Cultural Imperialism on a Personal Scale

Scott Hardie | December 24, 2001
One of the few things that my mom and I have in common is a love of movies. Though we don't like the same genres, good movies transcend these kinds of preferences.

When I visit my mom on vacation, I usually bring a few of my DVDs with me to share with her, hoping that she'll like them as much as I do. We don't have to watch all of them (can't really do so anyway), but I usually have one or two favorites that I stress.

This trip, it's Memento. I thought it was good. I think she'll agree. But she won't see it. No reason stated. I tried to show her the trailer, but she won't watch it. I tried to show her good reviews, but she won't read them. I tried to just tell her about the movie, but she wouldn't listen to me.

Now, I don't want to force her to watch it if she doesn't want to watch it; I hate it when people do that to me. If she rejected it after at least learning a little bit about it, I wouldn't mind. But she won't even learn enough about it to properly reject it. She won't even stop what she's doing for two stinkin' minutes to watch the trailer. And I'm very irritated by that. It's frustrating when someone whose opinion matters to you willfully chooses not to pay attention to what you're trying to communicate to them, whether it's something meaningful or not.

We meant to eat at Olive Garden tonight, but there was a huge crowd and we were both too hungry to wait. Instead, she suggested the Sweet Tomatoes salad buffet in the same parking lot. (See my next entry for more positivity on that.) I said, "I don't know..." but she explained it to me, as though I can't guess what it is from the words "salad buffet" on the sign. I said, "I don't know if I want to eat here," but she said, "Come on! It's good!" and pulled into a parking space. So much for that.