Manners

MANNERS
        

               I recently watched Sean Penn's 'Into the Wild'. Overall I thought it
was an excellent film, until the end that is. I don't want to spoil it for
those who haven't seen it yet, but I mean after all that, it finishes like
that... I mean... that... not even a bear attack... no blood or anything...
 Anyway I digress. What struck me was the main character's,
Christopher McCandless (played excellently by Emile Hirsch), lack of
manners.
         The story goes that Christopher isn't happy with his family life and
doesn't have a great relationship with his parents; he also despises
'Society', also the title of one of the songs from a stellar soundtrack of
original songs written by Eddie Vedder. Thus he decides he wants to get away
and his ultimate dream is to live in Alaska, so he packs up his things and
leaves. Along the way he sees a lot of great things and meets a lot of great
people - some not so nice, with scary dogs. Now, he starts in his car but
soon abandons it, leaving the only means of travel to be hitching rides,
whether on freight trains or from strangers driving past.
            What I found most shocking was his response to either the strangers
passing by, who were kind enough to give him a lift, and to the friends he
accumulated, who paid him money for work, offered to give him money or just
shared good times and morals. His response was always subdued and lacked a
certain display of gratitude. Most of the time his answer to their acts of
kindness was merely 'Thanks' (On ocassions he did manage to stretch to
'Thanks a lot').
                My initial reaction was that of shock (not jump and of my seat and
phone Sean Penn and complain shock, just an slight 'oh' in the back of my
mind). But it got me thinking. Why would he think that simply 'Thanks' would
suffice? I mean, if my mum ever caught me just saying 'Thanks' to someone
who was kind enough to give me a free lift (forgetting the spanking I'd get
for hitchhiking) she'd kill me! And that's it.
               My mum beat it into me from an early age, as I'm sure the lots of
parents do in Britain, and all around the world. 'Can I have a drink?' Can I
have a drink, what?' 'Can I have a drink, PLEASE?' 'There you go... What do
you say?' 'Thank you!!!' In that awful, droning voice children use to be
cute. Now it's sub-conscious. I show gratitude for the smallest things;
'Hold this for a second, please... Thank you'; 'Can you pass me my drink,
please?... Thanks a lot'. If I was in the situation McCandless was in I
would have had to shake hands and hug, perhaps a kiss on the cheek, while I
ramble on in the background, 'I really can't thank you enough. You'd ever so
kind. Again, thank you so much.'
                McCandless on the other hand was happy with plain and simple
'Thanks'. Considering his rapport with his parents wasn't great, we can
assume he never got the beating, like I did, for not saying 'please' and
'thank you', or being a rebellious type, he chose to ignore it.
 From this I draw that the two different upbringings has lead to a
sizeable difference in magnitude and a degeneration in the meaning and
context of the phrase 'Thanks'. For me, it's an informal expression of
gratitude for a minor favour, whereas I would imagine he would find it
appropriate to thank Spiderman after he'd saved him from certain death in
one of his webs.
 This is a fine example of people having different interpretations on
meanings of words and the realisation that it isn't the words themselves
that matter, it's context. The people who McCandless thanked so briefly had
heard his story and felt 'Thanks' to be sufficient and frankly would
probably have thought he was ridiculing them had he taken my fore mentioned
approach.
               Now McCandless' past lead him to keep and preserve a strong and
powerful meaning of 'Thanks' to what others, e.g me, consider informal and
inproper. There is a silver lining to the dreadful relationship with his
parents, well two in this case, the second being a book and film about your
life. But when the real controversy starts, it's over a controversial word.
There's 'word police' everywhere pinning you down. Is it P.C gone mad?
People are scared to describe a black man as black, or a man wearing a
turban as the man in the turban, due to the threat of being called a racist.
And whose job is it anyway to determine what the desired meaning was?
               There's thousands, probably millions of cases going on right now of
misinterpretation. What one person said and meant may not be what one person
heard and interprets. Hell, you probably think this whole article is a great
big stab at Jews.