Finding No One

About a week ago AFI had a 10 top 10 show on TV.  The categories were:  animation, fantasy, science fiction, sports, western, gangster, mystery, romantic comedy, courtroom drama, and epic.  I had wondered what categories they would choose.  I was mildly and pleasantly surprised that they didn’t combine science fiction and fantasy.  Many people don’t see the differences between the two.  And they could have had a romantic category and a comedic one, but, instead, only had one category.  I was surprised that there were gangster and courtroom drama categories, but no plain drama category.  I had expected there to be a musical category and a children’s category; and they could have had a war films category as well.

I know it must have been hard for them to come up with ten categories, but I still question how balanced the categories were and how well they were separated from one another.  I know that no film is simply going to fit into one category without having elements that could be considered part of another category but even when some of the people were talking about the films they sometimes mentioned that there were significant elements of another category within the film they were talking about.  I probably wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to me, but once it was pointed out I had to wonder about it.  In the end, I don’t consider it to be a major problem, but other people could use that as a foothold to make it one.

I have to admit that part of the reason I was happy that science fiction and fantasy were separate is because I like both categories a lot.  I’m not a movie buff, but I knew most of the films in those categories.  The only one I didn’t recognise was “The Thief of Bagdad” and it was made in 1924,  so I don’t feel too bad about that. 

I can’t say that I was unhappy that romantic comedy was one category, but it did surprise me.  Then I thought about it some more and I realized that most romance stories are comedic in nature, so it makes sense to have it as only one category.

Two of the films in the gangster category were about the same man and two others where from the same trilogy, so I think it may have been a little too specialized to be it’s own category.   I think it could have been eliminated and/or the courtroom drama could have been the more general category of drama, as a way to have better balance in the categories.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought there would be a children’s category.  I think the animation category basically fills that role, with a couple of the fantasy being part of it as well.  It was no surprise to me that about half of them were Disney films.  Yet, animation doesn’t have to be for children.  I don’t like the assumption that animation equals children’s film.  I think it limits the genre.  If people would think about it, there are a lot of computer generation in films written for adults, and computer generation isn’t all that different from animation.  They both allow things to be portrayed that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to portray.

There was one movie that I really don’t like that was on the list.  In my opinion, one of the main characters was an idiot.  That character reminded me a little too much of someone I knew in real life, and found to be extremely annoying.  Sadly, I think that is part of the reason I don’t like that movie.  But another thing I want to know is who names their kid no one?  I mean, really, what kind of name is that?  Yeah, I know there’s a literary basis, but in all the instances that I know of, the character took that name to hide their identity.  It wasn’t their given name.