Love, marriage, a baby carriage, and the monster that eats it all up

In the past three weeks, I have seen three films: Juno, 27 Dresses, and Cloverfield. All had buzz around them for different reasons--Juno was the Little Miss Sunshine of 2008, a little engine that could of an independent film that follows a sharp-tongued pregnant teenager as she gives her baby up for adoption to a seemingly immaculate couple. 27 Dresses gives the term "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" a lot more credence as it explores a woman living vicariously through other people's relationships and wedding days until true love finds her as unexpectedly as it can in a formulaic romantic-comedy. Finally, Cloverfield is about--well fuck it. Who knows?

I'm not a genre discriminator when it comes to film. I love (melo)drama, romantic comedy, horror, sci-fi, action...pretty much all of it. But what I've really been interested in for the past few weeks is the concept of spectacle. In fact, I started reading a pretty intriguing book over Winter Break about it called The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. He's another French dude in a long line of French dudes that talk about postmodernism, Marxism, commodity-fetishism, some more -isms, and how it all relates to ideology. Pretty cool guy. Anywho, I got to thinking about relationships. No I'm kidding. I'm not Carrie Bradshaw nor do I wear Manolos and have a Mr. Big. I really got to thinking about how we construct spectacle in our lives. Why are we drawn to train wrecks (read: Britney Spears)? Why do I, the feminist, swoon over vows and first dances, while obsessively planning out my completely non-existent wedding day?

I think it's partly due to what I want to call the Matrix-effect. We are drawn to simulations and hyper-reality. We are constantly trying to find ways to escape the Real and create new worlds of fantasy predicated on the image. I'm going to make a controversial statement in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...Britney Spears is not Real. She's a figment of our collective imaginations constructed by popular culture (more on this in coming posts as I'm pretty much infatuated with the Britney Spears Effect). There's one particular scene in 27 Dresses where Katherine Heigl tries on her 27 bridesmaid dresses for Kevin (played by the deliciously lickable James Marsden) who photographs her in each one. It's cute.



And I wanted to be her at that moment, be Jane who was seamlessly performing her simultaneous pathetic and precious (Look at that picture...PRECIOUS) existence with such charisma. It was excess at its schmaltzy finest. So how do we get from Katherine Heigl prancing to Cloverfield.

Death and total destruction. I am convinced that only in the space and place of NYC can both a movie like 27 Dresses and Cloverfield reside in terms of spectacle and the fantastical. I enjoyed Cloverfield, even though it was a little traumatizing to watch. I haven't felt such a visceral reaction to a film in a very long time and the adrenaline rush was kinda cool. So JJ Abrams of Lost fame said he wanted to make a monster movie. But really, the monster itself (its origins, etc.) is pretty much not the point of the film. What is most important is how it is constructed through the recording device of the camera. What the monster appears to be supercedes what it actually is. The movie indicts the spectator's gaze and infatuation with looking at an image--the cinematic apparatus and the monster (one in the same?) win in the end. I'm always wary of monster films because I inevitably think they are propaganda to create a stronger national identity in the face of the infiltration of an Other which is almost always racially coded. But Cloverfield surprised me in that it didn't have that strong nationalist bent (though it does have a complex mythology surrounding its viral marketing campaign...there's a whole Cloverfield world out there!)

I say all of this to say that all of these movies end with love. Look at Juno and her baby daddy:

Like, really heartfelt and emotional love that makes you wanna cry with mushy satisfaction. Even though Juno is a film that is decidedly the most "normal" of the three, Juno is an (extra)ordinary girl, not quite believable as a young girl entering motherhood but still quite pleasurable to an audience member.

If this was Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw would cleverly do a voice over in that familiar contemplative tone of hers and comment: "I couldn't help but wonder...is love the greatest spectacle of all?"

Think about it. Brought to you by Brandy, ruining your Valentine's Day since 2008.