The Darkening Mirror

Surrounding Los Angeles are hills both bleak and black. They are the barren sentinels of an arid landscape and if it were not for the winding highways carved through this desert, the whole scene could be mistaken for the far side of the moon.

For a passenger gawking out of an airplane window, these mountains offer a proper welcome to a region cursed by its own geology. Their dull colors and hulking shapes form a vivid reminder of the natural forces that have created Southern California.

These hills are real. The palm trees are not. Though they line the runways of the Los Angeles International Airport like a merry contingent of hula dancers, they do not belong to the harsh land that forged the mountains. Like so many others in LA, these palm trees are simply visitors.

Which is one of the reasons why most writers have found it impossible to describe Los Angeles as anything other than a dream. It is more a concept than a city, like a restaurant chock full of ambiance but lacking in tables. Even the geography suggests illusion since there is no real center to anything and everybody seemingly lives 35 minutes away from everybody else.

All of which is appropriate. After all, this is the city that formed around the film industry as an ironic hybrid of cultural center and company town. Dreams are to Los Angeles what smokestacks once were to Pittsburgh: the primal symbol of the business that fuels the engines and greases the wheels.

But the business of Los Angeles is fantasy, and despite the elusive nature of such a commodity, it has become the primarily item of export for the entire nation. American movies and TV shows have rolled across the globe like a conquering army of invincible shadows. Videotapes of Rambo and Rocky are popular in Kathmandu and in the streets of Beijing, vendors hawk posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger right next to the obligatory portraits of Mao Zedong.

It's a small world after all, and the planet's name is Hollywood.

Or as the German filmmaker Wim Wenders once explained, the Americans have colonized the subconscious.

The great dream factory has engulfed the world as if it were a modern substitute for the old Hegelian bugaboo so quaintly called the Universal Spirit. Though these mass produced images are spat out like sausages from a meat packing plant, they have become the basis for an international phenomenon that simultaneously strokes the viewers' imagination and denies any real or rational engagement. Instead, it simply invites us to sit back and enjoy the show.

Hollywood insists that it is in the business of producing art and entertainment. Unfortunately, post-modernism (which is the dominate term of this post-everything age) has relegated art to the ash heap of history, much like leisure suits and the Soviet Empire. This theoretical maneuver was done, in part, to accommodate the overwhelming influence of mass media and advertising. If you can't beat them, redefine everything in order to join them.

As for entertainment, who cares? The word itself is slippery and bear baiting was once considered quite amusing. Besides, the term is usually invoked as an easy excuse for the ideological function of mass media. Basically put, to control what people see is the first step toward controlling what they think. The entertainment value is simply part of the ideological package (good or bad).

But the "looking-glass" model of mass media is not invalid, either. In many ways, the media is a reflection of its society. Film and television both function as a mirror, and mirrors offer an image which we mentally amplify. That reflection of our face which we see in the looking-glass appears full size, but it is actually no larger than our fist. Likewise, our perception of media images are routinely filtered through a distorting haze of assumptions, convictions, prejudices, and desires. We carry the extensive weight of this baggage with us every time we enter a theatre, which may explain why theatre seats have such a short life span before they break.

Despite the convoluted nature of this process, film and tele­vision have become the predominate means by which we view our world. The media is our mirror, not because it actually reflects reality but because we mistake it for reality. For some, it is a mistake made out of naivete. For most, it is an error caused by the sheer and overwhelming persistence of the material. There is no way to escape the influence of television and virtually the entire world knows the name Schwarzenegger.

Brute pervasiveness has provided mass media with the illusionary quality of communal bonding. Hip theorists of the TV generation argue that a working knowledge of The Brady Bunch is a solid substitute for a national culture. Of course, no one can live on white bread alone. So a thick slice of Cosby is offered on the side.

The commercial demands of mass media precludes any real engagement with reality. The media is simply a forum for the consumer marketplace and the ideal audience is composed of people with the greatest amount of disposable income. In other words, adolescent males. The hard-ball politics of demographics has forced most of Hollywood into a wild chase after testosterone. That is why the term "chick movie" is bandied about as an insult, one that strongly suggests that estrogen has no economic value except in relationship to the boyfriend's wallet.

Ironically, the enormous economic factors that makes mass media so powerful are the very same forces that reduces it to a marginal level. The world reflected in this mirror is false and the gap between the viewer and the viewed widens every day.

There is a mathematician at UCLA whose house is systematically being rearranged by the ever increasing seismic activity in Los Angeles. Thanks to his scientific curiosity, he has developed a peculiar fascination with charting the slow but resolute pro­gression of his main staircase as it follows a westward journey away from the rest of the house. After each quake, he excitedly calls his brother in Ohio to rely the newest measurements.

Much the same is the function of a film critic as we lurk before the darkening mirror, in a fearful wait for the next, low rumble.