My, my, this has been an eventful week. I have not one but two movies to snark about (127 Hours and The King's Speech), though both reviews will probably consist more of glowing praise than anything else. They were both very good movies in very different ways, and both were outside the realm of my usual theatergoings. I considered putting them both in a single Cinema Snark post, if only for the sake of learning to write shorter reviews: "Brevity is the soul of wit," I said to myself, but then I remembered that Polonius was the one who said that first and he was a hypocritical asshole and Shakespeare himself didn't exactly become famous for his curt, utilitarian verse, so in the end I decided that brevity can piss off. I don't blog in a vain attempt to achieve some sort of maximum linguistic efficiency; I write rambly shit like this because I like the sound of my inner monologue narrating my posts as I type. If you want straightforward prose, bugger off to Caesar's Gallic War.
In any case, I just didn't feel like writing reviews today. This isn't solely a movie blog, after all (even if "Cinema Snark" is the most commonly used tag on my rather colorful list), and I've resolved to try and do at least one regular post for every movie review. So, if your decision on whether or not to see 127 Hours or The King's Speech hinges entirely on my opinion, I'd say that you're a moron and you probably also need help feeding yourself, so maybe your next trip to the movies shouldn't be your biggest concern. Your IQ aside, however, they're both great movies and I highly recommend them--though there's a pretty graphic scene where Colin Firth gets his hand stuck under a boulder and Geoffrey Rush has to amputate the arm just below the elbow. And then the two of them work together to inspire the people of Britain through radio broadcasts.
Or at least that's how I remember it. I might be getting the movies confused.
Aaaaand moving on.
Also in the eventful department, The 40-Year-Old Virgin Mother is by far the most visited and commented upon of any of my posts to date. This can mean one of two things: I either need to blog about touchy subjects more often, or I need to rebut more obscure and relatively esoteric articles that no one else has actually read. (I wonder which it could be! Oh, the mysteries of life.)
So! Speaking of religious matters, anecdote ahoy:
I was sitting in church one Sunday morning, minding my own business, when the priest made a comment in his homily about the minor sins that people commit in their everyday lives: jealousy, pessimism, things like that. And what else did he see fit to include in this little list?
Snarkiness and sarcasm.
That's right, snark is apparently a sin now. My immediate reaction was along the same lines Patrick's, who leaned over and whispered to me that if snark is sinful, I'm going to be first in line at the gates of hell. The more I thought about it, though, the more it annoyed me. I'm sure that if pressed, the priest in question would say something about people using snarkiness and sarcasm (snarkasm?) to tear down or hurt others, but the actual sin in that instance would be mean-spiritedness. Snarkasm is a generally humorous method of communication which can be used or abused by anyone capable of coherent speech--and if that's sinful, you could just as easily make an argument for the sinfulness of pure, unadulterated honesty, because that's often more likely to result in hurt feelings.
But no. People get admonished for being snarky, because that's somehow a less legitimate way to live your life. Comments like the one from the homily have this insidious undertone to them, suggesting that if what you have to say isn't serious enough or real enough, then it has no value in our society/religion/world.
That is, to use a technical term, BULLSHIT.
I choose to live a humorous life. I choose to laugh at dead baby jokes. I choose to be a dick to my friends because they know that I don't actually hope they get hit by trains. Does that make me immature? Possibly, but who gives a damn. I know how to be serious when the situation calls for it, so why the hell shouldn't I get what amusement I can from the rest of life? People who decide that humor has an inherently low societal value are the sort of tight-ass, stoic old fuckers who've never experienced a moment of true happiness in their lives and want the rest of the world to stop having so much fun so they'll stop feeling left out.
Furthermore, snarking happens to keep my wits sharp and my vocabulary imaginative. It's critical thinking in its most literal sense. I find holes in logic or inconsistencies in arguments. I point out the blatantly absurd. I may use more than my fair share of profanity while doing so, but you can't make an omelet without dropping a few F-bombs. Damn near everything I say comes from a very genuine place, and saying it in creatively loquacious ways just happens to be more challenging and fun.
And finally, there are few things in life I love more than a good argument. Part of it is simply the joy of trolling the easily angered, but it's so much more satisfying to trade verbal blows with a worthy opponent. That's why it's awesome to post things like "Mary might not have been a virgin her whole life" and get a well-crafted, literate response telling me why I'm wrong. God knows neither of us is likely to admit defeat, but in the course of debating, we're sure as hell going to get some mental and philosophical exercise.
See? Snark as self-improvement.
Put that in your next homily, you smug jerk.
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