11 Jan Film Fund-amentals: Reverberations and Major Disconnections

It has long been rumored that Martin Scorsese was planning to do a sequel to Taxi Driver. But why did he relocate the story to Tuscon, Arizona?

OK, the old movie Taxi Driver is probably not particularly connected to last weekend’s massacre in Tuscon (though news reporters will soon be flocking in that direction). But Carl Jung would be quick to note the strange run of synchronicity involved, from the alleged shooter’s shaved head to the completely ironic appearance of an honest-to-god real life taxi driver at the shooting. Heck, we even have incoherent, rambling messages much like the journal kept by Travis Bickle in the original movie (though to be honest, Travis’ ravings are just a tad more coherent).

The only thing missing is the soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann. The reverberations are simply awesome. So too are the disconnects. There is simply no room for rational discussion about this (or much of anything else) in current American society. Heck, we Americans gave up rational discourse ages ago. Just like our movies, we live with an incredible disconnect from reality. How else do you explain an assassination attempt against a relatively moderate congressperson (she has been pro-choice, supported gun rights, and was going both ways at once on immigration issues) committed by an alleged Marxist/Nazi/Siddhartha-luvin’ assailant who wanted to return the US Currency system back to the gold standard. By comparison, John Hinckley‘s reason for shooting Ronald Reagan almost makes sense. Yes I know, Hinckley’s case involved that Taxi Driver thing again.

A long time ago, H. Rap Brown got the media stirred up with his pronouncement that violence was as American as apple pie. Brown was always gifted at stirring up attention, and if he hadn’t gone up the river on homicide charges, he could conceivably had found employment on Fox News. Every strident statement currently being made about the extreme and vitriolic nature of current American political discourse is true. Ironically, American political discourse has often been both extreme and violent since sometime before the American Revolution. Heck, even our vernacular language is incredibly violent (and has been long before the appearance of Hip Hop). I wouldn’t exactly say that Americans are more violent than other people, but we sure do love to talk tough, and our ears perk up faster to the words of Mickey Spillane than they do to Jane Austen.

But what has become unique is the degree to which most of our contemporary political and cultural discussions are taking place in an alternative universe that has no connection to reality. This is true of both “conservative” and “liberal” discussions (besides, these old-guard political terms are virtually meaningless in modern America). Real political debate is almost impossible in this country, as everybody is busy accusing everybody else of being some form of Satanic spawn engaged in an evil conspiracy. In turn, a lot of people are sprouting a lot of half-truths while failing to discover that two half-truths don’t add up to a single fact. Not surprisingly, much of contemporary society has fallen into a deep sticky pile of gibberish. The result is making us all pretty mad, but we don’t know what we are really mad about. We only know that we ain’t gonna take it anymore and are ready to start blasting. Too bad Chester Himes isn’t more widely read in his own country. His final metaphor in Blind Man With a Pistol is still chillingly accurate.

However, this has little to do with the state of modern American movies. Then again, it has everything to do with it. As part of their contribution to the present state of vast alienation, most modern American movies have nothing to do with life as we know it. The relationship between movies and reality has always been a tad thin, and the escapist aspect of Hollywood does have a striking appeal (for example, the 1930s really weren’t dominated by screwball heiresses and flippant hard-nosed reporters, but it sure plays better that way). But come on, when was the last time you saw a major Hollywood film that in any thin way reflected even so much as a glimmer of the world as you know it? Well, are you still thinking? Yeah, takes a while, doesn’t it.

These days, movies pretty much exist at a near total disconnect from the rest of the world. Even at an allegorical level, most modern movies have basically no point (unless the point is to squeeze money out of socially awkward teenage boys with no personal life). The traditional Hollywood movie is designed to manipulate your emotions along a well-defined narrative path. But the narrative doesn’t much exist these days. That’s why many people leave the theater feeling hopelessly jerked around. They are being jerked around, in just the same way they are being jerked at every other level of their lives.

But the primary emptiness of the average Hollywood product is compensated for by the viewer’s willingness to read into the movie whatever subjective meaning they wish to see. Its a bit like all of those folks years ago who liked the movie Rocky because they came away thinking he had won the fight at the end of the film. The narrative didn’t matter (by the way, Rocky loses the fight). It was the subjective emotional effect that the audience locked into. In other words, they were having a strong emotional reaction that was not based on reality.

It’s a form of emotional dissociation with a dash of paranoid schizophrenia on the side. The result is that the subjective interpretation takes precedence over any form of objective analysis. This is the dark side of what is sometimes called Hollywood Magic: manipulated emotions that are completely unattached to any empirical basis. It was once primarily located on the movie screen. It is now the common currency of daily American life.