Thursday, January 22, 2009

Predatorial Patron of the Arts


Today I was thinking about our eyes and the movie screens. In film class I learned that originally film strips were supposed to be eyes shaped (more oval) but were produced as rectangles because it was more cost effective. I guess it goes to show you that money shapes just about everything. Anyway, people were already used to looking through windows and at picture frames, so films strips were nothing for people to get used to. We are kind of lucky that we have only one field of vision or that we don't have eyes on the sides of our heads or else focusing on film screens might be a tad more difficult. Predators, the type of animal that usually has both eyes facing forward, are designed to watch.

What we see on the screen is sometimes all that there is. I was thinking about our field of vision and how we can't see behind us and how you can easily imagine a set in front of you and a film crew behind you, capturing everything that you see and hear.

Life was a play, but we have evolved past this Shakespearean mindset. I think that, today, life is a film.

This evening I watched some of the first season of the reality television series The Mole. It seems to me that the first season of a reality program is the best because the participants do not have any predisposed expectations or archetypes. So far the show seems to be fairly good. It does not encompass a lot of bullshit and forced romance that most reality shows do.

There seems to be more reality in fiction. Writers write what they know and base characters off of real people. The world that an author or filmmaker paints is real to the audience for at least a short period of time. It is engrossing.

We only really know what we are told. Someday it could get to the point where people or news or entire species are fabricated, and we wouldn't know the difference. Frankly, I am not yet convinced that Michael Jackson is a real person.

Speak easy,
Neil

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