"What's your shining light?"

There's a lot of good that came out of the 2015 podcast The Worst Idea of All Time - in which two New Zealand friends decide to watch Grown-Ups 2 once a week for a whole year, while recording a podcast review of the film after each viewing. It's of course, a funny concept and a hilarious show. And it led to one of the greatest Thanksgiving traditions of all time: Till Death Do Us Blart.

But I'm going to focus again on the phrase: "What's your shining light?" It came up twice in one day for me this weekend.

1) I had to watch The Exorcist for my podcast RandomHorror9. I've seen this movie before, and I think it's stupid. I don't hate it. I just think at it's core it's a completely silly film with a misguided premise, an inflated sense of worth, and some of the corniest scares this side of your neighbor's sidewalk at Halloween. Okay, now that I'm writing all of this down it does sound like I kind of hate this movie.

But while it feels good to shit on The Exorcist, it's not really useful. Many of you out there love this movie, or at least find it super effective at horror. My feelings about it are just feelings. And my job as a film critic is not to try to convince you that my opinion is right, it's to talk about aa movie in a way that helps you contextualize and understand the film. There's so much more to The Exorcist than it's TomatoMeter rating.

What's my shining light? All of my notes for that movie are trying to point out what I liked in it. Acting choices. Bold camera work. Pacing. Etc.

Because it's so easy and lazy to HATE something, to know what you DON'T want. Working from the NEGATIVE is a way to push everything else away. It isolates you, secures you in your well-guarded castle.

But to proudly state your LOVE of something, to proclaim that this is what you DO want. Well, that is very vulnerable. It leaves you open to ridicule to criticism. And worst of all, (in the case of my second example) to not ever getting what you want.

2) A friend called me for relationship advice. She's in an off-an-on relationship with an ex-girlfriend. They're currently just friends. And it's been difficult for my friend to process this. I won't go into specifics, but the gist is that my friend "X" is not happy with the current relationship status between her and "Y."

After a lot of back and forth, I finally asked "what do you WANT?" I know what make you UNhappy. But what do you think would make you happy? In other words, "What's your shining light?"

She thought for a bit, and eventually said that she wanted to just be friends with Y and not carry around the baggage of "on again off again." X wanted to have more time for other friends and for herself.

And now she has a path to achieve this. She can communicate what she WANTS. Rather than refuse or reject Y, she can very civilly state what she wants.

So what is your shining light? What do you want, rather than not want? What was good about this less than ideal experience?

For me, speaking about The Exorcist, my shining light is that it's fucking over. Uy.

-Jeffrey Cranor
June 24, 2024