Sunday, July 17, 2022

Wanda Vision and Dr. Strange

OK, although I intended to never watch Wanda Vision, mostly because if something becomes wildly popular I sort of avoid it. The feeling is like wearing a mask to prevent the spread of COVID. I feel like popularity is some sickening disease that I do not want to rewrite my belief system. Though both popularity and Covid pose no real threat, the perceived possibility of damage terrorizes me.....ok, too much? Perhaps, but anyway, I watched WandaVision because for some stupid reason I wanted to love Doctor Strange, even after I had been warned about the extreme political views expressed in the recent Avengers movies...isn't it the norm for Disney in trying to appeal to the masses?

It felt like a "megaphone to rouse a deaf world". Though highly veiled in metaphor it felt like all the hypocrisy of a modern idea of happiness was on display for all to grab their popcorn and twiddle their thumbs away watching lives sacrificed and rescued for the sake of one individual desire to have RIGHT NOW the same thing that would naturally become if let unfold naturally.

When is a thing so far gone it becomes unreachable by hope? Cathartically, I could see most of our limits are self-imposed lines drawn in the sand...waiting for the next big wave to wash away. This reminds me of an observation my daughter made in Tennessee regarding state and city lines. She said, " It is good we actually have maps, otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell when one state ends and the other one begins." Likewise, it is good that we have ceremony to clarify our desires.

Back to Dr. Strange. I keep trying to remove all of the politically correct/popularly appealing agendas and just see the movie and what it was supposed to be saying. I wasn't going to let all those stupid trappings become a stumbling block. But, maybe that's the whole point, I need to recognize that I have already fallen. As I age, I accept more and more garbage ever so gradually.  It is like a foot got in the door somehow. I must mention my favorite line when America is Dueling with Wanda or the Scarlett Witch she realizes (I want to point out that the good guys and bad guys are extremely fluid. Wanda was the hero and is now the villain, though her intent is the same)...America realizes that she cannot fight Wanda the aggressive, combatant, usual way, so instead she grants her desire and figures Wanda can only defeat herself, so she opens a portal granting the thing she was fighting to keep from happening. It works! That is my favorite part. It teaches me that being patient and letting things work themselves out is extremely hard to endure, and might require a super hero, but ultimately it is the strongest defense and offense. If Evil is Evil then it alone will be able to defeat itself...eventually when it becomes self-aware.

My own kids were trying to define art and stumbled when it came to stories. Drawing was mathematical, music was scientific, and stories can be written down and thus mathematical or orally/aurally passed down, thus they are scientific. This went on circularly for a long time. Stories are kinda like light traveling as particles in a wave until they can be defined. So, I guess that makes stories like truth. And the closer they are to what truly is, the better.

There, It is hard to unjumble my thoughts and explain them using words, but I shared a little bit of what watching that movie gave me.

Don't you have it when humpty dumpy falls and cannot be put back together again? Perhaps, if they are so easily destroyed it is for the best. I sort of think the center will hold and things will last that ought to be, though it is hard knowing where the lines are without a map.