The Everyday Epic

Does this

equal

this?

Yesterday I watched Superbad for the first time since seeing it in the theater. For whatever reason, I was left with the thought that movies like Superbad and Harold & Kumar remind me a lot of the Lord of the Rings...

The value of movies like Harold & Kumar and Superbad is how they turn real life goals (getting fast food and hooking up with girls) into journeys of epic proportions. For Harold and Kumar to reach White Castle, as well as for Seth and Even to bring alcohol to Jules' party, is the equivalent of Frodo climbing Mount Doom.

The beauty of transforming the everyday into the epic is that in real life, the completion of certain everyday tasks feels like monumental achievements. Everybody has moments in which they think that, what just happened right there, to me, in my life, could have been in a movie. Successfully journeying to get the exact food you desire at an off-hour for restaurants or obtaining and transporting a substance you are not legally of age to possess, definitely qualify as these certain everyday (epic) journeys.

On the side: This might just be me, but I constantly confuse Lord of the Rings with Harry Potter and for the longest time thought the eye in the sky was called Lord Voldemort. Just me?



Devil's Advocate: Last year, The Stage Names by Okkervil River, may have been may favorite non-hip hop cd. The first song, Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe (lyrics posted below), stands as an attack against our ego’s tendency to self-aggrandize events in our own life to the point that we think our life could be a movie.

Basically, the song states that the everyday is in no way relatable to the epic. (but at the same time the “or Maybe” in the title of the song means they are open to the idea)

Final Thought: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was noted for bringing tragedy, which had been reserved solely for royal figures (ie Oedipus, Macbeth, etc.), to the common man (Willy Loman). Dare I say, Superbad and Harold & Kumar, in the vein of Death of a Salesman, have brought the epic to the everyday? Think I just did.

It’s just a life story, so there’s no climax.
No more new territory, so pull away the imax.
In the slot that you sliced through the scene there was no shyness.
In the plot that you passed through your teeth there was no pity.
No fade in, film begins on a kid in the big city.
And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!)
No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!)
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane
of some great movie.
-
Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe