David Foster Wallace Gets a Movie; I Feel Weird About Colbert
"The internet" (read as: me about a week ago) has been abuzz with talk of a biographical-esque film about David Foster Wallace. Wallace being primarily my favorite author ever and also pretty famous (hence the biographical-esque film). Needless to say several minutes of internal violence ensued my discovery of this travesty (I'm looking at you "the choice of actors", and also you "decision to make this film"). I can't say that I can't say why I'm bothered by this film, because I'm doing so right now. This is exactly what David Foster Wallace would not have wanted! It's utterly ridiculous!
Pause. Slam cut to parallel thought process/topic development.
Another person in the "People I Like Category" is Stephen Colbert, and after this recent twitter-storm my gut-reaction decision to "leap to his aid" found me squarely in the company of people who say things like "why can't you people take a joke?" and "everyone is always getting so offended these days!" This isn't company that I usually keep, and I was pretty eager to show it the door, but it was still jarring. After walking back up the chain of assumptions and privilege that brought me to that point, I eventually came to thing that I put in quotes up there "leap to his aid". Why on Earth would anything I say or do have any level of impact on Stephen Colbert as a person or as a successful performer? It's pretty clear that his show will probably not be cancelled over a hashtag campaign, and even if it was it is unlikely that my lone and brilliant voice would do anything to stop it. I did some more thinking and I realized it was because I wanted to explain to people how the tweet was out of context! It wasn't offensive! I wanted to be right because they didn't understand Colbert like I did, and if I could just explain it well enough they would maybe they would. Well, to be honest that's a bit of fanciful editing, I wanted to be right because I like being right and if I don't immediately perceive something that somebody else as "correct" then I typically start to invest myself in finding a way for them to be wrong.
Back to the other track again.
I don't know David Foster Wallace, I have never known David Foster Wallace, and it is impossible for me to ever get to know David Foster Wallace because he is dead. I have read a good chunk of his fiction and a smaller chunk of his non-fiction (I've even read non-trivial bit of his senior thesis, which made me feel wonderfully inadequate as a thinker) and it really touched me inside, but I don't know him. I really want to know him though. I think that's a built-in feature of being a fan of somebody. Something that they have made touches you in a real and serious way and it just seems so inconceivable that it isn't a two way street. Every other serious, life-altering interaction in my life is two-way; that's usually what makes relationships so fun. My relationship with the media and stuff that I consume, however, is not. This is a problem that everybody who is a fan of anybody bumps into, so I expect that you are familiar with it.
Coming back to the biography-type-film, I think I am so thoroughly disturbed by it for this reason. The David Foster Wallace in my head who has been so important to me and who is a person whom I love and cherish is not going to be the one on the screen. Anybody short of my identical self is going to have a different interpretation of the person that he was, so the character will not be who I want it to be, and this is frustrating. Kind of for the same reason that when you go to a concert and you see other fans of the same music that you like it's always sort of a let down. It's like "am I one of these people? They're all so stupid and cow-eyed." (relevant xkcd as always: https://xkcd.com/610/). I guess my fundamental problem here is that something incredibly intimate and important to me is going to be put up for everybody to interact with and interpret (or mis-interpret) on their own and that's deeply uncomfortable. Obviously it's not a particularly reasonable discomfort, but there it is. Everyone can sympathize, because we've all done it. We make fun of it because it's so ubiquitous ("bro you just don't understand *band name here* like I do").
And now we synthesize the two thought processes.
The danger comes when the compulsive desire to be right, smart, etc. meets the fragility of my one way connection with the media I love, and the results are kind of easy to extrapolate, so I'll leave that to you. I have no final thesis here, but I guess this (as almost every #RealTalk moment I have with myself) leads back to something I read by David Foster Wallace (and continue to read), his commencement speech at Kenyon College, retitled "This is Water" after it's publication (http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf). It was turned into a short, Buzzworthy-esque YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dexIA_OfLzg) that bothered me for the same reasons the movie will bother me, but ultimately I guess I'm glad that other people like it as much as I do, and I'm also glad that it will reach a wider audience. The lessons I'm choosing to take here are to try and appreciate the fact that the depth and beauty of the experience I have with David Foster Wallace (and to a much lesser extent, Mr. Colbert) are something that many other people share (even if their experiences are wrong [I jest, it's a predictable attempt at a running gag]), and to leave it at that. I can't pretend that it's any manner of solution to the problem of these stupid feelings running amok, but it's what I've got so far.
