Hidden among the classic rock albums delivered to my 18-year-old-high-school-self’s doorstep by BMG and Columbia House, the hordes of folk music that serve as a reminder of my post-college sensitivity, and the indie albums that symbolize my juvenile attempt to fit in by not fitting in, is a brown CD case that protects a 12-song album straight out of southern blues rock heaven. In another room, a Blockbuster-like collection of Academy Award winning films, Sundance Festival selections, and indie pictures surround a 2-disc edition of a classic movie starring two of my generation’s greatest actors. The album is one of the top 20 selling albums of all time; the movie is in the top 10. Both were released in the 1990s, both received rave reviews, and yet, 10-15 years later, you’d be hard pressed to find one person who would admit to liking either of them. I’m talking, of course, about Hootie and the Blowfish’s debut album Cracked Rear View, and James Cameron’s epic film Titanic.
In the past few weeks, as I struggled through the BBGE’s most recent selection, the painfully-easy-to-read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (a successful book because of its author’s fame, not talent), I found a blog-worthy similarity between the fleeting fame of a band or movie, and the book’s ongoing discussion of the fragility of a high school kid’s popularity. Stated in such a simplistic way that would make Picoult proud (and concerned that you were trying to usurp her commercial success throne), the popularity of a high school kid, or of a movie, or of a band, is entirely at the mercy of those who deem it worthy of popularity. But as soon as enough of society has conformed and fallen in line with the beliefs of the masses, the popularity will spawn resentment and the masses will stop being fans.
I don’t know what a sociologist would say about this phenomenon mostly because Sociology 101 was my first college class and, let’s be honest here, who does well in their first college class? Even so, I do feel as though I have an idea of the mindset of the masses. For as long as I can remember, walking the line of popularity has always been a delicate balance between conformity and individuality. The two operated in an almost symbiotic way: you were popular because you didn’t conform, but you stayed popular by not sticking out. In other words, you had to be different to get noticed, but like everyone else to be popular. Those who were just plain different were outcasts, and those who were simply carbon copies were followers. You had to find the balance, all the while facing the fact that the line between the two was constantly changing.
Most high school kids lack confidence, and so what usually happens in their quest for popularity is that they establish a unique identity, and when their fear of the potential wrath of the masses gets to them, they fall back in line. Although conformity brings with it less popularity, it’s the safer side of that line. The kids who are ahead of their time and who make the “mistake” of not falling back in line quickly discover the hell that waits for them on the other side.
All of these thoughts were on my mind last week when Freckles and I went to see M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening in a local movie theatre filled to the brim with teenagers who all believed it was their responsibility to give a running commentary of the film (in between their cell phone calls, of course). Their immaturity and disrespect brought me back to high school, which, in a way, helped me understand why so many movie critics were quick to bash Shyamalan’s latest.
The Happening is a story of a mysterious plague that begins to almost immediately kill off the northeastern part of the US. It’s told through the eyes of a Philadelphia married couple (played by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel), their friend (John Leguizamo) and his daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez). Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the story is more about the couple than the plague (think Signs), that the couple’s survival of the plague is subtly dependent on who they are and what brought them to that particular point in life (again, like Signs), but that, unlike Signs (a great movie in and of itself), Shyamalan doesn’t spell out the ending with a climactic “Swing away, Merrill” line or a Sixth Sense-like twist. Instead, he hopes the viewers are smart enough to pick up on the subtle clues brilliantly acted out by Wahlberg and Deschanel. And because I wasn’t as subtle as Shyamalan, you know how this story ends: the critics (read: masses) hated it.
The Los Angeles Times said, “Shyamalan favors the whimper over the bang,” that Shyamalan failed to answer the question of what happened?, that “Wahlberg’s displays of emotion never mesh[ed] with what’s going on,” and that Wahlberg’s character should have thrown himself into a much more situation-appropriate sweaty mass panic.” Even my beloved The Onion said, “Wahlberg’s soothing, almost hypnotic vocal patterns seem modeled on the paternal purr of Mr. Rogers.” What most every critic (save Roger Ebert) failed to understand is that Shyamalan took a thriller story and Hitchcocked the hell out of it. I’d even go so far as to say he one-upped Hitchcock because as great as Alfred was in building tension, his movies always had an expected bang. Shyamalan recognized that the more powerful way of telling this story would be to have the audience figure the bang out for themselves (whether in the theatre or on the drive home) and the fact that the ending wasn’t as clear cut as The Sixth Sense would leave an unsettled uneasiness in every viewer, which is, incidentally, the kind of reaction you’re looking for in a thriller.
But alas, in this popular eat popular world that hates Hootie because they love him, that sees Titanic five times before bashing it, Shyamalan never had a chance. He made a name for himself when he got Bruce Willis to act, but then he kept refusing to conform to the cookie-cutter standards of our society. He stuck his neck out, and with Jerry Bruckheimer special effects, we cut it off.
Benchly'sword 
Totally just added The Happening to my queue.