Theoretical Cinematic De-elevations - P.A.W. Print

I finally saw it: The Ring. Intrigued long ago by the TV advertisements, I wisely decided against seeing it when it was in theatres. I live alone; having no one to wrap my terrified arms around at three in the morning, no deep and sonorous snoring to listen to as a well-muscled chest rose and fell, I said no. I was curious, but I lived alone.

Time passed however, I was comfortable in my new second-floor Philly digs in the up-and-coming, on-its-way-to-gentrification part of town, and I was even fully acclimated to and appreciative of the beautiful bay windows in my bedroom which, when I had the blinds open, gave me a downright luxurious view of the courtyard and the big east coast wintry tree which dominated it. Full summer now and the leaves green and bright as the heavens sent down rain during this wettest summer in decades. With the blinds closed, the branches showed up in dark relief, shadows on the other side of white blinds day or night, the courtyard safety beam making them visible even in the deepest evening.

And it was in fact the courtyard light dutifully standing sentry that gave me comfort the night I finally went to bed after a movie marathon with a girlfriend belonging to NetFlix. I had mentioned my curiosity about The Ring and she had ordered it. I agreed to watch it (she'd seen it in theatres) but warned her, in a comic tone, that she would be spending the night if I got scared. Matching me note for note, she declaimed dryly, "Oh no, I die in my own bed."

So the afternoon began in jest, with good friendship and much kidding. Hours later, when we marveled that movie night was ending at 9:30 p.m., how had that happened, neither one of us was exhausted and it wasn't two in the morning; hours after we'd followed The Ring with The Cooler and what we had expected to be a light comedy, Steve Martin in Novocain, our questions, our objections to the progress of the plot were preface to my as yet unnamed obsessions.

My friend couldn't believe the boy's mother had not besieged him with questions. "He seeing things, talking to people, and she ain't askin him nothing. Disregarding him like she did at the beginning." My protest was dual: why does she keep fucking with the horse when it's obvious from the get go that she's spooking him. Far as I'm concerned, she drives that horse into the river. But then, blonde white women have been excused their blundering abuses of power for centuries. I fume at her focused stupidity as the boat's propellers chew the horse up. I also can't believe she lets the father off so easily. She has one day left to live (the warning is seven days after viewing the video you die) and she lets the father/husband slam the door in her face because he does not want to discuss the events and people in his life that have caused him such pain. I wouldn't give a lily-livered shit. I'm about to die, motherfucker, and your past holds all of the answers. But he slams the door and she just tilts her head and walks away.

I have never been a head-tilter and my neck ain't bendin' now. For the thing I found most horrifying about The Ring was not the way Samara kills her victims (no, I'm not going to ruin the ending), but the fantasy that snuck up on me about the mother and son who survive, my questions about how they cope with the way they are forced to survive (no, I'm still not going to give away the ending). How does the mother handle new relationships? How does she live with a man, marry him, love and sleep with him the rest of her days and not tell him she and her son are murderers? How do she and the son bear this guilt? Do they ever share their predicament? Does the son hit adolescence and pick up a drug habit? He was already lookin' pretty bug-eyed in the film. Does the mother begin to drink?

What is truly horrifying is the presence of these questions in my psyche, their haunting residence in my brain. I care. I care about complete fictions whose purpose was to scare and entertain me for approximately two hours. The horror is that they are real to me, and before I catch myself I worry about them with a mixture of deep pathos and familial (we are a human family) concern. I worry as a mother would: about their futures.

To propel the horror even further, to place this in context the academics would say, is these celluloid bodies take up the space in my brain set aside for the imagination, for human feeling. They live and breathe and grab my heart with potency, to a degree unmatched by the bookish characters I have known and loved. I was with Jason Bourne through every twist and turn of deceit he unraveled as he sought his identity and defined his supremacy; I loved his victories and felt his wounds, but once the book was over I did not sweat his future. He was real while his tale played out in Ludlum's pages, but then he receded. Certain moments will always come to mind when I think of the books or pick them up, but all of the Bourne films I have found unsatisfying, rather tepid, not nearly as engrossing or energetic as Ludlum's prose.

Jason Bourne lived while I read him and then he faded. No haunting. No human concern. He was less real than the full-bodied human beings far from being imprisoned on a strip of film. I know because I catch myself in stray moments wondering and worrying about Bobby Goren and what he will do if that Australian woman, rich now, commits another crime. I have a shocking affection for him that no television character should merit. On my backburner remains the intention to dig up some old Vincent D'Onofrio films. I hate that he is married. I mean, I know my hope of happening into Dr. Carter's life like a sunny day in Chicago is daydreaming bilge water; well, Perrier, but Goren sneaks up on me, shows up when I don't expect, invades my psychic space, capturing my tender feelings.

I never felt this way about Sherlock Holmes, never granted him this degree of intimacy. And that is the nature of my warning, if not uttered far, far too late. We are caring about celluloid dreams more than we are our fathers and cousins, sisters and brothers. We have ceased to relax in front of the TV or the film screen; we have become intimate with what we find there. Celluloid images realer to us than the humans we resist touching, wrestling with, loving in our real daily lives. It is easier to care about a fictional cop who can save my day than to brave accepting an invitation to coffee from a real African American brother.

They live in our heads, acquire real estate in our hearts, even for those of us long past adolescent fantasizing. It has gone beyond, dangerously beyond, the fact that film requires no imaginative work from us. We don't need to construct for ourselves the room Jason Bourne awakens in aboard the ship that saves his life. We relish the little details we learn about Bobby Goren that explain his fastidious knowledge and intrepid psychological querying which, united, lead to discovery of the true criminal. We miss or delay phone calls to find out the latest. They, with their living breathing celluloid bodies, have moved in, overtaking our imaginative muscles, benevolently watching them atrophy, as they slyly cause us to care, more and more deeply, about them.

Is the answer the death of film and a forced resurgence of the primacy of reading? Impossible. We've already lost two generations and the babies and toddlers now are well versed in their Elmo, their Barney their TeleTubbies. Where do we turn? How do we turn back? How do we feel again, prepare ourselves, our children, to feel real emotions, real palpitations brought on by a real loved one's hand on our shoulder?

How do we not create a void so enticing we willingly go to sleep to live in it, prepping the way for the feared dominance of machines?

No answers. They say awareness is the first step. I dip back into literature, forced by the oncoming fall semester and two English classes I'll be teaching. I had planned to incorporate film and video, technology, bells and whistles to keep my 21st century students interested, attentive.

But I don't think so. Witnessing what has happened in my own psyche I decide that no, there will be no film or video. We'll have to imagine the black box on our own, Fulton's "second elevation" brought to us by Colson Whitehead. It will be a tough semester of dealing with words, author's words, and not a screenwriter's dialogue.

I want them to care about characters who will not move in and poach psychic and cardiac real estate. I want them to look at the literature and tussle, tussle with ideas, see what those ideas and that tussling bring to their lives.

I want them to be afraid, not of a well's cover, but of a deeper darkness, of shutting out a light that fosters human connection, human thought, productive brain activity.

I want us to give our hearts to those who breed, not human reflections captured on film. Humans play, yes, downtime is essential, but let us not give our heart and soul, our anima, to sophisticated toys.

FILM

Jersey, a Quarter-Life Crisis, and Sundance

High School Revisited in Strangers With Candy

PIGLFF Celebrates Ten Years of Queer Cinema in Philadelphia

Lost Film Festival

Cinema India! Brings Bollywood to Philly

THEATRE

A Potable Joyce: A Watered-Down Version of Ulysses

The Brick Playhouse Gives Voice to Local Playwrights

SOCIETY

Garden Varieties: Big Tea Party

Love for Sale: Profile of David Henry Sterry

Sex Cop: Josh McIlvain is on Patrol

Exploring Body Work at Hot Import Nights

COLUMNS

The Masked Perfesser in Dublin

Ghost of Fuddruckers

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