The Lair

Or in other words, reality is an interesting thing. Interesting in how it’s depicted, interesting also in how being too realistic causes people to wince. For the purposes of expanding on this observation, trite though it may be, I offer two pieces of (circumstantial) evidence.

I was watching Castaway on TV last night. Yeah, I had nothing better to do etc etc, I was watching a 5 year old movie on television, whatever. Actually, I saw it when it came out because it was the buzz of the month at the time. There, I feel cool and important now I’ve established my movie goer cred. Be that as it may, I was better able to notice small details in the movie last night that I missed the first time around. And one such was the depiction of reality. Reality: if you leave behind a fiancee for four years, don’t expect her to wait around. That’s a chick flick, not a real movie. That’s just silly. Score one to the script writer (or Robert Zemeckis). Equally so, when you make a miraculous return from the dead, don’t expect the said (now ex-) fiancee to fall over you and come over to live happily ever after. There was a point in the movie where it appeared that this was, in fact, going to happen. And I remember the first time around, I was mentally going “No, no, no. That isn’t real“. But the script writers avoided the temptation. And Castaway was a better movie for ending without a happily ever after. Verdict: reality = good. But since I am in a nitpicky mode, it seems slightly incredible that Tom Hanks could retain such muscle mass (based on his diet) after 4 fricking years marooned on an island. Slightly stretching credulity, but oh well. Can’t have everything. And was that ice skate dentistry cool or what ?

Onto the second piece of evidence. The newest craze in a country that regularly seems to drift from one craze to another is the so called Crazy Frog ringtone. Yep. It drives anyone watching day time TV without the mental advertising blinkers on … in a word … crazy. But this is how marketing works in these parts and the crazy frog is … at number one in the UK charts. Further proving that the record buying public in the UK has certainly come a long way. If not exactly in a direction that I’d follow. But no, we’re on reality, right? Well, compare, if you will. The original image. Note the err.. somewhat noticeable protuberance in the frog’s belly area. Can’t see it ? Try the closeup. Now, look at the censored bits on the CNN press photo. And laugh. Some clever artist actually went a bit too far in depicting reality (well, as close as one gets for humanoid looking frogs) and put in a mini set of uhm, well.. wedding tackle on.

We want our cartoon animals to look like humans. But not.. too human, please. Will someone please think of the children ?