The Illusion is Over

It seems like this semester’s voyage through the long, evolving history of motion pictures runs parallel to life. We are born (in my opinion) with a clean slate. We know nothing of the world around us. We do not understand that there are things happening outside the range of the landscape captured by our eyes. As a young child, there is only hunger, fatigue, and the wonders of an unknown world.

As we mature, we naturally begin to question the world. For some strange reason, parents take it upon themselves to shield us from the world and create this fragile facade of an environment teeming with joy, love, and compassion. We believe that we are safe from harm; that no evil acts befall the citizens of the world and, when it does, everything turns out okay in the end. This is the same way that I view the film making styles in the first few decades following the introduction of motion pictures. The films that we have seen from that era are cheerful and full of song. The settings, themselves, teem with color and a joy so vibrant that is almost contagious. The good guy always comes out on top. Love always finds a way. The sheriff always catches his man. It’s almost nauseating to witness such a naive and optimistic representation of the world.

Then the teenage years come along, and that old viewpoint gets shot to hell. We gain first hand exposure to terrible realization that the world just generally does not give a damn. Through peer pressure and rated R movies, we witness the effects of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and, oh god, is it exciting and frightening. We realize that those old noises we heard were fights. Our parents get divorced. We read accounts of war and famine. We wonder the streets and take notice of the filth. We see the homeless man on the corner. We get our hearts broken. Parents wonder why we’re an angry generation; why we rebel and lash out. The anger stemming from the collapse of a decade long façade leave a kid hating life. Teenage rebellion should be known as teenage awakening. Blow Out represents the teenage years of our semester. The Technicolor is gone. The streets are bland and the colors are dull. People die. People cheat. People cry. Nobody cares. We walk along the street not realizing that a lady is being strangled in the ally just five feet away. We march up the stairs of the stadium not noticing the girl struggling against a captor in the corner. The accident plastered all over the news wasn’t an accident at all. We get rushed with more media than we can manage, and the person we become in life is a direct reflection of our interpretation of that media. The film industry came to a crossroads with the rebellion of the 1960’s filmmakers and I’m anxious to see the way that it evolved in the wake of that rebellion.