 Connected |
|
My So-Called Life changed my life. No, really. It really did. It premiered ten years ago this summer, and I was consumed.  I was devastated when it was cancelled, and like many others, took solace in joining an online mailing list set up to keep the show and its characters alive. I was never an active poster on the list, but I read it devotedly every single day. It was looking for information on the show and this list that essentially brought me to the Internet. It was the reason I got email. To join that list. I stayed on it for years. I would read the messages in the university library where I would sit in a line of chairs waiting to get on a computer in the days before laptops and before there were even all that many computers on campus. I would read them from my parents' ancient computer where figuring out how to log into my school email account took myself, my dad, one drunk computer science major, pliers, and aluminum foil. I devoured them. I contemplated the eternal question of Jordan or Brian, Jordan or Brian, Jordan or Brian and what would have happened in season two. Would Graham have left Patty for Hallie Lowenthal? Would Angela and Rayanne ever be friends again? Would Rickie get to stay with Mr. Katimski? Wasn't it a tragedy that Operation Life Support didn't succeed?  I remember that a lot of people wrote tributes to the show on the anniversary of its premiere. This was either the first or second anniversary; I can't remember. I know I printed and saved some of them, and they're in a box somewhere, including my own. It was maudlin and overwrought, but it was honest. It just told how My So-Called Life tapped into a part of me that I don't think I'd ever quite experienced before with any show. I mean, I mailed tear-stained typed missives to CBS when they canceled Beauty and the Beast when I was fifteen, but this was different. My Lord, I just found what I wrote. (Don't you know that I have a MSCL file folder, full of old articles and printouts from the list, like the show reconceived as The Wizard of Oz and drinking games and every other random thing you can imagine that of course I will now sit here and scan.) It was for the second anniversary. I actually said at the end, "I guess I'll leave you with my belief that this show was -- is -- 'like a miracle. Like, seeing a comet, or just feeling like you're seeing one.' " Which, of course, is how Rickie explains what he thinks sex is like. Or should be, anyway. God -- Rickie! My favorite person on the list was Kent Greene, who regarded himself as the Mr. Katimski of the list and with whom I eventually exchanged private emails about Angels in America and RENT and living in New York. He was smart and funny and warm and wise. I was sad years later when I learned of his death. I know I still have some of those emails somewhere. I remember how cool I thought it was once when I stumbled upon a novel written by the husband of one of the list members at the huge university used book sale. It literally fell on top of me in a tumble of paperbacks. I wrote to that list member, whose posts were always among my favorites, and she was tickled, too. I still have that book. I took a most excellent women and television class my senior year of college. It was a top-level English course, and I did my presentation on postmodernism and My So-Called Life, focusing on the episode "The Zit." (This was the same class for which I wrote my thirty-page final paper on the evolution of Nancy on thirtysomething. What would I have done without Bedford Falls?) I edited video clips to show scenes or moments that represented different facets of postmodernism like self-reflexiveness, fragmentation, a breakdown of subjectivity, and the dissolution of the high culture / popular opposition ... for the last one, I pointed out how Kafka's Metamorphosis was the means through which the characters thought about their own life changes in terms of breasts, zits, and boyfriends. I said, "Postmodernism offers the liberating possibilities of difference, multiplicity, and decenteredness in the human condition, and the division of one's self is aptly explored throughout this series." Yeah. I'm not even sure I knew what I was talking about, but it sure was fun. My professor wrote: "Sophisticated approach. Clear, lucid explanation and illustration of postmodernism. Your definition was precise and well-supported by the examples you chose. The presentation worked equally well as an introduction and analysis of the show and as an explanation of a theoretical position. Excellent use of video. Your selections were powerful and did a superb job of proving the various points that you made. Superb delivery." So, yeah. I got an A. I couldn't believe I was able to exploit my favorite show to steer myself towards graduation.  Even after dissecting the show academically, I was still a teenager about it at heart. I clung to my videotapes for dear life. I bought the BMG video box sets that never issued all the episodes. I ordered the DVD box set, was embroiled in the great double charging controversy (the man responsible was later arrested) and waited for what seemed like forever for it finally to arrive. I've watched the series a few times since then, finishing it again recently. And I have to say that I still really love it. I still adore Rickie Vasquez with all my heart. The things that bugged me about it before, like not really Patty the character necessarily but the actress's portrayal of her and the appalling wardrobe of Sharon Cherski, still do. But I'm looking at parts of the show in a whole new way. Invinciblegirl ranted recently, "But the fact that the show got cancelled and Angela and Brian never hooked up was bullshit." And she is right. She is so right. I know that when I was 19, I wanted Angela to be with Jordan because Jared Leto gave me WPs and I thought every mysterious boy with long hair was truly soulmate potential instead of just a mental and emotional simpleton, which Jordan Catalano TOTALLY WAS. And I see it now. Jordan hurt Angela, over and over, and she just kept going back for more. He interrupted her by sticking his tongue down her throat when she was trying to talk. He stood her up on their date. He ignored her in front of his friends. And then he broke up with her because she wouldn't sleep with him, and then he turned around and slept with her best friend. Hello. HELLO? He was a jerk! Because this show was so well-written, he wasn't all-jerk and had his sweet if dumb moments, but he was mostly jerk. And I see now that Brian was the smartest and appealingly geekiest person who just didn't really fit in but saw Angela for who she truly was, not perfect, just human, just a girl. Just real. And he was just human, too, doing stupid and thoughtless things sometimes like being bratty or dumping Delia Fisher, but fundamentally he was a good person. He tried to protect Angela from seeing that videotape of Jordan Catalano having sex with Rayanne. He was secure enough in his masculinity, even if not about other things, to totally befriend Rickie. He had some of the most classic lines on the show, like, "Why am I like this? I truly sicken myself!" and "I mean, if you, like, analyze why certain people end up with certain other people, it'll make you want to kill yourself." Were truer words ever spoken? I think not. And he was so funny and weird in all of his angst and so obviously the right choice for any girl with half a brain. Which Angela, at fifteen, didn't have when it came to boys, so who can blame her, but maybe she would have at sixteen or seventeen or eighteen. But we'll never know, and all we're left with is seeing her drive away with Jordan while, after realizing how Brian felt about her and knowing all of the love she felt for whoever wrote her that letter was directed toward the wrong person, looking back at him in the mirror, and he stands there by his bike staring back at her. So I can't believe that it's been ten years. Looking back, I see how huge of an impact the show's Internet community had on me, even though I was a total lurker. It showed me that there were really funny and smart and creative people out there who could be just as obsessed with a TV show as I could, and maybe we were all a little bit bizarre, but wasn't it fun to have that thing in common with people from all over the world? And so I stayed online, and I connected with other things and people that made me feel like I wasn't such a lunatic. And a few years later, I found another community of weirdos all oddly bound by this crazy online writing that we do. And it just makes me happy in a strange way to think on some level that these things, these five years of keeping this journal and the cool people I've met in the process, really all boil down to Brian Krakow.  About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
There are the people you feel this unspoken connection to, even though there's not even a word for it. There's the people who you've known forever, who know you in this way that other people can't, because they've seen you change ... they've let you change. --MSCL P.S. Go Fug Yourself is the best website in the history of the universe. |
