30 Rock, season 3, disc 2
"Did Cranston give you my messages?"
Super Size Me
The third in the trifecta of fast food horror documentaries.
Transformers
Didn't care for this movie much, but we all knew that would happen, so let's move on to the interesting part: The way I watched it. Normally, I like to remove all distraction, sit down, and watch a movie in one sitting. I didn't do that here, and I blame 30 Rock. Watching 22-minute TV episodes is delightful. Watch one, you're done, a nice bedtime story or a responsible half-hour filler. Watch two, it's an hour with an intermission. I've gotten used to it. I like it.
So I watched this movie that way too, without pressure. When I wanted to stop, I got up and did something else. I expect most films to have an emotional arc best experienced in one sitting, but I didn't feel robbed, because it was just a lousy Michael Bay Transformers movie. Go team Jeff!
The Invention of Lying
I love alternate reality, and I love high concept. Even if it turned out to be antithetical to some of my own beliefs, I was ready to be amused and challenged on a long plane flight to Rome by The Invention of Lying. However, this movie had a big, stupid flaw, namely, an inherent unreality that drives a truck over suspension of disbelief. Killed this movie dead for me.
Here's the thing: religion is a part of human existence. Let's start secular and empirical: Religion has shaped culture, history, art, government, and language in every part of the world for every human, everywhere. This is not wispy poetry-and-flowers talk, this is way shit is. Even if you think religion is bogus, it has MADE you in ways you can't control.
So it will be understandably difficult to envision a world without it. You have to rethink everything, including, literally, how you think. What is justice? What is evil? Why wear clothes?
I don't expect Ricky Gervais to have a philosophically defensible rubric here, but some sense that he'd spent some time on the implications would help me like the movie. Genetic advancement? That's your highest imperative? How does anything get done then? Why isn't everyone living in huts? (Because a whole lot of architecture got done because of religion. Architects and engineers are not, historically, renowned for genetic excellence.)
That's the big one. That's the problem I can't get past, intellectually. But then there's another horrible flaw this movie purports: that honesty is cruel. That kindness is only "invented" when someone has the genius idea to lie.
The only reason honesty is ever harsh is because people cherish lies. If you did not, for instance, silently and invisibly nurture the lie that you are OK with losing your hair, then no one could hurt you by calling you "baldy." And in a world where no one lies, there would be no reason to try hurting you. Your deficiencies are fact, not barb. The cruelty that Gervais's character, Mark, endures at his work is dishonest.
Yes, it was played for larfs, but the emotional premise of the movie, one of the reasons we're supposed to empathize with Mark, is that in this world of no lies, people are hurtful to each other with honesty. That kind of internal illogic punches you in the face over and over.
Furthermore, this movie does truthfulness a disservice by suggesting that lies make the world a kinder, richer place. The colors, the lighting, the set design, all suggest a bland, homogeneous, simplistic place. But if you think about the consequences of the absence of deception for even a few minutes, when everything and everyone can only be itself and nothing else -- that would have to be the most varied, colorful, wiggy world you can imagine. Telling lies forces us into being boring, safe, and predictable, not the other way around.
Then of course, there is the poetry-and-flowers kind of stuff that you can't reason around. Love. Art. Feelings. Those things are real and powerful, and impervious to justification. A society that could not lie would understand this implicitly. I suspect a concept as dodgy as "genetic imperative" would be inconsequential as well.
And so, see, I'm putting more thought into this than Gervais seems to have, and the thought I put into it tells me that the movie itself is fundamentally a lie. The setting and premise are so divorced from reality, so bedrock fictional, that it doesn't possess the capacity to enlighten us about the reality we do live in.
I know it's a silly, cheap movie. But I want more. In fiction, we tell wonderful lies to get at wonderful truths. The Invention of Lying doesn't have the capacity to do or be either one.
Transformers
Didn't care for this movie much, but we all knew that would happen, so let's move on to the interesting part: The way I watched it. Normally, I like to remove all distraction, sit down, and watch a movie in one sitting. I didn't do that here, and I blame 30 Rock. Watching 22-minute TV episodes is delightful. Watch one, you're done, a nice bedtime story or a responsible half-hour filler. Watch two, it's an hour with an intermission. I've gotten used to it. I like it.
So I watched this movie that way too, without pressure. When I wanted to stop, I got up and did something else. I expect most films to have an emotional arc best experienced in one sitting, but I didn't feel robbed, because it was just a lousy Michael Bay Transformers movie. Go team Jeff!
The Invention of Lying
I love alternate reality, and I love high concept. Even if it turned out to be antithetical to some of my own beliefs, I was ready to be amused and challenged on a long plane flight to Rome by The Invention of Lying. However, this movie had a big, stupid flaw, namely, an inherent unreality that drives a truck over suspension of disbelief. Killed this movie dead for me.
Here's the thing: religion is a part of human existence. Let's start secular and empirical: Religion has shaped culture, history, art, government, and language in every part of the world for every human, everywhere. This is not wispy poetry-and-flowers talk, this is way shit is. Even if you think religion is bogus, it has MADE you in ways you can't control.
So it will be understandably difficult to envision a world without it. You have to rethink everything, including, literally, how you think. What is justice? What is evil? Why wear clothes?
I don't expect Ricky Gervais to have a philosophically defensible rubric here, but some sense that he'd spent some time on the implications would help me like the movie. Genetic advancement? That's your highest imperative? How does anything get done then? Why isn't everyone living in huts? (Because a whole lot of architecture got done because of religion. Architects and engineers are not, historically, renowned for genetic excellence.)
That's the big one. That's the problem I can't get past, intellectually. But then there's another horrible flaw this movie purports: that honesty is cruel. That kindness is only "invented" when someone has the genius idea to lie.
The only reason honesty is ever harsh is because people cherish lies. If you did not, for instance, silently and invisibly nurture the lie that you are OK with losing your hair, then no one could hurt you by calling you "baldy." And in a world where no one lies, there would be no reason to try hurting you. Your deficiencies are fact, not barb. The cruelty that Gervais's character, Mark, endures at his work is dishonest.
Yes, it was played for larfs, but the emotional premise of the movie, one of the reasons we're supposed to empathize with Mark, is that in this world of no lies, people are hurtful to each other with honesty. That kind of internal illogic punches you in the face over and over.
Furthermore, this movie does truthfulness a disservice by suggesting that lies make the world a kinder, richer place. The colors, the lighting, the set design, all suggest a bland, homogeneous, simplistic place. But if you think about the consequences of the absence of deception for even a few minutes, when everything and everyone can only be itself and nothing else -- that would have to be the most varied, colorful, wiggy world you can imagine. Telling lies forces us into being boring, safe, and predictable, not the other way around.
Then of course, there is the poetry-and-flowers kind of stuff that you can't reason around. Love. Art. Feelings. Those things are real and powerful, and impervious to justification. A society that could not lie would understand this implicitly. I suspect a concept as dodgy as "genetic imperative" would be inconsequential as well.
And so, see, I'm putting more thought into this than Gervais seems to have, and the thought I put into it tells me that the movie itself is fundamentally a lie. The setting and premise are so divorced from reality, so bedrock fictional, that it doesn't possess the capacity to enlighten us about the reality we do live in.
I know it's a silly, cheap movie. But I want more. In fiction, we tell wonderful lies to get at wonderful truths. The Invention of Lying doesn't have the capacity to do or be either one.
3 comments:
I, for one, would like to hear what you thought of "Invention of Lying" if you get up the energy. I saw it recently and had mixed feelings. It sort of felt like a funny premise that didn't seem to totally play out. I was often confused about the implications of no one being able to lie. The wedding was interesting, especially--since we can't lie, we have to say that we're getting married only to procreate. So saying we love someone is a lie?
BTW--Hi, Jeff.
Hey man, good to hear from you! Ok, done.
Thank you, Jeff Z. I figured we would have similar reactions of dissatisfaction about the film. It's our own fault, I guess, for wanting it to be anything other than what it is.
But you're still right--it didn't quite logically work, and the implications of that logical failure are enormous. What you said about "art" and "love" in the film is right on. Just because the characters live in a world in which they can't lie doesn't mean they understand everything completely (especially their own experiences and feelings) and are able to express that understanding clearly and directly all the time. I can't really go along with Gervais' implication that if we take away lying, we would all just be direct and clear all the time. In that world, how would one express an emotion or an experience that one doesn't completely understand?
In our world, this is the role of culture (including religion), what Raymond Williams calls a "structure of feeling." Culture gives voice to human experience; that voice isn't always adequate to the experience, but that doesn't make it a lie.
Thanks again for writing, Jeff. Some day we'll do this in person again.
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