Fanpeople

Argument with a person over The Hours today. I said that I loved the ending scene and that last shot of Nicole Kidman sliding into her watery grave (made beautiful by the cinematography and Philip Glass' score) but that it was melodramatic and pretentious; she said it was not. Just that. "It's not". Personally, I think that she confused emotional resonance with quality. That kind of reaction just bothers me, frankly. You can acknowledge that something that reponds to your inner needs and desires can also be a piece of trash, subjectively speaking. The aesthetically pleasing can also be devoid of any real meaning. There's merit in both viewpoints. That's what separates the despicable fanperson from the thinking and the aware.

*By fanperson, I mean anyone who vouches for a pop culture subject to such an extreme degree that he/she refuses to acknowledge even a differing opinion that is less than fervently positive.

**Thought more about this after seeing Eat Pray Love over the weekend - it was a pretty meh adaptation, but I saw quite a few people crying whenever Julia Roberts' Liz was depicted struggling with her failed marriage and breakups, which pretty much proves my point. They would have cried at any movie that reminded them of all the painful breakups they went through - that doesn't automatically render the movie great in its own right.