...where distraction is the main attraction.

Monday, June 9, 2008

La Question humaine

Last week was strange and I thought I'd drop a small note about it here in case I can't get another entry in this week.

I have not kept secret the fact that my job is 50 hours a week of soul-suffocating insanity. I was beginning to pull together the first of several emails preparing coworkers for my eventual voluntary departure. Sort of a heads-up that the following things are broken and make my job generally intolerable. So, I prepared to get the writer energies to serve this purpose only to arrive on Monday to find out that I was given a substantial raise. Like, wuh? Raises are almost as rare as quality TV programming at my place of employ. So, just as I came to grips with this idea on Friday, I was informed that I have credits. On TV. Real ones. On Supper Club (quality programming) on Planet Green and This is Why You're Single (dunno, at this moment) on TLC. As a Production Accountant. Incomplete sentence.

Who would have ever thought I would have gotten my first credits this way? I mean, I have Production Assistant credits on a couple of straight to video nuggets, but that's it.

I'm not really sure how to feel about any of this. I've heard myself thanking people for each thing, but it doesn't sound like my voice and it doesn't seem like my life. I don't know.

***

I watched a film and a movie on Saturday. First was Heartbeat Detector (La Question humaine, much better title) which, though released by the French, is a European Union film. The lead, (Mathieu Almaric) a psychologist for a European chemical corporation, is given the task of investigating the CEO whom the board thinks has lost his mind. The film goes completely into the dark reaches of the EU soul after that. The loudest theme in the film is about the dehumanization of language, how we create ways of speaking to legitimize our actions. Then this very language robs us of our humanity once we put it into use. The language of present-day corporations are paralleled with the verbiage used by the Nazis in the step by step assembly of the Final Solution. There are times in the film when the two are combined and one doesn't know where the corporate words begin and Himmler's instructions end. It is horrifying. The film's intensity forces it to leave behind the plot 2/3s of the way through, then eventually abandons all imagery for blackness and a voice speaking fractured prose.

Then, five hours later I watched Sex and the City. The polar opposite, if you will. I will not be too harsh on the movie or Sarah JP. But stylized television acting does not translate to the very big screen. The result is two-and-a-half hours of ACTING. Shatner would be proud. Otherwise there's not nearly enough sex and the male characters are pushed to the far periphery. It could have also used some more of the series' humor. Though I was never able to entirely relate to series' characters, I did admire the unique voice and humor that lived in each episode. I feel it was all abbreviated to squeeze a half season's worth of story into a single 2.5 hour feature. Aside from that, the film wasn't designed for me, so my only true honest criticism of it can be of its tight embrace of the luxury consumer culture that I wish would just come crumbling down already.

Anyway, good Monday wishes to all! Make sure you listen to some good music this week.