My first crush wasn't some scrawny white boy in my class, who loved college basketball and Manchester United (that would come later) - it was a guy on TV. My So-Called Life came on when I was in the fourth grade. I didn't really watch it then, because I was more concerned with battling my crippling fear of crossing the monkey bars rather than watch Claire Danes deal with teen angst. I started watching it after it had been canceled and it reran on MTV a few years later.
I instantly became obsessed with Jordan Catalano, the dreamy, James Dean-like, rebel character played by Jared Leto. He was so misunderstood, so troubled, and the way he slouched against the lockers fundamentally screamed bad boy. An ongoing theme for me is that I desperately want art to imitate life (as Wilde asserted in "The Decay of Lying"). And I wanted a Jordan Catalano-like character to appear in the hallways of Carlisle School, a guy who had really blue eyes, who was battling dyslexia, played Ramones' songs at divey bars, and wore fraying flannel. Of course, life never meets the heightened drama of art, and all I ever got at my school were over-privileged guys who liked to wrestle each other (in a very homoerotic way) before homeroom.
Jordan Catalano was such a dream boat that I was completely oblivious to how dimwitted the writers characterized him as. Instead, I found his lines to have an inherent profundity that unlocked the meaning to life, love, and the universe. For instance, I wanted some dreamy guy to say to me at the school dance, as "What is love? What is love? Baby don't hurt me..." played in the background:
Jordan: Why are you like this?
Angela: Like what?
Jordan: Like how you are.
Who knew what Jordan even meant by that? It didn't really matter much because Jordan Catalano was really dreamy, and I desperately wanted him to be real. The closest equivalent I ever got was a guy who was only half as cute and was slightly off mentally.
In retrospect, though, it's funny how you idealize and obsess over (real and fake) guys that you think are the epitome of perfection, but when you re-examine your experiences or re-watch some My So-Called Life episodes, you realize how much your perceptions change, and you ask yourself incredulously, "What was I thinking?" I watch My So-Called Life now and think what an ass tool with no future Jordan Catalano is. It's like kids who idealize Disney World and Magic Mountain as this pure moment of unadulterated fun, and then, when they come back, as adults, they find the place dingier and less magical than it once was. But at the same time, though, I can't help but watch the scene where Jordan acknowledges Angela in front of all his cool friends as Buffalo Tom plays in the background and smile.
--By Mariam, who really should be studying instead of blogging.
12 comments:
My first crush was Leonardo DiCaprio on Growing pains. He grew up to be really hot, like really really hot and a good actor, so I don't regret the crush at all.
Also, I wasn't allowed to watch "my so called life," so again what kind of foreign kid are you?
She's not much of a foreign kid at all.
My first crush was Jeff Goldblum after I watched Jurassic Park.
But Mariam, I thought I was your first crush?
Yeah, I don't think I'm foreign either. You guys are right.
And also, tanonymous, you've got nothing on Jordan Catalano, considering you're...real, and he's a fictional TV character. xoxo
I think I still do have my crush on Jordan Catalano, it's the way he sings that song "Red" that does it for me.
Ricky must have felt like such a tool when he found out it was about Jordan's car and he´d already made Angela believe it was about her.
OMG that was sooo funny when Angela thought "Red" was about her. It sounds like something I'd do so I almost cringe with embarrassment whenever I watch that part.
Nameless friend and I actually are obsessed with that show, and I just bought the DVDs so we're going to watch them over Thanksgiving iA.
I didn't even know they had that show over in England!!!!
Yeah dude we used to get it here, I was a kid when it first came on so I only remember it vaguely, then I got the dvds off my buddy about 3 years ago and watched the whole thing start to finish.
Great girly teen drama, one of the best.
Apparently there was a script for season 2 and I heard Angela and Brian Krackow got together in it. We'll never know how that one turned out!
Oh man I saw that picture in Barcelona on the cover of some book! The one with the caption "I LOVE READING STORIES FROM THE BACK ROW, LEFT SIDE"
Where's that picture from?
It's a Roy Lichtenstein. He was my favorite pop artist. The actual caption in that picture is "M-maybe he became ill and couldn't leave the studio!"
Yeah that's what it said where I saw it! It was on the cover of a pop art book by Tilman Osterwold.
By the way can someone tell me how to put videos up here that play direct from youtube like this MSCL one? I can't work it out.
I guess some people never move forward. Jared Leto was my first crush. I was 14 when I saw him for the 1st time on My So Called Life (the age that Angela is in the show), and fell in love. I'm still in love with Jared Leto ... and got to see him live in concert recently. Seeing him in person just triggered all my teenage hopes and dreams! Jordan might have been going nowhere, but Jared is on top of the world.
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