Me? Watch ‘Titanic’? Never!
Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o wipes her tears during a performance at Mariwa Primary School in Rata, Kisumu County, in 2016, during a visit to her home in Rata in 2015.
You must be familiar with the story about the submersible that disappeared with five people in it, on its way to see the wreck of the Titanic. The world, which was hoping for a miracle, would find out, days later, that the vessel imploded, and all on board died.
That sad story revived Titanic, the 1997 movie that told the tragic story of the more than 1,500 people that drowned when the steamship sank in 1912.
“You people should watch that movie if you haven’t, aki I cried…” a colleague announced to a group of us on Wednesday this week. She went ahead to explain that what she especially found moving and difficult to take was watching “all those children drowning”, after which she stressed, yet again, that we should really watch the movie. She had watched it over the weekend, yet days later, what she had seen still traumatised her.
And this is, dear reader, exactly why I don’t watch these kinds of movies. My take is that there is already so much to cry about in the real world, it doesn’t make any sense why anyone would put themselves through the unnecessary agony of manufactured grief by watching such tearjerkers. And yet there are thousands, if not millions, of people all over the world that are hooked on such sad, depressing films.
I never cease to get amazed at those who go on social media to ask others to recommend sentimental movies that they can binge-watch over the weekend or during their free time away from work, minding the children or during their annual leave. What astounds me even more is seeing the avalanche of recommendations that such a query usually gets – people do like watching upsetting stuff.
Whenever I see such posts, I think to myself, ‘what a depressing way to spend your free time…’ It is as if some of us thrive in misery. When I have time to myself, I would rather watch something exciting, something that will uplift my spirits, such as a movie about good guys beating up bad guys that do bad things.
I refuse to sit in front of my TV, sniffling into my sweater and dubbing tears from the corners of my eyes with tissue, (and pretending that something got into my eyes when my children wonder why I’m crying) because of a made-up story. I deliberately give these heartbreakers a wide berth, and not even rave reviews would convince me to watch even one, not even if it won an Oscar. So no, I’m not going to watch the Titanic, not even if you promise to pay me, which would be welcome in these hard economic times we are in.
I am quite happy to escape reality for an hour or two by watching John Wick-type films where the hero single-handedly annihilates an entire army armed with machine guns, grenades, bombs and missiles, which all somehow miss him.
Come to think of it, I think I will re-watch Skyscraper, the thriller starring The Rock doing a bunch of improbable things to save his family after a bunch of terrorists set a building on fire...
