It is not the best times for partying, even if the personified party fomo in the form of Charli XCX appears again and again. So it was a carnival, I was a bit “out” and noticed quickly: Oh, no, I prefer to move the project “rumbling to music” towards summer.
So instead I found myself twice in a weekend in the cinema – Friday in “A Complete Unknown”, the biopic about Bob Dylan with Timothée Chalamet in the leading role and Saturday in “Bridget Jones – Mad About The Boy” with Renée Zellweger. (With both actors you have to google where this line has to be over.)
On Sunday I had the feeling that I had played two extremes. Two pictures with which I and many others grew up, two hetero-ideal types, two pop cultural inventions.
There is Bob Dylan, the locked genius about which you don’t learn much, but which gives us with great music and clever texts. Who constantly smokes, adheres other men and lets women bounce off. Who is considered authentic, wants to be loved by others, but does not allow it.
And there is Bridget Jones, very open and full of feelings that is simply blown out, clumsy. Who is looking for love and fights against her body. That constantly smokes and stumbles through life, but can also stand up for himself. It is somehow too much and faulty, but still lovable.
I then thought a bit on these two figures and that they are something like our pop cultural parents. Here is the cool type of indie, since the quitsy mainstreamant. The pop dads like one, the pop mums the other, pop mill nials move back and forth in between. Distinction is the keyword. A little exaggerated, but I had it in the Kopp.
Both figures have visible weaknesses that have been connoted male, the others female. Nobody can really identify with both of them, but many try or are encouraged to do so because both are so coupled to gender images. In the meantime, these images are of course more than scribbed down because we luckily have more of it. But now they are back again. IN THE CINEMA. Although “A Complete Unknown” plays in the 1960s and “Mad about the Boy” in the present time both feel similarly time for me.
Where they still appear, these two clichés, parodies, archetypes, you name it, is probably in the dating, in which most perform and imitate. The Quirky woman, who is buddy, but when it matters also attracts top underwear, which is constantly moving between self -love and socially arranged hatred of her body and age, which deals with how she “comes across”, who talks to her friends about how she changes her life, gets it under control, happens to it and love.
And the puzzling, poetic guy who cannot do anything with society and therefore only deals with his thoughts and what inspires them. The lonely wolf, the Outlaw, a cynic who pushes everyone who could soften him. Who of course does not call back or is interested in the world of the person next to him, but only brings a dramatic scene from time to time, as to be at the door at night. (Small tip: Mystical guys are mostly not that deep, often you just get what you see – everyone has to know themselves.)
The Bob Dylans of this world, together with the great male writers and cool film figures in the world, they were often a model for the most annoying types of this planet. But many also wanted to identify with Bridget Jones. Only slowly in pop culture we work out of the story that women primarily deal with diets, men and babies and only meet their friendships to cushion this search. Both are self -related. But they can also love. One likes to get close and preferably one person, the other likes to remotely and everyone.
One wonders whether Bob Dylan and Bridget Jones could exist in a universe. I would like to see a spin-off: Bridget and Bob hang together and listen to music. They smoke and drink, they talk about Metoo, they bing series, they sing, they discuss closeness and distance, they talk about Bridget’s little world and dylans infinite and then roll forever pros and contrast, whether they should still leave the house. After all, they do it and then lose themselves. Probably too boring for the cinema.
In the end you can of course just ask yourself with cultural products: Did my time waste or give me something? Did I have a good time on two weekend evenings with these two crowd ham? And how! With “A Complete Unknown” I was rather okay after the credits, but now think all the time that I want to go in again because his music and the time (together with all the characters) into which he catapults you, sucked and touched you. With “Mad about the Boy” you had the feeling that you saw another of these good, old wholesome films that actually wants nothing more than one to entertain: a little grief, little humor plus kitsch and sex. Everything was nice again, but it is also good that we outgrow our pop cultural parents.
What has happened so far? Here all pop column texts at a glance.