how I met Barney

Remember my shameful “Dentist Story”? Well, now I can say without a doubt that I was right to feel so bad after the visit. In fact, I felt soooo bad that almost directly from the plane I got into the hospital in Geneva with a fever, horrible pain and of course with completely destroyed tooth. Good bye Bora Bora, good bye rich husband with private practice, good bye new car and welcome to the world of young overeducated but still incompetent doctors.

However, I cannot say that I wasted all the time I’d spend in bed after this very unpleasant events. It’s one week later and I am proud to announce that…

… wait for it…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…that I’ve seen each and every episode of How I Met You Mother! I’ve done it in the name of my research (you know, young people struggling with life in American kinda way / how television is making us even dumber etc.), but mostly because I felt in love with that guy Barney. I have this thing going on for fiction characters. I just can help myself. It’s been always like that since the early childhood, when I had a crash on Blake’s evil brother in Dynasty, but I guess I shouldn’t be especially proud of it now (daaaaamn ! now everybody knows my secret !)

Anyways… have anyone noticed how romantic plots targeted at people in their 20s / 30s changed? It probably started with my favorite When Harry Met Sally movie, now appreciated more than ever, cause it all about confusion. However, today let’s look closer at two very popular American sitcoms  -> Friends and this How I Met Your Mother stuff indeed.

As I’m seeing it, the main idea is the same  – bunch of young people in their very late 20s struggling to make it through in New York City. Main difference, when first sitcom is based in 90s, second is very recent. Let’s say that we have a 15 year gap between two facts I want to emphasize.

1.      Who exactly doesn’t know Rachel and Ross’s story? I don’t think I have to go into details with that one. What is important here is that we have a guy madly in love with a girl since high school. He’s quietly suffering watching her jumping from one relationship to another, looking for true love. Finally, she realizes his existence and what we witness is a veeeeery cheesy, but nevertheless traditionally romantic love connection. And by that I mean the first time they started dating, cause than it just got lame. It’s always like that when TV show is just too long on air.

2.      Barney and Robin from HIMYM. Sniffing around each other for months, but instead of showing a slightest sign of a real interest, instead of doing a smallest move they just sleep around and have a long talks about funny sex things that happen to them. Both have problems with commitment. Both don’t want to have children. Both desperately trying to make a career, leaving themselves just enough time to get laid occasionally with some strangers. And when suddenly they connect they make a real scene out of it. When Rachel just get’s up, runs to Ross and kisses him in “dirty dancing style”, here we have a neurotic conversation, jumping from “I think I love U’s” to “no no no it’s better to stay friends”, circulating around the room like wrestlers, moving forward and backward and a final quick bizarre kiss ended with disturbing “we will talk about it later” phrase. I mean what? Emotional rollercoaster that’s one, but secondly we have to take under the consideration the fact that this is exactly what today’s viewer wants to see. No cheesy love letters, no lame Celine Dion video clips, but two neurotic, terrified, uncertain, confused, emotionally disturb people with parental issues and sex drive of a bull. I truly believe there’s something in my theory, cause it’s not a secret that such relationships between beloved characters are deeply researched before performance. It’s like with that Avatar chic. Why she was sooo…am… so blue? Cause majority of researched “average viewers” claimed that they would hit that.

One question remains – is it that we want to see people like us in television to comfort ourselves, or is it that media are making us believe that this is an only right way to live? Hell yeah neurotic style!

Actually two questions remain - if I'm so critical and distand and cool and awesome why exactly I felt for Barney? 

damn...

And now something completely different – next part from my essays :

According to American Psychologist, J.J. Arnett the question of importance could be linked with the idea that we cannot simply refer to ourselves as “a generation”, but the changes that in a way created us, are here to stay, and so are our most common characteristics. What was perceived as generational threats is in fact a phenomenon of prolonged transition into the more responsible adult roles in society. In other words, Emerging Adulthood can be defined as a developmental stage which consists such attributes as:

-          the age of identity exploration

-          instability (exploring the over-stimulating environment and revising projects and plans regarding future and adult roles, which can be confusing and which can even effect on anxiety and on doubts in self-efficacy)

-          the self-focused age (searching for satisfactory answers on  “who we are” and “what we want form life” kind of questions, egocentric stage)

-          feeling in-between (not an adolescent any more, but still not a “full-time” adult)

-          the age of possibilities (this feature is vaguely explained by author, so I guess we can agree on lots and lots of choices and opportunities to create our own individual and completely original paths of life, which are given to us by our humble environments)

What is necessary to emphasize, is the term of “indecisiveness” which comes with Emerging Adulthood as a whole package. Back at the University in Poland, my professor of social psychology, Augustyn Bańka, has created a special authorial questionnaire (The Career Indecisiveness Scale), prepared to examine this particular characteristic among young people. It’s a pretty interesting, but general tool oscillating around career issues, where “indecisiveness” is treated as a behavioral, emotional and cognitive response to the life obstacles and its character is multifactorial. Bańka distinguished 4 main factors – General Indecisiveness (typical reaction, almost a personality feature, which depending on circumstances may become even pathological), Informational Indecisiveness (the lack of satisfying information caused by overwhelming existence of information as such), Fear of Commitment to the Well-Defined Career, and Need of the Further Crystallization of the Personal Image.

I guess if we erase “career” from the picture, we can surely manage to use it in more extended way (General Indecisiveness factor is too weak as a single feature), however what is intriguing is a compilation of information – fear – commitment – need – personal image key words. 

To be continued above...