Pattern Recognition

My previous two posts have focused on, what the observant have undoubtedly noticed, movies and my experiences/critiques of them.

Roger Ebert is someone whom I model my writing style after. Seriously. If you can get past the lampooning he received in the shortly-lived television series "The Critic," and can actually force yourself to summon up an ounce of interest in the shitty movies he's forced to review these days, you're in for a treat in the form of an excellent writer and thinker. Ebert is fair, sarcastically sincere, and he can express in a simple paragraph a thought or observation that might take a lesser writer such as myself an entire page, however ill-defined that might be in relation to html.

I'm not sure if film critique would be something I would be interested in. There's that whole thing about the "ivory tower", and my lack of interest in having to even waste my time and breath in critiquing the latest Jessica Simpson shitstain on the human consciousness. If I'm going to watch a shitty movie and then make fun of it, I'd like that to be on my own accord.

Rather, I have found myself in the position of a cultural observer of many things American, far removed from the environment and society that engenders such byproducts of culture. Being here in China provides me with a unique position, whereas I am both integrated and removed from this landscape of creativity that I both abandoned and simultaneously missed.

It's weird: watching all these Oscar movies, and other cultural events such as witnessing Barack Obama being sworn in... weird. It doesn't feel like my culture, and at the same time, it does. This is perhaps the first time I've found myself almost completely immersed in an entirely different culture, as my wife and perhaps the only person I talk to on a regular basis is unmistakably Chinese, and the only language I find myself speaking is inevitably Chinese.

Movies, then, are those little slices of life back home in America that no force here in China can hope to take from me. My escape. All those insecurities about modern life, those fucked-up inconsistencies that only Americans can master, that decadence that arises and possesses close association with depression. And all the bad things that go with American culture, too. Sure, it's fucked up. But it's what I know. I've since become comfortable in the fucked-upness of it all.

I can safely say with certainty that China, although a fun place, is not somewhere I'd like to settle down for the long haul. I get along with everyone here, but at the same time, I'm tired of meeting the cultural expectations of everyone I meet, that is, being the good American and the good Chinese boy. I'm tired of being the uncultured traitor who's turned his back on his own people. It's not to say that many of the people here are culturally blind, or even more harshly, insensitive, to the plight of their overseas brethren. Rather, there's no foundation for them to base their assumptions and preconceptions on. That's fine and dandy, but it's not my position to put up with it, either.

My return back to China has dispelled, for the most part, many to most of my pangs of romantic longing and emptiness that I felt after returning back to America. There'll always be a special association I carry with me, and lots of unforgettable memories. But, ask me truthfully and honestly?

I can't wait to get out of this place.