Do you ever watch REALLY bad/dumb movies for fun? I’ve only been able to do this very recently, but it seems to help.

Access is super easy at zero cost. In addition to Youtube’s amusingly high-quality VHS rips from well-known distributors, there’s a lot of this stuff at the Internet Archive as well: Example One and Example Two.

(AKA: Bad movies: Does anybody even GAF about copyright? You don’t even have to watch these in parts that you painstakingly searched for and added to a playlist!)

And that’s not even getting into the various streaming channels. Some of them are really worth checking out for that bad-movies aspect alone.

As a kid, then later as a teenager, and still later as a dumbass 20-something and professionally-foolish 30-something, I wasn’t really into non-serious movies. I thought: The more-seriouser, probably the better.

I was a much more serious person back then. I kind of regret it. And now that I’m a freshly-minted dumbass 40-something, I think it’s good to have regrets.

(Check out my list of INTJs on the front page of the blog, too. As a group, you see, we’re basically known to be dead serious about stuff at some fundamental level, and also at some fundamental level, that tends to break)

So these days I’m out here in the streets trying to be less serious. This seems to be reflected in the movies and TV I’m willing to watch. Here’s what I like:

• I like that no part of me is acting like the production needs to be on my level. I’m not struggling with the question of whether I’m above any of it (yes/no it doesn’t really matter), and that’s relaxing in its own way.
• I like taking apart the plot. Taking notes is kinda fun. And sometimes I like reassembling it to make it better. But mostly, I like the funny questions it brings up.
• I like the waves of silliness that lap onto the shores of my over-serious perceptions. This feeling of “lighten up a bit” is much more treasured now than ever before.
• I like the feeling of “maybe I could take something this seriously and do an OK job of writing it.” It’s fun to think about.

There are still some exceptions; I’m not able to take the silliness to 100%. For example, a production that’s just pointless chaos without any structure—I’m still not so comfortable with that. I like to feel at least a little bit of seriousness from the production team. Low budget? Fine. Low quality script? Also fine. But when there’s literally nobody taking any aspect of the entire thing seriously? Personally, that’s where I fear to tread.

Maybe that will change—we’ll see.

Filed in: Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Randomness /26/ | Energy /120/