Scratching The Surface

As a writer I know from experience that there is a plethora of books out there which are decidedly obscure.  It's not so much a case of the writer intentionally writing a book that they did not want to enter the mainstream media - although that is sometimes the case with niche marketing - instead it's just been a case that the books for the most part went unnoticed.  This got me thinking about how deep our culture goes and how shallow we tend to be when we venture into it.  Whether it's music, movies, games, books, or even blogs, there's a lot to be said about the sheer depth of content that exists which very few people have ever consumed.

I've touched on these issues before on this blog.  I wrote about how our bubbles can limit our experiences and close our minds to new experiences.  I wrote about favouritism and how it too can also trap us inside bubbles of content consuming the same thing over and over again because we like it in an everlasting positive feedback loop.  I've been thinking more about authors and actors being examples of this behaviour.  In a previous post I spoke about Will and Grace and how it was one of my favourite TV shows so naturally that was a starting point in an experiment.  Reading back through my post I picked out Veronica Cartwright who played Jack's mother in Will and Grace.  I've seen her appear in a few TV shows and Movies over the years, so I decided to take a look at her IMDB article to test my theory.  As I expected, reading through the list of shows and movies she has been in, the vast majority I have never heard of, and a minority I have but do not recall her appearing in it or her character.  There are a few surprising entries too, for one, I love 'The Witches of Eastwick' yet I was completely oblivious to the fact there was a TV series made from the story in 2009 which she was in. 

This isn't an attempt to undermine Cartwright's career, this is simply proving a point, one which you can then go on to prove repeatedly with any actor you want really.  Even when you pick actors who with no disrespect to Cartwright, had much more successful careers, you still find that the vast majority of the roles they have played you've never heard of either.  This isn't about a frame of reference, although age and experience will play a small role in what you recognise in those lists, this is about the fact that people have lives.  That's something we tend to forget quite a bit.  These actors have careers that span many years, many decades for some, through which they were not always successful, they were not always headliners, and they certainly weren't always paid well for their work.  You can pick the most famous actor you can think of and read through their filmography and the same thing holds true.  Just as with the books that are banished to obscurity, most of these titles are banished there too.

The question is, why do we stick to such a small frame of reference, and why do we rarely venture beyond it?  Does the answer lie in Psychology?  Perhaps we find comfort in the familiar and choose not to explore the unknown?  Maybe we are just lazy and don't want to have to think or research what to read or watch and want whatever is the easiest to pick up - which is usually whatever mainstream media provides.  Even when you use services like Netflix or Spotify you can quickly become aware of the wealth of content that you've never consumed before, and with the latter showing the popularity of content among listeners you can see which tracks are the least played.

There are rarities however, those who have a keen interest in one specific person, whether they be author, actor, singer, or simply someone whose career provides interest.  These people who have a fascination tend to explore every inch of that interest.  You may be someone who can name every movie a particular actor has been in, or every winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in order, but beyond those fascinations the depth of information you would have to memorise to know this about everyone is so great that you could spend a lifetime trying to learn it all and you would barely scratch the surface.

As a gay man there is one area that I would like to explore to a much greater extent and that is the genres of LGBT TV shows and Movies.  Here too I admit I am guilty of staying on the surface.  I have seen about 50 LGBT Movies and the bulk of those come up over and over again when you try finding other LGBT movies to watch, top 10 articles, even top 20 and top 100 articles ranked by personal preference repeat the same titles over and over.  One thing is quite clear, there are a lot more than this that were created.  When you venture into the gay indie movies there are many which never gained any great deal of exposure.  When you ask people to name LGBT movies they usually come up with the same titles, 'Another Gay Movie', 'Milk', 'Eating Out', 'Bound', and 'Brokeback Mountain' I hear the most from Americans I ask, and 'Beautiful Thing', 'History Boys', and 'Weekend' for the British readers.  I'll leave the politics of which are better for another post.

Try and explore a little more.  Go beyond the surface and dig down a little deeper.  You never know what diamonds are waiting to be discovered.