Gone Girl. David Finchers latest. youtu.be/Ym3LB0lOJ0o It is a oddly constructed mystery. But it really isnt about the mystery, but rather the response to the mystery of a wife who has gone missing. Gone Girl is an excellent depiction of what I call The Spectacle of the Real (edbrenegar.typepad/leading_questions/2013/05/the-spectacle-of-the-real.html). In the film, nothing is actually real, except maybe the chief detectives skepticism about what has actually gone on. Everything else operates on the level of hyper-reality. According to Guy DeBord, The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. Fincher does an excellent job of showing how the medias image of the two protagonists, Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, becomes a gathering point of all kinds of people who want to be apart of the simulation. Take any other dramatic event, like a football game or a misstatement by a politician or the weight loss or gain of a celebrity, and all of a sudden, you have a gathering of people who want to make this hyper-event central to their existence for today, this week or maybe the rest of their life. I knew a guy forty years ago for whom the assassination of President Kennedy became the center of his life. Reality is not what is projected on the screen. Reality is what you do with your own mind, your own hands and feet, and in relationships with people to whom you are accountable as a friend or family member. Reality carries with it the consequences of our decisions and actions. Most of what occupies our attention is not this sort of reality. Go see Gone Girl, and realize that it is a statement about the world we live in. Then, try to identify other kinds of hyper-reality.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:48:12 +0000
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