Besides the fact that I don't care about either Tom Cruise or sports-themed movies, it looks as if this film is yet another attempt to promote emotional diarrhea in society. I agree 100% with this:
I also believe that the good god of evolutionary biology gave us brains to judge, repress, distance ourselves and generally keep control over our emotions. This is because our emotions conflict with each other. Indulged in without thought or judgement, they lead us to catastrophe. If they control us, instead of us controlling them, situations that would merely be situations become instead emotional battlefields, and can do incalculable damage and cause incalculable pain. I associate emotional incontinence with poor, unhappy people, and I believe that their emotional incontinence is, above all else, what makes them poor and unhappy. They don't live their lives. Their lives live them.
Mr. Micklethwaite lives in Britain, where what he calls the "Princess Diana industry" has been making inroads against the famous British stiff upper lip. Or as he puts it: "Old fashioned (stuck up) stoicism is out. Emotional display is in. Self control is out." Sadly, from what I have seen and heard from my perch across the pond, they have been largely successful. I still remember the awful sight of booing, sobbing Princess Di fans descending upon Buckingham Palace with their teddy bears and flowers and candles and their demands that the Queen stand in front of them and shed real tears or they wouldn't like her anymore. One British writer (I think it was one of the Hitchens, though I can't remember which one) contrasted this hysteria with the solemn and dignified procession before Churchill's casket.
Here in the States, of course, keeping your emotions under control has always been optional, and most people don't seem interested in exercising that option. The advantages of doing so are slim: you just have to not mind your dignity and self-control earning you the label of "she's cold and unfeeling," and being accused of lacking enthusiasm (and therefore spoiling everyone's fun, because emotion junkies can't stand what they see as an unappreciative audience), told you should see a doctor about your "depression," and so on.
If I sound bitter, it's because I am. My least favorite parts of old Star Trek episodes were ones where Spock was coaxed, tricked, or browbeaten into losing his wonderful cool and displaying a "warm human emotion."
(Via Lynn at Reflections in D Minor.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at June 4, 2003 11:31 AMTake out your stopwatch whilst watching a 'news' show; when they start on a murder story, clock how much time is devoted to facts about the case versus how much time is devoted to the bleating, wailing, and weeping, all elicited from the relatives, friends, and even passers-by, by a nosy, intrusive, and sometimes almost abusive reporter!
GACK !!
Posted by: MommaBear at June 4, 2003 at 01:30 PMI didn't much care for those Star Trek eps either. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is highly overrated IMHO.
Posted by: Ith at June 4, 2003 at 01:34 PMWith Spock I believe that would be a tepid, half-human emotion. The only good one of that sort was when he started, unthinkingly, to pet a Tribble.
Posted by: Michael Lonie at June 4, 2003 at 09:56 PMI forget where I read it, but apparently there was one episode where Spock was manning the transporter to bring Kirk back aboard, and apparently Nimoy didn't realize at the time that his Adam's apple was bobbing up and down during the scene. That's a better example of Spock giving in to his "emotions" than all the hokey stuff we've seen and regret seeing.
The Vulcans have to repress their emotions because they're so violent and powerful, remember.
You know, that reminds me of someone
Posted by: Dark Avenger at June 5, 2003 at 04:00 AM