In the above thread, some dopers mentioned that they found Patch Adams “disturbing”. I couldn’t agree more. When I watched it, I wasn’t “inspired” at all. I was REALLY creeped out. The fact that this guy was real bothered me even more.
He seemed like a bit of a sociopath…
Another one was the character Rudy from the film of the same name.
While I LOVE that movie, I was a bit disturbed by the obsession. There is a fine line between dedication and stalking.
This is exactly why they created restraining orders!
Anyone else out there that was supposed to be inspirational that you found creepy?
Because to me, these guys look a WHOLE lot different without the original score by John Williams to let the audience know they are supposed to be moved.
Forrest Gump. I think Quentin Tarantino summed it up best when he talked about how subversive the movie is, that this big idiot was responsible for so many important events and critical moments in American history. That said, I find it a bland, boring, vanilla movie, the worst kind of “feel-good tearjerker.”
And I love Say Anything and John Cusack movies in general, but nowadays, they call that behavior “stalking.”
The thing I found funny about PATCH ADAMS, was the fact that the Robin Williams character looked really normal compared to the real man. If you ever get a chance to see the real Patch Adams, and you have a clown phobia, you might be scarred for life…
Well, there’s an upcoming TV series about a young woman who’s commanded to do “God’s work” by—get this—talking animal figurines, which only she can hear.
::Stunned silence::
Cripes, that’s not a plot outline, that’s a friggin’ entry in the DSM-IV! That with “Joan of Arcadia,” and you have the “Schizophrenic Psychosis Family Hour.” Replace “God” with “clumsy yet loveable martian” and you have a TGIF show from 1996!
There are dozens of movies about “one lone idealist taking on a huge corporation,” and we’re supposed to be cheering for the lone idealist. Usually (not always), this is a lawyer who’s suing some heartless fiends from the Fotune 500, but occasionally it’s just a do-gooder.
Such films usually leave me cold, partly for political reasons, but even more because, in this day and age, it’s mighty easy to launch a frivolous lawsuit and win a pile of money, regardless of the merits of your case. So, I was FAR from “inspired” by the likes of Erin Brockovich (or Paul Newman in “The Verdict” or John Travolta in “A Civil Action”) because I regard them as greedy ambulance chasers, rather than as heroes.
[Slight hijack]
I was assigned a book in my historical methodology course that discussed saints in Medieval society. Rather that finding them inspirational, the majority of the stories discussed in the book turned my stomach. One story after another of children who embraced extreme asceticism and stoically suffered in the name of God, often dying of self-inflicted starvation or bleeding to death from self-flagellation before the age of 10. Revolting. Seemed perfectly obvious to me that all of the attention they got from society had turned these kids into little masochists – the more they suffered, the more praise they got from all directions.
[/hijack]
Regarding Say Anything and “stalking”…stalking is a fairly recent invention. Before the late 90s, men who would never give up on the woman they felt was their destiny were looked upon as romantics.
I know a lot of folks who found John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany very inspiring, I couldn’t stand it. I found both Owen and the narrator kind of creepy.
Kizarvexius, there’s an interesting book by Caroline Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women that explores medieval saints and their relationships to their bodies. I found it fascinating, but I agree that the saints’ stories were more frightening than inspiring.
Are you talking about Wonder Falls? I know it sounds odd, but I’m quite excited about it. Tim Minear (Angel, Firefly) is creating/producing/writing it. It can’t be any more bizarre than a 300 year old vampire with a gypsy curse looking for redemption on the streets of L.A.
I second Patch Adams. Creeps me the fuck out.
Put me down for Erin Brockovich. The movie glamorized her a lot. In real life I find her to be pushy and desperate for fame. Shes not an ambulance chaser. She jumps in front of them to force them to stop.
I felt the same about Irving’s The World According to Garp. It been praised as something of a feminist movie, but I’ve rarely seen anything so misogynistic in my life. All of the women are various degrees of stupid or unpleasant.
I also find Teletubbies as extremely creepy. The sinister sun watching over everything makes me shudder.
Then there’s George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s a human doormat.
I thought I was the only person in the world who was creeped out by Owen Meany! It seems that everyone I speak to that has read that book has loved it.
I, for one, never liked it. There’s something sinister about Owen…
Not by the women they terrorized and sometimes murdered. People may not have been concerned about stalking as a social issue until fairly recently, but the phenomenon certainly existed long before that.
Not ‘characters’ per se, but I did have a psychotic break at Disneyworld at the end of the “It’s a Small World” boat ride (for those lucky enough to have not seen it, the little multiethnic marionettes are all a weird blue/white color at the ride’s end):
“Oh my God!! They’re all dead! It’s the “it’s a small world” afterlife!!! Uncle Walt killed them!”
C’mon. If you had that song blasting in your ear for five minutes straight, you’d have snapped too.
For the Pirates of the Carribean, I just got drunk
