juxtaposition

So yeah, I'm not sure that this qualifies for a story, but I think it's pretty interesting nonetheless. I just really hate that melancholy feeling I get when I watch a sappy movie that I don't like, but still feel sad anyways. Hope you all like it.


Hollywood
By: Nicholas Rodgers

Roll credits. The connection was severed. A faint sense of longing and melancholy overtook the heart; a deep pain caused by a want unattainable. Every time she watched a movie Shauna felt this way. The sadness was only the tip of a hatred held deeper for a life she knew did not exist. Idealism. The credits moving up her screen pushed that fantasy farther away while her own existence was forced back onto her. Not that it was unpleasant or miserable, but she did not ever get to feel that way. The way the characters felt in the bittersweet story written on her mass-produced DVD. Love, affection, scorn, brilliance, hatred, and redemption were shown in a way that was more real than she had ever experienced in her own life. The hatred was not towards the director or actors though. It was held toward the world, toward nature, toward life, toward herself. Shauna felt lied to when she watched overpaid actors poorly portray underdeveloped characters in screenplays and adaptations filled with such a great amount of plot-holes that the willing suspension of disbelief became impossible. Yet there was something about these movies, a reason she kept watching and kept buying. It was as if they contained a promise of what was attainable in life. The pain was caused by the discontent of falling short of those things. The abstracts that made the otherwise mundane situations feel so glorious. Love, friendship, solace, revenge; the reason she kept watching. She thought for a second about those absolutes. How love felt to her while she watched the movies, and then how love had turned out in her own life. There was no purity in real love. Love became repetition and boredom. Two people finishing each others sentences and the convergence of thought patterns. Soon she did not need the other person, and found that they not only were rid of their need for her, but had found the need for another. Then the pain. Another Hollywood lie. Pain in the cinema had closure. The character soon forgot about losing their loved one and moved on, or, in the greater farces found redemption with the one lost. All this mind you happened within an hour or two. Shaunas pain had lasted for years. When her mother died of leukemia, there was no closure. Seeing her mothers dead body in a satin lined casket did not make her feel better. Her mother did not leave messages for her from past the grave to tell her everything was ok. It was all bullshit.
End credits. A revelation struck her like a drunken husband. The reason for the hatred and melancholy revealed itself. The movie ended. She could not see the problems lying past the miles of film. She wondered if the movies had continued whether their lives and relationships would slowly decay like hers. If one day Harry would tell Sally to go fuck herself. But that would cross the line between cinema and reality. Hollywood cant be real. The ideals and perfection of Hollywood are like the finish line in Zenos paradox. You can make lots of progress towards it at first, but the closer you get the slower you go, until you realize that it is impossible to attain. You will never reach the finish line so you give up and start again towards another abstract. Something else you can never reach. Idealism. No wonder the Hollywood actors all think they know how to run the country, with their cockeyed glance at what the politicians should be doing. Theyve stood in so much of their own bullshit that they think the world can have a happy ending like the crappy movies they push down the throats of America. Shauna was tired. It was late and she had work in the morning.

PS didn't really edit it, so feel free to point out mistakes.