The bands included in the 1979 documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization” certainly epitomized (and pioneered) the punk movement of the late 70’s and early 80’s on America’s west coast. And although their lyrics were generally raw and disturbing, they were often poetically laced with political and cultural agendas reflecting their distaste for the social norms. I seriously doubt, however, that the likes of Darby Crash or Greg Ginn, at that time, could define the word bricolage if their life depended on it.
Their repurposed use of typically proletarian objects such as safety pins, chains and cheap fabrics symbolized their disdain for the mainstream and ironically categorized them into a class of bricoleurs, likely due to their financial limitations. Being restricted to the confines of a sixteen dollar per month apartments forced them to use readily available objects to express their stylistic anti-conformity.
It could be said, then, that their lifestyle defined their style, in that they deliberately abandoned the comforts of a working-class paycheck in exchange for the opportunity to pursue their art and subsequently constructed their style from the ubiquitous items of their surroundings.
There is probably a lesson here, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what I have to learn from a twenty-two year old suicidal drug abuser who readily admits to hurting himself to keep from being bored. Anyway, R.I.P. Darby Crash. I’m sure my parents would have a few choice words for you and your influence on my early teenage years.
Having worked in the retail industry for the majority of my life, I have learned many techniques over the years about how to display merchandise in a way that just makes you want to buy it. Obviously, it doesn’t always work, but that is the goal. Retail stores draw attention to their wares in different ways: window displays, signage, mannequins, floor stacks, vignettes, and many other visual distinctions. They are changed frequently giving the illusion that the merchandise changes as well, when in reality it just moves around, or the focus is taken off of one item and put on another. The idea is to “experience” the store every time you visit it, which may be weeks or months apart. You didn’t see that t-shirt last time you visited because you didn’t dig through the stack of hundreds of similar t-shirts on the shelf, but today it looks really great on that mannequin, right?
For those of us inside the stores, however, those displays tend to become monotonous. We walk by them dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day. We are tasked with keeping them straight and orderly. We get accustomed to the layout and navigate the store based on where things are, at least until the planogram is changed again, much like we do in our own neighborhoods and homes. We never seem to notice that dust building up on those ceiling fan blades or the weeds creeping into our gardens or that building that has been painted a different color until we step back and look at it from a different perspective, or someone points them out to us.
Our “local authority” is challenged inside our stores each and every day. Things that can take months or years to degrade or evolve outside the perception of change in the macro scale of our daily walks can happen in a matter of minutes in the micro scale of a retail environment. Most stores start their day in in fairly pristine condition and are rummaged through by shoppers until closing time. The visual aesthetic is denigrated throughout the day. Our job is to make sure that the customer that shops at 8:45 pm, 15 minutes before we close, is getting the same experience as the first customer who walks in the door at 10 am. We are often forced to step “outside” our roles as employees and attempt to look at the sales floor through a different set of eyes, through the eyes of the customer. This is often accomplished easily by simply taking a picture. A still shot of a store can be analyzed by the same set of eyes that walks through all day long and see the things that need to be fixed. Not just the obvious elements like a fallen stack of boxes or shirts that need to be folded back into a neat stack, but the minutia of a slightly crooked sign, a torn package, or a scuff on the floor or a fingerprint on the computer monitor. Things we walk by repeatedly and pay little attention to because they seem to be insignificant details.
But it is exactly that, the details, that make our experiences great, whether it is noticing the architectural details of a building that you walk by every day or the proportion of white space between product boxes on a shelf. The details define the whole and the whole frames our experience.
As out protagonist leaves the site of where the body was supposed to be, he comes across the group of mimes he interacted with the morning before. He witnesses the mimes transform from a rowdy group into exactly what we (and he) expect them to be. He is drawn into their world as he watches them mime a game of tennis. He even becomes part of their reality when he is asked to throw the lost ball back into the court. He indulges them, and himself, acknowledging his own perception of reality as he hears the ball actually being hit back and forth.
This is important because he has come to the conclusion that he has to believe what he can’t see through his camera lens. Everything that made the murder a reality has been taken away from him. The detail of the scene was lost as he blew up the photos. His photographic evidence was stolen, with the exception of a single blurry blowup that really reveals nothing. The body was removed from the park. He has to rely on what HE has seen to be true.
Perception alters reality. Perception defines reality. And Antonioni’s use of the camera and color in this film controls our own perception of Thomas’s experiences. We are drawn into his world. A world based on our own beliefs and values. Who are we to judge his actions when we are all guilty of framing our own perception of life?
Thomas’s attempt to verify the reality he created is demonstrated in his return visit to the park. He sees with his own eyes the body he observed in the photo he took earlier in the day. Why he does not bring his camera at this point, we can only guess. A lack of flash, perhaps? With a lack of photo evidence of what he witnessed, he seeks the validation of his editor, wanting him to see the body for himself. He enjoys having the power of knowledge and chooses this path instead of reporting the body to authorities. He needs the ownership of this knowledge in the form of a photo to find value in his own life. His own reality.
His need for power is also exemplified in the scene with the guitar neck. He meanders through the crowd of seemingly dumbstruck concert-goers, save for two people dancing as if in their own world. You would think that everyone would be dancing and screaming. It begs the question of whether the crowd, as we see them, is HIS perception of this group of people - a group of people with no value to him outside of the eye of his camera and with no real identity. The crowd shows absolutely no emotion until the guitarist throws the neck of his destroyed guitar. He fights to obtain that which everyone wants, then discards the item like a piece of trash on the sidewalk. Suddenly this object has no meaning to him, much like the crowd did when he first entered the room. And much like the models he interacts with in his day to day life.
Blowup is a beautifully constructed film that challenges the dividing line between reality and imagination, ultimately defined by perception. The main character is a self-absorbed, egotistical photographer who hates what he does to pay the bills, namely fashion photography. He believes that his skills should be used to document the images of real life, as he is currently putting together a book of photos of the homeless and immerses himself in their world to achieve his goal. He believes that true reality is captured in the photographs he takes and develops, and seeks validation from others to encapsulate that reality. He proves this by creating a storyboard of the scene he believes he witnessed in the park. As he develops and displays the photos, he creates his own version of the story unfolding before the eye of his camera.
As he builds his storyboard, he blows up the photos in an effort to zoom in on details that are difficult to see in the normal versions. These details turn out to be, in his perception, a man with a gun and a subsequent dead body. The irony of his perception is scripted earlier in the film. His visit to a neighboring artist plants the seed of abstract art and how one should perceive it. Thomas sees a canvas full of dots and specks and questions its form. The artist states that they mean nothing as he creates them, but he later finds something in them to hold onto. Thomas uses this technique in his own art form as he blows up the photos. The lack of detail in the blowups results in an abstract effect of what was reality in its previous version. He sees what he thinks is a gun and a body and that becomes the reality he seeks throughout the rest of the film.
The character of Marge Simpson is driven by her morals and her desire to do what is in the best interest of her family. She is the polar opposite to her husband Homer and provides a moral balance to an otherwise dysfunctional relationship and family. The balance also extends to her children, and even follows the parallel of gender, with Lisa, almost without fail, choosing the moral high road in her daily decisions and Bart, like his father, choosing to wreak havoc for his own personal gain and amusement.
When Marge decides to take on the subject of violence in cartoons by protesting against the company that produces the show, she struggles with the balance that she provides in her own family, taking on the responsibilities of leading this mini revolution and abandoning her role as wife and mother. As her movement gains momentum, she sees that she is actually making a difference, but also realizes that her family is paying consequences in other ways.
Her struggle in this episode is not unlike the struggle that we as parents face every day. We want the best for our children and go about obtaining that goal in different ways, when the best way is likely to just spend time with them and monitor and involve yourself in what they are doing. The single biggest influence a child has on the decisions they make is the example set by their parents. Marge’s “One person can make a difference” crusade was successful in its own right, but failed in the grander scheme because she lost the level of involvement she had in her childrens’ lives previously.
Who can’t love a show that ends with that line?
In their quest to capture our viewing attention, the producers of reality game shows bank on the use of these taglines to differentiate themselves from the rest of the shows on TV, especially other shows in their genre. This practice was arguably seeded by The Donald on his show The Apprentice when he eliminated potential business apprentices by saying “You’re fired.” The trend could also be attributed to an earlier game show called The Weakest Link. It was hosted by a feisty Brit named Anne Robinson who eliminated her losing contestants by proclaiming “You are the weakest link. Goodbye!”, certainly one of the most memorable lines in recent American television game show history.
The sheer success of these early shows spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of new shows based on the concept of “reality”, most of them using a tag line of their own. Here are a couple of my other favorites:
“Our friendship is finished. TTYN.” - Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF
“You’ve been dropped. Get the fuck outta here.”- 50 Cent, 50 Cent: The Money and The Power
And possibly the most annoying, “You’ve been chopped”, from Chopped host Ted Allen.
But why do we watch these so-called reality shows? Who’s reality do they portray? Can I really relate to Paris Hilton as she ponders her new BFF or 50 Cent as he chooses who to invest his money in? No. But a subject I can relate to is cooking. And there is no shortage of cooking shows on networks like Bravo, food, and Travel channel. My favorite, however, has to be Top Chef on Bravo. Not only does it employ the delicious hostess Padma, but it satisfies my desire to learn as I watch television. The competition between the chefs allows me to cheer for the ones that I like and root against the ones I don’t, all the while learning from their skills(and mistakes) in the kitchen.
What’s your favorite reality show tagline?
