Film, Digital Media, Electronic Music
University of California, Santa Cruz
Spring 2004
Editor: Ekaette Akpan
alpha_omega81@yahoo.com
Publisher: Jose M. Hernandez
jozecuervo@jozecuervo.com
Assistant Editor:
Sara Torello
Production Staff:
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Suzanne Karnes
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Photographer:
Tyson Dai
Writing Staff:
Sumit Agarwal
Eric Danch
Suzanne Karnes
Nellie Kim
Advisor:David Crane
eyecandy is a quarterly, student run film and digital
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Table of contents images (top to bottom):Cary Grant (left), Ralph Bellamy, and Rosalind
Russell (right) in a scene from His Girl Friday;
Casey Spooner from Fischerspooner; Activating the
Medium; cartoon from the opening of Bewitched.
Cover Image Photo: Charles Kirby, Photographer andProduction Designer; Carlos Veron, Lighting Director
Cover Image Artwork: Jose M. Hernandez

Please visit eyecandy on the web for
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contents

eyecandy{film}

Screenplay Transformation:

From Dialogue to Visual Spectacle
by Suzanne Karnes

02{electronic music}

The Electroclash
Phenomenon:

An Interview with Casey
Spoonerby Sara Torello04{sound art & photography}

Activating the Medium:
A Photo Essay
by Tyson Dai

06{film & television}

Give My Regards to Oblivion:
1960s TV Show Remakesby Eric Danch08

Screenplay Transformation:
While sitting on the cozy sofa devouring a large tubof buttered popcorn, I watched my favorite movie of alltime, His Girl Friday. Adapted from the original stage playtitled The Front Page, the 1940 screwball adaptation’s main
component consists of witty and playful dialogue spoken
at a rapid-fire pace between the two main characters.
As I observed this intriguing tale about anewspaperman (Cary Grant) who, still in love with his exwife (Rosalind Russell), tries to persuade her to continue
reporting and prevent her from remarrying someone else,
I became completely engaged with the smooth, carefully
crafted lines bursting out of the characters’ mouths.
Why are dialogue-driven screenplays rarely,
if ever, shown on the contemporary big screen? The
commercial films that dominate the box office focus
more on visual sensation rather than dazzling wordplay.
To address this issue, I
consulted several sources
about how technologicalinnovation and theintroduction of
television play apart in the shift.
Many early films—
Casablanca (1942),
The Philadelphia
Story (1947), and All
About Eve (1950)—arecleverly written andinclude memorable
lines that have become
signature catchphrases. The films
revolve around thecharacters’ personal
lives and emotions
rather than focusing on
heroes saving the worldfrom supernatural villains inblockbuster hits like The Matrix
trilogy and the X-Men films.
Shelly Stamp, who specializes in earlycinema history, provided some context: “Themedium starts out as a silent medium, and thensound is added, and it becomes, especially in the ‘30s,
a medium that is all about talking and verbal humor,”she said. “What happened in the ‘30s when sound cameinto Hollywood is [that] a whole bunch of plays wereadapted for movies, and playwrights came to write in
Hollywood. So there was a real emphasis on dialogue andverbal repartee and that has really, really shifted,” Stamp
explained.
In Framework: A History of Screenwriting in theAmerican Film, Tom Stempel outlines both the structure ofsilent screenplays and the shift to sound. During the silent
period, “scenario” or “title” writers not only wrote thestory for a film but also concentrated on writing emotional
tone, specific visuals, and character gestures. Dialogue wasonly written so that actors could get a feel for the story.
Such dialogue was deemed too literary when
02 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Suzanne Karnes
sound was implemented in the late ‘20s, so film demanded
writers who could write realistic dialogue. The studios hired
novelists, playwrights, and journalists from New York and
New England and moved them to Hollywood—among themWilliam Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Stempel argues that scripts became more specific andsound made movies less open to individual interpretation.
Since dialogue was the new trend, scripts that needed only
one or two writers now took four or five. Consequently,
the screenwriter’s place in cinema became limited; he or she
developed the ideas and the overall concept, but had little
control over the final movie.
Screenwriters had three ways to change their status: they
could work within the studio system and become producers
and/or directors; they could unionize, which they did as
the Screen Writers Guild; finally, they could try to change
the political system by joining the Communist Party.
However, the latter led to the blacklist, which posed
threats to screenwriters who already had little power.
Stamp also noted that in the old studiohierarchy of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, screenwriters
did not have a lot of power. “They probably
had most power in the ‘30s, in that era
that produced something like His
Girl Friday, and then got lessand less power as they
were displaced byproducers, directors,
and stars,” shesaid. “There is
the paradox again
because at the
moment whenconservative
politicians aretrying to route out
the contaminants
within Hollywood,they focused onscreenwriters as
principal architects
of some ideologicalsubversion,” Stamp
said.
However, the birthof television in the 1940s gave
new status to screenwriters. “Thepower structure in television reallyfavors screenwriters, and the screenwriters are often
considered the authors of the TV series,” Stamp said. Unlike
the film writer, the television writer had complete control
over the script to make it flawless.
L.S. Kim, professor of television, explained thattelevision scripts concentrate on what the characters sayrather than what they do in order to keep the shows alive
and running. “If you had an ending in television, your show
was a failure,” Kim said.
This use of dialogue to drive the story that was
frequently practiced in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s films is now
used in television. Did movies shift back to visual spectacle

Photos: Cary Grant (left) and Rosalind Russell.

From Dialogue to Visual Spectacle������� �� ���������� ��� ����������� ����

toseparatethemselvesfrom television?
Since the industry has
moved toward technologicalinnovation and the viewer hastaken pleasure in its new trends, perhaps the introductionof special effects plays an important role in the shift inscreenplays from dialogue to visual.
Stamp explained the technological shift by questioning
the abundance of media fed to audiences. “Visual
spectacle, especially in the ‘80s and ‘90s, has really takenover the art of dialogue and character development,” sheargued. “Does it have something to do with our late 20th
century supersaturated media culture where we’re justbombarded by images all the time—advertisement images,
television images, and internet images. Is that part of whatfilms are responding to?” She sat back in her chair andshrugged, “I don’t know.”
Gerald Mast and Bruce F. Kawin’s book, A ShortHistory of the Movies, states that the computer has foundits way into practically every aspect of filmmaking since
the late 1970s. In 1990 it was Dolby Digital SurroundSound that made possible state-of-the-art sound editing
and mixing, and with special effects, computer generated
images could be superimposed onto real images.
From the ‘80s to the present, special effects havebecome the new visual overload for audiences to consume.
The sounds of explosions, airplanes, gunshots, traffic, andspaceships have become more important than dialogue.
Sound has become an image’s “side-kick”—inferior to thevisual.
Moving away from historical analyses, I will now
concentrate on the viewer. For example, Stamp said, “I’mthe kind of viewer with new films where I can get quite
easily bored by extended fight scenes or extended scenesof violence without any narrative exposition or character
development.”
However, Stamp admitted her personal preference
could be generational. She grew-up watching films that
had a story to tell—not an image to sell. Considering hercomment, I thought about what drew me to older films
besides their narrative and dialogue composition. Chip
Lord, Film and Digital Media department chair, explained
the reason simply. “I think, in part, we look back at thosefilms and the scripts seem more interesting because of thehistorical distance.”
Films like His Girl Friday appeal to me because they���� ��� ���� ������������������ ����������� � ��� � ���� ��� �� ��� ���� �� ��������� ��� ����� ������ �� ���������� ����� �� ����� ����� ������� ���� � ������� ������

are foreign to my generation,
and although they are older
films, they feel newer when
watched. Without the use of
special effects, these classic films
focus solely on the emotions of the characters.
Many blockbuster films today target younger
audiences because they watch the violence and likethe visual effects fed to them. They grow up in a
culture surrounded by commercials, new trends, andconsumption.
But people still enjoy good stories. Like
Stamp, Lord also prefers films that have a message:“I don’t like big blockbuster adventure films. I’ve
seen enough of the thrills and spills of the car chases
and the special effects to know that they are not verysatisfying to me. I’m more interested in seeing something
truthful about people interacting.” If viewers like Stamp,
Lord, and myself favor meaningful stories that we can relate
to, then I still wonder why great films like His Girl Friday are
not being written.
On the other hand, Lord explained that carefully
crafted scripts do exist. “It’s harder to get them made or they
are being made by completely independent filmmakers,”
Lord noted. It requires working hard to find stories that are
sincere, truthful, and heartfelt. “You don’t have to work
hard at all to find The Matrix or Dumb and Dumber 2 because
it’s in your face all of the time.”
Lord teaches a screenwriting seminar in which heemphasizes well written stories. “In my class, I always tellstudents one way of looking at what you’re proposing to do
is to ask, ‘is this story the most important story in the life of
the main character? Because if it’s not you should be tellingthat story—the most important story.’”
Was the shift in screenwriting and screenplays caused bytechnological innovation—the perfection of the silent film,
the discovery of sound, and the artistry of the computergenerated image made possible by special effects? Was it
caused by new media like television or controversies like theblacklist? Could it have anything to do with the viewer’s
personal preference and the entrance of new aspiring
writers? I think it was all of the above. For me, I will
always remember Grant and Russell’s witty personalities
and repartee in His Girl Friday more than fight scenes, dance
sequences, or space adventures. ■eyecandy Spring 2004 | 03

The Electroclash Phenomenon:
An interview with Casey Spooner
Electroclash: the pounding,electronic eighties-revival musicthat tries to be elitist, but is just
too much disco fun to be taken
seriously. Either you hate it, or you
love it. If you love it, chances are
you have heard of Fischerspooner,
an electroclash and performanceart group from the city that neversleeps. Apparently, neither do
Warren Fischer or Casey Spooner,
the two masterminds behind thecollective. They have been caught
up in a recent flurry of publicity
caused by the explosion of their firstalbum, “#1.” After the throbbing
electro-crunch, post-punk inspired
single “Emerge” played at Berlin’s
annual Love Parade, it became a
hit in clubs around the world. A
recently remixed single blending
the chorus of “Emerge” with the
lyrics of Nirvana’s “Smells Like
Teen Spirit” has been gracing thesets of prominent DJs like Felix
Da Housecat, Jason Bentley, andTommie Sunshine. The rave reviewsof “#1” have earned Fischerspooner
the chance to perform twice on
Britain’s famous television program“Top of the Pops” and at various
international art shows and musichalls.
What truly sets Fischerspooner
apart from other electronic
music acts is their involvementwith performance art and video
production. Warren and Casey
began performing in small coffee
houses and art galleries, where they
developed a signature minimalist
sound and strange performance
antics. With the addition offull lighting, wardrobe, a stage
production team, and a dance troupe,
Fischerspooner shows are truly
visual spectacles. Costumes play an
integral role in the show, whether
they are sparkling underwear pairedwith glitter tube socks, or tuxedoes
with 10 feet tails and feathered
headdresses. The performances areabout conveying a visual concept forthe music, and the group holds backnothing when it comes to putting ona show.
The group has just wrapped
04 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Sara Torello

Photo: Casey Spooner from Fischerspooner

up its North American tour, and will
eventually return to the studio to workon its next album. Although their firstalbum utilized cover songs and simple
digital sampling, the new album isslated to be more diverse and sonicallydeep, or as Fischer explains, “It’s adigital Phil Spector ‘Wall of Sound’
thing.” Strangely, it will feature lyrics
by cultural theorist and writer Susan
Sontag and live instruments eventhough the band has no plans to giveup its electronic roots. After a show at
the Fillmore in San Francisco, eyecandy
caught up with Casey Spooner, the lead
vocalist and ringleader of the group.
ec: How did you and Warren meet?
CS: We met at film school. We went
to school together at the Art Instituteof Chicago, and we were both in avideo production class. You know, we
met there and started collaborating on
different stuff. We made some very
different things initially. I was more into
spoken word, and Warren would play
the classical violin.
ec: So, how did you make thetransition into pop music?
CS: We knew each other, but we went

our separate ways for several years,
and then we reconnected in New
York. Warren and his wife Karen andI ended up working on a pitch for a
TV show. We were asked to do it andit didn’t turn out so well, but we had
all this incredible footage and so we
decided we would make a song andcut the footage to the song. We liked
the song more than the footage, and
we ended up performing it. That’s
how we fell into making pop music. It
started as a soundtrack for this film,
which we ended up ditching. But wekept the music.
ec: Who are your musical influences?
CS: Hmm.. [thinking noises].. you
know, it’s kind of like everything. I
don’t really discriminate. A band I
really love is called Bongwater. I likeit because it was this collaboration
between this performer named Anne
Magnuson, and this guy named
Kramer, who runs the [possibly
defunct] label Shimmydisc. And
the thing that’s interesting about it
for me to listen to now is that it’s acollaboration between a performer
and an indie rocker, and it’s kind ofwhat Warren and I are. I like Led

Zepplin, Nelly; I’ll listen to anything.
I’m kind of a music whore. Warren isreally the classically trained, serious
musician. He’s the indie rocker, I’m
just the good time Charley.
ec: Who usually writes the music,
you or Warren?
CS: It starts with Warren. He
composes the music and then we
work with this guy named Nicholas
Vernhes, who has a studio named“Rare Book Room.” We havealways recorded with him, so thestudio is kind of our home. Warren
and Nicholas will work on tracks
together, and then I’ll come in and
we start developing a direction or
idea or theme and lyrical content forthe songs. Then we develop vocal
melodies for the songs around thoseideas.
ec: You have a very distinct visual
style, with your costumes and makeup. Was that influenced by anyone,or did you come up with the entire
concept?
CS: I think its about embracing pop
clichés, so you can see all kinds ofcrazy relationships or similarities toanything from Adam Ant to Marilyn
Manson to Cabaret to whatever… For
me, it really came out of this impulse
I had at the, I love saying this, at the“turn-of-the-century.” New Yorkwas kind of a dead place, which wasa bit frustrating. I moved to New
York because I thought it was going
to be the most exciting place in theworld. It disappointed me a little
bit. Instead of continually looking forwhat I wanted, I decided to be what
it was that I imagined. And at thattime, everyone was obsessed with themillennium; you’d hear insane storiesof the city buying 60,000 body bags,
and everyone buying water, and Y2K,
and the imminent collapse of…(pause)
ec: Modern civilization?
CS: Yes, civilization as we know it.
So, I thought ‘shit, I want to rock, I
want to party!’ It was really aboutthat impulse to dress up and celebrate
and go crazy, if in fact our world wascoming to an end.

ec: It sounds fun even if the world isn’t
coming to an end…
CS: Yeah, it’s funny that that’s where
the urge came from. Then, it felt likeas soon as we sort of crossed into 2000,
everyone took a deep breath and a huge
exhale. After that, it seems like weconnected with everybody.
ec: On stage, you stated you wanted tostart a new cultural revolution. Do you
have any more insight into that? Do
you have a specific change you want tomake in pop music?
CS: There is no real aggressive agenda.
It’s more about making something that’s
exciting and fun and interesting at thesame time. And popular… that’s thething that was always real frustrating
to me about pop culture. It’s something
I enjoy, but I get frustrated because I
feel like it could be so much more. The
decision makers oftentimes assume theworld is filled with idiots, and I resent
the condescension that was inherent
in pop culture. So, I really wanted
something that had all the gloss and all
the excitement and production of classic
pop culture, but I felt like I and everyone
around me are smart enough to handle
something that’s a little more complex or
unusual or interesting. You get tired ofendless inane boy bands.
ec: And how.
CS: It’s also more of a personal thing.
Both Warren and I have worked in
the underground for years, and it
becomes kind of a crutch to always see
yourself in a limited world with a small
audience. It’s very exciting and difficult
to make something that you like, but
is still appealing to a lot of people, andthat a lot of people can identify with.
It’s trying to embrace pop culture as
something other than a dirty word.
ec: I heard about Fischerspooner
starting a production space?
CS: Well, we have a space called FS
Studios where we rehearse and do a
lot of production. We enjoy not only
making music, but we enjoy all of theimagery that goes around our music,
and we enjoy making film work andgraphic design and everything that goes

into making pop music. Now, we’restarting to work with other people on
their ideas as well. It’s kind of nice
to work on your thing, then stop anddo something for someone else. We
make treatments for other artists’music videos.
ec: So, you are going to use thisspace as a production area for music
videos?
CS: Yeah, it will be like our creative
think tank. When Marilyn Manson isover the whole neo-nazi...thing. we
can help him. It will be kind of like acelebrity makeover think tank. Like,
Michael Jackson maybe?
ec: Yeah, get rid of that bandanna.
CS: He needs some help. There’s a
lot there.
ec: Do you have any upcoming
projects that you are working on?
CS: We are doing a big show in
Venice, Italy at an art convention.
We are working on new music,
wardrobe, choreography, and new
video projections. We just finished
our first tour of the United States, andso then we will do a bigger world tourof Europe, South America, Asia, andthe U.S. again and Japan. I’m kind of
nervous about the Far East. I’m notready for the SARS tour.
ec: But you can wear the SARS facemasks, and decorate them for yourshows.
CS: We performed in Toronto when
the whole SARS thing was going on.
We performed there, and a couple
days later they had the lock down.
So, we did the show but kept our ears
open to see if anyone was coughing.
ec: I never considered the dangers of
touring.
CS: Yeah. There’s a lot of people
in a contained space with an insane
and secretive disease taking over. It
sounds like a great movie. ■eyecandy Spring 2004 | 05

Activating the Medium:
A Photo Essay

By Tyson Dai

The Seventh Annual Activating the Medium Festival
was presented by 23five incorporated and the
Cuesta College Department of Fine arts. The festival
was held at the SomArts art gallery in San Francisco
on February 6, 2004. Activating the Medium
presents sound performances using unconventional
hand crafted instruments.

Libby Oda runninglights for theshow.

06 | eyecandy Spring 2004

Activating the Medium: History(extracted from 23five.org)
Since its conception in 1998, the purposeof Activating the Medium has been to explore
and introduce the art of sound to new audiences.
Through performance, sound installation, andnew concept technologies, we have worked to
inform a new audience about the ambient andexpressive aural phenomena of the sonic arts.
Sound is perhaps the newest of genres, finding
a permanent voice within contemporary gallery
and museum systems. Sound has also found its
place within both the visual and performance arts
Jean Francois Laporte (Montreal, Canada) performs SIREN on air compressed boat horns

programs around the world. In order to promote
the education of sound in the arts, Randy Yau
and David Prochaska curated the first Activating
the Medium exhibition in conjunction with Cuesta
College of Fine Arts in San Luis Obispo, California.
Our location allowed us to bring in artists from two
major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles and San
Francisco) where, over the last decade, sound andperformance art have continued to build a more
informed audience. To date, there have been four
festivals in San Luis Obispo, bringing together
sound artists from San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Seattle, Chico, and as far away as Italy, Japan,
Germany, and Australia. In 2000, Activating the
Medium joined forces with one of the Bay Area’s
most prolific sound organizations, 23five. ThisJohn Bischoff (Berkeley, California) performs Immaterial Statescollaboration has allowed us to become one of themost important groups of artists and performers
making a professional commitment to activating
the medium of sound. Our commitment is to build
a larger, more educated, audience within the sonicarts and to help expose all to the ever-expanding
medium of sound.

Compression system for Jean-Francois Laporte’s installation “Khora”

eyecandy Spring 2004 | 07

Give My Regards to Oblivion:
1960s TV Show Remakes
It has often been my common practice to dismissthe cinematic remake, particularly that of mainstream
Hollywood, as desperate thinking by lesser artists who fill
their unimportant schedules obsessing over new ways to thinkcompletely unimaginatively. Without doubt, this perspective
has its merit, but it cannot stand alone in answering thequestion of why we are seeing an unprecedented amountof remakes. Historically, remakes are nothing new to
Hollywood or foreign film industries. One need only searcha film database like imdb.com in order to discover how many“classics” are anything but originals. Take for instance The
Maltese Falcon (1941) starring Humphrey Bogart. Not only is
this a remake of a 1931 Roy Del Ruth film of the same title, butboth films are direct adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s novel,
The Maltese Falcon (1929).
The remake can also be traced going in the other direction,in that a current film can masquerade as something new toyounger generations. Joel Schumacher’s recently announced
film, A Star is Born, will most likely prove to be such a film.
Schumacher, already credited with two of the Batman feature
length movies, and about to release his very own remakeof Phantom of the Opera (2004), can now add angry Barbara
Streisand fans to his list of achievements by choosing to tarnish
the 1977 version of A Star is Born. Yet, even the 1977 Streisandversion is a remake of the 1954 version with James Mason andJudy Garland, which is a remake of the 1937 version starring
Fredric March and Janet Gaynor, itself a remake of 1932’s What
Price Hollywood.
In addition, there is always an economic angle that mustbe factored into the decision making process. For instance, theremake is an ideal platform to showcase new special effects
and keep financially struggling companies like Industrial Lightand Magic afloat. Remakes also serve as a nostalgic callingcard for the older demographic, while being able to lurein the younger
one withcontemporary
star-power.
Finally,

Zoiks! The cast of the new Scooby-doo remake films.

08 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Eric Danch

The original Rocky and Bullwinkle crew - can’t beat the real thing!

remakes allow for collectively recognized iconographies tolucratively morph into everything ranging from Happy-Meals,
video games, soundtracks, and ‘making-of’ productions to
the occasional theme-park attraction, and an often inordinate
array of merchandise.
However, the economic incentive doesn’t seem entirely
responsible, either as a point of origin or as the dominantcatalyst, and as briefly mentioned above, remakes are nothing
new in and of themselves. However, what is different about
the new explosion of remakes is that most are based on
popular 1960s TV shows.
Accordingly, film scholar Robert Keser noted, in a recent
article in Bright Lights Film Journal, that if a time traveler
from the 1960s found him or herself in front of current
movie marquee, he or she would be convinced that the timemachine had malfunctioned. In support of this claim, and inno particular order, consider the following list of 1960s
TV shows made into movies in the recent and coming
years: Lost in Space (1998), The Avengers (1998), The
Mod Squad (1999), Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000), Mission
Impossible I,II & III (1996,2001,03), Scooby-Doo 1&2(2002,04), Spider-Man 1&2 (2002,04), I Spy (2002), Hulk
(2004), Mr. Ed (2005), Bewitched (2005), and Batman 5(2005).
This apparent symbiotic relationship between 1960s
TV shows and their current blockbuster re-imaginings
should not pass us by without critical attention. In otherwords, these nostalgic revivals need to be understood as
more than just some cheesy fetish or mere coincidence. For
instance, it is significant that all of these film narratives
were originally conceived during one of the most sociallyturbulent periods in US history. In particular, a periodof US history that encompassed an unprecedented
break-down of gender and racial barriers, major
political assassinations and controversy, radical
environmentalism, the Civil Rights Movement, second wave
Feminism, and maybe most importantly in relation to today,
massive anti-war protests nationwide.
Granted, the above has been by no means anexhaustive recap of the sixties,
nor is it intended to argue that
we are experiencing any kind of
repeat of the sixties. Instead, thepoint is that whatever entertained
audiences then seems to produce asimilarly popular response today. I don’t think it’s a grossgeneralization to argue that the formulated TV entertainment
provided during Vietnam and the Cold War is directly
connected to what’s filling our cinema marquees in the contextof Iraq and the war on terrorism. Thus, the big question
concerns whether or not we are consuming and processing
this form of entertainment differently now and to what effect.
In other words, how are we reading these texts? Are thenarratives igniting reflection or irony about the real world, orare they just cashing in on a public susceptible to temporary
escape via spectacle? Finally, how can the answers to thesequestions inform a critical discussion about how these 1960s
TV show remakes function within the current social context,
namely, the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism?
Keeping these questions and subsequent criticalengagement in mind, the first thing that we must ask ourselves
is what did audiences like about these 1960s TV shows
anyway? What was it about Scooby and the gang that kept
viewers coming back every Saturday morning? Did it quench
an insatiable thirst for discovering that some old has-beenwearing a mask was actually the monster? What about the
Batcomputer and its ability to formulate a definitive answer
to any question based on nothing more than Adam West’s
refreshingly vague, yet poetic, logic did people like so much?
What about Boris and Natasha’s chronically flawed plans torule the world did fans find so endlessly entertaining? In otherwords, these narratives weren’t preaching that “the times they
are a-changing” like other forms of entertainment at the time.
In contrast, they provided a formulaic and reassuring happyplace that found a largely frustrated and ineffectual audience.
Given this perspective, is it all happening again, except thistime with better special effects providing a more immersive
happy-place complete with theme-park rides, video-games,and Happy-Meals?
Such reassurance does have its charm when thealternative is to subject oneself to fear-based news andpolitical pundit programming that broadcasts the horrors ofwar, the probability of more war, and a volatile economy,
all the while coupled with an increased loss of civil liberties
inherent in such documents as the Patriot Act. Furthermore,in an attempt to contextualize the appeal of what 1960s TV
shows once offered, one could argue that making sense ofcurrent political rhetoric, especially like the most recent
State of the Union Address, does require something like a
Batcomputer. Moreover, I don’t think it’s terribly out of line
to characterize our current geopolitical presence as something
many at home and abroad might imagine originated fromthe Boris and Natasha think tank. Thus, it should come as no
surprise that within this context we have ample incentive toobsess over superpowers, super technology, and count on thepredictability of the enemy in order to smother the fact that we
actually feel increasingly powerless and insecure.
Nonetheless, an argument that a politics of (re)assurance
is communicated via entertainment is by no means limited
to the 1960s. Consider Steven Spielberg and his gifted ability
to recreate idealized realities in order to provide feel-goodideological security and thus displace real fear in films like
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) or The Raiders of the
Lost Ark (1981). However, the current remake phenomenon ismuch more distanced from reality and encompasses a muchlarger demographic. For instance, Spielberg typically grounds
his films historically or in culturally understood environments
in order to draw on preexisting stereotypes and clean binary
oppositions. Such examples include Schindler’s List (1993),
Raiders, Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Amistad (1997),
and the more recent Saving Private Ryan (1998) in order toconfront safe “evils” like Nazism and slavery. Yet, in thecurrent 1960s TV show remakes, historical background isalmost completely absent, creating a sense of timelessness andplacelessness. In support of this claim, where and when do
Scooby and the gang or Rocky and Bullwinkle live? Does itmatter where Mr. Ed’s stable is? Planet Krypton?
So what can be said about the combination of abstracted
timelessness and placelessness, the aforementioned false
sense of agency derived from narratives of assurance, andthe fact that current remakes are much less confined (i.e.
NETFLIX, DVD, and the web) to television or theaters as
their predecessors were in the sixties? At first glance it would
seem as if we are not exactly on our way to changing hearts
and minds. Yet, maybe this is in fact exactly what we need.
Maybe creating such ridiculous distractions from reality will
force us to start considering, at least with laughable irony,
why something like the Batcomputer and our President mightcomplement each other. ■eyecandy Spring 2004 | 09