27 Dec 2009 — The Proposal (Final)

    As Katherine and I left my parents' house to drive to her mom's, it was time for my plan to be put in motion.  “Here,” I said, giving her my scarf, “tie this on like a blindfold.  I’d help, but I’m driving.”  "Okay..." she said, smiling, and probably guessing what was coming.
    We'd already purchased a ring and brought it home with us to Canada for the holidays.  A few days before Christmas we also talked with Katherine's mom—mostly about our immediate financial future, and how we would make ends meet.  Finally, tonight we had some time before we were due back at her mom's house to play Settlers of Catan with her sister and brother-in-law.  The timing was perfect.  A little delay on the trip back would be all the time I needed to propose.
    When she'd finished putting the scarf-blindfold on, it made me think of when we first got back together after my mission.  We had dated before—we were high school sweethearts.  She had gone to BYU while I was gone, and had grown up in ways I hadn't expected.  I had grown too, but definitely not in ways I would've thought.  When we finally reunited over the Christmas holidays of 2008, we did it kind of blindly.  We didn't really know each other like we used to.  It was the first time we'd seen each other after 2 years and four months of being apart, but we went ahead and got back together anyways.  That was a year ago tonight.
    "Where are we going?" Katherine asked, attempting to peek out from under the blindfold.  "Hey!  Don't look, it's a secret," I said, as if she didn't already know.  My plan for the proposal was a simple, but meaningful one.  It was the anniversary of our getting back together, and I was going to drive her to a special location blindfolded, so she wouldn't know where we were going.  Since we had a little bit of time before we arrived, I started to tell her what I'd planned to talk about during the drive there.
    Katherine's dad had passed away while I was on my mission.  He had had multiple health challenges during his last twenty years of life.  Yet through it all, he and his wife, Katherine's mother, were strong and their love for each other grew with the challenges they faced.  They developed an inspiring reliance on each other as a result of going through so many difficult times.  I felt that Katherine and I had similarly grown closer through our own trials over the past year.
    Before I could explain what I meant, though, I realized that I was lost.  That wasn't part of my plan.  I said to Katherine, "Um, I'm not sure if we're going the right way anymore."  She let out a nervous laugh, unable to do anything else.  I'd only been to where we were headed twice, once by train and on foot.  I had an idea of where I was supposed to go, but I wasn't sure how to get there.  So for a few seconds, we both were lost.  In hindsight, it made the whole thing funnier, and less serious, but also more meaningful.  I finally recognized a landmark and got my bearings again, so on we drove.  With our sense of direction restored, I continued my little comparison of us to Katherine's parents.
    Of course, I didn't have any of the physical health problems Katherine's dad experienced.  We hadn't had anything close to the challenges her parents have gone through, but in the last year we had had our own unique adversities.  After my mission, I struggled with perfectionism and depression, and Katherine helped me and supported me in confronting those issues while we dated.  I told her, while driving, that I believed we too could grow stronger and closer together as a result of the trials we'd already been through, and that the love between her parents that she admired so much could be part of our lives too.  She had said before that I reminded her of her dad, so I felt the comparison would be acceptable.
    We finally reached the spot and parked the car.  When I stepped out of the car it was freezing!  I should've guessed that being on top of a hill would have that effect.  The city of Calgary is divided by a river that runs east-west through the middle of the city.  On the southern side of the river is the downtown core of Calgary, with all the skyscrapers and new developments of the city center.  On the northern side of the river is a major road and a large hill up to a street called Crescent Road.  There's a lookout point on Crescent Road where you can park your car, and some benches have been built so people can sit and look out over the river at downtown Calgary.  At night, when all the buildings are lit up, it's quite a sight.  Beyond that, this lookout point was also the same place where Katherine's dad proposed to her mom.
    I ran over to the other side of the car, opened Katherine's door, and helped her out of the car, since she was still blindfolded.  Snow crunching under our feet, we walked a few steps closer to the edge of the hill.  I faced her towards the skyline, and pulled out the ring.  I told her she could take her blindfold off, as I got down on one knee.  Her face lit up when she saw the view, recognizing it instantly.  We were both a little giddy, and I realized that I hadn’t planned what I was going to say.  I only had a general idea of what needed to be said, having never proposed to anyone before.  I could hardly believe the words were actually coming out of my mouth as I popped the question.
She said yes, thank goodness.  As we hugged, over her shoulder I saw that some bystanders admiring the view had witnessed the proposal.  I was about to make a joke to my new fiancee about us being a celebrity couple already, but she grabbed my hands and started pulling me towards the car.  “I’m freezing!” she said, but I had forgotten how cold it was.  We hopped back in the car and started to drive back to her mom's house.  On the way back we almost got lost again, which would’ve been hilarious—but we knew where we were going this time.

"Kairosity" in Comic Book Films

Why is it that The Dark Knight (2008) was such a popular movie, when it's DC Comics counterpart, Superman Returns (2006), did not do so well?  Why did Roger Ebert say that Iron Man (2008) was the best superhero movie since Spider-Man 2 (2004)—which he said was the best superhero movie since Superman (1978)?  I don't think it's due to Hollywood making better superhero movies, because many people didn't like Spider-Man 3 (2007) as much as Spider-Man 2.

A movie's popularity and success certainly goes beyond special effects.  If success were dependent on special effects—which improve as time goes on—then The Lost World (1997) should have been better than the original Jurassic Park (1993).  The explanation most frequently offered today is that the characters or stories of certain movies are better.  This is true, but there's an element of characters and stories that is essential to their popularity and success that is hard to put into words until you've taken an English class from BYU.

I believe a main contributing factor to these movies' success is their "kairosity" (I just made that word up).  For those who didn't read our little textbook, 'kairos' is the term used when, in a rhetorical situation, the time is right for a particular comment or action to be made.  Think of Jack Sparrow, from the first Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).  He told Will Turner and Barbossa to wait to do whatever they were going to do until the opportune moment.  That is to say, the time when one's action/comment/involvement will have the most favorable impact on the outcome of a situation.  "Strike while the iron is hot."  For movie stories and characters, kairosity is timeliness.

There was an animated movie that came out in 1999 called The Iron Giant.  It's a story about a young boy in Cold War era America who discovers a giant robot that fell out of the sky.  This giant is discovered just as Sputnik first begins orbiting the earth, and so the fear of a 'red' threat looms ominously like the giant itself.  Naturally, the giant attracts attention, especially from the paranoid national government, who wants to destroy the giant before really trying to understand it.

The movie is excellent, with a great moral message, but it didn't do well in the box office at all.  It was poorly marketed and generally overlooked, because the cold war paranoia didn't resonate with the prosperous age of the late 90s.  The movie was set in the 50s, and centered on a war that (in '99) had been over for 20 years.  The story is a great one, the characters are convincing and realistic, but the context of it all wasn't very timely.

Fast forward to 2008, when Iron Man came to the big screen.  This movie had great characters, and a classic prodigal son storyline, but it was also timely.  The hero is created out of an alternative form of energy, which was a current issue in 2008, and still is.  Tony Stark, the hero, is a CEO whose raucous lifestyle mirrors the celebrities we follow today.  The opening scenes of the movie show Stark getting kidnapped by terrorists and held hostage in the mountains of the Middle East.  By bringing up such timely situations and themes, the Iron Man is able to essentially say to his audience, "I speak your language, I know what your world is like," whereas the Iron Giant is not only from another place (outer space), but stuck in another time completely.

Although there are many reasons why some superheroes and their films are more successful than others, we should also remember that a lot more money went into The Dark Knight than Superman Returns, Iron Man didn't have an emo dancing scene like Spider-Man 3, and there's simply no more inspiring person to play Superman than Christopher Reeve.