Seriousness
🗓️ September 6, 2024
⏰ Read Time: 2 min
“Let’s all calm down, this is a movie about Pop Tarts — it doesn’t matter.”
Jerry Seinfeld said this incredible line in response to a crew member screaming at another crew member during the making of his recent Emmy-nominated movie “Unfrosted.” (I haven’t seen the movie, but man am I tempted now.) Here’s one of the biggest names in comedy history, with all the reason in the world to be a little higher and mightier about the things he’s doing, and he just rips himself and his project right off the pedestal. And it made me think, “yeah, this is ALL just a movie about Pop Tarts.” (in the philosophical sense, of course.) And then that made me think, “What on earth does that even mean?”
I sing songs about things and you very generously listen to them. You have lots of choices for the things you could listen to and engage with, and I have lots of choices for the ways I could spend my time, which currently is giving you things to listen to and engage with. I’m grateful that both sides of that coin are heads up. I’m tempted to say something like “but I need to learn to not take some things so seriously…” which might very well be true, but not particularly helpful or interesting. Why take things less seriously? It’s fun (for me at least) to rifle through the embers of life, looking for gold that’s surely hidden under every next pile, enough scratch to build up the life that lives in the mind’s eye. That’s a serious bit of work — those ashes are hot, the fireplace is dark, and black lung sounds like it’s just awful. But that’s where the gold is, they say! So I keep on rolling up my sleeves and plunging headlong into the stern and solemn work of digging in the dirt for something un-dirty.
But then something happens — a failure, an attack, some misshapen and twisted idea pens a new reality that was better left unwritten. The art I share, my own “movie about Pop Tarts,” starts jostling between ultimately serious and immediately ridiculous. The words and music act as balm or balloon, remedy or distraction from the sadness and severity of the “outside world.” Yet maybe they become neon and contrasty with the starkness of reality, and therefore taste like ice cream on canned tuna. While that sounds awful for taste and nutrition, as a bit of entertainment, it might do the trick.
I’m not sure what the takeaway is, whether I agree with Jerry’s sentiment, whether I’m taking things too seriously or not seriously enough, or whether I should advocate either to you in some well intentioned "moral of the story" to this random newsletter. So I guess all I can do is leave you with a question: If an unserious movie about Pop Tarts wins a serious award like an Emmy, does the movie remain unserious?
Your friend,
Joseph Bones
