My Readership Will Surely Disapprove


Wherein Our Heroine Peels Away the Layers of Cultural Snobbery.
I have a very soft spot in my heart for the first Bridget Jones novel - also for the movie of same. Cultural aesthetes everywhere are holding their noses, but I have confessed to guilty pleasures before, so this should come as no surprise. I have been thinking about how sometimes you appreciate something for what it gave you at the time - something apart from whatever dubious "cultural" or "aesthetic" value it may intrinsically have.

Before you ask me to turn in my cool card (hah! We both know I never had one), I should probably explain the circumstances. Bridget Jones' Diary was the first book we read when I joined my book club. I was a fairly new transplant to the DC area, and the promised company of four intelligent, funny women was a thrilling change from the limited social circle I had enjoyed living in New Hampshire. Since that first evening, these four women and I have shared weddings, births, joblessness (not just mine), and lots and lots of books. Our meetings are few and far between, but contain much laughter and nonstop conversation. We have marched through Dickens, wended our way through the thickets of Nabokov, and puzzled over the prose that wins a Pulitzer. But when the heavy and the deep becomes too heavy and deep, we have allowed ourselves the light and shallow. It was on just such a light and shallow note that I joined these women who have been such good friends to me, and for that I am very grateful to it.

The movie provided another refuge from the heavy and the deep. In March of 2001, my grandmother died after several years' suffering from ovarian cancer. I had flown to Connecticut to spend Easter with John and his family, and I was weary from the hollowness of grief and the concerns of trying to find my father, who was incommunicado somewhere in China. John asked what I wanted to do, and I said, "I just want to laugh." He took me to see the Bridget Jones movie, and for about an hour I was able to laugh. It was the definition of escapism, and it was exactly what I needed at the time.

I am thinking about this because movie sequel has been released. It sounds as if it is a shallow, dim copy of the original - no surprise, as the book sequel was the same. But that soft spot in my heart (and possibly my head) remains for the originals. I can be as much of a cultural snob as the next person, so it is a good reminder to me that escapism has its own merits.
Posted: Friday - November 12, 2004 at 08:15 AM         | |

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