Before we delve into the topic proper–I’ve got movies on the brain again–a quick sidebar for you behind-the-music aficionados: have you ever wondered how exactly you’d clean a mouth packed with bling? This is probably most relevant to the world of hip-hop, which for some reason was blaring through preset #1 on my car radio today, and I think it’s a valid concern, if only for a niche audience. Do you brush and floss like normal people, or do you just bury your face in a motorized jewelry cleaner? Reasonably you’d go with the first option, but toothpaste can’t possibly be good for gold plating. Note to self: pursue this line of inquiry during my next dental appointment.
Alright, smooth segue. We’re actually closer to the main discussion than you’d expect. I’ve been thinking about music in movies, specifically in the form of musicals, after finishing Across the Universe this weekend. It’s a drama powered primarily by the Beatles, and the initial reaction is that it’s a well-made, albeit unwatchable flick. For me, the problem lies in the genre itself, along with a realization that there’s a limit to the amount of escapism I can tolerate. I cruised through Once recently without incident and enjoyed the featured music. More importantly, the lead characters were singing and performing because they were musicians in the narrative, and I guess that’s what musicians do.
But a musical is a different animal entirely, with everyday people breaking into song without the slightest provocation. It’s just plain weird, and in this case there are two layers of escapism present. On the one hand, you have a story about a dockworker from Liverpool who, after finding his estranged father at Princeton, falls for an American war protester. Fine, I’ll buy into the fiction. But immediately characters large and small croon melodiously while disembarking the subway, running from the campus police, and emerging from the bathroom, and it’s, like, man! Go ahead and flush the goddamn toilet without the three-part harmony.
One layer of escapism is perfect for me. Two layers, I’m pulled right back into reality. Let’s take The Matrix, for example. Pure science fiction, so I need to accept the world peddled by the Wachowskis. I do, and I find the movie engrossing. But if Laurence Fishburne suddenly pirouetted out of a phone booth, his arms raised high, key of D major on his lips, and started warbling about “more more Morpheus” or some such tripe, we’d have a serious problem. It’d be too much. If I pulled the same shit in public and burst into song while swiping my credit card at Target, or washing my hands, or ordering from the menu, I’d likely be arrested. This would be after learning kung fu, but definitely before taking out an entire brigade in a fancy office lobby.
Our movie review site has been gr– Great? Growing? Gripping? Ground to a halt? Lord only knows because I surely don’t, and it’s been surprisingly easy to maintain total detachment in the past few weeks. This isn’t writer’s block, where I’m sitting glassy-eyed before a hollow text file, just waiting for inspiration to fill it. I remember surfing over to WordPress two weeks ago, typing in my username, and then just stopping dead-cold, physically unable to finish login. Didn’t even jab out my full username. Never saw the site proper.
This is partly due to a recent resurgence in enjoying movies. Yesterday, in fact, I found myself liking Wanted far more than I did during my first viewing, when I was heavy into critiquing in exact 50-word increments, simply because I checked my brain at the door. For me, media consumption continues to swivel on this idea of escapism, which evaporates if I start engaging in critical thought about plot arcs or how bullets can possibly curve. Really, we’re not workshopping this shit when the credits roll. There’s no roundtable discussion afterward.
Then again, the last movie I reviewed was Days of Thunder, and although I didn’t bury it, I did regard it with light disgust. What if– No, that’s just ridiculous. But what if Xenu himself read the review, whereupon he downgraded my clearance and created a force field around the site, effectively barring my entry? Thetan count’s been feeling kinda low recently, and I haven’t seen the little guys since– Oh, god. Better go check the Dyson.
Sure enough, right in the thick of Thanksgiving vacation, e-mails domestic and international began hitting my inbox about the fine Burberry scarves I was peddling on eBay for an astounding $68.00 apiece. Fortunately for me, dealing with minor identity theft was precisely what I wanted to do during my time off, and after a flurry of activity money was duly refunded, offending listings were removed, and passwords were secured. Most things were set right again. Most. Not everything.
I made sure to note my behavior throughout the situation from the get-go, almost as if I had a black box recorder running. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but the first thing that came to mind upon reading the honest bidder inquiries about shipping prices and delivery estimates was a hunch that someone in China had hijacked–or shanghaied, if we may go there–my eBay account. Certainly probability was on my side. When a population exceeds a billion people, the Shyster Count is bound to be higher. But it wasn’t statistics so much as self-loathing and simple racism that drove my hypothesis.
Technically I’m Taiwanese, I suppose, but my ancestors hailed from across the strait. On most days, though, I consider myself white. I’ve simply never liked the food, nor the media, nor the interpersonal customs inherent in my cultural roots. Part of it may be upbringing. I remember pondering, however much a five-year-old can ponder, why my dad faithfully embargoed toys made in China. Product from Japan always got top marks, as did merchandise from the States and, for some odd reason, Macau. But never China, a word that to this day is synonymous with “shoddy” in my thesaurus.
“Poisonous” apparently would’ve been a better synonym, given the news coverage from the past year or so, which I imagine my old man regarded with a feeling of exoneration. It’s the same thing I felt when the auction listings declared these fake Burberries would “bring you and your family happy and bless!” It’s the same thing I felt when I continued to read the Engrish, so delicious in its earnestness. It’s the same thing I felt when I discovered the hijacker had used my eBay ID to give mad props to vendors from China. My hunch had been right, and in a single day an entire country had fossilized itself in my mind as a festering shithole of two parts melamine, three parts lead, and an entire warren of scuttling chiselers.
But even then, when the black box clicked to a stop and all this had been said and sentenced, a mental picture popped up. It’s not the first time this imagery has appeared. In it, I’m doing some kind of missions work in China. Where, specifically, I’m not sure, but it’s a sunny, humid afternoon. Rural. Noisy. I’ve wondered a few times whether I cribbed this panorama from a movie or something, though Hollywood’s traditionally been light on missionaries in China. Panicrama is more like it, actually, because it contains everything I want to avoid the most, and it is more than a little unsettling.