My brother has been watching a Youtube channel called, Popcorn in Bed, so I tried it. A cute, mid-30’s woman reacts to a movie she is watching for the first time. Cassie is chatty, sweet and naïve.
The movies chosen are well-known and well-regarded. She goes all the way back to King Kong, from 1933. The channel shows most of the best parts of a movie, so it’s a convenient way to watch a familiar movie in just a half-hour.
Cassie is intelligent, but knows very little about movies or history. She reminds me of the charming alien character that is popular in science fiction.
Big stars, like Harrison Ford, Sean Connery or Sigourney Weaver, aren’t familiar to her, unless the actor happened to have a part in in something current.
Cassie just finished watching The Right Stuff. It was irritating to hear her repeatedly pronounce the name of one test pilot as “Yogger”. His name is mentioned many times in the movie. While teaching physics, we spend a couple of weeks on sound. In my class, that test pilot’s name is pronounced, “American Hero, Chuck Yeager”. Yes, like that, every time, even the students.
John Glenn is also featured in The Right Stuff, and Cassie found him to be courageous and admirable. She was very concerned that he would survive his flight on a Mercury rocket. John Glenn has been my senator for 25 years. It’s just a little startling for someone to think that he might die on that flight.
Cassie was raised in Canada, so maybe pop culture and common knowledge didn’t make it that far north.