As I explained earlier today in a talkback forum, Joe Popcorn is a different guy than Joe Sixpack. The latter is a cultural figure who responds to various hot-button issues in the political realm. They know each other, live in the same neck, park their cars in the same garage. Except Joe Popcorn is a kind of older movie-buff who sees movies once every two or three weeks.

His movie-love, granted, is defined by a limited attitude and education (having never watched films like L’avventura or The Hit or Office Space or Martin Scorsese‘s American Boy) and diminished/conventional spiritual vistas. But that’s our Joe.

JP tends to stick to easily-digestible, heavily advertised, broadly-commercial fare. I call him “older” in the sense that he’s not one of the Eloi, which is an under-25 kneejerk moviegoing culture that always attends the latest big-studio idiot flick, no matter how godawful or how wretched the online buzz, out of feelings of basic peer pressure and needing/wanting to hang with their yo-homies on Friday and Saturday night, etc.