What the Movie "Stripes" Taught Me About Myself
The disenchantment of sophistication
I pulled a leftover quesadilla from the refrigerator, put it in the toaster oven, walked into the dining room, picked up the remote, and pushed the power button. It was another day of running errands and keeping myself busy; that self-motivation stuff that I’m not the greatest at. I flipped through the options of what to watch, I discovered Stripes with Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. I played it and was mildly amused; amused enough to keep it playing.
John Winger, the character played by Bill Murray, would lose his job, apartment, car, and girlfriend.
And then, depression set in.
As he’s bitterly dunking a basketball on an indoor hoop in his apartment, he pulls back, starts an almost hook shot, and hurles it through his window with complete purpose. This is one of my favorite scenes—when a character takes out a frustration, in a comedic way, it becomes a distraction that brings me joy.
“Nice shot, John,” Russell says [this is Harold Ramis] after he walks into the apartment.
John peers out the window, looking for someone, “I need a little help?!”
“Hey, can I take your last beer?”
“No.”
“We’ll split it.”
This was the first time I’d seen this. Eighties movies are always a good distraction from life’s common woes, long before there was an unreasonable amount of drama. (Maybe I’m getting overly nostalgic.)
Later, as the two watch an advertisement for the Army, John reasons that the Army doesn’t look like a bad gig.
“What? the Army?” Russel smirks, “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’ve always thought about joining the Army.”
“The Army? You’re not the type.”
John squints, as if in disbelief, “What do you mean, I’m not the type? I’ve seen the kind of guys that enlist in the Army, I saw ‘em when I was working unemployment, they’re just like us. ‘Cept, they’re not as … sophisticated.”
When I was working as a Surgical Technologist, I was being shadowed by another ST. I was talking with the Doctor, kind of bantering, as she described what she was doing.
“Isn’t that exciting? Why aren’t you communicating that with the Doctor, Aaron?” commented the shadowing ST.
“Of course, yes. I’m just so … enthralled.”
“Enthralled?” replied the Doctor. “You must be into philosophy.”
I just used the word enthralled. That’s all I did. Is that too sophisticated? What the hell?
They poked, and I played along, knowing I made some kind of veiled mistake when I used that word, for lack of a dumbed-down one. Oh, well. (I am into philosophy, by the way.)
It was an awkward moment. I think that’s what John feels when he uses the word sophisticated.
Some of us are just plain awkward people.
The Army is similar to healthcare, in that it holds a diverse group of people. Each person is held together by what they wear—scrubs and camouflage—no difference; no individuality. They are a collective, and to succeed they must work as a group.
John Winger needs to give a speech to get his unit to work as one—they’re reeling and feeling like they can’t get their shit together.
“We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans. With a capital A, huh? You know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts. But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt. […] We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us. We're soldiers, we're American soldiers.”
Just like healthcare, that’s how they’re tied together—through their diversity; a compulsory collective.
Bill Murray is an actor, playing the role of someone living the grunt life. I’m a writer, who worked the role in a different kind of grunt life. I’ve tripped on floors and rammed my head against various O.R. lights. It’s been a fun few years.
I’m keeping the awkward, though. I can’t really get rid of it.