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Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004).
This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).
Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films.
Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch.
When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.
We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.
Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!
In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060? Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?
Today's Rune: Movement.
With Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Hudson all sittin' pretty in Schaefer City these days, and fresh from checking out the Barack Obama 2.0 Inauguration and Super Bowl XLVII celebrations, I finally came around to watching Dreamgirls (2006) -- and liked it. Here in Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1981 Broadway show, the setting is moved from Chicago to Detroit. This fits well with its alternative universe take on Motown and the rise of a "girl group," in this case the transformation of the Dreamettes into the Dreams, with a few attendant nightmares thrown in to keep things spicy. There is a firm sense of historical backdrop, things like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s early tryout of the "I Have a Dream" refrain at Detroit's Cobo Hall during the "Great March to Freedom" of June 23, 1963 (distributed on vinyl by Motown) and the 1967 Detroit riot.
The full story of Motown is a hundred times more compelling than the streamlined refraction of it depicted in Dreamgirls, but for legal reasons, we'll have to wait for the mini-series with the real music. Maybe by the year 2060 or so, somebody will get to see it. Still, in Dreamgirls, Eddie Murphy is good as an amalgam of singers, Jamie Foxx stands in deftly for Berry Gordy, Beyoncé equates with Diana Ross, Jennifer Hudson with Florence Ballard and the Dreams with the Supremes. Let's not forget Danny Glover as an old school manager, plus Anika Noni Rose as the third main Dreamette-to-Dream singer.
Today's Rune: Journey.
Franny Armstrong's The Age of Stupid (2009) does a great service: in a pithy, entertaining way, it is conciousness-raising. How does it work? Several stories are interwoven in a way that draws the viewer in, from multiple perspectives: a world archivist in the year 2055 (played by Pete Postlethwaite, who died earlier this year), dudes from post-Katrina New Orleans, from Mumbai and France; Iraqi refugee kids living in Jordan; an English family that is trying to establish wind power in their area; and Layefa Malemi, a woman living in rural Nigeria. This approach most definitely personalizes the film, an interesting mix of documentary (present or near past) and fiction (the near future).
Much more to discuss with The Age of Stupid, which was released in that relatively brief period between Hurricane Katrina (2005) and the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (2010). It also happens to tie in perfectly with the "Arab Spring," "Occupy Wall Street" and other happenings of 2011 by showing how power structures and resource exploitation are more or less the same around the world -- and tied together.
Today's Rune: Opening.
Another library acquisition evokes Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" It's a book by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics, The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past (2010), that recalls dozens of predictions and images of the future from the perspective of a time now in the past. Some were visionary, pragmatic and now do, indeed, exist in the visible world. Others persist only in the invisible world, at least for "now."
I'm supposing the biggest shifts of the last ten years have been the arrival of a near universality in communications and information synergies and quickening ecological change. In the words of a Detroit man at a yard sale, "What else you got?"
Today's Rune: Signals.
Robert Kenner's FOOD, INC. (2008) takes a trenchant look at agribusinesses and their impact on the average person's living conditions. As with Business, Banking, and Energy, so it is with Agriculture: Bigger is Not Better for anyone except those who hold and consolidate the reins of power and those who make the quarterly profits. Underscoring the importance of seeing this film, everyone has to eat to survive.
FOOD, INC. doesn't come out and say it directly much, but people can choose to bypass the dominant system, or at least subvert it to a degree. Even while others are trying to change it from within.
Support a victory garden (try planting without Monsanto-owned seeds), local organic producers and farmers, local vegan/vegetarian/organic co-ops and eateries, and so on. Reduce visits to fast food joints, cut down on superfluous driving, try some of the energy savings ideas Jimmy Carter put forth in the late 1970s -- they are still valid on this side of Ronald Reagan's diminishing shadow.
In Fort Worth, there is an increasing buildup of certified organic food supply. For hamburger-lovers, Kincaid's cows "are vegetarian so you don't have to be." Spiral Diner offers nicely-prepared and tasty vegan meals; the same owners will soon open an independent movie theater, The Citizen. These foods are slightly more expensive than typical fast-food, but not by much -- and you can get them at most grocery stores to a surprising degree, and at mixed retailers like Target.
I am hopeful, actually, and predict that by 2060, organic vegetarian and vegan meals will comprise the majority of choices by the majority of the (mostly urban) population out of pure common sense, if nothing else.
Today's Rune: Fertility.
Variations on an archetype. What is the same and what is different? As with tarot decks, chess sets and religious iconography, anyone familiar with one example of a set will probably be able to discern common threads or tropes in another.
Within this post are included three examples of Lotería card number 3: LA DAMA. Off the cuff, we can tell they're all from within the last century. Besides that, what? Each casts a shadow, yes. What else?
La Lotería dates back to quite a little while ago (centuries). I wonder what some of the earlier images looked like? How did LA DAMA appear then? How will LA DAMA appear in 2060?
Today's Rune: Signals.
Again, Haiti. One of its surest exports is coffee, produced by pèti plantè and sold increasingly under Fair Trade policies, which means that small farmers theoretically earn a fair price for what they sell. Everything is disrupted now and under a state of extreme emergency. At this point, I can't add much more about the situation beyond what's all over the news. Most Haitians already lived in complete poverty before the quake. My heart goes out to them.
Here's a not entirely unrelated question for the longterm. In what year do you suppose people will say, "I remember when coffee only cost $10 per cup"?
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. Photo by Julius Schorzman, 2005.
