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November 24, 2007
Briefly Noted: Cool &/Or Provocative
The Spouse and I saw The Mist a few days ago, and it was really good. We heartily recommend it. It's got a surprising amount of suspense, rather than just heaping on the gore.
And it has a moment, pretty early on, that I think I get now that we live in Vermont. Don't worry, this won't spoil anything. (This blog has a strict no spoilers policy.) The film takes place in Maine, which isn't that different from Vermont. Maine is, however, the whitest state in the U.S. Yes, Vermonters, there is a whiter state than ours.
Anyway, Andre Braugher plays a hot-shot attorney from New York who vacations at his Maine home (as you do). We're told in the film that he could have a seat "on the bench" one day. Well, early on in the film, Andre decides that the white folks (and especially the white locals -- which is redundant) are trying to pull a fast one on the black out-of-towner (and which is worse should be a subject of much debate) and he leads a group of "his people" (the 5 other black people trapped in the store) outside.
I'm not going to say anything about what happens. But I do want to mention this point because of its interesting racial implications.
We might assume that this is a racist plot point -- the black folks are too stupid to stay inside where it's safer. However...
Is Braugher paranoid? Being black in the whitest state in the country has got to be a bizarre experience.
And being an outsider, regardless of your skin color, is a bizarre experience in New England. My mother spent part of her childhood in Massachusetts, and she always told me that the Mass. folks were the most intolerant, closed group of people in the country. On the social ladder, that may be true. But I wonder about it in general, especially up here in the north country.
And let's face it -- going for help rather than staying in the store just because there's a heavy fog makes sense.
The Spouse and I were both impressed with the psychological and sociological depth of the film. (When was the last time you said that about a horror film?) This is an intriguing moment in the film for me, and one that I read differently now that I live here in Vermont.
Also, you probably read about the giant sea scorpion they found that was nine feet long. Here's a graphic from the CNN article:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: insects and arachnids are just plain evil. Yes, we know that gravity and physics prevent these monstrosities from getting this big on land. But give them a little buoyancy... EVIL!!!!
And finally, a brief return to my thoughts on movies/film/video online. I was reading John Rogers' blog Kung Fu Monkey, and I came across this post, which is intriguing for many reasons. But the one I want to mention here is his use of the word "prosumer" to describe high-quality but affordable digital video cameras.
I mention this because of the double-nature of the word. As Wikipedia points out, the word is a back-formation meaning either/both producer/consumer and professional/consumer. It is, of course, also a play on the Pro/Con dyad. This is great, as it really gets to the heart of the video online phenomenon: the consumers are also producers, and are increasingly able to become professionals. Sweet.
And there's a new branding effort going on to reclaim the much-maligned term "progressive" that makes some really nice use of the pro/con dyad. Here's one of the commercials in this effort:
You can watch the others here.
Posted by reparent at November 24, 2007 5:52 PM