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Thursday, December 31, 2020

Sweet Home

 Recently, my 20 year old stepson recommended that I watch a Netflix series called, Sweet Home--a South Korean horror flick about people locked down in their apartment buildings while monsters of every assorted contortion rage in the streets outside, and of course invade the apartment buildings themselves. 

What struck me most about the film was the personal sense of being dropped into a strange generational divide, an inability to grasp any sort of world being described through the viewpoint of this younger generation, with or without monsters. In a way, for an older person like me, the whole experience is monstrous from the get-go, because the people, their attitudes, their crushing ennui alternating with blind detachment sets up a nagging conflict before you even get to the one-eyed serpents or the hulking behemoths. 

For a generation steeped in video games and anime, I guess this all works. They seem to enter the story without requirement of logic or narrative guidance, as we in my generation know these things, but simply accept a sort of prefab world with a shrug of easy recognition. This is how things work in the modern environment. They just happen that way. 

In short, I was lost. I kept asking Why? and How? 

"What do you mean?" Sasha said. "Where were you confused?" 

"Starting from the beginning, and up to this point in time." 

"Hmm. Well, yeah, I guess they could have explained things a little better. But stay with it. The end explains everything." 

Hopefully this will include how the beginning began. 

We are truly like on two different planes in time, or in space, or both, hovering, knocking edges, tipping one another, but never congruing (which is, by the way, the present participle of congrue, despite my spellcheck's red underlining). We are, for all practical purposes, and mutually so, aliens to one another. The difference, of course, is that I am a member of a dying race (despite its order and logic), while Sasha is a member of the contemporary. So if some things are beyond me, hey, no worries. He has it all, in his detached and weary though flexible way, perfectly under control. 

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