I study film.
By "study," I mean I huddle in a dark room dissecting the nebulous motivations of fictitious people. In film class, they give you fancy words to snack on so you don't waste away in the dark obscurity of cinematic criticism. Recent tasties include: causal agent, mise-en-scene, genrification and my personal bunchacrunch: diegesis.
Note: There is no practical application of diegesis in daily conversation.
I can offer you byzantine claims on the cathartic role of transgender icons in the glam rock subgenre (Hedwig trumps Dr. Frank-N-Furter). But should convo turn to politics or finance, my mind moseys away via yellow brick road into silhouetted sunset. Mine is a fairyland of studio-approved story goodness. Go ahead real world, make my day.
Ask and you shall receive-in bulk. I don't know much about them physics books, but I digg CERN's particle acceleration like salacious celeb gossie. Sorry Apple Trailers, I'm busy loading my hadron collider rap YouTube video and completing my subatomic particle zoo order (can I have a bonus Tachyon plush toy with my Lepton-6 pack?)
And last week I did something that hails of non-fire non-ice apocalypse: I read Bloomberg.com. And I was intrigued.
(Insert three beats of dramatic orchestra music.)
I wasn't intrigued by the fact that we're probably heading towards a massive economic slowdown that will halt the dolla-dolla bills of my once-ambitious young adult career-so long Leblanc Mirabeau in red. "Depressed" is the more appropriate terminology for that headline. I was depressed, stupefied-Great Depressified.
What I was intrigued by was the stark smell of Change. And since habit compels me to contextualize through what I know best, voila: genre study.
"'Holy S-, What's Going On?' is a highbrow Wall Street drama meets sci-fi anarchist thriller gone ballistic on natural disaster action meets anti-war international political dramedy."
Right. Even Schumacher wouldn't produce this hot tranny mess.
In being so generically hybridized, this hypothetical film requires some serious plot trimming, i.e. cut a few reaction chains so the audience can follow (my cause-effect web gets knotty somewhere around subprime crisis, gas shortage, Greek Security Team hackers, Category 4 tropical hurricane, parochial Bible-thumping "don't know much about foreign or domestic policy" lipstick chick VP nominee with baby daddy drama debating a $700 billion government bailout). Too bad you can't splice reality. Or can you, Hadron Collider...
So what does it mean when the absurdity of the actual trumps the absurdity of Hollywood?
It means that not only is the natural landscape shuddering around and in response to us, but so too is the socio-political landscape. We watch it-history, that is-being made whether we're middle row middle seat privileged or front far right big guy blocked. Same disaster, different terms: Do we jeer? Do we clap? Do we update our Facebook status in citizenly angst?
Answer: Word. Literally: print, oral, electronic.
To prolong this happy movie metaphor: Be the won't-shut-it-squeaky-oh-so-loud American commentator in the theater. If you think the quality of the film is undermined by the lead's lack of credibility, the incongruous causal connections, the excruciating lack of resolution, then chuck those scholastic snacks at the screening supervisor and edit the IMDb page of our future-otherwise you're just a bum with no class.
With every cataclysm comes change, recovery, the potential for good: New Deal, Golden Age of Hollywood, hello 1930s. And if there's one thematic constant in the genre of "reality," it is that culture will respond as it always does to the rocked out, ODed, gone to rehab "E! True Hollywood Story of life." And guess what folks, now we are the movers and the shakers.
Here's looking at you, emo kid.
Janet Wu is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Friday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.