Well, not many more people. My younger cousin had already seen it when she visited last year, but that didn't stop her face from lighting up with glee when she found out she had the chance to watch it again. The whole time the movie was on, there was laughter in her eyes, which eagerly darted from the mesmerizing Microsoft Powerpoint birds on the TV screen to the expressions of everyone in the room.
My older cousin, on the other hand, had never seen the movie before. We had to stop twenty minutes before the movie's end, because by that point her eyes said that she wished she had never seen anything at all, if it meant not having to see this. While her sister clapped her hand as the movie's romantic ballad, Hangin' Out with My Family, began to kick in, she simply lolled her head. While her sister laughed at each beautiful, unique, completely inexplicable instance of the sound cutting out for no reason, she just gaped in astonishment. As the eagles dive-bombed gas stations, making kamikaze noises and exploding into two-dimensional clouds of smoke, rather than applaud and shout like her sister, all she could do was turn to look at me. She looked like a beloved dead relative had come back to life only to kick her in the shins before returning to the crypt. "I do not know," she said flatly, "whether to laugh or cry."
This reaction to Birdemic, and various other phenomena of its ilk, is familiar to me. My dad reacted much the same way to Birdemic, and reacts similarly to movies like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl and Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark, despite both being amazing. These reactions, while familiar, have nevertheless puzzled me, because I don't have them. If someone put a gun up to my head right now, at this exact second, and asked me whether I would rather watch Citizen Kane (a movie that, despite decades of existing in a culture that uses it as a synonym for "untouchable amazing masterpiece," I haven't seen) or Santa's Slay (a movie about wrestler Billy Goldberg dressing as Santa and murdering people while making Christmas puns), I'd probably choose the latter before I could even get scared. It's just who I am.
I never really thought about the significance of this trait until recently, but it's something I'm actually quite curious about now. What makes some people attracted to, or even amused by, the grotesque, sublime failures of others? Why do other people convince themselves that such spectacle isn't anything interesting, or worse yet, wish to ignore it? Is something wrong with them? Is something wrong with me?
Fortunately, after almost three hours of meditating on this issue, a conversation at work about a certain wafer-haired presidential frontrunner made me realize the true nature of this difference. To put it simply, I believe both attraction and repulsion to spectacular failure are defense mechanisms.
Imagine two scenarios. In the first scenario, life is relatively normal, but, just once, crazy people break down your door, take turns farting loudly on each other, and then leave. I can imagine many people I know being horrified by this idea, but to me, such a ridiculous thing happening in front of me sounds amazing. I would be able to recount it to people for days without ever getting tired of it, and a month or so after the event, I would probably be eager for it to reoccur. Every time I heard a fart sound I would probably unconsciously grin, and eventually just become a (more) reclusive shut-in, waiting around for the event to repeat itself while desperately clutching a camera so that I could make others understand. In this scenario, being someone that can be disgusted or bored by such nonsense makes sense, because it lets you move on and continue functioning normally in the otherwise normal world.
The second scenario is identical to the first, except the farters break into your house every two to four days, without fail. It's not perfectly predictable, though--just enough so that you know it will happen. People that are terrified by horrible, hilarious things would live their lives in a state of panic, knowing they can't escape the ridiculousness. Meanwhile, I'd be happy as a clam. I could keep living normally, but the intrusion of purposeless idiocy would brighten my day rather than ruin it.
So each attitude, I concluded, has its advantages and disadvantages. Despite this, I ultimately pity those that shudder, rather than cheer, at the painfully, awkwardly sincere face of true stupidity. There aren't people regularly breaking into our houses to engage in fart-battles (at least, as far as I know of. If I'm wrong and this is actually happening please tell me in the comments I want to see it on YouTube), but as time goes on, more and more of our society seems to be approaching the fart horizon.
Below, completely unrelated, is a video of Donald Trump, current frontrunner in the Republican Presidential primaries, doxxing fellow Republican candidate Lindsay Graham.
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