2/8/13: The Fear Of Being Normal

From "The Apartment", Billy Wilder 1960

Hollywood has quite the disdain for the ordinary desk job. In case you hadn't already noticed.

Consider the above film, "The Apartment", directed by Billy Wilder. In it, the main character is a dulled everyman in an endless office full of dulled everymen. He works nine to five and even works extra hours some days.  The only thing that separates him from the countless other office drones is that he's renting out his apartment to horny office executives, but that's another story. 

From "The Matrix", Andy and Lana Wachowski 1999

Or maybe you're more of a Matrix person. In the first film, we're introduced to Neo as yet another dulled everymen in an endless office full of dulled everymen. The only thing that separates him from the countless other office drones is that he is the cyber-messiah destined to save humanity, but that's another story.

The point being, Hollywood doesn't hold the office job in very high esteem. And why would they? They've only ever worked as screenwriters and actors and directors. Them imagining what it's like to be office workers is the same as the rest of us trying to imagine what it's like to be garbagemen, filled with terror at the endless piles of repetitive shit (literal or metaphorical) that has to be sifted through day in and day out. 

So consider this 2007 Job Satisfaction survey that says that shows 60.8% of Office Supervisors are "very satisfied" with their jobs, and that the same is true for 65.4% of Security and Financial Services salespersons.

Huh. Guess Hollywood lied to us. 

-----

There's a pervasive fear of normality in our culture, and especially among twentysomethings. I don't know if Hollywood influenced the culture or if the culture influenced Hollywood or if it's a combination of both. Simply put, the old 50's ideal of living a routine lifestyle in a modest suburban home is considered practically nightmarish for some. Everyone wants to be unique, everyone wants to find their dream job, everyone wants to be a genius in their field, and being normal is the worst punishment one can imagine. 

No one ever defines what exactly "normal" is, it's just the bogeyman in these stories. The cloud of half-formed images that seems so real and powerful in the framework of our minds. We may define it with various markers like "holding down an office job", but it's not like everyone who has an office job is the same person. Each of the people working those jobs has their own individual personality that brings joy to their friends and family. Sure, it may not come through in their jobs, but then neither has that been the case throughout human history. There's only so many ways you can shear corn before "expressing yourself" becomes "increasing the risk that we will die of starvation in the winter". Expressing ourselves creatively through our jobs is a luxury. 

It's not like these jobs were invented out of thin air to antagonize us. They need to get done. Office jobs especially are extremely necessary. We need someone to wade through the mounds of paperwork and bureaucracy that keeps this global village of ours working, yet we routinely disparage them as living dreary, soul-sucking lives. Imagine how that must make office people feel, being the butt of an entire's societies fear of their jobs.

I think part of the reason we so often antagonize those jobs is because it makes us feel better about our own decisions in contrast. Take the numerous would-be actors, dancers, and directors in our school. The performing arts are notoriously flaky and unstable, and it's hard to dismiss the fears that our dream job is untenable, that we might be wasting money for a pipe dream. To protect ourselves from that, we convince ourselves that this job, even the pursuit of it, is better than the "soul-crushing" office job, the job that so often is much more stable than the ones we pursue.

More than that, though, I think Hollywood, again, has influenced us. We live in an era of celebrities, and where seemingly anyone can become one. Viral is a household term. Celebrities are routinely celebrated and live a life the rest of us wish we could have. One of beautiful people, beautiful homes, and happiness. It's the last thing that seems the stickler. We see actors and directors on the read carpet smiling towards the camera, always smiling, and we think that we can be like that.

Never mind that celebrities are often just as unhappy as we are. The sheer amount of drug-related deaths and suicides is testament to that. What matters is that they present themselves as happy, and the camera devours that. Celebrities exist to present an ideal which the rest of us strive to achieve. They can't achieve it, and neither can we, but that doesn't stop us from wanting it.

I'll use myself as an example. For the longest time I had dreams of myself being a famous writer. I envisioned myself having interviews with news people and talking about whatever I was writing. I dreamed of writing novels that get adapted to movies. Hell, sometimes I still dream of that stuff.

Yet thinking about it, what was I looking to get from being a famous writer? Contentment? Writing isn't exactly a low-stress job, especially the more you invest yourself in it. It doesn't guarantee financial stability, God knows it doesn't. But I wasn't thinking realistically, was I? I was thinking in terms of those beautiful ideals which the celebrity industry propagates, that we can all be fabulously successful and, through that success, find happiness.

Well here I am, two years into Film School and wondering if I really want to keep doing this. Am I really not that special? Am I really not that unique?

I certainly am unique. We are all. The problem comes when I then use this uniqueness to assume that it makes me better than other people. Which I did. A lot. I think that's what brought me to Film School. For the longest time I was told of how talented I was, how I was destined for being a successful director or whatever. Yet so was everyone else here. They were told by friends and loved ones how awesome they were, how they were one-of-a-kind. So we all go to a University where we all believe themselves to be so much better than the rest of us, that we have something others don't.

What I have is a unique perspective, a unique background, a unique person. I can share and express those, maybe not through my work, but through living. Which I do every moment, no matter what job I have, no matter what house I have. I have value by being. And maybe that's enough.