All Things Quaint and Trite or a Rant Inspired by another Nicholas Sparks' 'movie'

Please tell me when you look up the word 'putrid' in the dictionary you find a list of Nicholas Sparks' novels as examples. 

Either that or American pop culture for the last twenty years. 

There are lows and there is the graveyard of absolute, inexhaustible lows. Here you find the modern book and music industries, as well as the blockbuster cinema machine. Not to mention, the American mindset that embraces it.

Years ago (I wish it was longer) I tried to watch The Notebook only to feel both nausea and revolt. I love romantic comedies, that is well-written, well-structured romantic comedies but anything from Nicholas Sparks, count me out. 

The Notebook, my god, what a badly written, ill-conceived, un-balanced catastrophic mess, all of it under the allure and gloss of telling a contrived, generic, sub-genial story to appeal to the female persuasion. A story that drags and drearily moves along like a beaten-up Ford on a gravel road. And no one notices the road is  bumpy one, alas, because the ingredients, alas, are all there - charismatic leads, star-crossed and all (Joan Allen could have mailed in her performance) - American audiences gobbled it up. A digestive cookie for sops.

I've haven't watched anything since inspired by the mediocre spark of the Sparks' pen, or if I have, I only get half-way through. 

Take for instance, The Lucky One. It isn't a movie but a series of scripted cues.

Cue the war scenes, cue the wild-jive-talking negro companion at the hummer machine gun. Cue the night scene wherein the soldiers are on a mission.

Cue the gunfight. 

When Zac Efron as the manly-sensitive soldier returns home, cue the German shepherd looking up, then barking and running toward him, welcoming him home.

Cue the romantic vistas, the American pastoral farmlands. 

The entire film is simply this derivative pile of cues. And I can go on because indeed, it's endless. 

Cue the pretty blonde with high cheeks and her artsy, outgoing but sensitive child with curly blonde hair. 

Cue the surly, sheriff ex-husband. 

Cue Blythe Danner and her grandmother-knows-best wisdom.

Cue the tension, the breakdowns and dissent between the exes. The Lucky One? Who's lucky? The audience that can blissfully swallow this pre-masticated, emotional pornographic hayride hybrid of values, longing and nationalistic pride. It's one big jig-saw puzzle, a connect-the-dots, a colour-by-numbers approach to bland Americana and its underbelly of propaganda and ignorance. 

And you know what I compare it with? Soviet Realism.

In the paintings commissioned by the Communist regime under Joseph Stalin, one can see Russians happily at work, big arms, titanic smiles of fortitude, eyes resolved with the task at hand. They are occupied with building the strong, mechanized, industrialized Soviet Union, shovels in their hands, pick axes and wrenches, looking off into the distance amidst railroads, productive factories in the background, plumes of progressive smoke emitting from the heavenly stacks. And beside them, never idle but equally involved, the Russian women with their scarfs, working, keeping pace with the men, children red-cheeked and healthy, either in their arms or at their sides.

No one sees the midnight KGB car in the background, ready to take away someone's father. No one sees the Gulag, the snow-weathered limbs of prisoners with year-old beards and sleepless eyes. No. No one sees the suicides and executions, the torture, the fear.

The same could be said about popular American movies. We don't see the working poor, do we? The people working at Wal-Mart, the ghettos of abandoned cities like Detroit, the empty downtown store fronts, the crack addicts and meth-heads. No. We don't see the people who can't afford health care. No. We're always introduced to the (the yet again) problems of the well-established, people who have cushy jobs - doctors and lawyers, architects and so forth, all of whom are noble, kind and talented, accompanied on their Hollywood journey by good friends and good families to see them though. And somehow, despite everything else, their love life needs work.

Poor things. (Cue the tilted head of sympathy.)

We see characters played by Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep with their lovely ranch houses somewhere in California. Oh, it would be so nice to be young again. Such a shame we're divorced. Oh well, oh well, let's flip through a fashion magazine and then a Home and Garden and order something nice. We'll have a big wedding for the daughter who is eclectic and curious but is marrying someone with a financial future - a banker, lawyer, an investor, broker or maybe a high end chef.

And playing opposite the Baby Boomeresses, Kevin Kline and John Cusack and Alec Baldwin and George Clooney...and so one.

The same shit.

We don't see the prisons, the prisoners, the Guantanamo Bays of our world.

With Nicholas Sparks in his latest book-to-screen wonder, we see Zac Efron as Logan, his emotive eyes, always that tender twinkle of melancholy. We find out he can play the piano and that he took philosophy for a year. And that he loves dogs, oh, my, oh my...rally all the ladies for girls night out because he doesn't compare with any man you've met or will ever meet. And best of all, he's a little unshaven. Oh, so rugged, so un-High School Musical.

And as for the girl, somewhere between adorable and forgettable, she stands there with the Soviet Realism women with her sun dresses and slender figure, her girl-next-door looks and maternal charm.

Bread and circuses. American audiences are given The Lucky One when at the same time all their freedoms are being taken away. If an American citizen is considered a terrorist, they can be whisked off to a modern dungeon without trial because of a new law. (I'm not making this up.)

Adolf Obama in the White House, the Chocolate Jesus according to Bill Maher but don't worry, Zac Efron is more manly now. Don't worry, there will be another season of Glee. Don't worry, there will still be InTouch and People magazines, Comos and InStyles to stare you down at the grocery store.


Don't worry, Taylor Swift with regurgitate her bubble-gum for you to swallow.

And so it goes, history eternally repeating itself (sorry, Mark Twain, sorry, my mistake, "rhyming"). Entertainment to keep the masses amused. The people are truly hungry for justice, truth, transparency but they'll sadly settle for a loaf of bread, either a slice of Miley Cyrus sour dough, a Kim Kardashian ciabatta, or a  Brad Pitt pumpernickel. From Caesar to the Popes, to the Kings of France and England, to Peter and Catherine the Great, to Bismarck, to Hitler, Stalin, down through Bush and now with Obama.

Obama...

And Don't worry, he'll probably be re-elected and no one will no the difference. Well, maybe the people in Yemen and Pakistan, bombed by drones, drones manned by former kids who probably, innocently played Doom and the World of War Craft, masturbating to online porn, totally cut-off from the world.

But that doesn't matter. As long as Zac Efron is happy and he gets the girl.

I tried to watch The Lucky One. But I can't stand stupid long enough. I can guess the ending based on the cues.

Let's see... I'm sure there was a showdown between the ex-husband and him. And I'm sure Blythe Danner talked something wise. And I'm sure the kid is alright though I'm sure he had a realization of some kind, a moment wherein he discovered that Zac Efron is better and kinder, more noble than his sheriff dad with slight abuse tendencies.

And I'm sure the near-forgettable love-interest almost didn't want Efron (almost...) but that's not the way it ends right Sparky? 

As for the rest of North America, I'm not sure. It seems we're only safe in our theatres where we can't see all the jobs going overseas to factory workers without union and safety standards. We can't see the fore-closed homes and the Chinese business men laughing at our corrupt system, happy to do business with Wal-Mart.

Moreover, we can't see the dismembered marines coming home, everyone else who doesn't look like Efron.

Popcorn and circuses. My god, Nicholas Sparks... nevermind, you already know who you are. We already know whose bread you butter.