The Neutral List
It is surprisingly difficult to be neutral on anything.
I loved Frozen. So did a lot of other people. As far as I can tell, not many people hated the movie with the exception of a few nutjobs who decided it had some secret homosexual and / or witchcraft agenda, but those people hardly count. Some people, however, were not as impressed by it, and there’s almost a defensive nature to their response.
I kind of get that. I’m neutral on a lot of things. I neither love nor hate Breaking Bad, A Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Lord of the Rings (books and movie), and a great many other things. Some of these are because I haven’t been interested enough to even give them a glance, and some, I would probably actively dislike if I cared enough to try and watch / read it. But I don’t. I know myself well enough that it’s highly unlikely a show about an amoral, murdering evil genius is unlikely to win me over, so I never watched Breaking Bad. And I watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones because I thought I should as a fantasy writer. It wasn’t for me, as I already suspected, but I’m not particularly negative about it.
It’s human nature to shove things into neat little categories, and the broadest categories are GOOD and BAD, but it seems like another false choice. I don’t enjoy A Game of Thrones. I don’t care for the books, and the TV show leaves me cold. Which is fine. It’s not a slight to it or to anyone who does like it. We’re all different people, and we’re all looking for different things in our entertainment. I won’t hold someone’s love of A Game of Thrones against them if they don’t hold my love of Guyver 2: Dark Hero against me.
Yet neutrality is often the most difficult position to maintain because if you love or hate something, you can always find someone who agrees or disagrees with you. You can always have a discussion. You can jump onto the right message boards and easily chat with people who share your opinion. But when your opinion is a great, big MEH, there’s not really much left to say. A discussion with a bunch of indifferent people is not, generally, terribly engaging.
In the spirit of neutrality, I offer an incomplete list of things I am neutral on:
The Color Yellow
Fish as Pets
Tattoos
The West Wing
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Taylor Swift
Any Award Show
The Saw Movies
Unicorns
Tom Cruise
By no means, an exhaustive list, but one that I feel quite comfortable with. The list is always changing. Things are added and removed on a continual basis. Our opinions are complex and evolving. Or at least they should be. But if you can’t put a minimum of five things on your own list, you probably need to consider how often you’ve adopted strong opinions because society demanded it of you. Or not. I’m not your boss. Do what you want.
I’m pretty neutral on that too.
Keelah Se’lai
Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,
LEE
