Sunday Soapbox: Looking Below the Surface

*Steps on soapbox*

Last week, those of you who have come to expect quality bitching from me were likely disappointed. Well, good news for you; you should get your money's worth today. See, today, I'm going to complain about people who don't see past the surface and then complain about the superficiality. Complain, perhaps, isn't the right term. Perhaps a better word is "fuss."

It's a pet peeve of mine and goes back to when I first started writing, poetry, as it happens, in the beginning. I'm going to provide for you nice peoples, a poem written when I was thirteen or fourteen (decades, by the way, before Saving Private Ryan; the name is a coincidence) - it is unchanged and I was idealistic. Bear with me. Then, I will explain why this leads to one of my pet peeves.

Ryan's Dream

Soldier Ryan had a dream
Much worse than any thought.
His mind and body gave a scream
That, in his throat, was caught.
He walked along a bloody beach
That he had seen before
And his bloody footstep fell
Upon the bloody shore.

His comrades' corpses lay around.
'Twas in their blood he stepped!
Ryan all at once came 'round
Then bowed his head and wept.
Abhorréd vision, go away!
The sight made to deplore,
The squelching crimson food that fell
Upon the bloody shore.

He vowed to save his comrades
When, the next day, they would fight.
He vowed he'd save them all from raids;
He vowed it all that night.
But his eyes just saw the scarelet sea
And heard his terror roar,
As the broken boot, so bloody be,
Upon the bloody shore.

In rage and in denial
He killed opposing bands.
No comrade would he let fall
Upon the shifting sands
'Til, fin'ly he had finished;
The en'my was no more,
No friend or comrade vanquished
Upon the silent shore.

But now he walked in glory
On the beach's stainéd sand
But stained by his adversity
Who stained his feet and hands.
The vanquished lay around him
But his heart will cry no more
As he steps a bloody footstep
Upon the bloody shore.

(No surprise, I'm sure, that I had very few friends in high school)

Anyway, I gave this to my biggest fan at the time, my freshman English teacher, and he gave it (along with several others) to a college professor friend of his to look over. The comment on this one (and a few others) was, why are these stories so superficial? On this one, he added, "Why are you glorifying war?"

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Glorifying war? It's an anti-war poem (as, in fact, many of mine were back then). I was absolutely floored that anyone could think otherwise, could miss it. Then my English teacher, my biggest fan, said he thought that was what I'd intended and suggested I make it more obvious.

Well, I didn't. I feel and still feel that people who don't want to see past the surface won't see it if you make it more obvious unless you make it so obvious it's, well, surface. And, for those people who get the depths - and my teacher's daughter got it first off - it makes the piece that much more effective.

Also, I'm a firm believer that no reader's/watcher's reaction is wrong, even if it wasn't the one I intended or wasn't the one the original artist/director/writer's intended. If you read something and get nothing from it, it's a perfectly legitimate response. Hell, I've had it quite a few times myself.

But, I also realize that my perspective and past make me more receptive to some things than others, that teenage or child protagonists often make me roll my eyes (even if written really well), that there are some perspectives I just won't understand and others I will identify with even if eveyrone else thinks the character is shallow.

In other words, just because someone thinks something is shallow, doesn't mean it is. And that, if someone decides ahead of time how he/she feels about something, it's a pretty safe bet his mind wasn't open. I try to remember to make the distinction when I describe something as something I didn't like as opposed to something without worth.

Not enogh people, in my opinion, do that.

*Steps off soapbox*