I’m easily amused. Perhaps maybe even a simpleton. Put me in a room with an iPod and some speakers and I’ll sing and dance for hours before I get bored.
I’m the girl who yells at the television after crucial plot twists or lets out a bro-like “Ohhhhhhhhh” during insane fight sequences in movies.
I unabashedly take childish delight in being entertained, so I have a serious problem with entertainment snobs. Said snobs are anyone who writes off popcorn movies because they “lack substance.”
Sure, we all go to Binghamton University and everyone should know how smart and amazing and progressive we all are — but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy a Michael Bay movie every now and then. Because we can.
I didn’t watch all three of the “Transformers” movies to learn something. I watched them because there were cars, talking robots beating the oil out of each other and Megan Fox. And because Transformers are the coolest alien species ever created, ever. It’s science.
But lately, society has started taking cheap shots at popcorn movies. Nowadays it’s not OK to like “Fast Five” because the film is without some form of deep cultural discussion that coincidentally causes a form of progressive discourse and possibly a move toward societal change.
Is it no longer OK to go to the movies just to be entertained? Sure, I enjoy allegories just as much as the next English major, but can’t I also enjoy watching 25-foot-tall robots rip each others’ guts out and scream, “Filthy heap of scrap metal?” There is literally nothing cooler than hearing Peter Cullen, better known as Optimus Prime, speak — and there’s no way I’m the only person that enjoys listening.
Isn’t that entertaining enough? Aren’t explosions and expensive cars and a sexy woman good enough? Since when did America get standards, huh?
I’ve met plenty of entertainment snobs in my time here at BU. Most of them are hipsters who only liked Feist when she was underground and swear that “Running With Scissors” is the most important movie of the century. A lot of them enjoy bashing popcorn movies like “Transformers” and television shows like “True Blood” because of their unashamed adoption of an excessive form of artistic expression.
But there is nothing wrong with watching explosions and fight scenes and gratuitous ass shots of Rosie Huntington-Whatever. If we sit down to watch television or we go to the theater to see a movie or indulge in a night of pure fist-pumping Benny Bennasi club goodness, don’t we do all of these in order to be entertained?
I accept and enjoy the binary between thought-provoking entertainment and pure bubble gum fun and I do not think straddling the line between those two mediums is a bad thing. It’s a great thing. I can sit down and watch “The Walking Dead,” have an intelligent discussion about it and immediately afterward put on “Beat that Beat” by DJ Pauly D and “fist pump until my ahm fawls awf.”
I firmly believe that enjoying campy, fun, ridiculous entertainment is exactly what this world needs. Because dancing to Ke$ha in the shower every day is scientifically proven to make you less of an uptight douchebag.
So sit down, shut your brain off and watch a “Transformers” movie. Just not the second one, please. I don’t know if any of you entertainment snobs could handle the extreme decrease in brain activity just quite yet.