Once upon a time, movie nights were the holy grail of quality family time. My parents would pop in some damsel-in-distress VHS tape in the player and without the foresight of seeing how Disney was going to ruin their daughter's perception of men for the rest of her life, would have a chance to exchange a little quiet for the brain drain that was 1990s G-rated movies. Nowadays, as a twenty-something, I just wish that I could revert to those good old days when wanting to watch Beauty and the Beast three times in a row and picturing myself transforming some beastly abusive guy into prince charming was the norm.
At first, with a little help with the availability of Hindi films via satellite, I continued to be in the safe zone, aka the Bollywood zone. I'd sing along in foreign tongue with my parents that could never seem to ever get too tired of the inflated romance in every plot line. And that was A-Okay in my book because to my relief, other than the occasional nuzzling between hero and heroine, there is never anything sexually pictured or implied that would want me to go into the other room and tie a noose around my neck.
But now, my parents have decided to sign up for HBO and the experience has been abysmal. At first my tactic was always to "pretend" that I did not know what was happening as two people dry humped in the screen before me. I often did this by blurring my vision a little and starting to count until the scene was over. I find it similar to counting sheep, if you are ever caught in that predicament and would like to try out this technique yourself. Be forewarned that this may permanently damage your vision. (Although this may not be so bad if you never went to sit through something like that again.)
I have since found it necessary to expand upon my arsenal of tactics, and as a result, possibly handling such delicate situations with greater maturity. One of them was to just ask someone to change the channel. The problem with this approach, however, is the fact that by asking for the channel to be changed, you are indirectly acknowledging to your Old World parents that you know what sex is and may even have had a lot of it. I mean, a lot. So I had to modify this technique a little, by saying I'd like the channel changed BECAUSE there was some crappy Grey's Anatomy rerun you want to catch a glimpse of or wanted to know what the latest score of that darn lacrosse game. Genius, I know.
Other than that, my most powerful technique is something I like to call "The Dodge," and is not related to dodgeball in any way. This is when the movie of choice is chosen ahead of time, and is one that I know very well. This way, I can avoid being in the living room when the sexually heightened scenes occur and make it seem like I really did need to use the bathroom or really did need to go into the kitchen to grab a glass of OJ in that very moment Diego Rivera is caught graphically boning his sister-in-law's cunt in Frida or when Kate shows off more than a sapphire pendant to Leo in the Titanic. Double genius, I know.
I need to get this published in some scholarly journal somewhere.
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