THE GREAT GADFLY:

Reality Used To Be A Friend Of Mine

We'll pay to procure a special piece of communications technology to carry on our bodies 24/7 so we can have the ability to share with others such significant moments of our lives as, "I'm on the bus", "I'm eating a bagel", "I'm about to cross the street" and "I think I have a wart growing on my left index finger". Overhearing the narratives of cellphone users is like listening in on some postmodern fusion of sudden fiction and haiku.

Meanwhile, when we want to really encounter a memorable experience, we can tune in to my favorite subbacultcha of current American pop culture, reality television, where we can let the participants of "Fear Factor", "Survivor" and "The Bachelor" do all the legwork for us as we sit passively by and mouth "oh my God". Perhaps we will call a friend the next day on our cellphones and discuss what happened to the perfectly-edited marketing professional on her wild and woolly blind date in the Australian outback. After we let our friends know we're on the train, that is. And that we forgot to bring the new American Idol soundtrack album to work with us today. Because that is OUR reality.

Bissell's Believer article puts it so well:

"It is extremely difficult even to make the concept of reality interesting. Good or strange things that happen are often considered "unreal". "You have to deal with reality," one is occasionally told, as though it were somehow obvious that reality amounts to difficulty. Equally pervasive is the sense that reality is more intense than most of what happens in the course of a normal life. This is douftless what the hip-hop generation is talking about when it speaks of "reality" and "keeping it real". But strangeness and exctiement and difficulty are no realer than anything else. They are only parts of reality. What people who want it "kept real" are actually saying is this: Do not surpass my expectations. Do not overrule my reality."

Today I saw the documentary, "Capturing the Friedmans". In making this film, the director has found a way to essentially plant a collective hand grenade in the hearts of everyone who sees it. It's simply one of the most powerful films I've ever seen. But then again, I'm a documentary geek.

Sometimes I'm asked how I can have such an affinity for documentary films and not enjoy the reality television boom. "It seems like you'd be in verite hog heaven," one friend said.

There's a broad difference. In "Capturing the Friedmans", a film about a family ruined by its patriarch's pedophilia, one of the sons explained why he made home movies of family arguments thusly: "I videotape it because I don't want to remember it." In other words, film is like a zip disc for his personal history, to contain files he can't hold in the hard drive of his mind. As we're introduced to the members of this family, it's impossible not to wander through the coping and defense mechanisms they've built throughout the years of shame, fear and humiliation they've encountered. This is no gimmick. None is needed. We don't watch to thrill vicariously to carefully constructed adventures of skillfully selected participants. This family is random. This family is us. We watch to try to understand.

Another example is what is most likely my favorite movie of all time, "Grey Gardens". The story of these eccentric mother-and-daughter shut ins has more narrative value, character and wit than most scripted movies...and they were simply living their lives. Keeping it real, Bouvier-Beale style. This was how they rolled. There was no need for eating live centipedes or wearing silly mask-helmets, nor did they need to be placed in some contrived environment. Being who they were was enough, and again, we watch not because we wish we could have the excitement of their lives, but rather because we're fascinated by how these people live, how they came to be, who they are.

And this, basically, is why I can watch everything Errol Morris has ever done, yet gladly pass on "Road Rules".

Reality has become a strange word in recent years, particularly since 9-11, which could be thought of as a monumental, traumatic melding of reality and "reality". There's no denying the truth of what we saw on our televisions that day (or out our windows, for that matter). Yet, in the weeks to follow, we were barraged with inspirational "true-life" profiles of survivors and families of the fallen, and we were even served up a collectors-edition deluxe "you are there" feature-length documentary. "Collectors edition"? I suppose something has to compliment the heap of 9-11 coffee table books released around the same time.

Reality has become a commodity. It's a great time to work in marketing, because one can literally sell people a complete worldview and we'll come back for more. More and more of us are happy to have our lives lived for us, to be told what we need and where to go and how to get things done. It's always been this way, but the line between autonomy and coersion seems to be blurred now more than ever.

Reality is what one makes it, and over the past decade, more and more people want their reality made for them. As a result, an entire industry has been built based on snugly caging reality in a tight pair of quotation marks and sold as "entertainment".

Meanwhile, I'm actually beginning to think I'd enjoy a reality television show chronicling some poor schmuck's day-to-day cellphone conversations. Ode To Joy, indeed.