Saturday, 5 January 2019

On Glumness and Being Interesting.

Do you know what Dr Onc said to Dr House tonight? He said:

‘You don’t like yourself, so you’re miserable. And you won’t let yourself change and stop being miserable because you fear that if you do you’ll stop being interesting. Being miserable doesn’t make you interesting, House; it just makes you miserable.’

That can’t be right, can it? Of course being miserable makes him interesting. Why else do we watch the damn programme?

*  *  *

So having put Dr Onc right, I watched the next instalment of the glum Swedish drama and discovered something else interesting. The Swedish term for OK is ‘OK.’ See what I mean? Give them something with a positive connection and they can’t even invent their own word for it.

And now they’re all having sex with each other, which isn’t surprising I suppose in the circumstances. Popular culture has always led us to believe that having sex is what the Swedes are best at when they’re not making Volvos and flat pack furniture or singing about the Battle of Waterloo. That’s why I was interested in one particular bit of dialogue.

‘Do you fancy having sex?’

Dunno. Will it make us any less glum?

‘Don’t suppose so. But it is what we’re best at when we’re not making Volvos and flat pack furniture or singing about the Battle of Waterloo.’

I see what you mean. OK.

Or it could be that I misread the subtitles at that point.

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