Somehow all of this is Bruce Willis's fault

Question: When exactly did I become such a pussy?

I ask this in light of an event that took place this weekend. On Saturday night Jamie wanted to watch a movie, and we quickly skimmed through the available TiVoed options: King Kong, which is something like three-and-a-half hours long, and who has time for three-and-a-half hours worth of a ginormous lovelorn aircraft-swatting ape? Pass. A History of Violence, which I nixed as too intense for Saturday night film viewing, and Walk The Line, which Jamie for some reason wasn't in the mood for. This left the Bruce Willis/Mos Def vehicle 16 Blocks. Perhaps you're by chance one of the, oh, five freakin' people on planet earth who've seen this film? If not, a quick plot summary courtesy of IMDB:

Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosley, a burnt-out detective assigned the unenviable task of transporting a fast-talking convict (Mos Def) from jail to a courthouse 16 blocks away. However, along the way he learns that the man is supposed to testify against Mosley's colleagues, and the entire NYPD wants him dead. Mosley must choose between loyalty to his colleagues and protecting the witness, and never has such a short distance seemed so long...

Which sounds, I don't know, passable? Perhaps not something you'll want to one day share with your children as an example of fine filmmaking, but certainly worthy of a lazy date-night-at-home looksee? And I've always had a soft spot for Mos Def quite frankly, if only because his name is Mos Def, and I firmly believe the world would be a better place if we all likewise shortened our given monikers to three-letter-abbreviations. I mean, think of how much more you'd get done in a day, not having to mouth all those extra, superfluous syllables. Who needs em'? ANYWAY, both Jamie and I agreed 16 Blocks was the night's winner, and settled in on the couch together to partake of its televisualized wonders.

I lasted about twenty-five whole minutes.

Twenty-five minutes: right around the time Mos Def and Bruce Willis -- the latter having just been shot in the hand, ouch! -- were flailing their way through a dank, steam-filled Chinese laundry, dodging bullets from the Bad Cops hot on their heels. There must be something inherently cinematic about Chinese laundries, as I felt I'd watched the scene before: the billowing, ghost-white sheets hung in rows, riddled with flashes of shadowy movement. The tension mounted and mounted. Would our heroes, flawed but all the more relatable for their imperfections, make it out alive?

Aroundabout this time I stood up, turned to Jamie and said: “I can't watch this. Its not relaxing to me.”

Which was, of course, completely true, but here's the question: when did filmic experience become about RELAXATION, exactly?  When did it stop being about mind-broadening, about dredging the depths of human experience, about some kind of vague sense of enlightenment gained by way of the down-and-dirty truths of the human condition laid bare in visual-narrative form? When, precisely, did film go from being something I engaged as Art, with all the complexities that suggests, to something I applied to my brain like a soothing tonic to make the real world go away?

I think I have the answer. And that is: when my recommended daily allowance of personal stress began to be regularly exceeded by a factor of about five. Which, if we're going to be completely honest here, is probably right around the time I became a homeowner and a parent.

When asked by others what my favorite film is, I've had the same answer for the past 13 years: Naked. Its a Mike Leigh film about a misanthropic, mentally disturbed homeless person, and is chock full of biting social commentary, achingly painful wit, and some really, REALLY dark shit. It is not a movie you want to watch with your parents, or show to your children, or view if you don't have at least a full day to recover from the emotional and psychological beat-down it is sure to inflict on your brain. And in truth, I'm not sure I could even make it through the first ten minutes of this movie now, containing as it does a really unpleasant alleyway rape scene, let alone endure the whole ninety-minute film. Yet I still call it my favorite movie, because to me it really does summon up the complex beauty and horror and brilliance film as a medium is capable of. That film owns me in this sense, but would I choose to watch it over Harold and Kumar go to White Castle on an average night? No.

Because if I'm honest with myself, I just plain don't need the added stress. And perhaps, if I were better able to detach myself from that which I consume as entertainment I wouldn't feel this way, but my sense of empathy demands I take on stupid fictional character's stupid burdens as though they were my own. I am incapable of not suspending disbelief, incapable of putting up the necessary buffering boundaries. And so when faced with taking on Bruce Willis and Mos Def's anxiety and terror as they're hunted down like dogs on the streets of New York City, I just have to bow out. Sorry fictitious on-the-run dudes, hope you make it out alive and all that, but I now have a real live actual kid and a marriage and bills to pay and shit, and my personal account with the Bank of Anxiety, Worry, and Tension is simply maxed out. There's no room at the Tracey Inn of Disquietude. Flight 2007 on Gaughran-Perez Panic and Dread Airlines is overbooked, and we're shedding passengers just to make the weight limit necessary to get airborne. Move along, move along.

I should feel worse about the loss of real Film Art from my life, at least it seems that I should, but honestly? Meh. Life is rich and full and complex enough, thanks. And who needs intellectual challenge in film when Will Ferrell and his clown posse keep reliably churning out the mindless feel-good chuckles? Saaaay... anybody up for a Showgirls screening? I HAVE THE DIRECTORS CUT.