..,.Gary Dretzka
..,.Leonard Klady
...David Poland
...Doug Pratt
...Ray Pride
...S.T. VanAirsdale

JANUARY 22, 2006

Eating In Smaller Bites And Not Choking...

Everything's getting smaller...

I saw my first great film of Sundance 2006 today. It's called Thin and it's a document of an in-patient treatment center for eating disorders, focusing centrally on the lives of four of the women who had checked themselves in.

Watching the film, it struck me that there is a cultural issue beneath this film, many other films lately, and much more of our society than I think we have yet fathomed. The internet is as much a driver of the change as it is a reflection. But it is more profound than the internet. All technology has accelerated to allow us a degree of self-indulgence that has never before been possible. We are free to obsess. We are free to break out of the oppression of delivery systems. We are free to hurt ourselves in ways that were unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago.

To quote Randy Newman's "Rednecks,"

"Now your northern nigger's a negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the north has set the nigger free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the west-side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down"

And here is the joke of it. We are all the "niggers" and we are building the cage for ourselves.

Technology has set us free and our reaction seems to be to build bigger cages.

When I look to trends, I look at the trendmakers first. And no matter how good or bad Sundance is this year, this is where many of the trendmakers in film are. And as you look at these films, you can feel the dry, stifled air... not of the Bush administration, as so many of us find comfort in believing... but in the restrictions within our own choices, whoever we are... whatever our stripe.

Of course, one of the most compelling things about Thin is that even as some of these women face their part in the responsibility for their conditions, that still is not enough to stop them from killing themselves.

To watch a human being struggle to eat a cupcake in 20 minutes, bit by bit, disgusted by the prospect... it is a powerful thing... almost incomprehensible to a "healthy" person. But each of us struggle with some kind of cupcake at different moments of our lives. And sometimes, the cupcake eats us.

I see it in the film business every time I read another story about how consumers are demanding various new delivery systems. This is a lie. Less than 10% of the public has the facility to use new delivery systems effectively. And most of them/us are already overwhelmed by the number of choices we have.

What drives this obsession is a need to keep stock prices up and to create a mythology that Wall Street will believe when it comes to the future of the entertainment industry. And the media combines a fear of the new - which creates an even bigger fear of being seen as not progressive enough - with a need for a new story to tell everyday. It will be at least 3-5 years before the DVR becomes a ubiquitous as the VCR. But in the meanwhile, we need news. So we scream about Tivo's announcement about making TV shows available for iPod without even thinking about the issue of Fair Use that has allowed DVRs and VCRs to become so much a basic life staple that probably will not be extended to format shifting when the courts finally get around to it in a few years. It is - or at least, it used to be - our job in the media to ask those questions for you and not to simply regurgitate whatever a source we bow to as though their position in the industry makes them more truthful tells us.

But worse, it shows how desperate delivery companies are willing to sell their partners out to save their own skins. Even though I believe the current model is a laugher, Disney and everyone else in town is now pursuing alternate modes of delivery as an additional income producer. A DVD is not a tape of a show that's been broadcast, and time shifting 60 Minutes on Tivo is not the same as sending it to your iPod. So why is Tivo so quick to sell the legs out from under Disney and every other studio by removing the cash value of the to-iPod service? It's desperation, not demand.

But that is just one of my obsessions...

Human nature, en masse, involves a lot of embracing of the familiar. Even for kids who are rebelling. You may have noticed that few kids rebel in a particularly inventive or unique way. The Rebellious Teen market, like the Kid market, like the Single Parent market, and the Senior Citizens market are all just variables on the marketing program. People rebel, without really being aware of it, against challenges to their sense of normalcy.

And now, for the first time in human history, we are faced with nearly unlimited options. It is only beginning, as media would have you believe that every child has an iPod, every home has a car of their choice, every family is either part of the culture in which we participate or they are outsiders to be mocked and shunned. But this is not the case... yet. As time passes, second generation iPods go somewhere... prices lower... cable and satellite reaches further at a lower price... and even expensive cars can be financed to make them all too cheap. The war in high schools over athletic shoes becomes the war over Walkmen becomes the war over cell phones and so on. The basic foundations for inclusion in "regular" society continue to be raised. And at a certain watermark, foundations evolve into choices.

Not being able to live with being 100 pounds is real to the women in Thin, just as finding the right nanny may be live-saving to a Bel-Air homemaker or exec, just as being able to order pizza anytime they want may be critical to a kid in the suburbs, just as having 3 meals a day is life and death to so many people across the globe.

There is a moment in the film when one woman is caught in a lie that she told to protect a friend that she had made in the rehab. Friend #1 had given Friend #2 some antidepressants that she had stored away even though Friend #2 was going through an antidepressant detox. But Friend #2 was so deeply depressed by the process that Friend #1 offered her the only power she had that she felt was greater than her personal support. People need to be open and honest to make it through this rehab, so it was a critical problem.

Person #1 was then called out for lying in this case and in a number of other instances. And so, some of the therapists felt she was a destructive influence and had to go. And they were right. And they were wrong. And the woman who lied was right. And wrong. And the woman she was protecting was wrong. And right.

As we move deeper and deeper into a niche society where social choice is much closer to a reality than ever before, we are all so right and we are all so wrong. There are a few black & whites left... but the number gets smaller and smaller every day.

And we are all flailing to find answers that deal with a complex world of ideas. If Brokeback Mountain is the barometer of the moment, it must give pause that a very intelligent person I spoke to today made it clear that she did not see BBM, which she quite liked, as either revolutionary or an important statement about homosexuality. But seconds later, she was glibly talking about heterosexual panic going on around the movie. She certainly can be right about all three ideas (loving BBM as a love story, not seeing it as political, and thinking many straight men are intimidated by the idea of a simply, elegant love story that is between two men) But the ball of string just keeps unraveling. Would the tragedy of a woman in love with a man who will not move forward in their relationship, holding out hope and giving him her sex for 25 years before dying unrequited be seen as a great romance? Would women be sympathetic to the surviving man? Is it possible that a large majority of straight men are uninterested in any love story, especially one directed by Ang Lee, regardless of heterosexual panic? Just because "we" understand gay people better than "they" do, does our flippant response to straight male America okay?

The flipside, of course, is that there are bunch of loony right wingers who really do hate homosexuals blindly and want to claim that anyone who does like BBM is a lefty elitist who has no moral foundation.

I would argue for freedom of taste and freedom of expression. So sue me.

Where we are right now is that the most vocal of the pro-BBM crowd so hates the "righties" that they don't even believe that the "moral" objection is real... that the right is just spinning for some ulterior evil motive. And many on the right truly believe that people who support acceptance of gay people are Godless. Confusing it further is the fact that there are people on both sides whose actions support the angry beliefs of those in opposition.

There is a real difference between moral relativism and moral complexity. And no one on the far sides of the left or the right seems willing to deal with complexity, only throwing out relativism or lack of any give at all, as a stone to smite the heathen on the opposite shore.

We have no choice but to find an answer, just as the women of Thin have no choice... find a way to live or die. Changes on the rest of the planet can no longer be overlooked as unimportant. They have a real effect on us. But before we can deal with others, we must deal with ourselves.

Changes in technology do change the media table substantively. But the film industry must consider the direction it's taking and where it has been before careening wildly into delivering new formats and scheduling that may not be in its best interest in anything but the shortest term. (The film business is so short-term oriented already that long term planning is, to some, almost incomprehensible.)

But this is bigger than movies and media. We all must start to adjust to the idea that ideologies are both fair and unfair, honest and dishonest, heartfelt and cynical. But they are real. And people are squeezing themselves into smaller and smaller niches. And if you don't allow them the respect of believing in their strongly held positions, they will do the same to/for you. And there is little future in that.

One of the striking things in Thin is that the staff of the rehab never questions whether these women are suffering from anorexia/bulimia. They take these women at face value and then work hard to deal with the bad behaviors that come from the core problem, including lying or other rule bending.

How many of us really respect the moviegoing choices of 13 year olds and allow them their choices before we subject them to our influences?

How many of us really respect that the structure of the business of movies not only indulges a class of greedy overpaid fools, but tens of thousands of "regular people" who would be hurt if the film business revenue was reduced by a significant percentage, regardless of how much wider the distribution of film entertainment might go?

How many of us really respect that we are part of a niche in the larger community and that all movies and media are not here to attend to our personal demands?

If your answer to any of these questions is, "But they don't deserve my respect" or "But I disagree with the premise," then you are ready to start sorting out your feelings.

If you don't think 13 year olds should make their own choices on what they see, you are in favor of some restriction. If you think movies would be better off without so much overspending and that it will only effect the ultra-rich, you are not counting all the bodies. And if you blanche at the notion that what you - and even your demographically rich immediate family - desire is not necessarily good business, you're asking studios to behave as something other than a business... even though the average major studio film is now a $150 million investment by the time the film arrives across the globe. What business do you know that doesn't expect a return on their $150 million?

In Thin, the women and the rehab staff are dealing with life and death... and they all know it. Black and white. But not black and white enough to so what's best for themselves even.

Let's hope we can reach beyond our deep seeded, uncontrollable impulses as the world keeps expanding into smaller niches. Let's hope we can see how obsessed we all can be and how there is a wider place in the world for those who don't share them. Let's hope we can all give ourselves the freedom to live.

January 21, 2006
January 20, 2006

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