Click And Munch Time

by tristero


Yesterday, I saw Denzel Washington's excellent new film, The Great Debaters, the inspiring story of a debating team from a tiny black college in Texas in 1935. There is much to say about this film - including the portrayal of an emerging African-American middle-class, something that Hollywood rarely deigns to address. But I had an odd thought, after seeing it, connected to my previous post.

While watching "The Great Debaters," I was struck by how everyone is actively, intensely involved in the cultural and political concerns of the film. Of course, such a response to the racism portrayed makes disengagement by anyone, including we viewers, impossible. But the same intensity of participation is equally apparent in the scenes shot in Texas juke-joints, even in the incidental banter at a party.

The world in which "The Great Debaters" takes place is a world that has no place for slackerism. No one, not a single student, parent, sheriff, lyncher, shrugs a shoulder, and "whatevers" the situation.

And that got me imagining what a movie about the current strange American cultural moment would look like. Think about it for a second. The tube's on, they're flashing picture after picture of torture and even murder from Abu Ghraib. We cut from the tv screen to reaction shots of the couple watching the news, jaws hanging slack, absently munching from his 'n hers matching canisters of freshly-wrought Pringles.

The husband blinks twice, points the remote at the camera, we hear a click, then the sound of Jack Bauer's voice threatening some baddie who Doesn't Look Like One Of Us. But it's only for a moment, as the music swells, denoting a 6 or 7 minute break from simulated torture in order to tout the subtle advantages accrued to the viewer if she deploys a particular brand of vaginal douche on her nether regions. Another click, and the grooviest computer graphics imaginable are superimposed over grainy footage of a guy in a gorilla costume while a narrator intones, "As the computer analysis makes clear, it is impossible to tell from the gait whether the creature shown here is human or some species not known to science."

Another click and we're back to the newscast. The correspondent for the Abu Ghraib story signs off, a pensive look marring the studied vapidity of his boytoy face and we dissolve back to the newsroom, carefully decorated to create the appearance of competent reportering. "In other news, the primary race heats up. And it all comes down to haircuts. When we come back, two professional barbers will speak with our senior correspondent in Iowa on what it takes to snip and cut when the leadership of the Free World depends upon the placement of every follicle."

Click. Munch. Click. Munch, munch. Click.