Why Holden Doesn't Actually Hate Movies
Probably the more important part of his obsession with movies however, is how he seems to be regularly spinning these movie like plots in his mind. The first example I can think of is the tap dancing scene on page 34, but there's also the lie he tells about having a brain tumor on page 65. Then there's the Die Hard kind of plot that he comes up with on page 116 after he got beat up by Maurice, and fantasy he has near the end about going to live on a ranch or in the woods and find a job somewhere which he tells to Sally (Salinger 146-147). on page 116 he also specifically mentions that he got that from the movies, "The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding." Clearly the movies have influenced the way he thinks and definitely the way he lies to everyone. I also doubt he would have seen so many if he really did hate them, and they wouldn't come up so often.
However, if he actually does like the movies than it also seems pretty counterintuitive for him to constantly say that he hates them, but Holden says a lot of things that don't make sense, and he's also built this mindset of hating anything that seems phony. That seems to usually be what he's talking about when he says that he hates something. His fixation with movies might also be a symptom of how he seems interested in stories. There are DB's short stories which he mentions that he likes, in part because there's nothing phony about them, but there's also the story about Allie's baseball glove, and how he enjoys telling stories about Phoebe and Jane Gallagher (Salinger 4; 43). He seems to see more sincerity in stories but refuses to admit it in the case of movies, or just can't see past the phoniness of it. They still stay with him though and influence him, so even if he might not like all of them, movies are at least pretty important to Holden and the way he thinks.
Good post! For someone who supposedly hates the movies, Holden definitely brings them up a lot. I think that part of his dislike for movies stems from the fact that a lot of people like them, and that they are becoming popular. Holden doesn't want to seem phony by saying he loves moves because everyone loves movies, in the same way he purposely gets bad grades. Despite this, as you point out, they still influence him greatly.
ReplyDeleteYou make a lot of good points I feel like one of the reasons Holden may also feel like movies are phony is because they have actors (where stories have characters) so movies literally have people pretending to be something they're not which to Holden is probably the most phony thing someone could do. I also think he is always coming up with movie plots in his head because he enjoys the story telling aspect of them.
ReplyDeleteI assume Holden generally dislikes the movies because they’re phony and don’t show the true aspects of life. In this way, I also think he feels like D.B. is falling into this phoniness and becoming lost in the fake movie world. He does seem to go to them a lot though (even when he says he hates it), being a willing participant in the “phoniness” as well. I like the examples you brought up. It illustrates how he seems to find hope in the fictionality of these movies, using them as an escape from the reality he’s stuck in, as in the case with Maurice and his house in the woods fantasy. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHolden's weird love-hate thing with movies does make a kind of sense to me: he realizes how saturated his mind has become with these "phony" movie tropes, but he still can't help but resort to them for diversion or amusement or to see his own struggles in more dramatic and cinematic terms (as when he keeps imagining himself as a noir-hero with a bullet in his gut, head cradled by Jane as she lights his cigarette). He *realizes* how deeply movies have indeed influenced him, he can't deny it, but he kind of hates the fact.
ReplyDeleteSalinger too seemed to have a similar love-hate view of movies: he writes in his novel about how phony they are, and he refused multiple lucrative offers to adapt _Catcher_ for film. But in a fascinating vignette published by a former college friend of Salinger's son Matthew, the author described visiting J. D. Salinger's home in Cornish, NH--visiting his college friend's dad, trying not to act starstruck by meeting the famous reclusive author. He tells about how Salinger had an actual movie projector and screen set up in his house, and they all got together and watched a dumb war-comedy called _Sergeant Bilko_ on actual film. Salinger apparently made popcorn.
I think part of the reason that Holden has such a dislike for the movies is because its the reason that his Brother is on the other side of the country. He talks about his how his brother was writing short stories, but then went to hollywood and wrote for the movies, and this may be part of his distaste for movies.
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