Wanna Buy a Watch?

I first saw Cool As Ice the fall semester of my junior year in college, so this would have been 1994, a full three years after it's less than impressive three-week run in the theaters, and four years after Vanilla Ice's meteoric rise to (and subsequent fall from) fame due to the success of his #1 hit, "Ice Ice Baby." Being able to say that Cool As Ice is not the worst movie I've ever seen is more a testament to the fact that I've seen a lot of bad movies, and that City Slickers 2 - The Legend of Curly's Gold exists. I bring up Cool As Ice not to take a shot at the easily targeted Vanilla Ice, but instead to illustrate why I was watching Cool As Ice in the first place.

My junior year in college, I lived in the unimaginably tight living quarters of 5 guys sharing a 2-bedroom apartment. One night I came home to see all of my roommates sitting in the living room, and one of my roommates standing up in front of everyone with a VHS tape in his hand, presenting the movie that he had corralled everyone to see. He put in Cool As Ice and for the next 100 agonizing minutes, he got angrier and angrier as we laughed at the stupidity of the film. As the credits were rolling, he exploded, "What's wrong with you guys, you know that Vanilla Ice is cool, I don't know why everyone makes fun of him, I mean, he's really cool, and just cause he hasn't had a hit record in a while, people make fun of him, but that's crap, he's cool and a brilliant musician."

We all stared at him dumbfounded not knowing if he really meant what he was saying, but he was obviously upset, and he grabbed the tape out of the VCR and ran out. At which point we all started laughing.

What could make this 20-year old man, who obviously had some sort of crush on Vanilla Ice react so extremely to our mocking? Is it that he really loved Vanilla Ice and was angry about us making fun of him, or is it because he really knew that Vanilla Ice sucked, but had been so fooled by the marketing machine that created Vanilla Ice, and had spent so much time and emotional energy loving Vanilla Ice, that the fact that Vanilla Ice obviously sucked and was so openly mocked made his whole world-view come crashing down.

In today's world, everything around us is fake, yet we eat it up anyway. Do you think a 14-year-old girl that just got Ashley Simpson's new album for Christmas really cares that Simpson was totally exposed as a fraud not once, but twice? First on Saturday Night Live, and then again, much more dramatically, at the halftime show at the Orange Bowl. Does this surprise anyone? This is the way it is, this is the way it's always been. Now granted, Ashley Simpson at halftime at the Orange Bowl, with her "punk rock" outfit on, and an anarchy symbol on her "drummer's" drum kit, is so much more extremely phony than the Beatles' manager taking these leather wearing ruffians from Liverpool, and putting them in white shirts and skinny ties, but at it's root is the same thing, creating something to sell to people.

The music industry is more at fault than anyone about this, but the movie industry does it too, how else can you explain Ben Affleck? It happens in politics and news, note the recent news that CBS faked memos for Democrats, that the Bush administration paid off a black commentator to support the No Child Left Behind act. Does any of this surprise anybody? Do people think that reality TV is actually real? You can manipulate footage by editing so easily to create whatever you want.

If you do think all of this is real, and then get angry when you find out it's not, then that's your fault.

Nothing you read, see, watch, or hear is real. And if you can't see that, then you're blind.

Take a look at two of the most popular films of 2004: Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ. Both movies are passed off as real. Fahrenheit 9/11 as a true statement of George Bush's ineptitude and deviousness; and The Passion of the Christ as a historical account of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. But Fahrenheit 9/11 is obviously a film that manipulates its footage and sources to create a desired effect, to demonize George Bush. The Passion of the Christ strays from the gospels by using the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, an early 19th century nun and stigmatist who is held up by some as a prophet, but then passes off the film as gospel truth. Pointing these fallacies out in no way is a comment by me on the quality of either film, both of which I thought were very good, but passing them off as truth to a public that is in dire need of something to inspire them is manipulating and quite frankly wrong. Mel Gibson manipulates the story of Christ's Passion, by using non-gospel information, in order to present it in the way he wanted to present it. Michael Moore manipulates the actions of George Bush, by cutting and looping footage in a certain way, to present George Bush in the way that he wanted Bush to be presented. I'm reminded of a bit of footage I saw in a media class in college of Adolf Hitler, dancing a jig after accepting the surrender of France in June of 1940. This footage was played all over the Allied countries, showing Hitler stepping back and stepping forward as if he were childishly dancing at his victory. This enraged people in the Allied countries and showed Hitler to be a monstrous tyrant, but in actuality it was doctored footage of Hitler simply stepping backwards and forwards, looped over and over again and sped up to appear as if he were dancing. It was a masterful stroke of propaganda for the Allies, ridiculing and demonizing Hitler, but it was a fake.

I'm not saying the Adolf Hitler wasn't a monstrous tyrant, or that George Bush isn't a fool, or that Jesus Christ's Passion wasn't important, in fact putting all three of these men in the same sentence makes me slightly uncomfortable, but the point is that they're all both victims and beneficiaries of manufactured images, in the same way that Ashley Simpson, Vanilla Ice, and Beatles are. (side note: it's sort of unfair to include the Beatles in with Simpson and Ice, as the Beatles obviously are of a much higher quality and standard than the other two, but they serve to illustrate the point.)

In 1964 Phillip K. Dick, no stranger to paranoid philosophizing about reality, published The Simulacra, a book in which the entire government is fake, and the president is a robot. George Bush kind of looks like a robot·

Should we all then become paranoid like Dick, never trusting anything that we see, hear or read? In a way, yes. I think there is room to be functional in non-trusting paranoia. The main point is to not believe anything is 100% accurate, start there. Just assume that whatever is being presented to you in no way shape or form is 100% true, maybe it's 99.99% true, but that's it. When you watch your stupid reality TV programs look for the subtle edits, the manipulation of timing, check for the way someone's hair looks or the angle of the light, and notice when they strategically throw in a cut-away of someone rolling their eyes, when someone else says something. That cut-away was probably shot 30 minutes earlier and the person rolling their eyes did that in response to something completely different (probably because of something the producers told them to do) but it served it's purpose, to dictate "reality" to the viewer.

So if you want to be one of the vapid masses of people who buy Ashley Simpson records, read People magazine, believe that "George W. Bush" isn't an android placed in the presidency by a shadow government of the 6 people who run the world through their consolidation of all media outlets, then go right ahead, stick your head in the sand and believe everything that everyone tells you. But for the rest of you, I'll let you in on a little secret, the moon is hollow, and is actually a space ark that came from another star system and is inhabited by aliens who will invade the Earth this summer on July 29, and the only one who will be able to save us is Tom Cruise!