wondering how my writing would be different if I had been interested in seeing these particularly age-defining movies and shows. Maybe I’m wondering if exposure to Top Gun would mean that I wouldn’t, once again, be looking for an agent, if I were more in touch with popular culture.
It’s a powerful movie, it seems. People still talk about it these many years later. I once told a friend of mine that I’d never seen Friends. He called me Un-American. He was only partly joking.
None of which is to say that I don’t enjoy many, many mainstream movies or popular TV shows. I’ve gladly watched virtually every episode of Sponge Bob Squarepants with my children. I’ve watched each of the Star Wars movies more time than I’ll willingly admit.
But Footloose, it seems so happy. Friends as well. I’ve seen clips, I’ve heard people talk about these shows. People I know and like. They get a certain joy out of watching Footloose. Out of repeating bits and pieces of a favorite episode of Friends. Good and simple and popular stories, it seems, that people like very much.
Sometimes I think I want to write very different fiction from what I do now. Science Fiction, maybe. Something purely funny. Or a heart-warming tale of youthful rebellion. Set to music.
But I’d have to use a different name, I come to realize. Otherwise it wouldn’t be me.
