An interchange with reality

Stuart: The other day, I was sitting in a parking lot, and it was pretty full, with everyone trying to find a park. As I was watching, this vehicle drove into a parking spot fast, and literally as it came to a halt, a second vehicle stopped right behind it. In the second vehicle was a woman who was all but apoplectic with anger, and who proceeded to berate the man who had been driving the first vehicle.

Ethan: Sounds exciting.

Kurt: Voyeuristic, if you ask me.

Stuart: Well, what intrigued me about it, was that I was sitting in my car, listening to music, so I could actually hear anything. The effect was further exaggerated as I was actually watching this scene play out through my rear-view mirror. It was so surreal, these people waving their arms at each other, with angry faces and clearly letting their emotions run high. I felt like I had been transported into some sort of a computer game- almost like being in the Sims, where your character has an angry face, and he grumbles as he walks around your house. You are not entirely sure why he is angry, and so you sit there trying to work out the other half of the story.

Lester: Kind of like Dungeon Keeper then, with your demons walking around with a black cloud over their heads, and threatening to leave your danger.

Stuart: Well, almost exactly like that. This incident was very brief, so it was equally as strange when all of sudden the woman got back into her car and drove off with some aggression. It was the literal flash-temper, and almost like a slightly plastic exchange, it was over. 'Your character is now satisfied, and you may now move onto the next problem...'

Claire: Ok, I seriously think you need to get out more.

Ethan: No, I hear exactly what you are saying. It has been a problem that I have grappled with for some time. I think the most profound expose on this, for me, was in Pan's Labyrinth. To a lesser extent, there is a discussion of the same themes in Hellboy 2...

Kurt: Oh, so now we're discussing high art, are we?

Ethan: (ignoring Kurt)...in that there is this growing tension between fantasy and reality. I have this growing fear that our extreme emphasis on the real is doing immeasurable harm to our psyche as human beings. Consider the basic escapism of fantasy books that we used to read as children, or the cartoons we used to watch. They were innocent, naive, and just earnestly charming. There was no innuendo, so alter agenda, in fact no attempt to be anything other than aimed at children. Now we have Spongebob Squarepants with his thinly veiled references to drugs, and psychedelic world.

Kurt: Well, I disagree. I think Spongebob is as wholesome as your idealised shows.

Stuart: You cannot mean that.

Lester: I don't know, when I was a child, all I wanted was to be grown up.

Claire: We know.

Ethan: Do you think it is just sepia-tinged nostalgia? I am just imagining this, or is this a legitimate gripe? Are children being expected to adopt a sophistication and worldliness that is just unrealistic, and dangerous? I know that every generation insists that the next is collapsing, but I do wonder if perhaps we are being exposed to too much these days before we are actually prepared to handle it.

Charles: I think we tend to create a phantamasgoria in our heads. We have surrounded ourselves with so many distractions, that we tend to forget what is real. This is, equally, a very popular observation- people like to point out a discongruence in life, and the general confusion that goes with it. So there is once again a system of push and pull, and if the parents are uncertain, then what does that mean for the children? A failing moral system, interlinked with a plethora of knowledge and availability, that people seem to be increasingly ill-equipped to contend with.

Claire: That is an extraordinarily cynical observation for you.

Ethan: I don't know, I think Charles is right. I think there is an element of unreality in everything we do in our worlds today. We are all expected to have perfect bodies, perfect hair, and all just generally be beautiful. We demand a life partner, someone who one can love, and love in such an extreme way, as well as expecting the extraordinary in the experiences and emotions that we encounter in our daily lives.

Kurt: "Our life is not a movie, or maybe..."

Ethan: Precisely. We have become so accustomed to seeing these extreme romances on television, people being put into impossible situations, and coming out the hero. I sometimes feel like I have become sealed off from the world, forced to insulate myself between the element of longing that media preys upon, and the often harsh reality of the world itself.

Kurt: Expected to be increasingly realistic, with the result that we are becoming increasingly escapist.

Claire: (softly) And ill-equipped to cope with the rigours of people and life...

Stuart: I was walking in the centre of town the other day, and I encountered this triumvirate of women, parading down the street, each pushing a pram with a child in it. Yet, these women all look so ravaged, and hard. Life had been cruel to them, as shown by their lined faces and nicotine stained teeth. These were not the "glowing woman, proudly showing off her child, whilst cars slow to watch her walk..."

Claire: I think you may all actually be lemmings here. Is it not possible that you are all just buying into this idea? I think you are all over-thinking this, observing a result, and then drawing your theory from the conclusion. You all know, perfectly well, that that is a very poor exercise in thought. Think of yourselves, all highly-educated, drawing thoughts from your own discomfort, feeling of being out of place, and, dare I say, despair. Can you understand someone who is perhaps not as intellectually defined as yourself? Somehow, I doubt it.

Ethan: So a nostalgia for a utopia we have never known...?

Claire: Exactly. It is easier to imagine than to deal with the world around you.

Ethan: Perhaps. It is a thought that I have not discounted. My own personal difficulties, and sense of desperation are just not translatable to some sort of a general indictment on the world around me.

Stuart: Well, I still think it is weird when I encounter a child, not even one year old, being carried around with a full hair weave. She had almost had more hair than there was a body, and with pierced ears as well. It truly was a little copy of the mother, her own personal Barbie doll.

Ethan: Leaving us to walk on, and wonder...

An obstruse conversation

Ethan: "Have any of you seen that new billboard that they have put outside the entrance to town? It is for that advertising company with the slogan "We think outside of the box"?"

Kurt: "Yeah, I get a chuckle out of it every morning."

Ethan: "It drives me crazy. It has this picture of four young women, showing from just below their breasts to the upper part of their thighs. Essentially a belly button shot. All four are white, in a row, wearing black underwear, and one has a belly stud. I mean, how is this even remotely inventive? It is not particularly revealing, by the standards of today, and it is hardly as if there is anything particularly risqué about it."

Stuart: "It seems to me that they are so far inside the box that they can't even see the box..."

Ethan: "I always half wonder whether they are referring to the one with the stud as being 'out of the box'. Can't imagine why though, perhaps we should be asking what their faces look like, or something."

Claire: "Anyone want to fill me in on what the 'box' is, exactly?"

Lester: "Well, I guess it would constitute the commonplace..."

Kurt: "Perhaps you might want to stop verbalizing your thoughts, genius."

Claire: "Anyone for more coffee? I need a break from you lot."

Ethan: "It is an interesting thought, if they think this particular advert is in some way inventive, it logically demands their conception of normal. I mean, to me, this advert is so unbelievably cliché in modern advertising as to render it obsolete."

Stuart: "Am I missing something? Do you think it is meant to be ironic?"

Ethan: "Maybe it is a demand to us, as the viewer, to use our imagination on the advert."

Lester: *snicker* "Maybe we need to imagine what is inside the box..."

Kurt: "I am glad we could finally introduce some filth."

Ethan: "We keep telling you to remove your mind from the gutter, but then I suppose that would be asking too much."

Lester: "Porn and cigarettes account for much of my childhood. What can I say? Certain things are still essential."

Kurt: "Please tell me that your childhood at least began at puberty..."

Ethan: "And that ratty army backpack that was buried under the Wendy-house that you would visit every other day. Like you thought we didn't know about that. Did it never cross your mind that your coming in and out of the house all the time with that thing wasn't going to raise suspicion?"

Lester: "Well, I did always toy with the idea of staying outside."

Stuart: "Ah, hell. I just caught that box comment. I think this needs to stop right now."

Lester: "What, is this a little too much for your puritanical sensibilities?"

Stuart: "Personally, I do not feel in the slight bit inclined to lower myself to your debased and regressive patterns of thinking."

Kurt: "Oh, right, that whole my mind is a temple, completely removed from the destructive forces of outside forces. If I were the government, you would be the kind of person I would put on my "Watch List" as most likely to be inclined to extremist activities."