Never Meet Your Teenaged Self

Recently I fell ill, like, I was so sick I didn't go to work, which means I was real sick. In my dazed state I browsed Prime and saw they were streaming A Knight's Tale which I hadn't seen since, well, probably since it came out, nearly twenty-four years ago.

But my sick-addled brain remembered, fifteen-year-old me liked the movie. Heath Ledger certainly caught my teenaged attention, so I hit play.

The movie opens with white Heath Ledger sporting blond dreadlocks. And not like neat rows of them, but like a big fat uneven mess of them. In 2001 I don't think I knew any white people with dreadlocks. Twenty-four years later, I had enough life experience that even completely congested, I could smell Heath Ledger's B.O. through the screen.

I was immediately suspect of my teenage self. But I continued on.

And what I learned is, of course our divorce rate is high. If this was what teenage millennials were patterning off of, we were doomed.

A quick recap, A Knight's Tale supposes that only nobility (I think Hollywood gets a little loose with that definition) can compete in the elite world of jousting. Heath Ledger's character works for a noble guy who happens to drink himself to death right before a big match. And if he doesn't compete Heath Ledger and his plucky band of friends (are the squires? What even is a squire?) won't eat. So Heath Ledger dons the real knight's armor and becomes... a jouster.

The movie then follows Ledger on his jousting circuit, which is kind of like a rodeo circuit, but with less showering and more Chaucer. That's right Chaucer ends up as Heath Ledger's hype man.

Of course Heath Ledger falls in love with some sort of princess, who appears to be a jousting junkie. And here is where the toxicity really begins.

Heath Ledger and this princess, actress Shannyn Sossamon, begin to fall in love. While separated from Sossamon due to his intense jousting schedule, Ledger and his non-noble peers decide to write Sossamon a love letter. All of Ledger's buddies chip in to write the letter and it comes out like a group of teenage girls in 2001 got together in the gym locker room and attempted to write a Shakespearian sonnet. It's maudlin. It's dripping in Bath and Body Works clashing scents. It's a cloying migraine of poem.

But Sossamon loves it, and next time she sees Ledger she DEMANDS more poetry.

This is where adult me, was like, holdup. Demanding poetry from your love interest is probably setting you both up to fail. Obviously poetry is something given not demanded, and obviously if she truly believes in art, she must know, one simply cannot snap their fingers and have a truly awful, ego boost of a poem just appear.

But she does. And Ledger tries to tell her that his ode to her will be to win his next jousting match in her name.

Quick side note here. I've realized that this scene is supposed to be Ledger wooing her. Wooing is a thing I think the modern era has gotten rid of. Now they would clearly be in a situationship, but back whenever this was happening, this is supposed to be a scene of wooing.

But back tot he scene. Ledger says something like, "I'll win my jousting game for you." (But more dramatic.) And she's like, "Nah. I'm not into that." Which frankly, I get. I mean Ledger just doing what he wants to do, and then saying he's now doing it for her, isn't really him doing anything for her. He's just rebranding. And Sossamon, even in a time when rebranding isn't a term, can see it.

But then she tells him, "If you love me, you'll lose for me."

RED FLAG, LEDGER. RED FLAG.

We're told, Ledger is a good jouster, like a really, really good jouster. I suppose we see a lot of jousting scenes, but I was in a fever state and missed the part where they explained whatever rules Hollywood ascribed to the sport. Is it a sport? Unknown, but the jousting scenes all looked the same to me, and all the characters had face armor, so it wasn't until after the jousting scenes when they cut to either the good guys cheering or the bad guys cheering that I knew what happened. But we are assured, Ledger is good at this. Really, really good.

Yet, this princess demands he lose. AHHH! Can you say toxic? Yet, teenaged me, and countless other teenagers, were there, in 2001, drooling over Ledger (thank God he got a haircut within the first act), taking mental notes. Love games are the way to prove love. We didn't even stand a chance.

And so he does lose! He gets pummeled to pieces until the princess sends her lady maid to him and demands he show his love by winning. And what does he do? He turns it on and wins.

Where is the ref throwing red flags? Oh, it's not that kind of sport.

What I learned from this movie:

Love is:

• Terrible poetry
• Rebranding your own wishes and telling your potential partner that your wishers are now their wishes
• Telling your partner to fail at the thing they love most
• Telling your partner to then unf*ck the mess they made when they failed because you told them to.
• Heath Ledger without dreadlocks.

I am both ashamed in my teenaged self, and I'm surprised I made it through those years with as few toxic traits as I did. I mean, I regularly tell my husband to lose at jousting if he loves me, but other than that, we're doing okay. It's not like he's giving me poems dipped in Bath and Body Work's Sweet Pea scent. He knows I have allergies.