Sunday, February 19, 2012

A Hitch in my Thursday Nights

When I signed up for an English Film class this semester, I wasn't exactly sure what I would encounter. I walked in to find a classroom of about 50 boy and 3 girls. Considering the ratio of women to men at JMU is something ridiculous like 70/30, I was shocked. I wondered what I had gotten myself into and immediately realized I had no idea what kind of movies we would be watching and analyzing. After I got the syllabus, I soon  began to see why so many guys signed up for the class. (If I'm being honest it's because I think a lot of guys saw the opportunity to get a credit out of the way just by watching movies) In all fairness though, the movies being shown during the class were somewhat geared towards a male audience. I'm not a movie buff, and so when I heard we would be watching the films of Capra, Hitchcock, Peckinpah and Scorsese, I was intrigued but not overally ecstatic. My professor, with his beard and extremely long ponytail, soon assured me that these films would be interesting in every sense of the word. While the Capra films were delightful, somewhat corny and most importantly light in subject matter, things have started to shift ever sense we just started to watch Hitchcock. I'm embarrassed to say I've NEVER seen a Hitchcock film until two weeks ago. Of course I knew who he was and could name a bunch of his films, but the only thing I associated with Hitchcock were birds and the music from the shower scene in Psycho. We began with Vertigo, a bizarre film that uses the same actor James Stewart from Capra's It's A Wonderful Life which we had seen the week before. Though I wouldn't exactly call the film a horror film, its eerie music and ambiguous characters left me feeling uneasy for quite some time. When my teacher announced that we would be watching Psycho last Thursday I was excited. I wanted to see if it lived up to all the hype , and went into the film knowing virtually nothing plot-wise. By the time I left the movie, I was disturbed. I didn't realize how creepy the film was and on top of that I had to walk alone in the dark to my car. This film class gets out around 8:30/9 pm and so I get to walk through a desolate, black campus to a parking lot that's about a 10 minute walk away. ( Technically I could park closer, but that would mean getting the $200 parking pass...which has now made me choose a healthy bank account over safety) Every Thursday night I make the trek alone to my car, but this Thursday the walk seemed especially long. I was  completely paranoid. Obviously I knew a deranged murderer wasn't going to come out to kill me, but I still carried a feeling of uncertainty up until the moment when I got in my car and locked the doors. Before the walk had been fine because I'd just been watching an upbeat film that left me feeling rejuvenated but I realize from now on, this walk is only going to get longer. After last Thursday I'm almost tempted to get the parking pass but I think I'll risk my safety and mental state in order to spare a few dollars....

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