No sex, lies, and video (digital)

My daughter came home from work yesterday evening and, to accompany Thai food, she wanted to watch "Easy A". Oh, well, I've been the only owner of a Y chromosome in a movie theater. Twice. "Thirteen Going on Thirty" and "The Princess Diaries". One good, one bad, so...



"Easy A" is hysterical. Maybe I laughed too loud. At least I was only embarrassing at home.

It occurred to me about halfway through that our modern media culture is a perfect match for North Ojai High School, all gossip, rumor, and sensation, perception is reality, who cares what's true, image rules.

Typically, Hollywood slaps a happy ending on the triumph of bullshit. Olive's webcast, guerrilla marketing and all, we're supposed to believe, is good enough to shovel it out of her young life. It's a comedy, after all. And Facebook won't follow you all the days of your life.

I suppose I should take some joy from this movie metaphor. If I really can stretch it, it means that media is not channelling middle school pubescent angst and might be mature enough for high school adolescent angst. But I'm not feeling the joy.

Emma Stone's Olive wasn't having sex. We, on the other hand, are fucked. The Supreme Court's wingnut majority continues to hand wealthy people and corporations bigger and bigger megaphones, as if they needed them, to drown out the free speech of everyone who can't go toe-to-toe with whichever billionaire bogeyman is currently most prominent in financing the conservative con-game whose basic message is that we'd all be happier as peons in thrall to their every whim. Because they're so rich, they must be the greatest people who ever lived.

But I didn't let these dark thoughts spoil my viewing pleasure. I've been repressing reality a lot lately.