An older lady comes in one day with her rental target firmly in mind. She straightaway asks Fernando, “How is Black Swan?”
“It's a very...idiosyncratic movie,” Fernando says. It probably would not be a good idea to advertise the saucy lesbianism to a 60-something year old.
“I heard it's about ballet and won a bunch of awards.”
“Well, only in the broadest sense. The ballet is used as a framing device and driving force for a rather, ah, risque thriller about the psychology of ambition and the drive to succeed. It did win all sorts of accolades, though.” This elaboration is good enough for her, as she rents the movie for the night.
The next day she returns to the store and slams the case down upon the counter. Her face is screwed up in a scowl that would intimidate even Satan. But Fernando is not Satan. “This movie was horrible!” she hisses. “Nothing but smut!”
“I'm sorry you disliked the movie.”
“It's all smut nowadays!” she continues, “Everything people your age and kids watch now! That they can turn ballet into...into this!” She throws her hands up in the air with a hearty “Feh!” Then she turns to Fernando's Spartacus poster and jabs a finger at it. “That, too! Have you seen that?”
“I can't say that I have.”
“Well, I have. I was watching HBO the other night (Fernando does not correct her error... maybe she instead saw Game of Thrones?) and that came on and it was nothing but sex and rape and murder!” So, yeah, Game of Thrones.
Fernando shrugs. “It's what sells. It's always what's sold. It's just that nowadays changes in how society views sex and violence have allowed for it to be much more up-front rather than being veiled behind innuendo. Frankly, it's a rather lazy way out of storytelling because it lays everything out for the viewer rather than allowing his or her imagination to fill in the blanks, but that's just the way things go. It's not limited to miniseries on cable TV channels.”
“It's not healthy,” the lady says. Then she departs, still grumbling about the decline of western society.
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