Binx's Horror

 In Percy’s Moviegoer  Binx takes his cousin Kate to the movies. The movie happens to be a movie that was filmed in the same neighborhood that the theater they were sitting in was located. Kate looked at him in amazement. As they walk out of the movie theater she says to Binx, “Now it’s certified” (63). Kate was speaking about a term that Binx had coined himself. Binx, with his strange and interesting philosophies about life, coined this term to describe how a person feels about their neighborhood.  A person wants to feel like they live somewhere not just anywhere. Binx theorizes that after one sees a movie that was filmed in his own neighborhood, he feels like he lives somewhere and he finds satisfaction in it. 

I think this is rather absurd. What if someone lives in a neighborhood that has never been filmed? Is there any hope for his happiness? The only solution to this problem would be found in moving to a city where a movie has been filmed.

Interestingly, Percy jumps from his explanation of “certification” to Kate’s hopeless aspect and “nightmare” way of living. In Binx’s eyes she morphs into whatever role she must to get by. Percy uses the word “transmogrification” which means, “to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect” (Merriam-Webster). Still the reader is left to wonder if she really changes as much as Binx says. Her character in the book seems affected but it does not make her changes that apparent. The reader only sees what is explained by the narrator, Binx. Since we see everything that Binx sees is it safe to say that the story we know is informed by his personal bias? Though she seems to be a character that is very unsure of herself (practically in a mid-life crisis) she does not seem to change in a grotesque way. These slight changes in her personhood have a bad effect on Binx. He notices every change of shade and every nuance in her.

The chapter is closed with Binx statement, “In her long nightmare, this our old friendship now itself falls victim to the grisly transmogrification by which she unfailingly turns everything she touches to horror” (63). It seems that Binx himself assigns a certain amount of grotesque on her and the nuances and different sides he sees in her terrifies him.