#33: The Raptor Fences Aren't Out, Are They?

(Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg, 1993)

When I first started writing this I was sitting in an airport in Philadelphia. It was 4 AM in Eugene, I basically hadn't slept, and I had two hours before my plane boarded. I figured I had two choices: I could either keep reading Dorian Gray and struggle to maintain focus on it, or I could try to hammer out a blog while I had the time. So there I was, in Philadelphia International Airport, writing about dinosaurs, trying to keep my eyes open. Needless to say, I couldn't stay focused on this any longer than I could on Dorian Gray, so I eventually gave up and just sat there and stared into space. Now I am sitting in a Starbucks in Lake Placid on my first full day off from camp and facing a very similar situation. I can either sit here and try to focus on Dorian Gray while my friends talk to each other, or I can try to write about dinosaurs. As is almost always the case, dinosaurs won.

My review of Jurassic Park is going to come with another "when Caroline was a little girl" story. When I was a little girl I was not what most people would consider normal. My favorite color was black, I was absolutely fascinated by the great disasters in history (Titanic, Pompeii, etc.), and I was obsessed with dinosaurs. That meant that when Jurassic Park came out I was dying to see it. Much like my later confusion about why I wasn't allowed to watch American Beauty, I was utterly shocked and devastated when my mom told me that she wouldn't take me to see it in theaters. You see, in my mind dinosaurs were not and could not ever be scary, a feeling that my mother understandably questioned. What I didn't realize was that Jurassic Park was not a film about dinosaurs and humans getting along, but rather a film about dinosaurs devouring the very people that brought them back into existence.

My mom's ban on Jurassic Park didn't last long, though. She told me that she would allow me to see it, but only after she'd seen it first. And even then I had to watch it in broad daylight with all the lights on so as to not give myself nightmares. I could not understand what all the rules were for, but I really wanted to watch some dinosaurs so I didn't really care. After she watched it, she was hesitant. She told me that she thought it was scary, but that my dad had said that I would probably love it, so she'd allow me to see it. Not surprisingly, I was overjoyed.

Now, dear readers, we reach the point in the story that truly highlights the oddity that was me as a child. I watched Jurassic Park intensely (and in broad daylight, as requested by my mother), and I loved every second of it. I was so excited to see the dinosaurs that I'd seen in books on a television screen, moving and interacting with each other (I'm also not entirely sure that I understood that the dinosaurs in the movie weren't actual dinosaurs). I was also unfailingly on the side of the dinosaurs. When the people in the movie were scared of them and trying to kill them, I was mad. It was impossible for me to understand that I was supposed to be rooting against the giant, murderous reptiles in favor of the people. I didn't want to do it, and I wasn't going to.

Now, many years later, I kind of feel the same way. For the most part the humans in Jurassic Park are douchebags who deserve to be tormented by prehistoric monsters. The people that survive that movie are the people who deserve to survive, and the ones who get ripped apart pretty much deserve what's coming to them. I still cheer when the Tyrannosaurus rex saves the main characters from the velociraptors, and I still think to myself "see, dinosaurs really aren't that bad." I understand that this is not popular opinion, but my inner 5-year-old still holds on to it. It doesn't matter how old I get, whenever I watched Jurassic Park I'll always want the dinosaurs to win, and I'll always be happy when the helicopters fly away the the dinosaurs are left to live on their island in peace.

#32: I Rule!

(American Beauty, 1999, Sam Mendes)

I have very distinct memories of watching the Academy Awards in 2000 when American Beauty won Best Picture. I was eleven, and I remember asking my mom if we could go see it. Of course she said no, because it was an R-rated movie and I was an eleven-year-old, but based on the clips they showed during the awards ceremony I couldn't grasp why it wouldn't be appropriate (clearly I didn't understand that networks couldn't show R-rated material during prime time). My mother told me that the movie was about "grown-up things," and that someday when I was older she'd let me see it. I'm sure I stewed on that for a while, unhappy that I was being denied something that I was interested, wallowing in the gross injustice of it all,  while still knowing that if my mom said the movie wasn't okay it probably wasn't.

It took me eleven years after that to finally see American Beauty, and for some reason it carried a special allure for all of those years. There were many occasions when American Beauty was on HBO and I could have watched it, but even though I was old enough to see "grown-up things" I always heard this little voice saying "you're not allowed to watch this! You're not a grown-up yet! Change the channel!" It didn't matter that I had long been old enough to handle it's mature content, the film maintained a forbidden status in my mind that I could never muscle past. Now I kind of think of it the same way I think of The Picture of Dorian Gray: it's something that I know is supposed to be great, but that I'm slightly afraid of experiencing because I don't want to be disappointed by it. I built American Beauty up in my head as this incredible film that would totally change the way that I looked at things, that I was being prevented from seeing because it's content was mind-blowingly R-rated, but I avoided seeing it because I didn't want to be let down when it didn't live up to those expectations. Having now seen it I can say that while it wasn't totally paradigm shifting or racy, it also wasn't a major disappointment.

I know my mother is reading this, so I'll take this moment to say that I absolutely do not resent her for not letting me see American Beauty when I was eleven. It is not a film for an eleven-year-old. In all honesty, it's not even really a film for a seventeen-year-old. The dysfunction and anger that exists between the characters is something that can really only be understood by someone who has some experience with the world, and even as a 22-year-old college graduate I'm not entirely sure that I can fully appreciate it's message. The things that the film deals with are challenging for anyone who is old enough to understand what they are, and while that makes it an excellent film it also makes it a difficult one.

One of the ways that I judge a good film is by how many times I get distracted. If I'm whipping my laptop open every fifteen minutes to check Facebook and play Angry Birds the film probably isn't that gripping. When my mom and I were watching American Beauty I don't think I got distracted once. I might have looked something up on my computer at one point, but if I did I paused the film to do so. I can't remember the last time that I have been so focused on a film, especially one where so very little seems to happen. For 122 minutes I was completely riveted. The characters experience so much anguish and face so many demons that I just didn't want to look away.

More than anything I am happy that I saw American Beauty when I did. I had plenty of opportunities between the winters of 2000 and 2011 to see it, but I didn't. Something, maybe that nagging voice in the back of my head saying that I wasn't allowed to see it yet, kept me from watching it until now, and I'm glad. Even though I don't feel like I've had enough life experiences or challenges to empathize with the characters, I at least know enough to be able to comprehend what they are going through. I learned that American Beauty is not the film that I thought it would be when I saw the pretty scenes with the red rose petals, and that's what makes it so great. On the outside it looks glossy and perfect and flawless, but it's not. Just like the characters that populate its world, American Beauty is putting up a facade for the sleaze, grime, dysfunction, and violence that are lying just below the surface.