When a problem comes along, you must Whip It

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all. ~Anatole France

One of my favorite things about movies is that you forget about yourself for two hours and live vicariously through someone else. No matter who the character, it’s invigorating to feel what someone else feels, especially if it’s passion, or excitement, or adventure. I think I just like to feel.

We build our lives to yield such security (which IS nice) in the name of shielding ourselves from unexpected unpleasantries, but in that security, we sometimes lose the possibility of something exciting happening. We take no risks. We see no changes.

I am not a risk taker. I mean I have taken risks, some really stupid ones in fact, but it is not a comfortable expedition when I do. I am much happier to play it safe in life. Because of this obsession with protection, I have spent most of my life wishing I was someone else - a different kind of girl. I might not even fundamentally agree with what kind of girl she is, but I envy her ability to be unenviable.

Having said that, I saw Whip It tonight with my sister. It was the kind of movie that socks me in the gut, that yells out to me, “What have you ever done that was exciting?” It was the kind of movie that makes me feel old and makes me covet the excitement of “firsts” and possibilities and the naivety that life will always have them to offer up.

It was a girl’s movie. I laughed, I cried, I felt empowered, then somehow disempowered, identifying sometimes more with Marcia Gay Harden’s character than with Ellen Page’s. (In case you never see the film, Marcia Gay Harden plays Bliss’s [played by Ellen Page, who looks 12, when she’s really 22] mother, who is bitter about the way her life turned out.)

I mean let’s face it. Juliette Lewis, who is also in the film, is five years older than me, which means that she is half dead, but she lives her life like she was 20. She’s a nut bag, but she’s doing something she likes.

Maybe I am a little sensitive today, but this movie bummed me out. Although I don’t want to literally acquire some whacky hairdo and a trashy tattoo and join a roller derby team, I would like to be a little less like my grandmother and more carefree. I, at least, would like to stop wishing I were someone else. But, that is the point of movies, isn’t it? To make you wish you were a different girl, in a different place, with a different life? In that case, this was a good one. I recommend it.