Here’s the way life is these days:
1- People take an action and STUFF HAPPENS.
2- Those happenings become EVENTS – and the most noteworthy, salacious or even occasionally the most interesting among them are reported to us by other people and/or sources as INFORMATION, nee NEWS. (Note: Current or just friends and family gossip).
3- This NEWS of the day, whether personal or broadcast internationally, can simply be new facts or stories we’ve acquired. But way, way, waaaaaaay too often it is quickly turned into CREATIVE CONTENT. (Note: Either by the professionals currently on strike (#WGAStrong) or anyone with a cell phone)
4- That CREATIVE CONTENT is then heard, watched, produced and/or ingested via platforms round the world. (Note: Not only on TV and film, or via music, theatre and books but in far, far, far too many personal and public conversations on social media #IKnewTikTokWasGood..OrBad…ForSomething).
5- And then, just like that, there is COMMENTARY on all of the above, often before we’ve even had the chance to fully digest it.
6- Which then sparks bigger EMOTIONS, which fuels further CONVERSATIONS, some of which become new HAPPENINGS and EVENTS and CONTENT and even more COMMENTARY, which all feed on each other in a kinetic continuous cycle of….
US.
It all happens so quickly, and at such dizzying speed, that ultimately all we are left wondering are the answers to just two questions.
#1 – IS ANY OF THIS REAL, and if so, which part?
And —
#2– WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED – because the only thing l am now is TOTALLY LOST.
Yes, too many of us are left feeling that way by how fast it all flies by. But what’s even worse, at least from this Chair, is never quite knowing exactly what to absolutely BELIEVE (Note: Not to mention what to believe in).
I mean, even when you know what is LIKELY true on one subject,, it’s hard to believe much of what so many adamant, or even smart, people are saying about so many other things.
Especially when you are forced to get stuck in the weeds of misinformation, arguing with idiots about the ethicacy of —
DRAG QUEENS?
Seriously???
What about Shakespeare, 18th century France and every man in the Continental Congress?
Not to mention…
CLOWNS!!!
Aren’t clowns, drag? I can testify that it is…I mean, THEY are.
When I was a very little boy I watched The Howdy Doody Show on TV and there was a clown named Clarabelle.
And she was played by a……MAN!!!
And no, she/they is NOT the reason why I turned out the way that I did.
This week saw the season six return of Netflix’s Black Mirror, and in its very first episode, Joan Is Awful, it brilliantly tackled all of the above and more.
Almost immediately we are introduced to a silver streak haired, upper mid-level tech manager, Joan – the kind of self-involved wealthy-ish supervisor of something or other that most of us have personally encountered or watched from afar being a very characteristic kind of awful to everyone in her life.
She’s bored with her loving boyfriend, bitches about her coffee to her gay assistant, rolls her eyes at having to be bothered firing an employee in person, text cheats with her oily ex, whines about her life to her therapist and then returns home that night to start the cycle all over again.
By all accounts, she IS awful.
Not quite Trump-y awful, there are new definitions for that, but awful nevertheless.
That is until she and the bf snuggle in that night and turn on their big flat screen to search for a new, of the moment TV series or movie to watch on Streamberry – the Netflix doppelganger platform where you click your remote and do the all too familiar content browse.
One seems too creepy, the other is said to suck, and still something else is too close in theme to something they’ve already watched before.
But suddenly, there is something on screen that looks interesting. It’s a new series entitled JOAN IS AWFUL, with the silver-streak haired image of a woman that looks a lot like the Joan that we see on the couch – but not exactly.
This Joan is billed as Salma Hayek with a silver-streaked wig and wardrobe that is unmistakably Joan. (Note: And yes, it is indeed THE Salma Hayek).
And when the real Joan is forced by her boyfriend to click on the fake Salma Hayek/Joan image, it begins playing out the events we’ve just witnessed in the real Joan’s life in real time, complete with physically accurate actor replacements of everyone else she has just interacted with over the course of that day.
Now forget that we are watching this episode of Black Mirror ON Netflix, which for all intents and purposes IS Streamberry, which includes the very same dulcet DUH-DUM audio tone we all so look forward to hearing once we’ve pushed our remote and chosen our viewing treasure for the evening.
All you need to know is that it all gets lot more complicated, nee confounding, nee troubling, from there – but not in a way we don’t recognize.
And it raises a few questions:
#1- Is it legal for a streaming platform to just take your life and film it? Well, it turns out it is. I mean, do any of us read the fine print of what it says when we click accept?
#2- Have any of us been filmed doing stuff we didn’t want others to know we did and had it broadcast somewhere? Well, um, we can’t really know for sure. But if you have you glanced on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook even once in your life and tittered at the misfortunes of someone else you are still part of the problem, and not in a solution-oriented way.
#3- Will artificial intelligence, aka A.I.., evolve to the point where what we did hours or even minutes ago could be broadcast to millions across the world? Well, okay, it already can be. But could it happen with computer-generated ACTORS playing US on a mainstream service like Netflix?
Well, why do you think there is a WGA strike to begin with?
I spend all this time on Joan Is Awful not merely to urge everyone to watch the opening episode of a superior series that is sort of a mash up of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, by way of Orphan Black.
Though it is pretty great and you won’t do much better if you’re looking to be entertained, diverted or, heaven forbid, prompted to think for an hour.
Rather, it’s to consider in real time what constitutes our daily realities and attempt to understand exactly how aware and present we are in them. Not to mention, what we want to do with them.
On a cosmic scale, Joan is not quite as awful as we think but in reality she is a lot more awful than she ever believed she was.
If creative content can serve any real purpose in 2023 it’s to show us that we need to dare to do better as we to share our mutual stories of survival.
Before forces beyond our control commandeer our every experience and put their own spin on what is left of our humanity.
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” – Snow White
notes from a chair 