{No. 95: Home Video} [1956] The King and I

Audiences of a certain age remember the now-bizarre struggle to maintain VHS recordings of their favorite programs and movies. During its 30 year dominance, the Video Home System was the singular standard for analog, portable video production and consumption, fully defeating Betamax’s inability to match functionality and consumer preference. The struggle, decades later, seems almost laughable: physically rewinding tapes after viewing, the constant threat of a tape jam, metallic tape depreciation – diminishing returns on each subsequent viewing – and finally physical clutter. Older audiences recall not having this struggle at all; recording anything was a tremendous accomplishment, and doing so was a marvel of technical skill and fiscal independence. New audiences, infants who can use Netflix instinctively, also recall not having this struggle given the death of the VHS when digital media, the DVD, took over.

Access to nothing and everything is almost the same. (Almost) every piece of media is available instantly now across too many platforms, so figuring out what to watch is no longer limited to what is currently on a shelf, but how long a person will spend scrolling through endless content. Both might be paralyzing, but for different reasons. For the film critic and historian, having access to an obscure title with a click is essential; but the critic likely has a decision matrix and a mental map of availability. The average viewer? The person looking to unwind after a long day? No clue, and why would they? There’s no structure or routine that the VHS, then the DVD, provided. A person’s evening would almost be better if the Internet made the choice for them, and just quit.

In 2001, my family first made the switch from VHS to DVD. The handsome Disney and Mel Brooks collections on our shelves would soon be decoration. Our first DVD was The King and I, seeing as it was the title my father recognized out of our library’s massive collection of four. At the time, my 43 year old father connected dearly with the 44-year-old movie; he was a fan of musicals of all kinds, and a fan of Oscar winner Yul Brenner as the precocious, permabanned-from-Thailand, eponymous King Mongkut. The King and I was an ideal introduction to DVD technology. It included an Overture, Entr’acte, and Exit Music to chop The King and I into halves and chapters. A VHS user would to continuously fast-forward and rewind if not interested; the DVD user pushes a single button and the only way to degrade the movie was to treat the DVD like a frisbee.

[1978] An Unmarried Woman

Thousands of years of male dominance has told women to shut up, sit down, and do as they are told. This has always been wrong and a lot perplexing to even the most progressive mind. How could an entire gender be designated “other” and inferior? Women’s liberation had been a long time coming and it used a strong media strategy and political campaign to break the shackles of expectation and subjugation. Men, oh men, did not like this one bit; while women went high – garnering lots of support and progressive change, men – somehow turning a positive movement into a negative attack on their every fiber and being – went low, or so it now seems. The underside of the women’s liberation movement, hiding in plain sight but without the thrust to make it stop, reared its ugly head in late 2017 after decades of rumor and manipulation, rug-shuffling, and horror and contempt.

Sexual assault, the unwarranted advance and action of one person toward another (overwhelmingly men preying on women), has most likely always been a deep seed in human culture.  But until the clock struck midnight in the waning months of both 2017 and of personal privacy and freedom, it has been quiet.

This is no longer the case and it is hardly a coincidence.

The backlash to men no longer being able to corral women – “own them” – was a Red Pill dismissal of their right to organize and present themselves as human beings. It’s belittling to everyone involved because a ferocious right to one’s own body and morality is no one’s to give but one’s own self. Chauvinists dismiss a woman’s right as precious and meaningless; they are wrong. “Nice guys” present as harmless, but are reptilian and have hijacked someone else’s perception of morality as their own; they too are wrong. Not everyone is at fault for the way the world has unraveled, but it everyone’s individual and collective responsibility to dig deep and bridge the gap between acceptable behavior and horrid, life-threatening, unwanted behavior. 

[1986] The Mission

Can a film be considered a religious text? Yes: if it openly professes a love for one’s gods and saints, openly proselytizes for the purposes of religious conversion, or maintains a strong interpretation of a written or oral religious text. In a tech-dominated world it is a means of spreading the Word visually. In other words – a modern world where information is more valuable by the second than by the sentence. It is too simple to say that our attention spans are shortening and that the only way we learn is force-fed through television. It is too simple to say that the only way to teach is to show and not tell. It is interesting that in a world with more choice, the options for information transmission have shrunk.

No: a film isn’t a religious text. How can it be? For a film to be successful it has to enrapture; tell a story, but not preach; fulfill character and plot narrative. A successful film has to draw from and reflect back its creation onto its audience – a religious text is instructional and a one-way guide to Salvation and Surrender. Or: can it be up to interpretation? Can a film be slick enough to work as a religious text for visual learners and a narrative for those who choose to see religion as a plot point and not an instruction manual? 1986’s The Mission comes close.

The Mission is a quasi-retelling of the betweenmath of the Treaty of Madrid that realigned Spanish/Portuguese political borders in Central South America at the expense of native peoples homes and livelihoods. In the center of this realignment are Jesuit priests, who have successfully(?) converted a tribe to Christianity bringing with them industry, housing tenure, and service to a higher power. The Jesuit priests, led by Jeremy Irons’ Father Gabriel, and eventually Robert De Niro’s Captain/Father Mendoza, seek to retain a relationship with the native tribe in spite of differing attitudes from the colonizing envoys – the Spanish are laxer than the Portuguese. They (Jesuits) see their purpose as one direct from God, by way of salvation and prosperity. They (envoys) see their purpose as one direct from God, by way of salvation and prosperity.