Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Let's Get Political

by Sara Peterson-Davis

Why can’t a movie just be a movie and a gallon of milk just a gallon of milk?

That’s the question I asked myself last week after a long day of life in the 21st century.

These days almost everything has to have a political hook to it.

It started with a bowl of oatmeal and the Today Show.

I was eating the oatmeal and watching as Matt Lauer interviewed Sylvester Stallone about his new movie, “Rambo.”

Now, this latest installment of the Rambo saga features America’s favorite machine gun-toting former Green Beret living the hermit’s life in civil war torn Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. Rambo comes to the rescue of a group of Christian aid workers taken hostage by an evil-doing strongman.

It sounds like the perfect recipe for two hours of mindless shootem’ up action adventure to me.

But no, according to Stallone it is so much more than that. It is also a political statement on the atrocities that have been and are still being committed in the Southeast Asian country. And he told Matt Lauer he had incorporated the news footage into the film to prove it.

Now, I haven’t seen this latest Rambo, but I have seen a couple of the others in the series and they weren’t exactly PBS Frontline reports. I imagine that once the news footage runs out so does the similarities to the real crisis in Myanmar. Unless of course there are a lot more bare-chested 60-something American men running around the Burmese countryside than I’d estimated.

Anyway, I just wanted to crawl into the television, shake Sly until his very white professionally veneered teeth rattled and shout “It’s OK. You don’t have to act like you’re making a political statement on my account. I make it a rule not to have my consciousness raised by Hollywood. It’s OK to be frivolous. We’ve come to expect that from you.”

But that’s not how the world works these days.

Which brings me to the grocery store.

Later in the day after encountering several other potentially politically charged encounters involving light bulbs, the car I drive and a last minute decision to eat fast food, I went to the grocery store to pick up several things including a gallon of milk.

When I got to the dairy section I found a sign declaring, “Buy locally!” I like the way this sounds. It makes me feel like I can solve at least some of the world’s problems with a wave of my fork or cup. Trouble is like my movies, I don’t necessarily like for my milk to be politicized.

In my local grocery store big corporate milk and little local dairy are locked in a David and Goliath struggle for my milk dollars.

To hear some talk, buying the little guy stuff is like running through a field of fresh mown alfalfa and giving a cow a big hug. While buying big milk’s product is like punching the same cow in the kisser and leaving a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint on the Earth thanks to added transportation costs.

In the end, I walked away with the store brand because both big and little guy’s milk were too expensive. I don’t even know what political statement that made, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.

No matter I’m sure I made other statements with the meat, cheese, bread and frozen pizzas I bought.

It all gets pretty silly after a while.

Which brings me back to my original question.

Why can’t a movie just be a movie and a gallon of milk just be a gallon of milk?

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