Remember Me This Way

by M. Glenn Gore

The X-Files' Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman said that "Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it." Granted, he also said "The Earth has a secret she wants to tell" and to "Leave the snakes alone today, for they will be angry." So, I think we're just going to focus on that first one.

Longevity. That's what we're talking about here. Not the life expectancy aspect of it but, rather, longevity as it pertains to media entertainment. I don't care what lies you tell yourself when you're alone in the dark and the demons come, but, as writers, longevity is what we're all searching for. It's the storytellers' Holy Grail. We all want to spin a yarn for the ages, something that will hopefully live on long after we've shuffled off this mortal coil, and who can blame us? True immortality is in what we leave behind. Sorry, Elves and Vampires.

So what is it that makes something endure? Quality? Obviously not. Michael Bay is still making movies, after all. Let's take music, for example. Music is incredibly subjective. Even an awful song (I'm looking at you, Rico Suave!) has the ability to attach itself to a specific moment in your life like a filthy barnacle, vastly and, oftentimes, ruthlessly extending its shelf-life in your fragile mind far beyond what any God-fearing human being would have preferred. It has that power.

Pictured: My ENTIRE fucking 8th-grade year!

But what about literature? Well, quality is of considerably more importance here. Dear, dead-as-hell William Shakespeare wrote the lion's share of his plays well over 400 years ago, and we're still reading them in school, still bringing them to both stage and screen, and still quoting them anytime we want to feel intellectually superior to others.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy... bitch."

But why is that, exactly? Much of his work is undeniably brilliant, of course, but I don't think you can dismiss the importance of the audience in this case the way you can with music. Unlike music, the written word asks for your continued aid in helping it to live on. It doesn't crawl inside your head against your will and spawn, does it, Nickelback? Does it?! No. Ultimately, it's our love of The Bard that keeps his body of work relevant - in truth - what has kept him at the literary forefront for nigh-on half a millennium. We have a say in the matter.

So, we've established two elements of longevity, thus far: audience enjoyment and... auditory brainwashing, I guess. This brings us to the visual. While nothing can compete with the staying power of a good book, video games and film are certainly giving them a run for their proverbial money. Not all video games, of course. I mean, who can even remember the difference between Modern Duty: Call of Warfare Heroes 3 and Medal of Heroes: Honor of Warfare Duty 4. More importantly, who gives a shit?

Admit it. You can't even tell which one this is, CAN you?

No, I'm talking about video games with real stamina, games that don't have to fear surviving their subsequent sequels simply because they already have. Many of them more than once.

I'm talking about the video games with relentless playability and hypnotic, addictive properties so staggering they should be classified as Schedule One narcotics by the DEA. I'm talking about video games so instantly and endlessly engrossing that people have literally sacrificed jobs and marriages at their 8-bit altar. They are the timeless, world-renowned, eye-crack masterpieces of yesteryear.

I'm talkin' about the Pac-Man and the Tetris!

"Don't look at it, Marion! Shut your eyes!"

Long after the various and sundry Medal of Honors-es and the Calls of Duty are forgotten, Tetris will still walk the post-apocalyptic, irradiated wastes of Earth-That-Was in search of one worthy to direct its cruel, multicolored blocks of ever-increasing speed and vindictively unhelpful selection (That goddamned S-shaped one? Again?!) into geometrically appeasing rows, and, on that darkest day, who will be ready to take up the call? You, Mr. Gears of War? You, Lt. World of Warcraft? I think not!

But what about film, you say? Well, I'll tell you about film.

Film encounters an issue I haven't really experienced when it comes to music, books, or video games. The music I liked when I was sixteen still sounds good to me, for the most part, and while my taste has definitely refined itself over the years, I haven't just flat-out excised anything old from my collection. Well, maybe that one Limp Bizkit album, but that was a pretty dark time in my life, and I don't like to talk about it.

The books I loved as a child are still good, and if you handed me a copy of Super Mario Brothers 3 right now, I would turn this bitch off and go on a Goomba-stomping spree from here to Bowser's Castle the likes of which you haven't witnessed in your bleakest nightmares!

Ugh! The REAL Danger Zone was in the THEATER!

But movies are different. Now, please don't misunderstand. There are movies I will always love. Tons of them. But Hollywood seems to hold the record for highest number of times I believed I enjoyed something only to come back to it ten or twenty years later and discover that it was piss-miserable (Ahem! Top Gun, Die Hard 2, and Gone in 60 Seconds, you can all stand up).

And I'm not talking about old movies versus new ones. I don't mean like how From Russia with Love might seem dated (or even campy) without the proper frame of reference for its place in pop culture and film history, an appreciation for the mentality of the era it comes from, or a respect for how groundbreaking it was when it was first released - I mean movies I loved as a child that are just unforgivably awful, like Moonraker.

Conan the Destroyer did this, too. Not that watching a pre-View to a Kill Grace Jones go snakehouse on anybody within striking distance of her wasn't its own kind of fun, that movie simply was not good. And if you had told ten-year-old me it was crap, I'd have murdered you in your sleep!

And don't think Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome gets a pass, either, 'cause it don't. Again, at the impressionable age of ten, outside of Star Wars, you couldn't convince me there was a cooler movie than Thunderdome... and then I saw it on AMC a few years ago. My God! I watched that whole thing, and I still can't tell you what it's about! Mad Max pisses off Tina Turner's hairdo, man-wrestles with an S & M tag team inside a jungle gym, and then... does what, exactly? I remember there were some really dusty kids... and pigs factored heavily into the narrative, but, other than that, I'm at a loss.

Seriously! What the fuck was this movie ABOUT?!

The things I keep coming back to, the things that last, all share certain similarities. They are innovative, both for their time and now, they feature convincingly-depicted, relatable elements that allow me to believe that what I'm reading or watching could happen, regardless of how fantastic it may be, and they often play on an aspect of wish fulfillment that is essential in all earthbound humans.

I mean, The Neverending Story, at its heart, is a movie about the unlimited power of the imagination and the importance of nurturing your dreams, and it's for that reason alone that ten-year-old me and old-as-hell me are in agreement. We will never outgrow that movie because it has become a part of who we are. It, in tandem with many more, helped shape what we believe and became a compass on the road toward our goals.

The things that can capture that unquantifiable unknown are the ones that endure. They leave a piece of themselves with you always. They ask you not to simply be a spectator but to go on the journey with them. And if they can do that, they've built something that can never die.

NEXT: Javy Gwaltney joins the Ran(t)som Notes gang and tells us why the movies that promise us the world sometimes fail to deliver.