Escape (the pina colada film)

Why I heart media

The media I truly love is film. Mundane and common as it may sound, the world of film is actually versatile enough to be neither. I cannot name just one film that I love the most. The fact that so many different stories can bring me to so many different worlds is what amazes me. Real life can scare me when I realise that I am set out to be like everyone else. I expect to get a 9-5 job, I accepted that fact, even though it used to scare me out of my mind. It’s not a bad life, but it’s not a world filled with magic. When I am watching a film, good or bad, my imagination drags me into that world. I leave this 9-5 world and temporarily move in time and space and out of my own head even. This loss of reality and control soothes me in a way that is incomparable to any other form of distraction. Those worlds without boundaries, in a way, make up for the fact that this world we live in, is so restricted in so many ways.

One might ask why a good book does not have the same effect on me. Well, even though the effect is slightly different, I love reading books almost equally, even though reading books kind of has the opposite effect on me than watching films. The pace in a film moves very quickly, everything is thought out for you, the next scene follows the previous one and every second is important. When reading a book, some sentences are phrased so beautifully I stop to think about the message behind them and appreciate that very often. When reading books, compared to watching films, I have more “free mind space”. Thus, I am not exactly transported into a different world, but I still see it as an escape.

I’m afraid I’m not exactly original in my answer as to why I love media, but I can’t help it. Whenever I’m malcontent with real life, even though I realise how lucky I am and I have very little to complain about, I still need an escape from this relatively boring life. With ‘relatively’ I mean it might be disheartening to compare my ‘boring’ high school life with the high school life of Harry Potter, or my ‘boring’ future 9-5 job with the life of the Marvel Avengers. I don’t get sad (anymore) by these comparisons, because I realise this life is hard enough as it is, but it is still exciting to live through someone else for a moment.

13811479 (student number)