Rubbing elbows
Last night I went to my first really LA-style event, and I'm trying to decide how I feel about it. A friend of mine is doing graphic design work for this entertaining store that fronts a child literacy program, founded by this novelist guy, and with parallels in other cities (my favorite is just around the corner from Stovielet in the Mission). It's a great store, anyone in town at some point should go visit it, since it's filled with excellent products imported from the past and future (including Robot Milk, Viking Odorant, zero in a box (brought to you from Baghdad in 413 AD), robot emotion chips (boredom; happiness; envy; schadenfreude) and dead languages in a bottle. In November, I decided this program should be my charity of the month, mostly because I had just been talking about it with my designer buddy and so didn't have to do any research (it can get kind of depressing to poke around and think "who deserves my (still paltry) contribution this month?" given that there is so damn much that needs fixing, even if you're staying local), and got the nicest personal e-mail in response, thanking me for my (paltry) donation and inviting me to the opening sneak-peak party. And I thought, "Why not?" If I'm an "official friend" of the program now, I have as much right as anyone to go to this thing, which my friend referred to as "the celebutard sneak preview party."
And it was packed out with more movie and tv people than I personally have ever rubbed elbows with (sometimes literally) in one place. I suspect that there were lots music and acting people floating around that I didn't recognize, but generally the people I saw that I recognized are ones who have been involved in more indie or offbeat work that I like, including persons A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I (and several more that I can't remember at the moment). One guy who brushed elbows with me came in with a friend of his who had also been on a show that I love -- just a few months ago when I was gorging myself on DVDs of the show, I was so upset by his villainy that I actually dreamt that he turned out in the end to be a nice guy. When I accidentally elbowed him as he walked behind me, I turned around to apologize and realized with a (not visible, I'm sure) start that he was a "celebrity" that I had "dreamed about." So teenagery! So odd! And so I decided that I really couldn't say anything in apology.
What was of particular interest to me was who talked to who (people who had worked together seemed to stick together in groups), and also how people were both recognizable and quite ordinary at the same time: I live in a neighborhood filled with good looking people dressing to be noticed, and so no one here looked particularly out of the ordinary in any way. Really, they looked just like people at concerts I go to, or parties I go to, who I see on campus, or just walking around town. But of course how ordinary can they be, because I actually knew who they were, while I was just a nobody standing on the sidelines, observing everything with great interest.
After this early-evening festival I grabbed some tacos from a truck around the corner and chatted with with my friend about art, bilingualism, and the high life, and then headed on over to a completely different party in not-quite-Beverly Hills; small, intimate, with high-end food and alcohol on real plates and in fancy glasses, filled with intellectuals and artsy types. A few of the guests were high school classmates of one of the hostesses, and somehow her high school yearbook materialized. I flipped through, mostly to see how the people in the room had changed over the last few decades, and recognized two people in her year as actorly types (one was a big teen star in the 80s and so only had a tacky poem on her page in lieu of a glamour shot). I was then pointed to two tabloid heroines in their 2nd and 4th grade incarnations, back when they looked sweet and innocent, and there was no clue that they would grow up to be debauched objects of media frenzy. It made me realize how, once you're in certain echelons of money or artistry (and here maybe read "successful artistic enterprise") just how pervasive "celebrities" can be. But mostly it had me thinking on the drive home and now this morning about mediated presentation, and the sheen that it can lend to almost anyone. Maybe it's less so now with all these reality shows, none of which I have ever really watched, where "ordinary" people are on TV, but there is definitely something about watching someone on your television or movie screen or computer screen and then seeing them in person that lends them a certain cachet. And I want to think more about just what that might be. I've had it myself during fieldwork, where I was on television a few times and on the radio twice, both in that minority language that I was learning and studying, and although when I watched them all I could think was about 1) how much my front teeth stick out - why didn't I have braces as a child?, 2) the fact that I really really do look Mexican, especially on camera, and 3) my poor linguistic performance (so painful!), these appearances definitely did burnish my semi-glamorous sheen, and I would meet people every few weeks who had already seen or heard me and were impressed by it. I even get it with my friend's hands, which incidentally appear in weekly films he makes of this ongoing art project he has going, and which definitely have some sheen of fascination attached to them now (at least for me). Which weirdly doesn't entirely extend to the rest of his body -- a perfectly fine body, but one that doesn't appear in his mini-videos. I went to a Central Asian concert about a month ago, and each group that performed was preceded by a contextualizing film in which they were photographed in situ, interviewed, shown performing locally, and more. And while I think it was done in part as a time filler, I think it was also calculated to burnish these performers, to get a small "hey, I've seen them in a movie!" response, even though said movie ended 30 seconds before the performance began. Surely there is theoretical work written on this floating out there -- maybe I should go look for it.
In other human behavior observational news, I find myself once again playing (for the third? fourth? time in the last year or so) the assessment game: a) not interested, b) ambivalent, or c) just German(ic)? (A friend has more than once played the parallel game: gay? or just Israeli?) It's annoying! And leaves me unsure how to calculate my own stance and behavior. (I am leaning towards the "not caring" side of things at the moment, although from what I have seen, German men are great once you actually have them in a relationship.) In a little "those who can't, teach" moment, I'm putting together readings now for the "intercultural communication" portion of my upcoming class -- I wonder if there's anything on intercultural courtship out there that would make for good reading for the kiddies.
And it was packed out with more movie and tv people than I personally have ever rubbed elbows with (sometimes literally) in one place. I suspect that there were lots music and acting people floating around that I didn't recognize, but generally the people I saw that I recognized are ones who have been involved in more indie or offbeat work that I like, including persons A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I (and several more that I can't remember at the moment). One guy who brushed elbows with me came in with a friend of his who had also been on a show that I love -- just a few months ago when I was gorging myself on DVDs of the show, I was so upset by his villainy that I actually dreamt that he turned out in the end to be a nice guy. When I accidentally elbowed him as he walked behind me, I turned around to apologize and realized with a (not visible, I'm sure) start that he was a "celebrity" that I had "dreamed about." So teenagery! So odd! And so I decided that I really couldn't say anything in apology.
What was of particular interest to me was who talked to who (people who had worked together seemed to stick together in groups), and also how people were both recognizable and quite ordinary at the same time: I live in a neighborhood filled with good looking people dressing to be noticed, and so no one here looked particularly out of the ordinary in any way. Really, they looked just like people at concerts I go to, or parties I go to, who I see on campus, or just walking around town. But of course how ordinary can they be, because I actually knew who they were, while I was just a nobody standing on the sidelines, observing everything with great interest.
After this early-evening festival I grabbed some tacos from a truck around the corner and chatted with with my friend about art, bilingualism, and the high life, and then headed on over to a completely different party in not-quite-Beverly Hills; small, intimate, with high-end food and alcohol on real plates and in fancy glasses, filled with intellectuals and artsy types. A few of the guests were high school classmates of one of the hostesses, and somehow her high school yearbook materialized. I flipped through, mostly to see how the people in the room had changed over the last few decades, and recognized two people in her year as actorly types (one was a big teen star in the 80s and so only had a tacky poem on her page in lieu of a glamour shot). I was then pointed to two tabloid heroines in their 2nd and 4th grade incarnations, back when they looked sweet and innocent, and there was no clue that they would grow up to be debauched objects of media frenzy. It made me realize how, once you're in certain echelons of money or artistry (and here maybe read "successful artistic enterprise") just how pervasive "celebrities" can be. But mostly it had me thinking on the drive home and now this morning about mediated presentation, and the sheen that it can lend to almost anyone. Maybe it's less so now with all these reality shows, none of which I have ever really watched, where "ordinary" people are on TV, but there is definitely something about watching someone on your television or movie screen or computer screen and then seeing them in person that lends them a certain cachet. And I want to think more about just what that might be. I've had it myself during fieldwork, where I was on television a few times and on the radio twice, both in that minority language that I was learning and studying, and although when I watched them all I could think was about 1) how much my front teeth stick out - why didn't I have braces as a child?, 2) the fact that I really really do look Mexican, especially on camera, and 3) my poor linguistic performance (so painful!), these appearances definitely did burnish my semi-glamorous sheen, and I would meet people every few weeks who had already seen or heard me and were impressed by it. I even get it with my friend's hands, which incidentally appear in weekly films he makes of this ongoing art project he has going, and which definitely have some sheen of fascination attached to them now (at least for me). Which weirdly doesn't entirely extend to the rest of his body -- a perfectly fine body, but one that doesn't appear in his mini-videos. I went to a Central Asian concert about a month ago, and each group that performed was preceded by a contextualizing film in which they were photographed in situ, interviewed, shown performing locally, and more. And while I think it was done in part as a time filler, I think it was also calculated to burnish these performers, to get a small "hey, I've seen them in a movie!" response, even though said movie ended 30 seconds before the performance began. Surely there is theoretical work written on this floating out there -- maybe I should go look for it.
In other human behavior observational news, I find myself once again playing (for the third? fourth? time in the last year or so) the assessment game: a) not interested, b) ambivalent, or c) just German(ic)? (A friend has more than once played the parallel game: gay? or just Israeli?) It's annoying! And leaves me unsure how to calculate my own stance and behavior. (I am leaning towards the "not caring" side of things at the moment, although from what I have seen, German men are great once you actually have them in a relationship.) In a little "those who can't, teach" moment, I'm putting together readings now for the "intercultural communication" portion of my upcoming class -- I wonder if there's anything on intercultural courtship out there that would make for good reading for the kiddies.
posted by Pangea at 12:20 PM
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