‘La La Land’ is really a metaphor for the futility of the Rams franchise in Los Angeles

February. The New York City skies are bleak and cold. Football season has passed and Monday nights are now half-heartedly devoted to SportsCenter reruns and unranked college basketball matchups. Seasonal affective disorder has kicked into gear. No sun. No warmth. No football.

“Go to the movies,” they said. “Take your mind off sports.” So, to overcome the winter blues I went to the theater. La La Land. The movie that will allegedly sweep the Oscars. A film in which former linebacker Ryan Gosling becomes a jazz pianist. Sure, I’ll see La La Land. And so, one blistery February night I layered on the scarves, swallowed my pride, and scrounged up a whopping $16 to see La La Land. Sixteen dollars for a movie ticket?! That’s more than Jets season tickets, folks. But I digress.

As there is no off switch to my football brain, throughout the movie I slowly discovered that I was not watching a romantic, modern love story between two aspiring performers but rather a deep, complex metaphor into the futility of the NFL in Los Angeles.

Ryan Gosling: Los Angeles, USA

Emma Stone: The Los Angeles Rams

In this metaphor and in real life, Ryan Gosling is the human embodiment of the city of Los Angeles. Have I ever been to Los Angeles? No. Was I a film major in college? Yes. So I basically know everything there is to know about LA. In real life, Gosling was born in Canada. I can’t think of anything more LA than being fucking Canadian. He’s married to Eva Mendes. Hollywood AF. In La La Land, Gosling is a jazz musician named Seb. Seb. Seb lives alone in his apartment, obsessing over jazz music and nostalgic for the classy LA jazz clubs of yore. Seb is basically Gosling if Gosling was poor, and both just SCREAM ~City of Stars~.

Emma Stone is, of course, the Los Angeles Rams. Her character, Mia, is trying really hard, but she’s failing and nobody really likes her. Except Seb for some reason. Seb kinda likes her and for some reason Seb and Mia’s fates are drawn together. You see, Mia actually is not from Los Angeles. She is from a much smaller, shittier place. Incidentally, the Rams were not founded in Los Angeles, but rather moved there from Cleveland in the 1940s.

So Seb and Mia are really into each other, but Mia just isn’t thriving while she’s with him. Her brand isn’t popular as it needs to be and falters due to extremely low attendance. No fans = doomed. Eventually, Mia realizes she has a shot if she leaves Seb. So she does. And she THRIVES.

You see, Mia’s time in Paris is really the equivalent of the Rams’ tenure in St. Louis. While Mia is in Paris she’s a hit. The Rams? Well, believe it or not, they managed to win a Super Bowl in St. Louis back in the day.

But what is the real moral of La La Land? It’s that you can’t keep Mia and Sebastian apart. They are bound inextricably by the forces of nature. So Mia is drawn back to Sebastian, as the Rams were pulled back into the mediocre football town that is LA.

Here’s the *SPOILER* part:

At the end of the movie Mia and Sebastian aren’t “together” because they could not overcome a long distance relationship. Mia has a new hubby. Now he ain’t Ryan Gosling, but he cute. (Sean McVay?????) The emotional bond is broken but Mia and Sebastian are spatially forced together. They lock eyes for the first time in a small smoke-filled jazz club. Like the Rams’ triumphant return to the Coliseum, a thrill permeated the room, but then reality sunk in. Some things will never be the same.

Mia and Seb can’t go back to the way things were. What they once had was lost, due to the inextricable passage of space and time. All lost. Like some 7-9 bullshit.

Good grief what did I just write? Is it football season yet?