Sell You Are
Cellular is a good example of movie much enhanced by its DVD. It's a thriller, not a particularly good one... sort of a single lane plot like Speed. It doesn't even rise to the level of psychological thriller, which at least indicates some mental activity by someone in the film.
But, one of the bonus features went into this whole concept of what the cellular phone is doing to our society. It's been around a while now and I guess I never gave it that much thought because I keep the phone very much at bay in my own life. I'm sure this will clarify a lot for many of you who haven't already figured that out.
But, I do notice more and more people mindlessly blathering on cell phones while in public, restaurants, stores... almost no place is safe, even airlines are now talking about allowing them en route. They already are on board, just at those jacked up rates, but those phones came in pretty handy for those on hijacked flights on 9/11.
There's a huge trade off. We're never going back to the past. Those phones have saved many lives. But, a generation of kids is growing up with a very limited sense of privacy or downtime, and that's a shame. With VoIP, we'll be constantly at the umbilical line off some cell. It will be up to each of us to create our own limits.
Marshall McLuhan called the phone a hot medium, and it's becoming less so. Hot means condensed, your cues are all coming into your ears. I guess that's why I avoid it. I really like to see the facial expressions & body language to get a read on someone. I was a communications major in college, the first one my school ever had and we learned about meta-language... all the communication that goes on besides the actual words. The words themselves are like 2% of the total message
So, now we have cells everywhere, phones omnipresent, yet the more conversation takes place, the less is actually said. A guy on the DVD gave an example of a woman (always a woman, right?) who was actually narrating a walk down the street, "now I'm in the bank, now I'm in the deli", fascinating stuff huh? Don't you wish you were the lucky hubby on the other end of that call?
In the film, the lovely and spirited Kim Basinger has been kidnapped by crooked cops looking for hubby's tape of their killing fun. She gets some hottie on his cell & he proceeds to do every maneuver taught in stunt driving school all over LA. I would have glossed right over this angle had it not been for the highly informative bonus feature on the real life scandal in LA Ramparts Division which ultimately resulted in the conviction of many detectives.
These guys practice justice on the roughest gang terrain around and they live by their own set of rules. They mete out justice with almost no oversight from the community or LAPD, which parsed them out to their own little fiefdom. They were selling mucho drugs on the street and pocketing the cash, lots of it. The killed and framed at will.
This is the background of Mark Furman, OJ framer. As OJ said, "You can believe they framed a guilty man or an innocent man, one or the other". I believe they framed a guilty man, the guy should have fried. But, that's what happens when you have a city with out of control cops who get videotaped beating a black guy and then get cleared by Simi Valley socialites... fear of payback.
The shmucky Brentwood cops got overruled by LA who wanted the trial to be brought downtown to avoid another nasty riot. Bowing to social pressure they ended up with a predominantly black jury, who, as we found out so clearly, after the trial, live in a very different world from white Americans, and know all to well that yes, dozens of police will lie.
It's a code cultivated the same way in fraternities, businesses, PTA, partnerships, social clubs in Stepford, Survivor Island, DC.... if you want in, you say the right things to the right people, you play the game and you play it well and you get in on the special group that has all the nicest homes and coolest jokes and handshakes. And once you're in, that's your family, your homies... you don't turn on your own, right? The end justifies the means, right?
But, one of the bonus features went into this whole concept of what the cellular phone is doing to our society. It's been around a while now and I guess I never gave it that much thought because I keep the phone very much at bay in my own life. I'm sure this will clarify a lot for many of you who haven't already figured that out.
But, I do notice more and more people mindlessly blathering on cell phones while in public, restaurants, stores... almost no place is safe, even airlines are now talking about allowing them en route. They already are on board, just at those jacked up rates, but those phones came in pretty handy for those on hijacked flights on 9/11.
There's a huge trade off. We're never going back to the past. Those phones have saved many lives. But, a generation of kids is growing up with a very limited sense of privacy or downtime, and that's a shame. With VoIP, we'll be constantly at the umbilical line off some cell. It will be up to each of us to create our own limits.
Marshall McLuhan called the phone a hot medium, and it's becoming less so. Hot means condensed, your cues are all coming into your ears. I guess that's why I avoid it. I really like to see the facial expressions & body language to get a read on someone. I was a communications major in college, the first one my school ever had and we learned about meta-language... all the communication that goes on besides the actual words. The words themselves are like 2% of the total message
So, now we have cells everywhere, phones omnipresent, yet the more conversation takes place, the less is actually said. A guy on the DVD gave an example of a woman (always a woman, right?) who was actually narrating a walk down the street, "now I'm in the bank, now I'm in the deli", fascinating stuff huh? Don't you wish you were the lucky hubby on the other end of that call?
In the film, the lovely and spirited Kim Basinger has been kidnapped by crooked cops looking for hubby's tape of their killing fun. She gets some hottie on his cell & he proceeds to do every maneuver taught in stunt driving school all over LA. I would have glossed right over this angle had it not been for the highly informative bonus feature on the real life scandal in LA Ramparts Division which ultimately resulted in the conviction of many detectives.
These guys practice justice on the roughest gang terrain around and they live by their own set of rules. They mete out justice with almost no oversight from the community or LAPD, which parsed them out to their own little fiefdom. They were selling mucho drugs on the street and pocketing the cash, lots of it. The killed and framed at will.
This is the background of Mark Furman, OJ framer. As OJ said, "You can believe they framed a guilty man or an innocent man, one or the other". I believe they framed a guilty man, the guy should have fried. But, that's what happens when you have a city with out of control cops who get videotaped beating a black guy and then get cleared by Simi Valley socialites... fear of payback.
The shmucky Brentwood cops got overruled by LA who wanted the trial to be brought downtown to avoid another nasty riot. Bowing to social pressure they ended up with a predominantly black jury, who, as we found out so clearly, after the trial, live in a very different world from white Americans, and know all to well that yes, dozens of police will lie.
It's a code cultivated the same way in fraternities, businesses, PTA, partnerships, social clubs in Stepford, Survivor Island, DC.... if you want in, you say the right things to the right people, you play the game and you play it well and you get in on the special group that has all the nicest homes and coolest jokes and handshakes. And once you're in, that's your family, your homies... you don't turn on your own, right? The end justifies the means, right?
posted by Intervision at 3:01 PM
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