Fitting Out

Robert Burkenhare

When you’ve been eating nothing but shit sandwiches, baloney tastes good. And man, what a lot of baloney lately that’s being praised as coq au vin.

The late comedian Bill Hicks ranted against the movie Basic Instinct and claimed that America had lost the ability to judge correctly, as most Americans were caught up in the hype around that “piece of shit.” Hicks then goes into a joke about how many times he watched Basic Instinct, being a dirty guy who liked girl-on-girl action. Rest in peace, Bill.

2023 was the year of Barbenheimer. Or so I heard. I skipped both movies until just this month. I would’ve skipped both, but there’s only so many times a guy can rewatch The Wire. My quick review of each: Oppenheimer is overlong and Barbie is underdone. The first made me bored, the second bummed out. Not because I disagree with the messages loaded into each movie. But as vehicles for some pretty no-brainer messages, these are less movies than extended slogans. Oppenheimer probably appeals to people older than me. Barbie is adored by my younger family members. Alas, I am in the worst age bracket, one that can’t deal with Boomer, Millennial, or Gen Z self-importance. And I’m too old to be in Gen X. Maybe that’s good. Those folks are gloomy as hell.

2024 is the year I should start thinking about retirement. But there’s no chance I’ll have the dough to stop working all-together. What the kids and college professors call “late-stage capitalism” is making retirement impossible. The other side of the political aisle will claim I have no one but myself to blame. I could’ve done so much more, worked harder, saved, invested, all the verbs they use in praise of the all mighty market. Aside from having no plan for my next month much less my golden years, I have no party offering me assurance that I belong. Again, might be my fault since I don’t trust politicians or political parties or anyone with a strong ideology, but damn if it isn’t lonely out here in the cold.

Those of us without a dog in the Barbenheimer fight, without a strong feeling for the elephant or the donkey, who are left-of-center for sure but find no solace with the far left, who struggle to find a generational marker, well, it’s hard on us sometimes. Where do we fit in? Is it any wonder my favorite movie is Cool Hand Luke?

I don’t like being an outsider. That word has so much underserved weight to it. There’s no cache in being a contrarian just for the sake of the contrary. No one really likes an outsider. We think we do, but who are the most praised outsiders? The ones from history or religion (the Jesuses and MLKs) didn’t fare well in their time. The current outsiders are hardly outside. Trump was elected partially because a lot of people loved his outsider status. And yeah, he was outside the political world, but fuck, was that a good thing? The opposite of a corrupt system is not automatically uncorrupt. Anyway, Trump is not an outsider. He’d die in a second if he ever felt like people didn’t love him. Or at least pay him attention. No, real outsiders don’t have social media followers.

Outsider artists. You’ve heard of them? Those weirdos who draw or make music that doesn’t follow the rules. Wesley Willis (rest in peace) is the name I think of first, being a Chicago guy who hung around bars in the 90s. And there’s a cult around Wesley, but I still have a dent in my head where he head-butted me, and it wasn’t always fun telling him “No” when he asked “DO YOU WANT TO BUY MY ROCK-N-ROLL CD?” over and over. And he smelled bad. And was troubled.

Outsiders are freaks. They make you uncomfortable. Then they die. Then they become heroes, but only to a small group who romanticize the sad.

Who are the mavericks making art outside of tradition? Who’s rewriting the rules or doing their own thing without care for conventions? They’re out there, sure, but does anyone think they’re happy? Was Jackson Pollack? Artaud?

Insiders are sexy. Sexiest when they appear as outsiders. The pop stars who dress weird and try so damn hard to show us how strange they are. How different. Maybe it’s my age (I was a kid when Bowie was coming off his glam phase and Alice Cooper was still scary) but they don’t shock me. Not in 2023. Hell, even my dentist has tattoos.

Greta Gerwig is a skilled director, absolutely. Ditto Christopher Nolan. But are either of their films truly revolutionary? One is blessed by a corporation and the other, for all its time jumps and dizzying cuts, follows an established biopic pattern. And you know what? That’s okay. A good movie doesn’t have to be “different.” It doesn’t have to come from the outside. But we shouldn’t go on about how these movies are anything more than the old repacked as the new.

Would an outsider even make a movie in 2023?

Fitting in is important. Kids want desperately to fit in. Even when they brand themselves outsiders, they’re bonding with others like them. O, the days when to be a nonconformist meant wearing the same Doc Martins or berets as all the other nonconformists.

Being an outsider in your job is a bad move if you want to advance. I can’t imagine the military looks kindly on outsiders. Or the police. Or the academics. Especially the academics. Those folks play at being outsiders in the most insulated environments imaginable.

I don’t think I’m an outsider, really, but I don’t always fit in. Fitting out is okay. There’s quiet and space to be whatever you want. Even if what you want is to fit in. Or at least fit in enough to be yourself. But fitting out is still fitting. We all fit somewhere. Until we don’t. That’s a hard day.