The Perks of Being

Despite my having a degree to do, I seem to have a great deal of time on my hands. This isn’t the case for many people, just people such as myself who refuse to work in the evening. As a result of this, I find myself searching the internet aimlessly and usually finding something of note. Today I stumbled upon the above Youtube video. I have no particular investment in the person in the video or The Perks of Being a Wallflower (at least, not the same extent of the gentleman in the video). What I liked about the video, is what he speaks about. He doesn’t tell you to read the book or really attempt to sell the book to the viewer at all. What he does is speak freely about something he is passionate about, something that makes him feel. This, my beautiful readers (I say beautiful because everybody deserves to be reminded of their beauty every once and a while) is what this blog post shall focus on; things that illicit any emotion whether it is wonderful, awful, painful or terrifying because, feeling anything is magnificent. In the words of Mr Stephen Fry, “knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime”.

When I started writing this (a whole 200 words ago), I wasn’t too sure about what I was really going to focus on. The nature of feeling? What I like? What I’m passionate about? What other people are passionate about? What makes people feel? I’m still not too sure what I’m going to focus on, what I do know is that I would love to hear responses from whoever reads this. I would love to hear what makes you feel, how it makes you feel and if possible, why (if you know). You, of course don’t have to answer all of these questions, or any at all. But if you can, thank you.

Any reader of this blog (of which there are few, I have the stats) would know that I am quite the film fan. I place high importance on films and their ability to tell stories about the human condition and affect the human condition, because of this I guess it’s no surprise that I have quite a few films in mind when it comes to writing about what makes me feel. If I haven’t clarified it properly thus far (which I’m sure I haven’t), I want to make another attempt to describe what I mean by certain things making you feel. I don’t just mean watching a sad film that makes you cry, I mean something stimulating your emotional core and your person in general, more so than most other things that you are exposed to.

The first film that comes to mind when I think about films that have had a affect on me is something I watched initially when I was very young and still watch on a fairly regular basis now. That film is Stand by Me, it is centred on a group of 12-year old boys as they go on a journey to find the body of another child. They are close friends and each character has something about them that seems to appeal to my emotional core. Geordie is the main character; his brother passed away before the film starts and it is his relationship with his parents that seems to be the most striking. His father rejects him and his mother just seems to be broken; for the most part she doesn’t even seem to be aware of his existence. Chris is Geordie’s best friend, he comes from a family that everyone looks down upon and fails to see why he should make any effort to make their perception of him any different. Chris is the catalyst for one of the most touching moments in the film, a moment of pure selflessness; he tells Geordie that he and his friends aren’t good for him and if he wants what’s best for him, he should leave them behind. Such moments as that epitomise the William Blake quote, “He who binds himself to joy does the winged life destroy, But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise”. Next we have Teddy, his Dad was crazy (as much as I hate to use that word, it’s the only one given) and hurt Teddy during an episode. What it fascinating about this relationship is that Teddy loves his father more than anything else in the world, he speaks of how he “stormed the beach at Normandy” and defends his father when others insult him. Vern, other being the one who finds out about the dead body, probably has the smallest back-story. However, this doesn’t make him any less interesting. He is very compassionate and probably the most innocent of the group. Stand by Me ends with the phrase, “I never had any friends like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” This is a phrase I agree with completely, that’s not to say that any friends I’ve made since pre-adolescence are in some way inferior, it’s just that friends of a certain period of time and what a friendship actually consists of at a certain time can never be replicated.

As much as I think writing about the following film will make me seem unbelievably sentimental (although an element of sentimentality was necessary for this post),I can’t help but include it in this post. The film in question is Dolls, a rarely violence-free film from Japanese director, Takeshi Kitano. IMDB states the plot quite simply, “Three stories about never-ending love”, this synopsis is perfect, no more words are necessary. I wish to focus on one story in particular. Haruna is a popstar with a huge fan base. Following an accident Haruna stays out of the limelight as she doesn’t want any of her fans to see her bandaged face. Nukui, her biggest fan sacrifices his eyesight to be in the company of his idol. I understand that this story can seem quite troubling, Nukui appears to be very obsessive and Haruna quite vain, if this was to actually occur the majority would not see it as a beautiful thing. However, in the wonderful world of Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls where everything is beautiful and love is more than an emotion but a reason for being, this story is not only acceptable but magical.

Initially this was to be a single post, but I think this is deserving of a few more, partially because I don’t want to rush this or produce one long, eventually tedious post. This is the end of part one, be sure to come back for part 2 which shall hopefully include some Susan Beir.

An interesting aside, I have 2000 word essay to do and I’ve written 500 words of that in one week, I wrote this (over 1000 words) in less than an hour.