Feature Posts
This is the place to make connections between the films I encounter...
they may be more similar than meets the eye.
they may be more similar than meets the eye.
2.) Instinctively separate yourself from the distinction between the real and the fake. As for the distinction between real and fake in Real Life, the two sort of mesh together. After all, reality TV is Hollywood's version of portraying reality, thus, some contradictions are inevitable. Tom Teicholz of Los Angeles Review of Books, made a comment that I believe hits home about the line drawn between fiction and non-fiction: "Real Life made clear what has now become fact: people in Hollywood have no conception of reality, but every confidence that they know how to deliver a fake version of it". While viewing the film, we realize that in the process of filming a reality program, we are seeing unnatural responses and actions of the family being recorded. However, in the same hand it becomes natural for the family to act in a strange manner when multiple cameras are intruding their personal space. Therefore, as the audience, even our perception of reality versus a performance becomes skewed.
Within the first minute of the clip above, Lonesome Rhodes presents a dynamic enthusiasm for advertising Vitajex - a male enhancement supplement, of sorts. Of course, the business is hiring him to promote their product as a well known entertainer. However, his excitement that rattles the meeting seems so absolutely genuine that as we watch him unfold his plans to hop on the Vitajex express, it become hard for us to measure how much of a performance his introduction really is. Is Lonesome's enthusiasm sincere? Is it entertaining enough that we simply don't care if it's sincere or not?
In each of the films mentioned above, credibility and trust of the main character is usually established, but in the most negative way possible: Brooks as a self-centered fraud dressing in a stereotypical Arizona getup, Bloom as a violent thief, Shields as a narcissist who cares little of other's consequences in wake of his success, Betty as a mysteriously optimistic, robotic wannabe actress, and Lonesome as an alcoholic vagabond. We technically have little to no trust in any of the main characters, which sort of dampens the ethos factor right off the bat.
Before you know it, you've already forgotten.Overall, the point lies in the key words, "...involuntary", "Instinctively," and "Unconsciously". Whether you view my guidelines for the simplistic route to take in order to forget what is actually going on during a film, you will forget anyways. The director intends on the audience to get lost in the relatable aspects of the dreamers, lose grasp on reality and fiction, and lean heavily on pathos. While viewing films - especially satirical in the nature of the five films mentioned above - performance is key when trying to manipulate an audience into much needed memory loss. It provides some sort of escapism for the viewers, therefore we become encapsulated in a scene or overarching theme just because our eyes, ears, and thoughts get lost in the façade of illusion that becomes entirely too believable.
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