Thursday, March 09, 2006

The fourth estate smashes into the forth wall

It's twenty five years since Chris Chubbock blew her brains out on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, and Paddy Chayefsky's visionary film Network has seen glorious realization in an endless procession of "real video" evening programming on some of our popular television networks.

Our case in point finds two teenage girls pushing the envelope of control in a stolen vehicle of the extra-large size commonly known as the Sports Utility Vehicle. The young adventurers are engaged in a wild chse with multiple police cruisers, living out the very best of the American dream as exemplified in cultural classics such as Bubblegum Rally and Smokey and the Bandit. After a series of narrow escapes and accidents of increasing severity, the junior high criminals are brought to bay by threat of arms. The commentators final analysis: they were "two girls with more car than they could handle."

Setting aside the obvious consideration of whether we may be a whole nation with more car than it can handle, it occurs to me that there is an interesting bit of historical comparison at work in these filmed rebellions against the basic order. Mao said that all power comes from the barrel of a gun, but the scientist demonstrates that that sort of power really boils down to a question of momentum. We have many millions of tons of steel lashing around on the roads. And most of us abide more or less by the rules, keep to our side of the road and wait our turn at the ramp meter. We ignore the obvious destructive potential of our costly posessions. And yet we are watching in fascination as one of our numbers suddenly breaks loose from the hive's dance and goes on the rampage, one last doomed and desperate bid to win free from the lines we have drawn so tightly around our lives.

klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.

No comments: