The Eyes Keep Their Old Job
The other night, some friends came over for a movie night. This has become a kind of ritual now. We watch something bad, or at least something bad in a way some of us used to sincerely enjoy, which is maybe the purest form of adult self-deprecation.
We just finished the Twilight movies.
God damn.
There is a special kind of pleasure in revisiting something ridiculous with people who know exactly what they are doing. Nobody is there to be impressed. Nobody is pretending the dialogue has aged into secret brilliance. We are there to laugh, groan, remember who we were when we first watched it, and maybe gently punish our younger selves for having taste that could be so easily defeated by pale cheekbones and dramatic pauses.
The funny thing is that, during all of this, I kept looking at the TV.
I say “looking” because that is the verb we have. It is not quite accurate, but it is close enough to get us in trouble. I can’t really see what is happening on the screen. Not in any meaningful way. I can hear the dialogue. I can follow the shape of a scene through music, timing, tone, and everyone else’s reactions. I can pick up more than people might assume. Still, the actual image is mostly beyond me.
And, even so, my head turns toward it.
The Habit of Facing What Everyone Faces
I don’t know exactly why I do this.
Part of it is probably habit. A lifetime of watching things leaves its tracks. The body remembers the arrangement: couch, screen, voices, laughter, snacks, the glow of a shared focal point. Something starts playing, and my face knows where to go before the rest of me has made a decision.
Part of it might be social. Even with people who know I can’t see the movie, some small unconscious part of me still wants to look engaged. Not because they need proof. Not because anyone is testing me. More because being in a room with people often means quietly aligning yourself with what everyone else is attending to.
When everyone looks left, you look left.
When everyone laughs at the screen, you face the screen.
When the werewolf takes his shirt off for reasons of urgent plot necessity, apparently you turn your head toward the blur and participate in whatever ancient civic duty is being performed.
A Blur Can Still Be Shared
There is something tender in this, though. A little sad, maybe, but not only sad.
My eyes keep trying to do the job they used to do. They are unreliable employees now, but loyal ones. They still show up. They still point themselves toward the center of the room. They still want to be part of the exchange.
Maybe that is what I noticed most. Not that I was pretending to see. I wasn’t. Everyone there knows the truth well enough that pretending would be absurd.
What I noticed was that attention is not only visual. It is also posture. It is listening. It is turning toward the same ridiculous thing as everyone else. It is laughing half a second late because the joke arrived through sound instead of image, and still laughing with the room.
I can’t really watch the movie.
But, somehow, I still look over.
Incredibly fun
Even when the movie sucks
Or, when you can’t see
