Watch More! Do Less!

When last I watched something on Hulu, I was treated to an advertisement for Hulu Plus, which almost seemed like a thematic sequel to the commercial with Will Arnett that ran during the Super Bowl. I didn’t mention that one in my post reviewing the Super Bowl ads, but I remember now just how puzzled I was by the message that it presented. Arnett played a space alien who presented himself as a member of a vast conspiracy among people in entertainment and broadcasting, observing with malicious glee all of the people around him who remained glued to television programs on their mobile devices while they sat in cafes or just walked down the street.

Obviously, the ad was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but to simply watch it, it’s hard to see any acknowledgement of the joke. I would expect that an absurdist portrayal of the would-be criticisms of a brand would show the salutary kernel of truth under the surface, but I don’t see that in the Will Arnett Super Bowl ad. Instead, it presents the criticisms of television viewing habits in an over-the-top way, but it also presents those actual habits in an over-the-top and markedly negative way. Arnett explains the evil plot that is modern television, and everyone around him sits in utter obliviousness, staring obsessively, vacantly into their screens. There is no point of contrast; there’s nothing that encourages viewers to both laugh at the absurdity and recognize the appeal of the product.

With the new commercial that I’ve seen run on Hulu itself, the company seems to have stripped the joke out of the equation altogether, leaving only a negative portrayal of their own product. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Either Hulu is engaged in some bizarre campaign of parodying itself, or my values are so hugely out of step with those of much of the culture that these advertisers see certain images as edifying while I see instead as disturbing.

That dichotomy is seen in the images of the new commercial alone, but it’s really driven home by Hulu Plus’ latest tagline: “Make the most of everything.” The ad shows a man on what I presume to be a Stair Master at a gym. I can only guess at the machine he’s using, because we don’t see it. The shot remains tight on this face and upper body, perhaps deliberately restricting our visual awareness of the fact that he is even doing anything. The man holds the handle of the machine with one hand while holding a mobile device in front of his face with the other. And as the camera lingers on the image of his distracted, staring expression, the voiceover says, “Make the most of your workout.”

How? I assume he means by doing the exact opposite of what this man is doing, seeing as he doesn’t appear to be aware of the fact that he’s working out at all. Now, I’m no fitness expert, but I’m pretty sure that if you don’t feel anything and you don’t have to concentrate on your exercise in any measure, you’re doing something wrong. The visual presentation really doesn’t give me the impression that he’s making the most out of his workout by adding television to it. It gives me the impression that he’s not getting much out of either activity.

“Make the most out of your lunch break,” the voiceover says next, at the same time that the scene changes to an image of a woman in business attire sitting on a bench outside and staring at an iPad on which she is watching an episode of Lost. The expression on the actresses face is marvelously discomforting, and it can’t be unintentional on the part of the advertisers. I wonder what the director said to her. Perhaps, “Try to look as if you’ve just dropped acid and you’re watching a dragon tenderly make love to a unicorn on a bed of rainbows.” They even have her raise a fast food beverage cup into frame and clumsily place the straw in her mouth without so much as moving her eyes. It’s an exceptionally unsophisticated image.

Nobody should look as rapturously mindless while watching television as Hulu has the subjects of its ads look. This is doubly true if the person is outside at the time. With the professional woman as with the man at the gym, the camera stays pretty close, but by all appearances it is a nice day outside. And yet Hulu’s concept of making the most of a lunch break on that day is to focus completely on an escapist fantasy and to never, ever glance for a moment at the sun. There’s no joke behind this as with the alien conspiracy ad; they’re actually saying that.

When I started to notice the popularity of watching television on DVD, I thought that there was something very positive about the changes to the way we consume media. At the same time that I miss the unifying experience of knowing that the rest of the country is watching the same thing at the same time, I considered it a worthy trade off, knowing that programs themselves were coming to be seen more as things to be sold directly, rather than just as means of delivering advertisements, and thus as things to be controlled by them. I liked the idea that Mad Men could make money because it was appreciated by its audience, and not just because it sold products. I realize, though, that that idea isn’t entirely accurate; the advertising is still primary, and it still affects the progress and direction of shows.

Now, not only does secondary advertising still hold sway over good media, the idea of entertainment as a product unto itself has proven to have a dark side. With companies now profiting not just from the consumption of their media but from the consumption of media in general, there are advertisers whose jobs have come to be to sell us on the very idea of watching television and movies, and to try to convince us that it’s better for us if we consume more, even as much as possible.

It’s only natural that a company tries to present its product as eminently beneficial to the consumer, especially in contrast to its competitors. It’s just less familiar, and quite unfortunate that in the cases of products like Hulu Plus, the major competitor is the entire outside world. Consequently the vision of such products’ ultimate benefit to your life is a situation in which you no longer have a life at all. “Make the most of everything” is a powerfully, and dangerously disingenuous slogan. With the haunting images of media addiction presented by such products as Hulu Plus and Digital Copy, about which I’ve written before, a far more fitting tagline would be, “You may as well not leave the couch.”

What I've Been Watching: Twin Peaks

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any commentary about film or television here. Toward the end of changing that, it seems worthwhile to point out that I recently finished watching the entire run of Twin Peaks. It was wonderfully compelling, in large part because of the skillful blend of soap-operatic, don’t-miss-an-episode plotlines, potentially revelatory themes, and wonderfully artistic imagery. Despite an almost perfect pilot movie, a thoroughly satisfying season and a half, and a finale that was the most eye-poppingly surreal bit of television I’ve seen since the last episode of The Prisoner, Twin Peaks has also allowed me to experience, twenty years after the fact, one of the most rapidly disappointing declines in television history.

I am assuredly not going to be saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times since 1991, but it is stunning how clearly season two of Twin Peaks demonstrates the destructive potential of television networks. If any controlling interest in work of fiction has ever made a more glaring error in judgment than ABC did in insisting upon a solution to the Laura Palmer murder, let me know about it. I cannot fathom how anyone could have thought that that would be a good idea, when even the most casual observer should have recognized that that was what held the show together, that without unresolved questions about the slain prom queen the show didn’t really exist.

If they’d wanted to resolve the storyline out of some sense of duty to their audience, I suppose I can understand that, especially if they were confident enough in the rest of the series to expect it to maintain its appeal on its various other merits. From what I understand, though, the network never had much faith in the show, even when the public was obsessed with it. Of course, the ratings at the end of the first season and the beginning of the second should have made it clear that the accountants and executives didn’t know what they were talking about, and they should have thus been motivated to stay the hell out of the way.

I can begin to understand insisting on the resolution to the initial A storyline, but how in God’s name could anyone see value in ending it mid-season? I started viewing the show in almost complete ignorance as to what to expect, and I certainly didn’t realize that the murder would be solved when it was. Even so, the revelation was extremely powerful for me, and I was quite disappointed in myself for not determining who the killer was ahead of time. But upon viewing that extremely early climax and knowing how many episodes were still left, I assumed that what I had watched was just the beginning of the end, and that the rest of the season would entail the characters pursuing a killer whose identity the audience now knew. I also assumed that they would continue to piece together layers of the mystery, tying the minor storylines into narrative of Laura Palmer’s death.

It’s not that the latter half of season two is bad, but when neither of those things happened, and when the primary driver of the plot was wrapped up very quickly and neatly, I was utterly disoriented. I imagine that the majority of fans of the show, like me, had to force themselves past that point just to see what happened next. Once I came to terms with the fact that the bottom fell out of the show, I rediscovered its appeal from a completely different standpoint. But even though it remained good television, what could hurt a series more than several episodes of the audience collectively wondering why they were suddenly watching an altogether different show.

Because of the catastrophic effect of ABC’s insistence on something that was about as obviously bad as bad ideas come, it’s a terrible disappointment that Twin Peaks didn’t constitute a breaking point in the tradition of interference by moneyed interests in art and media. But unfortunately that was just a particular high water mark in a still-ongoing history of networks and studies derailing promising projects and preventing good stories from becoming great.

Twin Peaks was still great, but it could have been great for so much longer. Oh, there were other problems with the post-resolution portion of the show, too. The recovery period might have been quicker and smoother if it weren’t for the fact that even minor storylines were dropped and new ones with new characters had to be unexpectedly introduced in large part, based on what I’ve read, because Kyle McLaughlin was unabashedly shitting where he ate. Nevertheless, all of this built through the development of a beautifully complex mythology to a final episode that kept my mind constantly racing to keep up with a parade of nightmarish riddles.

And that final episode was intellectually gratifying but emotionally devastating. David Lynch and Mark Frost had apparently arranged to put multiple characters in peril in hopes of generating demand for continuation to a third season. This also was something I didn’t know going into it, so I, and presumably many of those who watched it when it was on television, was expecting a closed ending. But when I read the final scenes that way I came away from the show grappling with the implication that there are dire personal consequences for trying to do good in a world that possesses precious little hope.

I heard whispers that the film, Fire Walk With Me might provide some resolution to the oppressively bleak ending of the show, but it didn’t. It tauntingly hinted at the possibility of a resolution, but it didn’t follow through with it, so I get the impression that David Lynch just enjoys screwing with his audience for kicks. That said, I’d be happy to be screwed with again. Hopefully I am part of an ongoing growth of retrospective interest in Twin Peaks. If so, I honestly think Lynch should revisit the town, since Twin Peaks has the unique distinction of having specifically placed one early scene twenty-five years in the series’ future. That’s right around the corner, underneath the sycamores, behind the red curtain.

Super Bowl Ads

Last night’s Super Bowl provided a nice opportunity for me to visit with family and watch the game, but I must admit that the better share of my motivation was to watch the commercials and keep a critical eye upon them. Despite that, when I made my way to my father’s house, I forgot to take along my notebook, so any comments that I have to make will have to be by memory. I suppose that’s appropriate, considering the intended roles of advertising. Also, I like to assess both the good and the bad, so I think I’ll pair my reflections so that I give one bit of praise and one bit of criticism on the same topic.

The Cola Wars

Pepsi was one of the first companies to run an ad once the game had started, and its style was eminently recognizable from previous years. There seems to be no plan behind high-profile Pepsi advertisements other than to pour money into acquiring odd collections of whatever celebrity guest stars they can get to sign a contract, and then piling them on top of one another in some display of spectacle without substance, in hopes that every member of the audience will see somebody they recognize well enough to stare at for up to sixty seconds.

I wondered aloud on seeing last night’s Elton John-centered absurdity, is this strategy really working for them? I guess either Pepsi has to reach a breaking point in its patience with its advertising agency, or I’ve got to reach a breaking point in my expectations of the television audience. It would be sad to think that the modern consumer brain runs on nothing but facial-recognition. I think they’re still capable of reflecting, thinking rationally, and grasping themes.

Of course, on that latter point, I suppose Pepsi’s advertisers are in agreement, as they did try to build some reference to the Zeitgeist into the bizarre scene that they crafted for their commercial. It concludes (at least prior to Flavor Flav putting his uniquely discomforting punctuation mark on it) with Melanie Amaro refusing King Elton John’s begrudging offer of “Pepsi for you,” and insisting instead, “Pepsi for all.”

It is arguably clever to try to tap into far-reaching frustrations over upper-class greed, but hinting at a socio-economic revolution doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose in a Pepsi commercial. It’s not as though Pepsi can somehow be viewed as a commodity that is cruelly withheld from the poor. It’s just a carbonated soft drink, and it’s already familiar to all of us, rich and poor – poor especially. Adding the class conflict dimension to a Pepsi commercial just adds another level to the acid nightmare that makes up their advertising.

On the other hand, Coca-Cola advertisements have been genuinely satisfying for years. This year in particular, their Super Bowl spots clearly aimed for continuity while Pepsi continued to deliberately eschew just that. Rather than focusing their expenditures on celebrity endorsements, Coca-Cola widely spread out two or three million dollars among a few timeslots throughout the event, so as to retain the audience’s attention with a series of installments of the same campaign, as opposed to just grapping the audience’s attention with one swift, bewildering slap in the face.

And Coca-Cola’s continuity curves around a tagline, and thus an overall theme, that is simple and effective: open happiness. That is precisely the sort of concept one should seek to attach to a soft drink. It should conjure the idea of refreshment, or leisure, or camaraderie, or enjoyment. And Coca-Cola makes a plain declaration of enjoyment, and then backs it up by making their Polar Bear commercials thoroughly enjoyable.

Nostalgia

If there’s one unique social trend amongst my generation, it is an unprecedented obsession with nostalgia. Budweiser’s ads utilized this fact delicately and artistically, while Samsung did so in a clumsy way that highlighted the worst aspects of our delight at remembering the past.

Budweiser is an absolute champion among Super Bowl advertisers, and a pair of their commercials this year were quite ambitions in connecting their brand to a long and romanticized past. First, their Clydesdale commercial depicted the end of Prohibition, and thus both allowed a young audience’s imagination to recede into an historical moment and connected that imagery to a larger theme of the end of hard times, which was no doubt expected to resonate with people throughout the country in the midst of this persistently difficult economy. Indeed, the same basic concept was repeated frequently by the American car companies and others.

Later in the game, Budweiser ran another commercial that effectively continued from where the Prohibition spot left off, tracing the presence of their brand throughout the twentieth century in America. It was a distinctly ambitious advertisement, and it theoretically made that impulse towards nostalgia accessible to everyone between the ages of twenty-one and seventy. I don’t know whether it was among the most effective commercials of the game, but it was certainly among the most affective. No one who was paying attention would have failed to find something that they could relate to, either experientially or imaginatively.

Interestingly, Samsung went in quite the opposite direction, which may in fact be appropriate given that their target demographic is certainly young, and comprised mostly of young urban professionals or current students, for whom cutting edge technology is of paramount importance, but for whom nostalgia is as strong a pull as it is for anyone else.

I do not understand why the singer from the band The Darkness appeared in the middle of that commercial. And while I recognize that many people roughly my age probably responded to it, I don’t understand why that would be. The bizarre thing about the increasingly strong nostalgic tendency in American society is that it’s also increasingly close. Thus, Samsung saw fit to make the hook for their ad a rock song that was unreasonably popular for a while seven years ago – not recent enough to be at all fresh, but not old enough to be what you might call a blast from the past.

I’m not saying that it was a poor move; I’m just saying that I can’t comprehend the appeal. I’d rather there hadn’t been such a commercial to remind me of the irrationality of certain young social trends.

Sex Sells

I love the Fiat commercial all the more because I hated it for the first several seconds. As I watched it, I started wondering if there was something wrong with me, given that such male fantasies as it depicted just tend to confuse me. It made for another instance where I had to remind myself to divorce myself from the target audience and recognize that that sort of overblown sexuality does have an influence on many potential consumers. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that what I was watching was just ridiculously over-the-top. Then, lo and behold, the hilarious turn reveals that that was exactly the point. I’m guessing the advertisers read the study from about a year ago that indicated that men’s brains do indeed respond the same way to cars as they do to women. Even if one thinks that comparison is hyperbole, though, Fiat’s utilization of the parallel was hilarious. It may very well have been my favorite commercial of the night, though admittedly the competition was quite slim.

By contrast, the sex-focused ad campaign for Go Daddy wore thin years ago and it just keeps getting more obnoxious, so those were probably my least favorite commercials. If the company thinks that the suggestion of nudity is helping to sell their domain hosting, I think somebody should urge them towards the breaking point of realizing that the reason why their sales figures are good is that they have essentially no competition. The Super Bowl commercial could consist of nothing but fifteen seconds of their web address flashing on the screen and they would probably still get a spike in traffic. Pretending that there’s a naked woman off camera does nothing to sell the service. The men to whom it might appeal can imagine nudity without Go Daddy’s help, and probably already were.

Supernatural

Audi’s vampire party commercial came on early and was so satisfying I was worried I wouldn’t have room for anything else once it concluded. Headlights are an odd feature on which to focus your sales pitch, but it probably is the sort of arcane status symbol that purchasers of high-end car brands would want to be aware of.

The entire structure of the commercial parallels that focus on – if I may call it this without sound pejorative – snobbishness. It grabs the attention of anyone who is aware of current popular culture, and lets them wonder what direction it’s going. I feel as though when vampires are put on screen in front of a diverse audience, one portion of people lean in and hope people start fucking, and the rest of us lean in and hope that people get massacred. It was those of us who are completely annoyed by the modern vampire obsession who were satisfied, in part because it came at the expense of the rest. Right now, someone who feels very good about himself because of both his taste in literature and his taste in consumer goods is seriously considering purchasing an Audi.

On the bad side of usage of the supernatural in Super Bowl commercials, there’s Cars.com. I appreciate the shades of John Carpenter’s The Thing, but really, what the hell were they thinking? “Haunting” is not necessarily a negative label. You can make your message haunt your audience in a good way. This was not an example of that.

I think the above constitute a pretty good cross-sample of last night’s advertisements. I hope this is far more thought than the rest of you put into it. After all, very few of the ads were especially impressive this year, whereas the actual game was terrific. Nevertheless, it is more fun to analyze social trends and consumer manipulation than offensive rushing statistics.

Keystone XL and General Flaws in Media

I recall that a few years ago I received e-mails from Media Matters for America on a very regular basis. Since that time they seem to have substantially reduced their commitment to direct mailing, which is for the best since in that same time the quality of their content has plunged catastrophically. I used to be able to count on them for advocacy that, while it did come overwhelmingly from one side of the political divide, called attention to genuine factual errors in politically skewed news reporting.

Now, when I receive a communication or call to action, or listen to the Media Matters Minute, or browse their featured content the message that the group is trying to convey is little more than, “Can you believe this familiar asshole said this latest thing that is obviously disagreeable to us?”

Media Still Matters?

That’s why it came as such a welcome surprise when a mass e-mail from Media Matters’ Matt Butler presented us readers with actual research and factually-oriented objections to widespread news reporting. The partisan bias is as evident as it ever has been, but I don’t rush to demonize bias in and of itself. Obviously, I have a dense collection of my own biases, but I like to think that they are subject to new information and that I respect data far over and above my ideological commitments. We interpret data differently based on our biases, as I’m sure I will do with the subject at hand, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable for me to expect that responsible politicians, media personalities, and especially media watch dog groups ought to make every one of their arguments on the basis of something substantive, as opposed to just ranting and making shit up.

The staff at Media Matters is probably by and large opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline. I am, too. But the organization’s e-mail served to share a legitimate and potentially significant study of media coverage of the issue. They’re pushing a certain interpretation of the data, but even if their views and mine didn’t align on this, it would still do my heart good to see data in the first place.

Necessary Balance vs. Harmful Balance

The first data point cited by Media Matters is already a shocking indication of inaccuracy and inconsistency in news reporting. According to their research, sources quoted and interviewed on the topic of Keystone XL were differently split among support, opposition, and neutrality depending on for what type of news media they were being interviewed. Print media relied on pro-pipeline sources 45 percent of the time, and opponents 31 percent of the time. Cable networks, on the other hand, gave 59 percent of their attention to proponents and only 16 to opponents. Broadcast television was even more wildly unbalanced, making 79 percent of their sources for the pipeline and only 7 percent against.

Though Media Matters doesn’t say it explicitly, the liberal track record they have developed suggests to me that they take these figures to mean that popular sources of news are probably distorting the issue to indicate that there is far more support for the pipelines than there is. That’s actually not my concern. It could just as well be the case that public opinion really is overwhelmingly in favor of the pipeline, and that print media is for some reason giving more time to a the minority view than that view’s influence warrants. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter in towards which side the coverage tilts. What bothers me is the outrageous inconsistency. Regardless of which side the media or particular parts of it is trying to take, the inescapable conclusion here is that either print or television journalists are effectively lying.

Media Matters indicates its bias on the issue through its breakdown of the distribution of views on major cable networks and major newspapers. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal naturally extended more air time and print space to proponents of the pipeline. By way of contrast, Media Matters identifies the New York Times and MSNBC as being the most balanced in their respective media categories. While this is technically true given the numbers, the word “balanced” is something of a loaded term, and anyone who makes a career or a pastime of criticizing Fox News should recognize its manipulative use.

The perceived virtue of “balance” is among the most harmful notions in the news media today. A balance of two issues only contributes positively to the public understanding of it if there is a legitimate divide in public opinion on that issue. MSNBC and the New York Times are right to provide roughly equal time to opponents and proponents of Keystone XL only if expert opinion in fact divides in that way. Otherwise, they are manufacturing balance to obfuscate the actual state of discourse and put their presumptive conclusion on equal footing even if it doesn’t belong there.

No outlet ought to do this, no matter how much I personally agree with their point of view. Of course, I don’t know whether the Times and MSNBC are the best or the worst representatives of the state of expert opinion. It could be that the vast majority of economists agree that it will create substantially many permanent jobs, and that such economists vastly exceed the percentage ecologists who believe that it will devastate the environment. Or it could be that experts are evenly split on each separate issue. I don’t know, because unfortunately there’s nobody in the country whose job it is to tell me these things.

Rhetoric of Emphasis

On the other hand, I give Media Matters much credit for taking the responsibility upon itself to tell me exactly what other organizations have been telling me. As I indicated above, it could be that media imbalance between opposition and advocacy is justified because there’s an actual imbalance in expert opinion on the pros and cons of the issue. That justification doesn’t really apply, though, if a news organization privileges one type of expertise over another when both are relevant to understanding the issue and resolving the conflict between alternatives. According to Media Matters’ data, that is just what most of the media has done in this case.

Its second data point tracked how often each of four topics was mentioned in broadcast, cable, and print media. These topics were job creation, environmental concerns, US energy security, and criticism of the state department review. The former two appear to both be foundational to this issue, yet Media Matters found that in broadcast media job creation was mentioned in 67 percent of all coverage, but environmental concerns were raised in only 17 percent. On cable the discrepancy was 77 to 34 percent. Only in print was there a rough balance of the two issues, with job creation being mentioned in 68 percent of articles and environmental concerns in 65 percent.

This is an instance where balance is decidedly a virtue. It may be that the raw number of economic advocates of Keystone XL is enormously greater than the raw number of environmental opponents, but the number of active voices on each topic says nothing about the legitimacy of their claims. When the issue is a pipeline designed to carry tar sands oil across much of the Midwestern United States, the environment is a self-evidently legitimate subject to cite in either advocacy or opposition.

Even if there were only a dozen ecologists who had formed opinion on the potential impact of building the pipeline and ten of them thought there would be no environmental damage whatsoever, that is still something that needs to be pointed out to readers and television viewers. The only excuse for discounting one aspect of such a dialogue is if consensus has already been formed and the result is common knowledge among the public. This is clearly not the case with Keystone XL. In fact, it seems that many people still do not understand just how poisonous to the environment tar sands oil is.

Specific Failings

Beyond these two general points, Media Matters addresses a series of specific details regarding the pipeline, TransCanada, and the studies surrounding them that the media seemingly failed to address adequately. These are all well worth understanding both for the sake of drawing conclusions regarding the pipeline itself and assessing the value of the media’s role in informing the public on it. However, the above general data points are particularly significant to criticism of overall media practices as they are likely to apply to entirely different stories.

Both these practices and the particular details that Media Matters addresses point to the rhetorical power of omission. Of course, with respect to the criticisms of specific omitted details, Media Matters is possibly playing the opposite game and misidentifying the absence of their preferred bias as the presence of a contrary bias. On the other hand, no such counter arguments truly apply to observation of vast discrepancies in the general type of information that is covered by different media organizations. That situation gives the awful impression that someone of those who are charged with informing the public, and perhaps all of them, are routinely lying to us.

Movies for Escaping a Desert Island

I’m a little bit late with this topic, but I was offline for several days, so why don’t you give me a break?

It seems that Friday was Matt Zoller Seitz’s last column for Salon.com before he became television critic for New York Magazine. As a finale slideshow, Seitz chose the topic “movies for a desert island,” and detailed his list of ten films, one short, and one series of television that he would keep as entertainment if he was stranded on a desert island with “an indestructible DVD player with a solar-recharging power source.”

Seitz prompted his readers to come up with their own lists, and I clicked into the comments section to see some of them. “Part of the fun of this exercise,” Seitz wrote, “is figuring out what you think you can watch over and over, and what you can live without.”

For me, though, the main part of the fun, and perhaps the frustration, of watching other people undertake the exercise was rediscovering how differently my mind approaches entertainment, as compared with most of the people around me. I can’t say that I took the time to dream up my list of twelve pieces of visual media, but I’m sure that mine wouldn’t have looked a thing like the others.

It may well be that I’m missing the entire point of the exercise, and applying a kind of logic to it that has no place in such purely academic challenges. But I can’t get past the fact that for me, the phrases “desert island films” and “current favorite films” do not mean the same thing. And that’s all that I seemed to be seeing in the author’s and the commenters’ lists. They were lists of a dozen items that each person thought he or she would find endlessly entertaining; a dozen things that would distract the person from the monotony and desperation of his surroundings. I simply can’t help extrapolating from the hypothetical and concluding that each person who participated in the exercise took it for granted that he was resigned to the fate of being trapped on a desert island for an indeterminate length of time, and possibly forever.

“Best to make the most of it, and see that I have some of my favorite entertainment on hand, so I can be as happy as possible while I’m here.”

Even in an utterly unrealistic hypothetical, I can’t take that attitude. It doesn’t reflect the way that I engage with media. I love film, but I hate escapism. I can’t think of a thing that I’ve watched on my own accord that I didn’t watch with an eye towards relating it to my own life and circumstances, or learning more about the world through it, and generally using it as a surface for reflection.

It would be no different on a desert island. So if I had access to a visual media there, I would damn well want it to be media that reminded me of my surroundings and circumstances, rather than distracting me from them, and that motivated me towards the goal of either getting the hell off of a desert island or building an idealized society on one. That’s not to say that the films I choose would have to have identical settings, but they would have to all possess themes that seemed personally significant, whether about freedom, or emotional fortitude, or encroaching insanity.

The closest thing that I saw to that line of thinking was that several commenters included The Matrix in their lists. I could see watching that in any circumstances wherein my freedom was constrained (i.e. the only circumstances I have known), because it’s explicitly about getting free by being in touch with reality when forces around you are compelling you to flee from it. But as far as Seitz’s challenge was concerned, I think that based on the content of the rest of their lists, those commenters chose The Matrix because it was an entertaining sci-fi action/adventure film that they had thoroughly enjoyed when they were younger.

Am I making unfair assumptions about the motivations of the respondents to the exercise? They could each find the content of their chosen films so personally poignant that they give them hope when things seem most hopeless. They might choose comedy and pure entertainment because they know they will function better towards some greater end if they can laugh and feel good amidst everything else. I don’t think that’s it, at least not on the whole. In response to one person placing Groundhog Day on his list, another commenter questioned the selection. “Don’t you think that would hit a little too close to home on a desert island?” he asked.

It’s still hard for me to accept, but apparently hitting close to home is not something that other people want in film and television. I, however, want little else. It sounds narcissistic, but if something isn’t in some sense about me, it isn’t worth watching.

I’m not sure what would qualify if I was on a desert island, though. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know what would speak to me. I’ll stick with The Matrix unless I come up with a better ten. I’d probably include some sort of nature documentary, likely Winged Migration, to put me more in touch with what beauty I would still have access to on my island. Perhaps I’d include Powaqqatsi as a way to remind myself both of the beauty that’s possible in the habitation of natural settings and of the beauty that I’d left behind in the rest of the world. Cast Away might make the list because even though it’s far from being one of my favorite films, it very well might become that when I’m in practically the exact same situation.

The only thing I can say with fair certainty, though, is what my television series would be. With its theme of resisting the circumstances in which one feels trapped, no matter how overwhelming they are, I think The Prisoner would be as poignant for me on an actual island as it is on the metaphorical island on which I now live.

Now, would you like to rethink the question for yourself? What films would you want with you if you were stranded on a desert island, could watch movies, but still cared about the fact that you were stranded on a desert island?