The First Week

Always, in the movies I’ve been allowed to watch since I was a child, there’s a moment where the main character’s world is shattered. Something they’d always believed is challenged or something they never thought possible to believe is revealed to them. It’s a moment from which point forward, the actual story begins. In a book I picked up one weekend on story structure, it was described as the ‘1st twist’.

I swore to myself a long time ago to never be the type of person to be swayed by a ‘1st twist’. Once you’ve watched enough of these things, you can see the twists and pinches coming from a mile away most of the time. The narratives are all essentially the same, they reflect a very well-controlled image of the lives we’re expected to lead, the goals we’re expected to have. When the perspective character's worldview changes, it almost always changes as to be brought more in line with the norm. There is an assumption that his or her worldview was incorrect in the first place.

There’s another way to look at these stories, one less filtered through our preconceptions. These characters are being led astray from the people they were meant to be, instead becoming someone more acceptable. I won’t let myself be swayed by the stale narratives they’re trying to push on me. Emma, Reina and Lexi might be a fresh coat of paint but they’re covering the same walls.

Is it obvious that I’ve been thinking a lot about that incident with Lexi from the other day?

…

By staying in my room getting lost in my own thoughts, I’d been hoping to avoid my classmates but they’ve already embedded themselves as long-term memories in my mind. As appealing as spending my entire week here inside one room originally sounded, I have come to realize that is impossible for me. Right now the thought of doing nothing makes me angry. I couldn’t tell you why, I’m trying not to think about it myself.

Instinctively, my legs have carried me to my door. I can’t bear to deny the whims of my body right now so I let my hand open it too.

“Hnn! Hnn! Hnn! Hnn!”

As if I were about to walk into the sun itself, my entire being froze in place. Reina charges straight through where I would’ve been, determined expression, banana in hand and steam coming out of her ears like a runaway locomotive. If I had taken one step further, this story would’ve ended a paragraph ago.

“Hnn! Hnn! Hnn! Hnn!”

Reina hits the handbrake and drifts through the doorway to the common area. A split second later an invisible force drags me after her.

By the time I arrive, which is only a matter of seconds after Reina, she has already hopped onto her favourite bunk, switched on the TV and gotten cosy. The channel she’s flicked to is on ads.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a TV that can receive a signal. Back in middle school one of the guys in my dorm had one but as soon as faculty found out, it was confiscated and destroyed. It’s fairly easy to get TVs and DVD players here, it’s not outside entertainment that’s the issue, not what they allow in anyway. I’ve always thought it was the ads, sometimes they’d talk about a live event like a concert or sports match. That was too much, it informed us that time isn’t stale outside the walls.

“What’s got you in such a rush?” I ask as I take a seat on the bunk bed to her left.

“Geh-” As soon as she notices I’m here she positions the banana to her left to block my view of her whilst leaving her line of sight to the TV unobstructed. “Why are you still here?”

“Do I have anywhere else to be?”

“Yeah!”

“OK, like where?”

“Like… um… um… dead.”

“The place I should be is dead?”

“No, you should just be dead.”

“That seems a little excess-”

“Shut up, it’s starting.”

Reina points to the TV and sure enough, the final ad ends and transitions into some cartoon. There are some vaguely humanoid-shaped fruit on screen fighting a hoard of zombies outside a factory. In the centre of the group is a large banana with arms and legs viciously curbstomping the ravenous hoards charging the group.

If it wasn’t already obvious that Reina was excited for this show, her legs start kicking out one by one in a giddy rhythm.

As the fruit people on screen continue their beatdown on the crowd around them, a narrator begins recapping the previous episode. “Last time on Banana Man: Banana Man and the United Fruit Force defeated the monstrous union, but only just. Now the entire region is at risk of falling into complete anarchy as the dastardly Workkkers Rights Syndicate incite riots wherever they go. Short on manpower and shorter on time, the fruit friends decided to split up. Will they be able to save Centroamérica before they get their way?”

I had a lot of questions but there was only one that was ever going to come out first.

“Wtf???”

“I told you to shut up! This is the best part.”

As she says this the scene fades into an animated intro sequence, obviously cut together using clips from the rest of the show.

“♪ Do you see banana man? ♪” Reina starts singing along with the theme, “♪ Hopping over on de white hot sand. ♪”

“You… like this song?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s like the best song ever?”

“Right…”

I try not to dwell on the fact that she’d appended a very unnecessary question mark to her statement and try to watch along.

As the intro fades out it switches to a scene of the Banana Man himself flying through the air at supersonic speed. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a residential compound on the ground below being swarmed by a hoard much like the one from the recap. They’ve broken through the walls of the compound and are about to reach the mansion in the middle.

“Workkkers…” Banana Man mutters to himself under his breath.

He looks down at the scene below and then to his watch. After a brief moment of deliberation he swerves down toward the mansion.

**BANG**

Banana Man crashes through the roof of the mansion into the master bedroom. Before him is quite the scene, a young child sits on the bed in abject horror as the workkkers devour the flesh of his parents before his very eyes. Banana Man takes it all in and his shoulders drop.

“When will the violence end…?”

Banana Man raises his right hand and the workkkers rise up into the air. They float there for a moment before exploding violently.

“Banana Man!” The bloodsoaked child exclaims, “What are you doing here in Honduras?”

Raising his hand to his heart(?) Banana Man responds. “I’m here because freedom knows no borders.”

With that Banana, Man leaps back into the sky.

“Next stop, Guatemala City.”

“Hang on he’s just going to leave the child there?!” Without thinking I blurt something out. At somepoint I’d actually started watching it.

“Of course he is,” Reina responds, “he killed all the workkers, the kid will be fine.”

“What if more of them come?”

“Then he should ‘pull himself off by the bootstraps’ and kill them himself.”

“Where’d you pick up that phrase?”

“Banana Man.”

Figures.

“How does a banana even get powers like this anyway? It’s ridiculous.”

“He’s not a banana, he’s a Bananaman.”

“Banana Man the Bananaman?”

“Yep!”

“I see. What about the powers then?”

“The Dr. Manhattan shit.”

“He got those at the end of season 2.”

The fact that Banana Man has more than two seasons might be the strangest thing I’ve heard in here thus far.

“Why does a banana sa-”

“Bananaman.”

“Why does a Bananaman save humans anyway?”

“He’s an agent of the counter force.”

“What in the fuck is a ‘counter force’?”

“They explained that in season one, idiot.”

She peaks around her banana plush and sticks her tongue out at me.

“Sounds stupid.”

“No. No. You can’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t seen the start. It makes sense in context.”

Just as I’m about to express my scepticism about that, Reina hits the pause button and starts navigating menus on the TV.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting up season one of Banana Man. I have them all recorded.”

“And why are you doing that?”

“I don’t like you saying mean things about something you know nothing about.”

“But-”

“No. You decided to sit down to watch, you decided to start criticizing things. The least you could do is try to know what you’re talking about.”

For a second I thought about telling her I didn’t want to watch her stupid fucking cartoon but I stopped myself when I saw her smile. She’s so invested in cycling through the menus that she’s let the banana slip down a bit. The rhythm of her leg kicks has increased substantially, she’s really excited at the idea of watching this with someone else.

…

It won’t kill me to watch a couple.