Tonight, we'd like to present you with the second installment of Lemming Patrol Productions, guardians of independent thought and free will.
Tonight's feature is a meditation on that infamous American industry gloriously known as Hollywood. That institution that pumps out the two-dimensional stories that determine so much of how we think and feel, what we believe, who we are as a culture.
Unfortunately, what Hollywood produces is, for the most part, crap. And by watching this crap faithfully, many of our potentially independent minds become what we consume.
Most of us probably realize the pitfalls of buying into the chimera on the screen, but many of us still accept the slop laid before us as something worth watching. And we continue to flock to these shallow, meaningless and inconsistent movies that lack any redeeming value without even questioning how much they affect our minds and psyches, or what statement they make about us.
Hollywood even mocks us by mocking itself, or the media in general, in decent movies such as Truman and Hope Floats. These movies revealingly expose our insatiable obsession with consuming substanceless trash and prying into others' dirty laundry, and the media's own willingness to cater to our revolting needs.
And this naiveté in people about what movies really represent is displayed everywhere one may happen to be:
The other day I was riding on a bus when I eavesdropped on a loud conversation a seat over from me. A couple was discussing their opinions on movies. One of the movies was Godzilla:
Guy: Have you seen that new Godzilla movie?
Girl: No I haven't. It don't look right.
Guy: I know! I've seen pictures of the new Godzilla and it don't even look like the real Godzilla. Them original movies were the best. I haven't seen the new one either and I don't care to.
Girl: Me neither. They ruined Godzilla.
Guy: They shore did. He looks different. It can't be the same as the real Godzilla movies. You can't just change something like that, something I grew up on. It ain't right.
Girl: No it ain't.
Guy: Nope. (pause) Did you see Twister?
Girl: Yeah, that was a good movie.
Guy: Yeah, them tornadoes in it looked so real. It was a real good movie.
Girl: It shore was. Very realistic.
Well, I agreed with that couples' assessment of Godzilla. From what I've seen, his head and body seem too Inguana-like instead of the normal Tyrannosaurus-humanoid that we've come to love. I agreed with them so wholeheartedly, that I nearly jumped in the conversation to voice my own agreement with them about the travesties of Hollywood.
However, my excitement waned when they threw in their two-cents worth for Twister. For, I grew up in Indiana, land of cornfields and tornadoes. I've seen first-hand the aftermath of destruction right there in my own town. I even found myself once in the tail-end of a real tornado. Man, it so was windy, I watched a small tree blow over right in front of me.
Therefore, when watching Twister, I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all: The implausible rash of tornadoes concentrated in one area. The melodramatic subplot of unfulfilled love. Ruthless, battling meteorologists. Flying cows and semis. Poor editing--the sky's hue changed from dusk to bright daylight in the same scene with the mere change of camera angles.
These movies remind me of the time that my girlfriend and I went to see Lost in Space. Man, were we disappointed. To see one of my favorites, William Hurt (Altered States is an all-time fave), in such a bomb nearly made me cry. It could have been a better movie, perhaps, if it had stayed truer to the original concept that us early Gen Xers grew up with, and if the editing was better done. But the one thing that ruined it most was that damn animated space monkey. For Hollywood to think that they could slip that blunder past us was of the most extreme insult. Sadly, however, is the fact that I know people who didn't think a thing of it. They accepted that dumb monkey as a legitimate character at first and only later questioned it after I had brought the absurdity of it up with them.
One can only shake one's head and sigh.
I guess the moral of this monolgue is that we must not let ourselves be fooled. Not by anyone or anything. We shouldn't accept what we see and hear without some amount of questioning. We should dare to "go against the flow." Otherwise, we become lemmings plundering off steep cliffs into the sea of mediocrity, because we're too afraid to step out of the crowd and cut our own path.
The couple on the bus had it--halfway. They could clearly see that what they already knew--Godzilla--was wrong. They weren't willing to buy into a shallow reinterpretation of something sacred. Unfortunately, they were unable to question what they clearly didn't know--tornadoes. My guess is that they've never seen a tornado before and had no contextual reference of comparison. Even if they've seen video tape of one or more devastating tornadoes, it's apparent that they didn't pay close attention to its real dynamics.
So remember, Hollywood and the media are serving us up this crap because we accept it. Thus, to you I say: You are what you consume. Remember that.