It’s Monday! But here in the UK, it’s also the end-of-summer bank holiday, similar to Labor Day in the US… though that’s not till next Monday. Meanwhile, my ex-pat American ass, running a web site that has more US readers than UK readers, is feeling very out-of-sorts. It doesn’t feel like a holiday to me, even after 12 and a half years living in London, and I’m having a hard time relaxing like it’s a holiday. But also next Monday, which will be a holiday in the US but not in the UK, will also not feel like a day off to me. I never quite feel at home in either time zone… like the denizens of Cory Doctorow’s brilliant, vaguely SF-nal 2004 novel Eastern Standard Tribe [Amazon US | Amazon UK | Apple Books], which I read long before I moved to the UK (from the US’s Eastern time zone) and now find myself living. *sigh*
Which prompts this week’s question: What bit of pop culture (movies, TV, books, comics, games, whatever) best captures the feeling of being disconnected with the larger world?
(You can also discuss this at Substack or Patreon, if you prefer. You don’t need to be a paying subscriber to comment, but you will need to register with either site to do so.)
For me, I think it’s “the Matrix”, even though… well it’s not quite subtle in dealing with “disconnectedness”, I guess.
But for me, what I found quite endearing about Neo even in the first 10 or 15 Minutes of the first movie, before we were even in on what was going on was that he seemed to be not quite in phase with the world around him.
To that, I certainly can relate.
And on another note… which came to my mind second was “The Sting” – which is odd, as it bascially deals with a con which only can succeed by the joint efforts of a group, standing up unified against The Bad Guy.
However, what spoke to me very much when I watched it first, as a teenager, and made it my favourite movie by far for many, many years, was that Redford’s character Johnny Hooker, despite becoming a central part of the con, and despite all his initial happy-go-luckiness, is actually displaying all signs of utter loneliness. He never really belongs anywhere. Even when he’s playing a central part in the con’s plot, he’s always sort of the odd one out. He’s much younger than most of the other protagonists, and even if it was his plan that got the project started, it’s the older guys who keep it going. He’s just to watch and play his part – which he does, but he never really fits in.
He’s in between all these people, laughing and charming at times, and yet, completely alone, with his keeping secrets and trying to solve his problems all alone making things worse.
I really felt him, there. Love that movie up to today – and nor to the least extent for the feeling of disconnectedness it transported so very well.