Wow, two days in a row, now that is cause for celebration! I thought I would stick with the John Hughes/80s teen angst themed movies and talk about my own foibles, faults, and failures and boy is that a long list…
Some Kind of Wonderful is set against the strict social hierarchy of an American public high school. In a nutshell, a young tomboy, Watts, finds her feelings for her best friend, Keith, run deeper than just friendship when he gets a date with the most popular girl in school: unfortunately, the girl's old boyfriend, who is from the rich section of town, is unable to let go of her, and plans to get back at Keith. This is a movie about teenagers, which is also about life, about insecurity, about rejection, about learning to grow. But essentially it’s a "don't judge a book by its cover"(DJABBIC) story. Something I tend to do all too often, and to those closest to me.
Lots of people and I am no exception tend to determine the worth of something or someone based on its appearance. Come on people, if everyone were really being honest we would admit that most of us make these kind of snap judgments ALL THE TIME. In fact, the research says we do it in less than 7 seconds! Think about that, we can ‘size people up’ faster than it takes us to turn on our computers. The science here says that most of us have honed our instincts to the point that we ‘trust our gut’ over 90% of the time. Here’s the problem with my gut (besides being big and flabby), my gut tends to make three critical errors in this process time and time again:
1. I tend to make unfounded judgments during my sizing up process. It really should be a somewhat data-driven process.
2. Sometimes I find it hard to keep my results private (my mouth gets me into trouble). The rule should always be—keep it to yourself. Results from the sizing up process are often personal and based on one’s own ability to process information about how they perceive people.
3. At times I tend to confuse ‘the sizing up process’ with my own personal envious feelings and/or displays of inadequacy as an individual. A shrink would call this ‘projecting’ (attributing your own repressed thoughts to someone else).
So DJABBIC is probably one of the most common expressions used in the English language to convey vanity. It is often used in modern culture, to publically indentify people that just ‘don't seem to fit in.’ Let’s face it; it’s all about fitting in, right? There is a great line in Some Kind of Wonderful that goes, “You can't tell a book by its cover. No, but you can tell how much it's gonna cost you.” There it is… money.
This brings me to another one of my favorite quotes from actor/author Spike Milligan, “Money can't buy you friends, but it does get you a better class of enemy.” Money you see screws EVERYTHING up. Money makes the world go ‘round right? Money is how athletes have entourages and cult-like followings. Money is how our gut gets thrown off when making our ‘sizing up’ decisions. And money is how the geek gets the girl. (Anyone who has been to a High School reunion has seen firsthand the impact of money-it’s from all those Microsoft, Google, or Apple stock options right?) These class battles are everywhere: cities vs. suburbs, private schools vs. public, and the powerful vs. the under-privileged.
You see, Some Kind of Wonderful is fundamentally about socio-economic class distinctions. It’s about kids from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ versus the preps who live in the gated communities up in the hills. The best example of this in my opinion is “The Outsiders” a classic coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton (also a fairly good movie).
I mention this, because where I am now, half-way around the world living the bubble-life that is the expatriate camp existence these class distinctions create an unlikely duality. You see here, class is dichotomous-it means everything and nothing at the same time. More to come on this… Oh yes, MUCH MORE…
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