Imminently Utterable

..And quite frankly should be repeated, there has been much talk of Juno dissenters dissenting on the grounds that the dialogue is unrealistic. The logical response has been that movies and books, though a mirror to the world, shouldn't produce an image unaltered by imagination.

Do we look like we come out of a Picasso painting, or do we sound like Ray Charles? No, but we find ourselves depicted by those artists whether we want to or not. We see ourselves as we are or as we could be, depending.

No wonder people are so unhappy. There are apparently large sections of the public that have abandoned any sort of fantasy life, whether it be their own, or the one vicariously supplied to them by the movies.

Surely, at large, this isn't true, right? I mean, considering what makes big bugs at the box-office, that just can't be so.

So, maybe the problem is simply a bad habit of compartmentalising. We can accept a pregnant teenager movie, but it better be earnest and depict a Maria Full of Grace-type reality. Fantasy films mustn't, by the way, have any reflection of the real world. Bah.

On a basic level, though, a Death Star doesn't exist to be blown away any more than the President is likely to fight terrorists with his bare hands, any more than it's right to expect people to talk like they're walking out of Raymond Chandler, Quentin Tarantino or Aaron Sorkin. What fun these things are, though.

To indulge in certain illusions will keep you young, people. The good kind of young.

There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, just as there're good illusions vs. bad ones. Consult the experts, in either case.