Banana Scoop

Movies are often used as tools to influence their target audience.  They have messages that, portrayed through relatable characters, can lead us to believe that by mimicking their actions and beliefs can bring us to a better life, due to seeing the consequences of leading that lifestyle.  It’s the simple idea of a the general public being too easily influenced by the media and unfortunately we’re all too influenced by this.  I’ve seen unfortunate people devoting themselves to Fight Club thought and Yes Man idea.  Here’s a list of some movies whose message might not actually be a good idea.

“F*** Your Mediocre Everyman Life, you’ll be freer when you do” – Fight Club

We’ve all felt the desire to ‘fuck’ everything and live life with nothing holding us back.  Fuck our iKea furniture, fuck our jobs, fuck everything right?  Live free like there’s no tomorrow and spend every night beating the shit out of each other.  This is how we should live our lives right?  To be like Tyler Durden, to be the ultimate bad-ass.  I’ve seen the hardcore Fight Club enthusiasts and I’ve even been one myself.  Unfortunately, they’re highly misguided and misinformed about how the real world works.  If you even tried to be like, just for one day, actually be like these guys [not by just nitpicking quotes that work on only certain situations],  you’d find that you’d be on the street, with the only story to tell is how you set fire to your apartment and gotten the shit beaten out of you for spraying your hose on some guy just because you wanted to fight him.

“Saying yes to everything leads to good things” – Yes Man

picking up a hobo doesn’t lead to this

The idea of this movie is to persuade the audience that saying yes to everything leads to good things.  The spontaneity is a welcoming aspect to life, enough so to get a quirky girl to fall in love with you.  The parts the movie skips out on is the hefty sum of money plane lessons, Korean lessons, middle eastern wives, etc. might incur.  The film also skips out on how all these outings might affect how many times you can go to your job to get that money.  And how do you say no to a random person saying ‘quit your job’?  The extent of instances of how yes may negatively affect your life end at sex with an old woman.  What stops the relatable Carl on his yes rampage is the unlikely chance of the government stepping in for charges against learning Korean.  You don’t need me to tell you that this road could lead to a much darker path.  Can you give me your life savings and sell me everything you own?  Yes.

“Quit Your Job and Blackmail Your Boss for enough money to be set for life” – American Beauty

The message is difficult, and easily miscontrued.  But it’s also beautiful at the same time.  The message I’m attacking isn’t the movie’s message [I wouldn’t be able to touch it], but rather the message Lester Burnham conveys in his actions in this movie.  Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham is a relatable suburban father who is fed up with everything and blackmails his corporate boss and then works at his teenage job as a fast food salesman.  All in an attempt to sleep with his daughter’s teenage friend.  It’s much more complicated than that, but I guarantee any John Doe who even tries to do this would have a counter suit from a major corporate stuck right up their ass, and 50 years working at a fast food joint wouldn’t be able to pay off the extreme debt you’d be put into.  Don’t try this at home.

“Cut Yourself off from the World to get involved with Nature” – Into the Wild

I will tell you now that I have not seen this movie.  I don’t want to pretend to have to lie to you about seeing this movie, so I’m going to be clean about it.  I include this movie on this list because I saw in a trailer that the idea of this movie was to abandon everything and get involved with nature.  Or something like that.  The man burns his credit cards and refuses to tell his family about his journey of finding himself.  I claim this not to be a good idea because of the selfishness he has.  Remembering that I haven’t seen the movie, the sheer idea of completely erasing oneself without telling anyone else is very similar to suicide.  In suicide, you contemplate eradicating your own life because ‘the world would be better without you’.  Wrong, believe it or not, people care about you and the thing this guy does in Into the Wild is incredibly selfish in my opinion.  [From basic plot summaries I’ve read] I hope whatever self satisfaction he gets from being one with nature is worth the grief and depression his loved ones are going through.

“Devote yourself to cleaning up the streets, starting with a 13 year old prostitute” – Taxi Driver

This is very similar to American Beauty.  The message I’m attacking isn’t the film’s message itself, but the message the character Travis Bickle is conveying.  Trying to attack Taxi Driver’s message would be like trying to throw a whiffle ball at a battleship.  Travis Bickle essentially [and very broadly] become a vigilante trying to clean up the streets.  He talks to himself in mirrors and saves 13 year old Jodie Fosters.  Or at least tries to.  In the name of chivalry, he very amateurishly tries to rush a house, and gets himself shot up.

Bonus: “Chill Out” – The Big Lebowski

There is a religion called Dudeism that was inspired by the actions of The Dude in the Big Lebowski.  I didn’t include this because in all reality, being chilled out the entire time wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.  It’s just [hilariously] unfortunate that The Dude got himself in a whole heaping pile of shit of a situation for just wanted some reparations for a peed-on rug.