Why do I have such strong feelings for film?
No, really. Honest question. I don’t know. I’m not sure why. It’s just, I have these insanely strong emotions when it comes to film and cartoons.
Like, not even individual films, just the entire medium. I love all types of art, but there’s something about film that I feel inherently connected to. I see a reel of film or an animation cell and I legitimately get emotional about it. Damaged nitrate film makes me genuinely sad. I get tingles when I see the circular countdown numbers and hear the pips. Seeing film restoration documentaries make me cry more than ones about saving kids in third world countries. I know, I’m horrible, but I have more immediate feelings for film than other human beings.
Don’t get me wrong I love living things too, and yes okay I would save the puppy from the fire before the two-reeler if I had to choose, but I don’t know if I would save me before it. I’m not even being dramatic, I’m being pragmatic. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had trouble understanding what reality is, or, rather, how people decide what is real. I remember having a real argument with an adult (I can’t remember who) when I was a kid about cartoon characters being real. They kept telling me that they weren’t, but I couldn’t accept that; because both of us knew who they were, what they were like, how they spoke and felt and what they’d done, and more people knew about that person than about either of us. That character was known to the world, and influenced it. To me, that meant that we were less real than the character, and I think I still believe that- we’re certainly less permanent.
Anyway I don’t know why this came up I just had a really weird night’s sleep and sometimes I have feels about things.
