I have a strange relationship with movies. Until I was about nineteen I went once or twice a week with my buddies in Truro as an entertainment. Then I worked for a few years as an usher at a playhouse in Halifax where I would watch the same play ten to twenty times in a few weeks and all of a sudden I found my ability to suspend my disbelief entirely gone. I would go to the movies and find myself sitting in a room with 200 strangers aimed at a wall where images flashed. It could be a classic at Wormwood's Dog and Monkey Theater or the latest crap staring Molly Ringwald - no good: the arse was truly out of it. I couldn't get out of my head that people were paying to get emotionally jerked around collectively. And so much of the experience of crisis, dramatic and often violent events never experiencable by average folk. Surely something must stick and displace parts of reality. The only movies I found as I got older that I could not suffer this trauma were movies I saw before I had this experience or movies that were so moronic, like The Wedding Singer, that it didn't matter - the point being that you were supposed to giggle out loud to the point that you were aware of acting stupidly in front of strangers. It all reminded me of Plato's ban on fiction nicely summarized here:

Ironically, Plato was no defender of liberty. In his Republic, Plato states that in an ideal state, all fables would be censored to protect the minds of the youth. Censors would reject and prohibit tales they considered to be bad or misleading. Mothers and nurses would be permitted to read only fables authorized by the republic. In this utopian state, Plato would also censor those plays and other works which tell untruths of the gods. He believed the only function of art was to aid in education and believed very strongly what might be harmful to the young should be prohibited.

I am not saying we should have censorship but certainly sympathize with the old toga man. The pre-eminant role of "being entertained" as a principle of a free and democractic populace then began to trouble. Like military expenditures on nuclear warheads, money wasted on half of our entertainment could surely solve 37% of our country's ills.

The condition may be passing as I enjoyed a normal healthy adult relationship with Master and Commander one weekend before Christmas and last night I watched a piece of 1998 global fear schlock, Deep Impact [now in a way caught in a pre-September 11th and even a pre-LOTR stasis (Ed.: as illustrated)] and, afterwards, suffered the obligatory night of wondering how far a killer wave caused by a comet hitting the north Atlantic would reach inland up the St. Lawrence. An appropriate response, I assume - the safe but realistic experience of fear for my safety and that of my young children. Slightly bothered sleep. Glad to be back on board as one of the entertainable, I guess.