Substance - DC goes to the movies: "Kick it up a niche"

I slouched in my seat, curtains of awe-struck eyes and gaped mouths enveloping my theatre chair, young ones and dads with juicebox stains on their Oxford shirts, teenagers with shoes that mom bought for them, hip grandparents clutching metro-sexual struts as they unleash their herd of offspring's offspring into the multiplex with chocolate smeared finger tips and sugar-kicked legs flailing...

I slouched, feeling dirty. Watching destruction porn. Or...disaster porn...what-have-you...

I felt like an animal rights activist picketing zoo exhibits, like Jack Kevorkian kicking over card-tables inside the games-and-activities room at the convalescent home, disruptive disputes from the snobby would-be-literati... I walked out of The Avengers at the 90-minute, assholiously-assured of myself that the final 37-minutes of the film would be nothing but explosions. I peed in the glossy bathroom, no one inside it save the robots that spat soap, shot water streams, blew hot air or oozed hand-sanitizer, waiting for me to finish and freshen...

I come back in and buildings are blowing up on the 90-ft screen. High definition.

The downer in me wants to harangue their insensitivity - but their gut reaction would be to suggest, maybe, that I politely fuck-off... And that's fine.

This world is not my own - I've allied with others... the groupthink of the Underground. But it isn't so black and white, hasn't been for a while, not even a century, really. I'm easily overwhelmed by the glossy-stares surrounding me, looking up at the screen as Rihanna saves them from holographic-horrors as big as monstrous tidal waves...the perverse curling of their mouths into satisfied smiles as fire-furled missiles zoom over roaring fields of gnashing bodies of aliens and chiseled hunks hi-yaw-ing their perfect, metallic-cut limbs in choreographed dances of green-screen augmented jujitsu - there's bullets everywhere but the names over the marquee will never get hit - extras are running through the streets, screaming their heads off as they chew-up the exploding scenery for the 2-seconds of screen time they get... Lava and flipped-over cars and fire-spewing space-jets that eradicate flying cars that can travel back in time to fix the fucked-up future that we've long-ago triggered some ominous countdown...

Shit gets blown to hell.

This guy does a back flip and lands on two dudes heads before breaking their necks with his telepathic powers that he's heretofore been ostracized for until some Wizard told him he held the key to saving the world and that he should train for an epic battle that he is destined to win and thereby win the super-model who kinda flashed flirty eyes at him in the first scene but wasn't sure if she wanted to date a guy who could read her thoughts...but that was before he killed the monster that leveled the Empire State Building by surfing atop a crashing helicopter and hanging-ten on the blades before sending their shards down its gaping gullet...

And boom.

Roll credits. Please turn in the 3-D glasses you just dropped two extra dollars for...

And I remember why I'm attracted to the other world. Emptier theatres with dust-coated carpets, chairs that haven't been replaced since 1998, and modest screen sizes - Boring movies that effectively use symbolism, Obscure movies that clash together experimental montages to comment upon the apathy of mainstream society, Weepy-movies where people live in shoe boxes and talk about their feelings and find deeper, cosmic meaning at unassuming locales like the laundromat.

And I can draw the parallels fairly easy between movie-worlds and music-worlds. These mega multiplexes are playing the mindless escapism while my financially-strapped art houses are playing the weird think-pieces. Mainstream terrestrial radio, the stuff that dominates Billboards charts and feeds fodder to the NOW That's What I Call "Music" -volume 49...

While I'm so far niched I'm like a spore clung to the over-turned pedal of a moss-shielded flower fed with just enough nutritional sunlight sucked up from its spot under an umbrella of brier burrs...

Some of us are so turned off by all this noise - And yes, we feel self-conscious that we're coming off as grumpy old codgers who are yelling at the clouds - Somewhere in the last twenty years or so, going to the movies, to the big blockbusters, became akin to seeing feather-maned, mascara-winked, pyrotechnic-pushed hair-metal bands inside a roaring sports arena - Cinema started down the path of away from substance 'cuz substance don't sell.

And I start thinking about the same things that irk me in music-world. It's an old complaint, a tired tale, to rail against the -all-flash- of frothy-pop radio.

Not all of us make our mind up so quickly on the new hit single from The Whatevers or the scandalous new music video from Those Other Guys or all the grammys piling up for the The Soundalikes, The Throwbacks and the Party-Starters...

"Oh that's just all crap..."

"But I like it..."

I excused myself to the bathroom and let them all have their explosions. There'll be nothing I can do to save the salivating mob - save for going home and listening to some of my favorite albums by artists who are currently slaving away inside musty basements to make their next minor masterpiece that will be seen as brilliant-in-my-eyes-and-maybe-the-eyes-of-a-few-dozen-others, but that's it... I'll listen to that sweet song from a pure heart and write this with jittery angst and tell myself that I'll cleanse my cultured side, detox my discerning arts' side by diving into highly provocative, experimentally rendered, confrontational works, dense, knotty, weird, eye-splitting, heart-wringing, soul-rattling works...

But who will I talk to about it later?

Dude, like that one scene where the hat-maker has to chase the peg-legged overweight woman out of his store because she tried to kidnap young Pierre, the nine-year-old runaway circus boy who took refuge there from the exploding austerities of war-torn Paris...and that montage where the rose-in-her-teeth turns into a knife and she starts throwing them fish flying through her kitchen window...

Like that scene...

We can't all really talk to each other about art, really, is what it comes down to...

Roving gangs - roving niches.

Are ID cards have grids with check-marks. Into this, but not into that. Into that, but not into this...  Oh, Oh...you're into that? Puh-leeeze. Oh, but wait, you're into this? That's like my favorite album of all time...let's get married.

But maybe if you subjected yourself to the degradation of disaster-porn this summer, and you want to commiserate, then, maybe we can get along - no matter how nuanced our respective niche. Tell me something good to get into, to cleanse myself. Tell me something that you like that might challenge me...

And I take heart in knowing that each niche is still out there, fighting the good fight - for whatever it's worth, the worth of "art's sake..." - Just as the mega-movie-plex peddles out fireball-flumed shit storms - endearing, local-level enterprises, ripe with sincerity and heartening devotion to fostering the creative spirit of the community, like, say the Mitten Movie Project, continue to persevere.

There's always the next weird song - and the next weird movie - giving me the inspiration to go on another weird rant... But the walls are up, higher than they were, it seems. People are palpably aware now that they are just not the type of person who reads The New Yorker. Or I only read the Sports section.

Those people, it felt to me, were all aligned together (against me?) in that theatre - enjoying their destruction porn. Blithe in the boom-booms.

And I decided to relax. The Underground grows every day, I reminded myself. There's no need to worry about what they're doing up top, on the Billboards, on the big screens.

They've got their noise.

We've got our own thing. You sure to find someone who'll get what you're getting-at... I think, reassuringly, that that's a good thing.

~
There ya go, Tom, that's the official 3rd-to-last post... Maybe we can put on a show?