a spy i know

      My brother-in-law lives abroad, and he works for the US government.  We joke and say he's a spy, but we know he isn't much like James Bond or Jason Bourne.  If he is a spy, wow, the life of a spy is pretty flat out boring.  He is a regular old American, not one of those ex-pat types who actually relishes life abroad with all of its exotic flavor. So when he visits on this side of the pond, we frequently talk about the methods he employs to maintain the American life from afar.

     If one computerized business has changed the lives of Americans everywhere, my brother-in-law the not so official spy claims, it is Amazon. Since there aren't many books published in English on other continents this ranks high on the 21st century improvement scale.  I countered with a lobby for Netflix.  Short of living atop the now defunct original NYC Kim's video, my life would have never been so filled with a broader collection of idiosyncratic and international film viewings. I know in the eyes of a pure cinephile I am seeing them in a compromised version, but I - unlike Angela Lansbury - do not have a personal stage and cinema in my house. (I heard this little tidbit from my husband who back in the day saw a hardcore show in her old house in Montclair.)

    On the menu this week, courtesy of the US Mail, I saw the furthest reaches of the rental spectrum: "The Lady and the Highwayman" (truly low brow historical novel pulp starring a very young and toothy Hugh Grant) followed by Nicholas Roeg's " The Man Who Fell to Earth" and ended finally with (by my 8 year old's request): "Mary Poppins".  While Netflix is apparently worried about competition from $1 supermarket kiosks that supply the latest Hollywood drek, I am worried at my ability to rent movies that I can't imagine anyone else is watching. 

     As David Bowie's alien character profoundly summed it up in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth': "television shows us everything, but it doesn't tell us anything".  Now of course we would have to replace 'television' with Facebook and Twitter.

    On the popular culture side of things, horrible acting performances in movies that should have been buried long ago can humanize our reactions to an actor.  Conversely, we can also see early movies that showed such promise for an actor who later left the acting ship at the dock to board the zombie express (earth calling Nicholas Cage).  My point here is time travel via cinema is a wonderful and perhaps overwhelming thing.  I know the more films I see in other time periods, the more I long for a different mode of dress than the one the new Topshop offers.  Why can't we all live in the fashion sense of Le Mepris?

      Just the ability to watch films on demand has somewhat altered the way we perceive the world.  When I was a young child the Wizard of Oz was on TV just once a year and it was an occasion!  Like nature delivering a strawberry bounty in June, it was a special event that was to be anticipated, savored, and then in a blink it was gone.  Now, of course, a child could own "The Wizard of Oz" and watch it every afternoon.  Perhaps that would have helped to de-sensitize me to the scary talking trees scene...

    I am carrying on here and perhaps confusing limitless access to the canon of film with self absorbed humans on cell phones who wander the sidewalk at a snail's pace....ooops.  But it is all related, don't you think?  I emerged from an afternoon showing of a Melville film at Film Forum last week and felt somewhat like a mole when the sun hit me.  I wonder if the limitless information of our digital age contributes to isolated pockets of self minded people and cuts off public community.  Do we sit in the dark, so to speak and blink irritatedly when the sun shines our way?

Comments

[K]

That line about TV stuck with me too. Here's the full quote.

Newton: The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything. It shows you everything about life on Earth, but the true mysteries remain. Perhaps it's in the nature of television. Just waves in space.

... but the real takeaway quote was the last lines in the film. I think about that little ending scene a lot.

Waiter: I think perhaps Mr. Newton has had enough, don't you?
Nathan Bryce: I think... perhaps... you're right.

[Dale]

The curse of having almost limitless information at your fingertips is that it all becomes devalued, both in real financial worth and in cultural worth as well.

When I was in college I ran our Art Forum film series one year, picking the films (thank God for Janus Films), ordering the 16mm reels from the local library system and signing out two projectors from the AV lab (I always had reels synched up - no clumsy breaks for my audience!). I kind of stuck to Fassbinder and Herzog but people loved it. Now we have Blockbuster - which I hate as a corporation - but we can still watch Herzog or a Pabst german expressionist film one week and the latest Hollywood dreck the next. Technology changes, but if your head doesn't you can still sift out the chaff. And movies I own? I never watch.

[vitamin J]

Tee hee! You said "rental spectrum."

[Ivy]

I lived in Poland for two years, from 1987 to 1989. I spent two years in Germany following that. A friend of mine lived in Japan for two years recently, and I can imagine how much easier and less isolated his life was thanks to the Internet and DVDs. We had access to VCRS and some American and British films in Poland. We could visit the American consulate to read issues of American magazines or go to the Adam Mickiewicz University's English library to read back issues of British magazines and the TLS. My friends really looked forward to a day trip to West Berlin so they could go to the McDonalds across from the Zoo Station and read the day's issue of the International Herald Tribune over breakfast. We were aware it was highly probable our mail was being opened and phoning the US was difficult. I had a short wave radio and loved the BBC World Service. God bless it.

I found life in Germany far less stressful, especially since there was a large international community in Frankfurt, where I worked. The big presence of the US Army meant there were many movie theatres in Frankfurt which showed American films in English, and several events held during the year which were aimed at the American community. I was working as a teacher of English, and when I spoke to my friends in the Army I noticed many of them felt cut off and isolated, even with American TV shows provided by the Armed Forces Network (including live sports coverage), American radio, daily free copies of the Stars and Stripes (with comic strips and Ann Landers and Dear Abby) and PXS full of American food.

By the way, I joined Twitter last week and I really don't see the point of it. It's mostly like sending updates from MySpace. I think the real attraction is that people can Twitter from their phones. It's perfect for people who love attention, love to text message, and have short attention spans.