Movies: The Only Reason I Can Talk to My Family

Like all families, mine fights. One of the best reprieves we have from each other is when we talk about movies. Most of my family traditions revolve around movies. The only party my parents throw every year is not a superbowl party, but an Oscar party. Everyone fills out a ballot and whoever has the most categories correct gets a prize. The person who has the least correct also gets a prize….mostly out of pity. When we got a Tivo for Christmas, the first test-tivo was Red Dawn. Since then we watch Red Dawn every year around Christmas time. Watching movies together is one of the best ways for my family to bond.

Movies, to me, have always been something that the  majority of people have in common. Discussing films is one the best icebreakers of all time. Almost anyone can talk about movies. I wouldn’t be able to pick a favorite film of all time, but the one movie I have found the majority of people have seen is The Princess Bride. It was the one movie I always watched as a kid when I stayed home sick from school and I have found that many people I have met also had this ritual. It was fun as a kid to be able to watch a movie about someone hearing a story when they were home sick, and then listening along with the character.

I was really interested in this class because movies are such a large part of my life. I feel like movies can somehow vicariously give the view life experiences through the characters and images. I personally love visually interesting movies like The Fall, something that I may never actually see in real life. I have never studied philosophy but I really do believe that movies impact people emotionally and that has everything to do with philosophy. People become so connected to certain films because of the way they make them feel or think, and I have always found that extremely interesting because this happens to me too.

Movies have become ritual in my family, and I’m sure in many others as well. An interesting thing, to me, about film is that it is a purely leisure activity in the sense that people don’t need movies to survive, they are an entertainment. People can sit in what my family terms “a popcorn movie” just to sit and enjoy, or they can actively choose to watch a drama or tragedy because they resinate with those emotions and want to share that experience with a film.