The Decline of Civilization, Part II

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers--"Room At The Top" (mp3)
Lisa Germano--"All Around The World" (mp3)

There's a great scene in the movie, Being There, where a randy Shirley McLaine is so turned on by Peter Seller's character that she completely misinterprets him. She's trying to get him into bed, but he is a simpleton, a gardner working at the White House, who has been mistaken as a genius of few words, and whose few words are dictating national policy. Shirley McLaine's character, of course, is intoxicated by the apparent power Sellers' Chauncy Gardner has. All Chauncy Gardner really likes to do, though, is to watch tv. And so, when he declares, in response to her advances and while staring at the television, "I like to watch, Eve," she takes this as a sexual preference of his and masturbates in front of him, to her own satisfaction, while he continues to watch tv.

Here's what most people like to do: watch.

That's it.

Far be it from me to extrapolate from the small, small sample of this blog, but I do think I notice a pattern that the more provocative a post Billy or I put up, the less likely it is to get a response. I can almost picture people squirming in their chairs. Does he really believe that?

I'm also basing this opinion on work and fantasy football message boards and everything else that leaves me convinced that's what people like to do (and not do). They like to watch to see what others will do or say. They'd rather hear an impersonation than try one. They'd rather acknowledge someone else's letter to the editor than write one. They like to stay out of the spotlight. They like to see and to report on the train wreck, but they don't want to be on the train. Oddly, it's not only a safe position, but it also can put them completely in the center, maybe moreso than the actors themselves. They can make an entire social career out of relating the crazy things that other people have done.

In this political season, however, there is an enlarged subset, and that is those who bravely speak their mind on the "comments" section below various political blogs, using clever nicknames. Using the moniker "Thomas Paine" or "flowergurl," one can safely say the most outrageous or offensive or ridiculous things and all that will come back in return will be attacks against a false front. I doubt any of these pseudonymed posters ever even go back to see what others have said in response. It's guerilla warfare for the timid. I guess the authors of the Federalist Papers knew what they were doing, eh?

Still, I'm saddened to see so many of my countrymen sidelined in ways large and small. And I, unfortunately, share their passive fear and inactivity. Consider the brilliant challenge, "What issue or situation would it take to get you out in the street protesting?" I am as befuddled as everyone else while searching for an answer. Sometimes I feel all high and mighty because I don't waste as much time watching television as most other people I know, but I'm not sure I can claim anything better.

Let's face it. We live in a time when "putting ourselves out there" is just too great a risk. This is a problem in everything from relationships to blogs to message boards. And those are situations involving friends and intimates. God forbid we should be that person standing on the corner of Georgia and 3rd holding an Obama sign and waving at passing cars and showing our positions for all the world to see. No, we're the ones in the cars that pass, and maybe if we don't recognize anyone around us, we'll honk in support. But mostly, we just like to watch.

"Room At The Top" is from the Tom Petty cd, Echo, and "Around The World" is from the Lisa Germano cd, Happiness. Both are availabe at Itunes.

The Decline of Civilization, Part 1

Jason Ringenberg (with Steve Earle)--"Bible and a Gun" (mp3)
Tokyo Police Club--"Citizens of Tommorrow" (mp3)

From Wikipedia: In the United States, the X-rating originally referred to a non-trademarked rating that indicated a film contained content unsuitable for minors such as extreme violence or explicit sex and thus was for adults only. A Clockwork Orange (1971) originally received an "X" rating for its sexual content. Today, many critics recognize it as one of Stanley Kubrick's most important films. The uncut version of the film has been released on DVD with an "R" rating.

So I went to Target yesterday and bought A Clockwork Orange. Something about it just didn't feel right. Oh, I was happy to find it there (I had seen it there last week) because I wanted to use it for class. But I felt an odd disconnect.

See, when a long time ago A Clockwork Orange received its original "X" rating and I was only 14 years old, there was such a forbidden feeling I had about such a movie, not a forbidden fruit, but something different. Which is odd, because it felt very different from, say, the X-rated sex movies we would go see at the drive-in within the next 2-3 years. Because we knew some little info about sex by age 14, but a movie like A Clockwork Orange, which would be nominated as Best Picture for 1971, seemed to be a completely different kind of mystery. We knew there was probably some sex in it, but that didn't seem to be the point. Instead, there was something about the movie that was so "adult" that we couldn't possibly hope to comprehend its meaning. What was it about? Divorce? I certainly didn't know anyone in 1971 whose family had gone through that. Children out of wedlock? Nope, I didn't know anyone. Interracial marriage? Ditto.

We really couldn't figure out what the mystery was, but Malcolm McDowell's face on the movie ads looked as unrepentantly evil as anything I knew to that point. In my 14-year-old mind, I drew the hazy conclusion that the movie was about something that was far more real and monstrous than anything I had seen. I wasn't that wrong.

Now, any fourteen year old with $20 can grab a copy of the movie off the rack at Target and take it home with no one blinking an eye.

Now, I'm showing the movie to my class of seniors in a high school setting, as a supplement to our reading and study of the book.

Now, on some scale, the movie is considered somewhat tame.

For what was once "X" is now "R," and so I guess we are supposed to think that Clockwork's scenes of rape, orgy, full frontal nudity and completely random violence are commonplace enough to merit the lesser rating that the film now gets.

But anytime you move an "X" to an "R," you are acknowledging that something has shifted, and encountering the movie at Target has called that to mind for me. Now, I don't pretend to be one of guys who bemoans the downward spiral of society; in fact, I'm usually in the other camp, claiming that openness, honesty, reality, invisibility, all of those things are good and far be it from any of us to try to censor the world for ourselves or anyone else. But Clockwork.....

Kubrick's novel, to me, is highly flawed, because he first explores a world where teenagers left to their own desires do the most awful things, and then after an interval of attempted societal rehabilitation, he concludes that the problems will solve themselves, that the only things needed to turn amoral teenagers into responsible, upstanding citizens are time and age. In short, the kids are alright, they'll grow out of it. The American versions of the novel cut off the chapter where that conclusion is reached, and the movie doesn't go that far either.

But either way, you're left with an awful choice--either the criminal teenagers are conditioned by society so severely that they literally become sick every time they confront these primal evil urges and that is how they are "cured," or they are simply temporary monsters who then become adults. Both ways, to me, are downhill, and not a story I necessarily want told as casual viewing available on the shelves at Target.