STRAY THOUGHTS ON MOVIES, MUSIC, AND MEDIA
8/27/10 SNEAK PEEK AT NEW PETER CASE DOC
A couple weeks ago I got a look at a work-in-progress screening of Troubador Blues, a new documentary featuring musician Peter Case. The film follows Case around from gig to gig as he ruminates about the reasons why being a musician is still so satisfying to him despite its poor pay and difficult working conditions. What emerges is an inspiring portrait of a living folk music subculture that still rewards performer and audience alike with moments of transcendence. The film also features thoughts and performances from over a dozen other contemporary performers, many of whom are equally thoughtful and talented. (Anyone heard of Chris Smithers? Wow!) The production values are low, there’s no narrative to speak of, but this one has the potential to be of real interest to anyone who holds a place in their heart for live music.
6/2/10 FACING FACEBOOK
In the Bio category on my Facebook page, one lone sentence appears: “Ambivalent about social networking sites.” This little scrap of irony, sandwiched between information about my political views and my current employer, was meant to make myself feel better about joining Facebook. “Look,” it says to my present and potential Friends, “I’m going into this with my eyes open. I want to participate, but only if you know that I’m not really going to enjoy it.”
But enjoy it I do. I like keeping up with the daily doings of people I know. I like broadcasting my opinions on music and politics and the satisfactions of fatherhood to high school classmates, ex-girlfriends, old pals, and whomever else I’ve decided to Accept as Friend. Thinking of myself as the publisher of my own real-time memoirs is attractive.
I was creeped out by Facebook when I started getting “friended” (are the quotes even necessary anymore?) a couple years back. Not by the lack of privacy, but by the idea that something as intimate and seemingly autonomous as conversations with friends were going to be turned into a way to sell us stuff. Really? Aren’t the ads above the urinals and on the back of the supermarket receipts enough? Has it come to this?
Yes, it has. And we’ve all gotten used to it. As the targeted ads recede into the background, part of the everyday noise that we all so expertly navigate to get to those nuggets of human interaction that are so satisfying, they seem to disappear. The frontier of commodification of the human experience has been advanced another step forward. Now get over it.
But what I’ve found equally strange is how Facebook has changed standards of familiarity. It never ceases to surprise me that a Friend Request from someone who I haven’t seen in 20 years often comes unadorned with any personalizing message. “Elaine wants to be friends with you. Click to Add as Friend.” Click. End of story, end of conversation. If I had run into this person in an airport, common decency—to speak nothing of sheer curiosity—would have dictated at least a three-minute chat.
The intimacy of those moments of shared remembering, and the mystery made possible by actually losing touch in the first place, now seem lost to history. Now we can read each other’s intimate, private thoughts without ever acknowledging each other’s presence. I feel closer to my Friends, but simultaneously further away.
And is it too obvious to point out the quantity vs. quality equation that can’t help but play itself out in the way we relate to our Facebook Friends? In the physical world, we share different parts of ourselves with different people. The history I share with my best friends from high school results in a different kind of conversation than the one I have when hanging out with my brother and sister.
But who exactly are we talking to when we post to Facebook? With the motley crew of Friends most of us carry, it’s not a simple question to answer. We’re forced to choose an identity that speaks to a group of people who would never otherwise meet in the physical world.
Thus, it seems inevitable that we think of our online selves more and more as a product. In books like The Brand Called You and Me 2.0, “personal branding experts” counsel us on how to “create a message and a strategy to promote the brand called You.” One can see the immediate utility in thinking this way if you’re self-employed and trying to create a name for yourself. But it goes beyond that, and not just because job security isn’t what it used to be. We are not just branding our professional selves, but the whole shebang.
Which brings us full circle back to the commodification of communication and identity on Facebook. “Ambivalent about social networking sites,” true as the statement may be, is also part of my own personal brand. So is this post. Welcome to the brand called Me.
5/30/10 EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
My take on Exit Through The Gift Shop: entertaining, fun, well put together. Narration expertly written and performed to make you feel like you’re always coming upon a new moment of exquisite revelation. Also a bit too easy. Funny that a film by a guerilla street artist would end up with an essentially elitist point of view. Also a bit exploitative. Banksy would have no film without MBW’s footage, but MBW is the butt of all the jokes. Who knows, maybe I’d have made the same choices; it’s hard to say without having been there.
5/6/10 NEW BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE ALBUM
Anyone else notice a funny resemblance in the vocals on the first track of the new Broken Social Scene album to what MGMT was doing on ‘Oracular’? And is the sound on it intentionally compressed all to hell, or is that just a bad E-Music download? Incidentally, I think tracks 1, 7, and 12 are winners. The others are a bit of a disappointment.
5/6/10 THE JESUS LIZARD
Excellent description by Sasha Frere-Jones of one reason why The Jesus Lizard were such a thrilling band: “Few people have ever played straight time with as much gusto as McNeilly; when he locks in with Sims, the drums and the bass make a single menacing vamp sound terrifying for two solid minutes. Any musician who feels the need to fancify time signatures would do well to study the Jesus Lizard. The band makes 4/4 time seem like an enormous playground, far from the view of authorities.” Link to article.