preternatural - adjective - beyond what is normal; unusual (Google)
Is it just me, or does it look like everyone is trying to jump onto the preternatural bandwagon in a big way? Are creators so uninspired with what most would consider normal that they feel they have to push the envelope and take huge risks in order to get people to notice? I don't know, but yesterday I was led down a fork in the road, which veered away from Status Quo Drive, and I wound up taking a walk on the wild, weird side.
Case in point #1: The pregnant daughter of my best friend decided to videotape the preternatural way she chose to announce the gender of her forthcoming infant to close relatives. My friend, no doubt proud of her daughter's idiosyncratic imagination, texted the footage to a small group of us women friends. The daughter–I'll call her Cindy–is obsessed with her two riotous black Labs and felt that she just had to include them somehow, somewhere in the unveiling, so she bought and later put a blue collar on one (to represent a boy baby) and a pink collar on the other (to represent a girl). Then on one side of the family room, Cindy had her husband contain the dogs in separate cages in order to control them and heighten the suspense. On the opposite side of the room, Cindy was crouching down, holding a treat. When she called out to the right dog, her hubby opened just the right cage and it galloped to her, revealing to everyone its blue collar. It was all very Pavlovian to me, and I suppose unique, to be euphemistic. I'm sure all of you dog lovers out there can't wait to impart this preternatural, pre-natal gender reveal to your own expecting daughters or sons; but personally, I am left thinking that the whole thing divulged more than just the baby's sex. My guess is that Cindy may just wind up spending more quality time with the dogs than with her son. Thank Goodness the husband seems to prefer human children over canine kids.
Case in point #2: Have you seen any of the critically acclaimed films released in 2022? After the aforementioned texted home video, I saw two on TV that are being streamed right now: "Banshees of Inisherin" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once," both considered foreign, I believe. (And yes, they are, very.) The first, set on a beautiful, bucolic, remote island off the coast of Ireland somewhere in the distant, indiscernible past, has a simple, yet somewhat ridiculous plot involving two grown men: the older friend decides to alienate his younger best friend because he is dull, and warns him if he persists in wanting to reclaim the friendship, in retaliation, he will cut off his fingers on his left hand, the hand he uses to play the violin. That's it. That's the plot. Does he do it? Of course. And his selfish, sado-masochistic act leads to repercussions that only worsen the situation, but at least the bored protagonist is no longer bored. He's miserable. The second film, sci-fi in many respects, is pretty much a series of nonstop acid trips depicting parallel universes that eventually boil down to a reconciliation between an estranged teen daughter and her mother, the owner of a laundromat (both are Chinese in descent) somewhere in L.A. Both movies transcend the preternatural. I'm sorry, but both are just weird–too weird for my taste.
I am sure there are plenty of critics and readers out there who definitely disagree with me and would take a walk on the wild, weird side any day of the week just to take the detour off Status Quo Drive. Which is perfectly fine. To each, his or her (or their) own. Yet every once in a while, natural, as opposed to preternatural, is on the soft, comforting, cozy side :).
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