Hi there,
When I discovered Community, it quickly became my favorite TV show. There are a number of reasons, but the biggest of them can be summed up in one word. Abed.
In a show so heavy with reference humor that it dedicated an entire episode to spoofing nearly every action movie imaginable, Abed is the undisputed king. The aspiring director connects the events of his life and the study group to television, the movies, and popular culture, his filter for viewing reality. For Abed, getting real with someone is staging a "My Dinner With Andre" birthday dinner so that he can engage in deep conversation without name-checking pop culture.
Why do I love Abed so much? Well, I guess that it's because in a sense, he's me.
From an early age, I've tended to think metaphorically and analogically, making conceptual leaps between the world on screen and the flesh-and-blood world that's also in front of me. Some people love it, others get exasperated by it, but this is how my mind works. It's the way I make connections between the multiple real worlds out there. That ranges from my firsthand experiences to things I've experienced vicariously through music, movies, TV, sports, and sports entertainment. It's why I'll skim Joe Posnanski's CNNSI columns but read every word of Bill Simmons' ESPN pieces (with the exception of his most-read column to date). It's why I can reference Game of Thrones and the Khmer Rouge in the same sermon, without feeling like either one is a flippant throw-away.
So far, it's worked out pretty well for me. Better than being clever, in fact. I made it through my twenties with a life story that I'm proud to be a part of, and a next chapter that intrigued me enough to sign on for three years of it: law school. I moved to Chicago about a month ago, and began 1L shortly after arriving.
At the outset, I was excited about the sort of work that I could do with a law degree, the opportunities that being here presented, and the idea of being in a learning environment, training my mind and developing new skills. There's something about developing my analytical skills and using them to sort through complex issues that really energizes me. However, I'll admit that I was worried that law school would choke the imagination out of me. I'm willing to make the sacrifices that come with the process of learning, but when it comes to the stuff that makes me me, I'm skeptical about the value of those sorts of trade-offs. It's not gaining the world but losing your soul, but it's somewhere on that spectrum.
So I've learned to stop worrying and love the pop culture junkie in me. A few weeks into classes, I've found that it's helped me stay interested in the required classes that I wouldn't have freely chosen. It even seems to be helping me make sense of contracts, torts, and criminal law. I make some connections between what we're talking about, my own experiences, and the general experiences that people growing up in the United States would have, but the vast majority of my processing of course material is filtered through popular culture.
So much so that the margin notes in my casebooks are something like "Distinguish from State v. O. Little, Wire S2 (hind parts not vital part of body)." [Note to self: remember to include a disclaimer about that when you sell those books at the end of the year]
Or I see a phrase like "wanton disregard for human life" and instantly remember the call from when LeBron dunked over KG. Last time I was in school, YouTube was just getting going. I've openly wondered how my student experience would have been different with it at full-speed. This blog is an experiment in that very topic.
As I make these connections, the prospect of writing these things up brings a huge smile to my face, and I hope that it'll do the same for everyone out there reading this.
As time goes on, I'll be filling this space with anecdotes about law school life, the mental images the case readings bring up in my mind, links to visual illustrations, and my musings about the whole "truth is stranger than fiction" maxim. In my opinion, the two are a whole lot closer than we like to give them credit for.
