| From
the creators of Drew Barrymore comes this uncanny indictment
of the post-millennial[1]
condition. The public sphere swallows privacy whole in its
quest to make all intimacy ironic (e.g. reality TV, blogs,
Friendster/MySpace) as star & exec producer Drew goes
undercover at a local high school so her paper can get a story
and (one assumes) we can be an audience. But then Drew’s
coworkers co-opt our audienceness once Drew attaches a tiny
camera to her lapel, as if movie watching weren’t passive
enough: we could spend the rest of the movie watching them
watch the movie. Want to know how to react to a scene but
don’t want to work up the energy to actually react to
it? Don’t worry, the Audience Surrogate will laugh and
cry for you. Yet the Audience Surrogate is unperturbed
by the implicit moral & statutory quagmires, such as adult
Drew pining for underage Guy and adult Drew’s Brother
(David Arquette) dating 16-Year Old Virgin Gymnast and adult
Hip Teacher falling for what he thinks is a minor Drew, so
there’s still hope for an unmediated real audience reaction.
That is, until Drew obliterates such hope by confessing her
and everybody else’s sins in the very public arena of
the prom, the communal catharsis of which so stimulates the
Audience Surrogate that it splits amoeba-like into the prom-goers
and the coworkers-via-video-link, applauding in unison, so
we don't have to.[2]
(Was I the only one bummed that she ratted out her brother?
I mean he just wanted to play ball and she ruined his big
chance so she could morally purge herself.). After that, there’s
no turning back. The movie ends with a double negative affirmation:
private life is spectacle and love can’t exist unless
it's public. Drew’s Boss: “I love this. [The audience],
out here en masse, relating personally to one of our reporters”
as she stands totally alone and barely visible at the center
of a baseball diamond, separated from us by a field, a fence,
and an audience.
________________________
[1]
actual release-date was pre-millennial 1999, making this the
most culturally prophetic rom-com ever
[2]
addendum: I totally misremembered this scene. I just watched
it again and Drew cuts off her video-link right before her
public confession — as if to distinguish between immediate
audience (studio audience = good) and distant audience (home
viewers = bad). Yet she later renegs on this distinction with
a cubist vengeance at the baseball stadium as she herself
(as the spectacle) splits at least three-fold: her face on
the field, on the stadium screen, and on the TV for those
at home.
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