You and I both know that quizzes and “memes” are the most popular non-niche element of blogs nowadays. The comments on this blog (and others) attest to that fact pretty clearly. That being said, they’re not the most substantive of expressions. Since I’ve been completely burned out about politics ever since last thursday (I’ll explain later), I have been having an impossible time trying to come up with some sort of commentary on the whole Gomery/Election thing. I’ve spent the last couple of days waffling between taking the time to do a good, detailed and considerate post on the state of affairs in Canadian politics, and just some more pop culture fluff. My dilemma is the fact that nobody reads my blog for the stuff I find interesting (Canadian politics) and the stuff that’s more fluff-ish attracts my friends.
Being the clever boy that I am though, I’ve managed to figure out a solution. I will enjoy the best of both worlds by talking about my personal favourite movie: Dark City. This way I get to be the arrogant, erudite know-it-all I love and everyone else hates, and I get to talk about something that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. And of course, even though it’s two days late, I will attach a new song and review below.
Anyone who has lived with me (all seven of them) know I have a strange fascination with this movie. In recent years I’ve actually discovered that I’m not the only person pulled in by this film. Roger Ebert actually recorded a lengthy commentary track for the DVD release of the film, and has a new one planned for the upcoming Director’s Cut. Naturally, he sees the film the way a film history would see it, homages, allusions and appeals. Since I’m kind of a retard when it comes to that sort of stuff, I’ve had a harder time quantifying my personal interest in it.
Obviously there’s the darkness which appeals to me as a night-owl. I’ve always been more comfortable in the dark. That’s not to say I walk around in a leather trench-coat and read Anne Rice “novels” (which still seem more like Penthouse Forum letters gone haywire to me), rather I’ve always been more comfortable operating in the shadows. Even now, at 12:39 in the afternoon my blinds are down and the lights are off. The other day my mother even commented that my pupils were contracted to half their normal size in the middle of the day. The point is that while other people are estranged or uncomfortable in the shadows, I find them secure and familiar. Which is why I’ve been able to immerse myself in darker films such as this. It’s also why I’m usually outside during a party, or at the very least trying to strike a compromise between standing in the corner, and talking to people.
More importantly, it asks a very common question in a very uncommon way. We all perceive reality on a very primary level. I can “see” the car parked on the street. I can “hear” it being driven. I can even “touch” it if nobody’s looking. (I suppose I could tongue it too, but that’s just creepy.) But there is so much that transpires between that event and our perception of car, and we are by the very nature of our consciousness unable to understand the entirety of that process. What seems like a simple series of events is in fact a very complicated transaction.
- Light reflects off of “car”
- Eyes refract that light onto our retina which process it into data
- Optic nerve carries data to our brain which processes data
- Brain compares image to past experience
- We understand that the object we see is a car
Dark City forces us to ponder something unnerving, or at the very least difficult to appreciate. Our entire life, and reality as we know it is processed in this way (with obvious variations for circumstance.) Does this process in fact alienate us from reality? Is reality the existance of the world around us, or merely our perception of it? Some people would ask “who cares?” at this point. But I believe fully that this schism of the mind is the source for some of our greatest fear and uncertainty. It would take another year, and the sledge-hammer philosophizing of the Matrix to ask these questions in a more accessible, but I believe that Dark City approaches the profundity of this debate much more intuitively. In the film (and the Matrix as well) a character learns that reality and the world around them are not the same. In time as well these characters learn to alter their reality, and while this process is obviously a metaphor for our own ability to change our own realities merely by altering the way we perceive things, the two films branch off into different territories.
While in the Matrix Neo sets off on a crusade to “liberate” people from control, Dark City hits the nail on the head. In this film, the main character takes control of his reality and makes some significant changes; but what is not seen is him changing reality for others. The insight of the film is understanding that what makes us individual, what makes us in fact human is not our different emotions or physical characteristics, nor is it control or the lack thereof, but rather the mask through which we perceive the reality of the world around us, and how that world perceives us.
For this week’s music feature I have uploaded a track from an artist named Buck65. While you could call him a hip-hop artist… the fact that he covers a Woodie Guthrie track on his particular album suggests that there is more to the story. Check him out.
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