01.11.08
18_Wired
_As I sat down the other night to watch the movie Trainspotting, two thoughts ran through my head:
1 – “It’s a drug movie I don’t trust it”
2 – “Maybe I do trust it, because they all have cool accents.”
_The reason for my mistrust is the fact that drug and mob movies constitute the genre of movie that is the most pathetically formulaic. There are only two drug movies I have ever seen (Requiem For a Dream, and now Trainspotting) that have impressed me. The only mob movie that has impressed me was The Godfather. All the rest are just bad copies off of a few good ideas.
_What most people don’t realize is that at the heart of every mod and drug movie is one thing: a betrayal. In mob movies the betrayal is more literal, where one member of the mob will hand another member over to the police or try to have the first member killed. In drug movies, the betrayal comes when the drug betrays the user by eventually wearing off. Every high must end and at the end of that high is the terrible reality of…well…reality.
_In The Godfather, the betrayal by Fredo in Part II is culminated when a furious Michael grabs Fredo and says “You broke my heart.” It’s the only time, that I know of, in mob movies, where the lead mobster is cognoscente of the fact that whoever betrayed him was not supposed to, due to some bond of loyalty.
_In Aronofsky’s Requiem For a Dream it is so easy to see the betrayal, so easy to know what is going to happen, that we are appalled at the end when the characters do not see it coming. That is the shock of the movie, that the characters we see on screen do not know what they are getting themselves into, when we know from the very start.
_Trainspotting takes the cake. The betrayal in Trainspotting, which is carried out by the main character, no less, is brilliant because by the time it happens, the viewer is so disillusioned by the characters that are being betrayed, that it doesn’t even seem like a betrayal. It seems like justice.
_The entire mob/drug genre seems to be setting out to glorify the idea of being a mobster/drug dealer/both. No one likes to hint at the real dangers of the job: being betrayed by everything and everyone you know. Everyone seems to be content to see how these mobster and drug dealers, who we all know are headed for a fall, are going to spend their money. Maybe instead of pumping out these sorts of movies we can just make a show sort of like MTV’s Cribs, but about people who got rich off of doing illegal shit, instead of people who got rich off of doing stupid shit. That way everyone is happy. The stupid mob/drug movie enthusiasts get their fix, and I never have to hear about Scarface ever again.
- Kid
01.03.08
17_Update: Complete
_Folks, The Digital Scene has gone through its first upgrade. Instead of posting on my parent’s computers, I am now posting on my very own ASUS Eee PC. Sure it might be small and sure it might have little memory space, but that does not bother me. The circuitry in my own head has enough room for everything I’ll need to remember and my scope is large enough.
_I hereby name my new computer Deck, after the never-really described “decks” used in William Gibson’s groundbreaking novel Neuromancer. Yes, I’m sure that Case’s deck had more than one gigabyte of free memory space and I’m more than sure that it had better than 800×480 resolution, but considering how much he had to carry that thing around, I doubt he would have wanted anything larger than this.
_How this concerns you is simple. You have no excuse, and neither do I. With the ability to pick up and rip off wireless signals almost anywhere, I will be posting more an you should be reading more. Boot up your minds. We’ve only just begun.
_All that being said, I am off to do what so many of my friends have talked about and I have dreamed of: use my computer in my bed. That’s right, of all the recent advancements in technology, the one I most desperately want to be able to take advantage of is the ability to sit in my bed and waste my mind starring into a computer screen.
- Kid
