On being completely out-of-touch with popular culture
A sampling of things I said to my mother upon her presentation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to Niall and me:
“Is there backstory I should know?”
“Do crazy Christians freak out about this?”
[On seeing Emma Watson appear onscreen:] “Oh, she’s going to be pretty when she grows up! Wait, when did this come out? Maybe she has grown up.”
“So, if I’ve counted right, that’s, like, the fourth racial stereotype they’ve presented.”
“This is dense storytelling. They must be trying to be authentic to the long novels I’ve seen.”
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November 23rd, 2009 at 15h06
“Oh, she’s going to be pretty when she grows up! Wait, when did this come out? Maybe she has grown up.”
1.) She did.
2.) She is.
3.) I think she might actually be slightly closer to Niall’s age than to yours, so it might be best to derail that particular train of thought.
November 23rd, 2009 at 15h17
Actually, it turns out that Niall is a year younger than I previously thought. Which means that I think she’s slightly closer to your age than to his (I’m not actually sure how old you are, so this is all a bit imprecise). So, uh, carry on, I guess.
November 23rd, 2009 at 15h31
I think she might actually be slightly closer to Niall’s age than to yours, so it might be best to derail that particular train of thought.
She’s just about evenly situated between Niall and me. But I’m not putting her on Passing the Torch or anything, especially after seeing her as a 15-year-old. One sees nascent beauty in girls sometimes — facial structure or something that one says, “Hmm, those features are going to mature well.” And only rarely is it as creepy as a topless sex scene with Keira Knightley as a 15-year-old.
Or am I digging myself deeper into a questionable hole?
November 23rd, 2009 at 16h00
I typically do my best not to notice or comment about anyone who falls outside of the [x/2] + 7 range, if only because I remember being a (late) teenager and thinking how incredibly creepy I found it when guys in their thirties (or, on occasion, significantly older) commented on the attractiveness of my girlfriend. Still, if any guy close to her age professed Emma Watson to be extremely attractive, I would not think him wrong.
November 23rd, 2009 at 16h19
When I saw Mia Wasikowska come onscreen in (the fantastic) Defiance, she lit up the screen, and I thought, “Wow, we’re going to see that actress in a lot of roles!” Her bearing and acting were amazing. And (awesome!) she landed the title role in Alice in Wonderland, and now in Jane Eyre. My reaction to Watson was basically the same — being floored, but in a chaste manner.
I met Tina Majorino when she was 11, and I remember seeing Haley Joel Osment in interviews when he was a child. I thought, “OK, so it’s not an accident when a young actor stands out from, presumably, hundreds of others auditioning for a role.” But a professedly-chaste fascination with glowing young actors and actresses connects back to the last paragraph — Lewis Carrol’s perception of Alice — which is to say, yes, kind of unsettling.
November 23rd, 2009 at 16h30
For the record, when I courted a tongue-in-cheek list of hot actresses in Hollywood younger than I, on the occasion of the youngest of the three hottest women in Hollywood turning 40, one of your contributions was a ten-year-old, and you noted that “Natalie Portman has gotten progressively less capable of holding [your] interest with each film after The Professional.” So, yes, I knew before this point that you could get uncomfortable about this particular subject.
November 23rd, 2009 at 16h52
I think that it’s worth noting that, quite unlike Emma Watson, Judith Vittet and Natalie Portman both fall rather comfortably within the bounds of “half my age plus seven”. Portman, especially, is close enough in age to me that I don’t think that it was at all untoward that I’d have found her attractive when I saw the film (keeping in mind that I was 14 at the time, myself, so I found damn near everything around me arousing).
November 23rd, 2009 at 16h54
OK, whatever helps you sleep online.
November 23rd, 2009 at 17h05
Just for that, here’s an awkward moment with that Haley Joel Osment kid you mentioned.
November 23rd, 2009 at 17h11
Wow. I can’t stop laughing.
The point about Judith Vittet was that you can’t wait until someone grows up to apply n/2 + 7. Presumably you saw her when she was 11 and you were 17? Yiee.
Seriously. Still laughing at the Walker bit.
November 23rd, 2009 at 17h13
(Coincidentally, I was 17 when I met Tina Majorino at 11, and she did light up … um … The Gamekeeper (?). And, yes, I took serious flak from my roommates when I told them what a charming little girl she was. And she also played Alice.)
OK, maybe we can move on past the “no, I’m not a pædophile, you are” conversation now.
November 24th, 2009 at 09h32
The point about Judith Vittet was that you can’t wait until someone grows up to apply n/2 + 7. Presumably you saw her when she was 11 and you were 17?
And here we disagree. I’m of the opinion that it matters when the comment was made. My first ever mention of Judith Vittet was speculation of what she would look like in July of 2006, when she was 22 years old, and I was 27. It’s saying “I bet she’s now a 22 year old that I would find attractive”. Now, had I speculated about Emily Watson in 2009, I would be a 30 year old wondering the same thing about a 19 year old. It certainly wasn’t a matter that I had at all considered at 17; it didn’t even occur to me until many years later when my then-girlfriend (who is only a year older than Vittet) stated that she was jealous of her looks and we started a whatever-happened-to-Carrie-Henn style search for her. If we’re being frank on the matter, I was far too distracted by Ron Perlman to pay much attention to the little girl he was hauling around. He was a well-built bit of man in that particular film.
November 24th, 2009 at 09h34
OK, maybe we can move on past the “no, I’m not a pædophile, you are” conversation now.
All right. Uh, how did you like the movie?