“Knocked Up,” “Revolutionary Road,” and Fracking Weddings
For nearly two weeks I have repeatedly sat down at my computer staring aimlessly, hoping for a shred of writing inspiration as the digital clock ticks away, minute by minute, second by second. Multiple drafts have come and go, ideas still circulating within my skull as I try and figure out why Darren Aronofsky and Satoshi Kon have similar and dissimilar directing styles, or why Nolan’s Inception may or may not be one of the pinnacle movies to date. This process has been going on on and off for the past five months, and with higher frequency since I came back home for the winter holiday. It’s been nothing short of frustratingly unproductive.
And then, like a rock smacking me in the head out of nowhere, I found myself perusing Facebook to see what old friends had been up to, a process that slowly lent itself to the “I wonder how ___ person is doing these days?” and looking them up for whatever impulse. In this cycle, it just so happened I saw that a girl I knew in high school had recently gotten married.
I was shocked. She and I had been in the same classes together, hell the same TA for four years! Four. Years.
She was very pretty. Red hair, freckles here and there, very sociable, on the cheerleading squad, and unless my memory fails me she might have been on the yearbook or some school student administration group…? From what I remember she was very sweet, and when I first met her she was just losing the last bits of baby fat from her cheeks.
So it’s nothing short of surreal to see her now Mrs. Smith, her surname gone just like that. Smiling, happy, wedded – how does time pass so quickly these days?
She’s not the only one I know who’s gotten married within these past four years: just last year a girl who’d graduated a year ahead of me in high school changed her name surname from Fischer to Bishop – Mrs. Bishop. She’d been a terrific bass player in our orchestra, and had gone on to CSU Long Beach for the school’s exemplary music program. She was funny, earnest, and talented – God she was talented, how she could slap that bass… now she is Mrs. Bishop, the high schooler Fischer now a distant memory.
I know another woman (by extension of friends) who recently got engaged while she and her boyfriend attended Great America. She’s going to graduate soon from UC Berkeley with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and has worked at MIT during her summer breaks. As it currently stands, she and her fiance will be getting married this upcoming spring.
And only a few hours ago I’d gotten together with some friends I’d hadn’t seen for awhile: two of them for months, one of them for years. We’d all known each other since grade school, the first two since second grade and the remaining since kindergarten. We talked and caught up with each other over the course of tea, coffee, pastries and aimless walking; and after settling down to rest our feet, the conversation made its way to “do you remember ___?” from elementary, middle and high schools past. I found out a girl I’d known in elementary and middle school has been married for three years and currently attends BYU with her husband. Memory recollects that she was very small, slim, and what one deems a “popular” girl (or whatever terminology you use to describe socially apt adolescents). From what my friends and I remember, she was one of the few girls who in spite of her popularity, was actually quite nice to everyone regardless.
My friends then went on to inform me of another girl from middle school has been married for two years, and either is or has going to have (another?) child. I only remember her as wide-hipped and upfront (middle school memories are probably the ones I tend to remember the least) but emotions tell me she was otherwise a swell girl.
All of this is nothing short of surreal for me. I mean hell, has time really passed by that much? I used to joke all the time that I’m getting old like a geezer (this began back in middle school post sixth-grade graduation) but at what point does it really become, well, true?
Seeing so many people I knew as kids, preteens and teenagers getting married is strange: perhaps it’s because I’m exposed to so much media and so many narratives that otherwise render me a bit skeptical of this institution called marriage. Or maybe it’s because I’ve experienced the effects of divorce throughout my adolescence and life so far, or that divorce rates peak at four years globally – or maybe I’m simply skeptical of any idea that binds us sexually dimorphic humans into a monogamous legal binding, while any biologist would you tell you we’d otherwise be more naturally inclined for polygamous relationships or serial monogamy.
But I digress. Now I don’t want anyone to think I’m wishing ill will upon all the newlyweds I know, or that I’m against marriage (I think it’s wonderful if it works for you) – this is more of a catharsis on my part, a wake-up call that perhaps sooner than I expect, I may be dealing with multiple weddings at a given time just like that.
All of this is really a cross product post Knocked Up viewing post Christmas Day. The film, which stars Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen, follows the repercussions of a one-night stand between a stoner Ben (Rogen) and E! personality Alison (Heigl). At one point, Ben “proposes” to Alison, promising that one he gets the money, he will buy her a ring that she truly deserves (he makes due with a empty ring box for the time being); however, by the end of the movie, while it’s clear that both Ben and Alison will work with one another to bring up and take care of their baby girl, it’s rather ambiguous as to whether or not the two will end up legally bound to one another.
That ambiguity, that idea that marriage isn’t as prevalent as I’d thought it was has been stuck in my head for years. At this point, the term marriage is less about the legal binding between two people as it is the sort of idyllic, Disney-esque ending that doesn’t quite resonate with how I’ve come to understand the world now. I know people who are in open relationships, have friends with benefits, need medical marijuana, have died from disease or misfortune, grew up in places thousands of miles away, juggle multiple jobs, have taken off to Cuba on a whim, hook up in gay/lesbian bars, have had divorced parents remarried… quite simply the 1950s Golden Era of the nuclear family just doesn’t quite cut it for me anymore, if it ever did.
I’m numb to human errors and failures, shortcomings of all types, the lows and highs of what people are capable of when left to their own devices. The idea of normality never quite settled into my head as something relatable, normal even; it was always fun to watch Disney movies, but afterwards I always knew deep down inside, the happily-ever-after feeling was temporary, soon to replaced by the heavier weight of the real world at hand – the real world I was familiar with, at least. In my mind, the term and idea of marriage really encompasses all those types of Disneyfied feelings I doubt I could legitimately experience outside of a theater. For me, the reality of change, pulsations and non-standard feels much more natural – the very thing Knocked Up resonates so soundingly for me overtime I watch it.
I’m not putting the nail in the coffin of my marriage prospects (that would run contrary to my belief in the ironic notion of constant change wouldn’t it?) but to see all these people I know so seemingly young and fresh in memory suddenly show off to the world that they are now a Misses instead of a Miss, and the Mister suddenly having more weight to it – for me, it’s perhaps a bit surprising to see how well they’ve seemingly worked out what they wanted in a spouse and familial establishment. The sureness of their resolution seems foreign to me, as I’ve grown up comfortable with the feeling of unsureness. I can only admire them in their confidence to say I do while I’m still wondering whether or not a Snuggie is worth the buy.
I’m happy for and slightly intimidated by the people who have so willingly and so happily said effectively “I don’t care if there’s other fish out there – I want this one!” Maybe I’m too caught up with the idea of changing tides, that the idyllic nuclear family is just a fragment of times past that may or may not work out for me in the end. Maybe I’m slightly pessimistic about institutionalized relationships simply because I know too many people with parents who’ve divorced and remarried. Maybe my feelings about the idyllic nuclear family were effectively reinforced and perhaps further disintegrated after reading Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Or maybe I’m just more down with the feeling that films like Knocked Up have in store than hyper-caramelized concoctions like Hannah Montana continuously spew out from Disney Channel-style outlets.
Non-normal is my normal, so perhaps being a bit contrarian might be a bit of my own personality in making (I always hated required reading lists like that: even if did like the books, as soon as they were required and on a list I instantly shunned and procrastinated on even turning a page). At this point, weddings are still a surreal aspect notion in my life: it sort of tarnishes my memories of people to an extent, memories that are otherwise held up by some notion of teenage, bubblewrapped adolescence. Marriage is the ultimate bubblewrap popper, the sledgehammer that comes in and smashes all the bubblewrap bubbles in on fell swoop – it effectively adds another component to my memories of people, reminding me that people will grow and age, and that very few remain as unspoiled and timeless as the cultural icon Marilyn Monroe – all by virtue of time and natural aging.
I’m probably a bit like Holden Caulfield at heart, where I want to think of people from memories past in the same light – a naive and optimistic notion, no doubt. I can’t help myself sometimes though, given how I’m so used to constant construction and deconstruction of knowledge and ideas that perhaps not surprisingly, I like remembering certain things in a nostalgic light. Marriage is a little, no big wake up call from that notion – a needed one no doubt, but perhaps one I’m not quite ready for myself.
Marriage is funny like that. And Facebook can drive you crazy like that too.
