The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

A few weeks ago I received an text from my sister, K, in California, asking if I had seen the trailer for the new Sandra Bullock movie due out in November. Since I only watch DVR'd television these days, the chances are slim to none I'll see a movie trailer unless I am actually at the movies - a twice yearly occurrence since making it to a movie on time is a stretch for people who don't have three kids and babysitting issues - or actively seek one out on Youtube.

You all know of my love of Sandy, so I was excited, indeed, when I started trolling the web. And then I found it, the trailer for The Blindside, a movie about a disadvantaged, African American teenager from Mississippi who eventually becomes a Division 1 college football player. The trailer featured scenes of this kid picking up discarded popcorn bags at basketball games in order to eat, walking home on cold, dark roads with no coat, and marveling at the luxury of having an actual bed to sleep in, something he has never had in his life, until Bullock's character takes him into her home. Conclusion?

There is no fucking way I am seeing this movie.

This is another one of Mean Mommy's peccadilloes. It might come as a surprise to some of you, with the bravado with which I write on this blog, that under the hard candy shell, I am ridiculously sensitive when it comes to others being hurt or maligned, especially the disadvantaged or weak. My sister has nicknamed me "The Champion of the Meek". Woe was you, as one of my former students, if I caught you teasing a fellow classmate. Humiliation was to be yours in spades. While I rage against cruelty toward anyone, there are a few categories of people who when wronged, really send me careening over the edge. They are, in no particular order: the overweight, African Americans*, the mentally challenged and children. If we are to be politically incorrect, as we often are in the MM household, H and I call it my "fat, black, retarded, kid thing". Any of these characteristics, singularly or in combination, in a victim of mistreatment can almost immediately brings me to tears.

It is only worse in the celluloid world. When I am a prisoner to a screenwriter's heartbreaking turn of phrase or a director's soul-destroying visuals, the wrath I would normally unleash on the perpetrator of abuse turns inward and becomes a gut-wrenching, run-out-of-the-theater-when-the-lights-come-up-so-no-one-knows-it-was-me-sobbing-so-loudly, crying jag. The movies I have suffered through throughout the years include: Rain Man, I Am Sam, Forest Gump, The Color Purple and the coup de gras - The Green Mile. I started crying ten minutes into that one (H says he remembers thinking," We are in trouble here...") and cried for three days after. Think about it. He's a large, black, mentally challenged angel who is wrongly being put to death. I didn't stand a chance. There are many, many more, but I don't have the emotional strength to go searching for titles that made me weep.**

It took me a few years, but after finally narrowing down the things that make me cry the most, there are dozens of movies and books I have avoided because their main characters fall squarely into one or more than one of these demographics. My brothers in-law have promised, under penalty of death, to never EVER tell me about Monster's Ball - I believe it involves some candy bar scene***. I mistakenly sat through the trailer of Pursuit of Happyness, online at home one night, thinking it was another goofy Will Smith vehicle (love!) and it was such a scarring experience, I ran out of the theater months later when confronted with it again.

So what am I to do? Sandy seriously looks like she rocks it in this film, with her blond wig, tight, white pants and Southern accent. But I just don't think I can take the downtrodden expression of the main character. And, yes, I know it's an uplifting story, but what will keep me knee-deep in Kleenex for hours after the credits roll, is the idea that there are thousands of children who are not saved by well-meaning Junior league ladies and at this very moment are starving, hurt or suffering. And I think that's my main issue. I don't want to see all the ugliness, even when a character is rescued from it, because I know more is out there and, as a mother, I die thinking people are capable of these things. I'm trying to raise kids here people, in my leisure time, let me think the world is full of sunshine and light so I can get a break from worrying about my kids coming down with swine flu or being abducted from the front yard.

In the end, I know I will wind up going to see this film with K during her December visit, since we share this Bullock obsession and getting to see it in the theater together is like the planets aligning. During rough scenes, I will just have to breath deeply, and think of rainbows and unicorns. Or maybe I can guarantee my institutionalization and make it a double feature with a screening of Precious.

* Not sure where this falls on the Does-This-Make-Me-Racist? spectrum.
**No, don't remind me of any.
***NO, DON'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT IT EITHER!