Managing pop culture expectations

I didn’t cry in “Toy Story 3.” The remainder of the audience in the movie theater was teary-eyed during the last 15 minutes of the film, but aside from a full bladder resulting from a jumbo soda, I was dry as a bone. And I didn’t care for Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy all that much, either.

But wait, don’t break out the pitchforks and torches just yet because I am not a monster. As it happens, I enjoyed “Toy Story 3,” but don’t consider it tear-inducing or all that “great.” And the first installment of Millennium, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was a compelling read (even if I think Larsson had some serious issues with women) but the follow-ups didn’t connect with me and I was left wanting.

Now, it would be easy to label me a pop-culture contrarian, the type of person who automatically dislikes whatever is popular or disagrees with consensus just to be different. Instead, I fear the exposure enjoyed by these things has left me not loving the universally beloved.

Frequently, when something is considered truly awesome by audiences and critics alike, chatter and media coverage reach a fever pitch until anyone who hasn’t seen/read/listened to the object of such attention is behind the times or considered a pop pariah.

Surprising as it is, I have friends who still haven’t seen “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Godfather: Part II,” read “The Da Vinci Code” or any Harry Potter book, or ever watched an episode of “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men.” But more shocking still are the ones who just don’t like these sacrosanct entertainment entries.

For instance, post to your Facebook wall you don’t revere The Beatles, and that the Sergeant Pepper album is overrated or even just “meh.” Woo boy, just observe the angry mob that forms “Are you smoking crack?” “What’s wrong with you?” “You just didn’t give it a try.” “You just hate it because it’s popular.” Say something similarly dismissive to twi-hards in Hot Topic, and you won’t even make it to the food court before they take you out.

To not love the universally beloved is to segregate yourself from the masses because it is received as an invalidation of other people’s tastes – even if you add, “but it’s OK if you like it.” I know this because I’ve been wounded in the same way.

A few years back I was dating a girl and things were progressing quite swimmingly – until I showed her a favorite movie of mine at the time, “Kicking and Screaming.” Not to be confused with the abysmal Will Ferrell soccer-dad flick from 2005, this “Kicking and Screaming” came out a decade earlier, and was the first film written and directed by Noah Baumbach. The film about twentysomething slackers caught between college and the real world spoke to me, and I was excited to share it with the new girl.

And she hated it.

The girl hated a movie I really loved at the time, but she didn’t hate me. It was fine by her I enjoyed it, but it just wasn’t her thing. She didn’t have an issue with a majority of my other tastes, and even found it somewhat charming I had a Green Lantern power ring replica - that’s more than most guys can reasonably expect from a girl. Still, her take on “Kicking and Screaming” gnawed at me. I was younger and way stupid, but it felt like a personal slight. We stopped dating for many, many reasons, but was her snub of that movie always in the back of my head? You betcha.

Of course it was wrong on my part to feel that way since. I felt her rejection was invalidating my tastes, but by essentially requiring her to love the same thing, I was precisely doing the same to her.

Besides, it’s more fun to debate quality and excellence when we don’t all agree.