Film Noir, Cars, and the Super Bowl

Sometimes January and February usher in a feeling of boredom, a letdown after all the holiday activity. Not this year. What with the Golden Globes and other awards shows, my birthday, and the Super Bowl, on top of the build-up to the Olympics, there's hardly been a minute to spare. That's what happens to mythologists trying to keep their ear to the ground without falling prey to background noise. You may have run into the same thing.

My birthday? Oh, thanks, for asking. There was an unexplained visitation from someone who appeared, despite a locked outer door, to knock on my own personal door at the same time as a scheduled but cancelled appointment that morning, but as we (or at least, I) like to say around here, whatever. I got some work accomplished and enjoyed an evening out; at or around midnight, I was eating Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie with a friend, and I call that a success.

Social media has presented its own challenges this week, on top of the usual cultural churn. I had the intriguing experience of seeing a comment I'd posted to someone else's Facebook page disappear not only from her page but also from my own activity log, as if it had never been (actually, the entire thread disappeared). I'm not sure how that happened, and neither was the page's moderator. It smacks a little of Hermes, the god of communications, commerce, and tricks -- or it could be gremlins. I'm not sure whether Mercury is in retrograde at the moment or not, so perhaps we can't blame him.

As for the Super Bowl, I actually am not a great football fan, but after hearing about the game and its commercials from others who were watching, I decided to stick my toe in the water and at least check out the advertisements. (I recognize the Super Bowl as an important cultural ritual -- I just don't enjoy football.) I didn't see all the commercials, but of the humorous ones, my favorite was the Radio Shack spot with the '80s icons clearing out the store as Loverboy wails in the background. I commend Radio Shack for its sense of humor.

And who else showed up but Bob Dylan? Weren't we just talking about him? I've not only watched his spot several times, I've also read reviews of it, including a couple from The New Yorker, which, it seems to me, royally missed the point ("Close Read" indeed). Some reviewers acknowledge Mr. Dylan's enigmatic nature but take the ad itself at face value, as a "jingoistic" (one reviewer's term) tribute to Detroit and American-built cars. On a simple reading, this might appear to be true, but I doubt that's all there is to it because, after all . . . Jingoistic? Bob Dylan? There's also the fact that, as of last month, Chrysler is wholly owned by Fiat, an Italian company, and Fiat Chrysler is soon to be tax resident in Great Britain, according to The Wall Street Journal. I thought I detected a slight British intonation in Mr. Dylan's final pronunciation of the word "car," though it could, of course, be accidental.

Wordplay finds itself traveling some interesting byways -- weren't we just talking about foreign acquisitions of American brands? With the above facts in mind, I'm wondering whether there isn't a certain amount of irony in Mr. Dylan's delivery of the Chrysler message. This is not to take away from the pride in American craftsmanship he refers to in the commercial; I judge that to be quite real enough. But taken with the film noirish darkness permeating some of the ad's scenes and the somber rendering of Mr. Dylan's "Things Have Changed" that forms the soundtrack, I sense something more complex at work.

What one reviewer took as a pastiche of typical scenes of Americana seems a bit more ambiguous to me. Someone peering through blinds at a darkened street . . . a pair of eyes seen in a rearview mirror . . . a person draped in a flag, at the ocean's edge . . . a diner customer whose smiling thanks looks a bit like a grimace . . . a rather anxious-looking baby in the arms of its mother . . . oh, look, there's Marilyn Monroe . . . a tattoo customer attempting to duplicate on her own skin the original Rosie the Riveter . . . a rather savage young woman, running wild along a ridgeline . . . a cowboy falling from a horse . . . fast traffic in a narrow tunnel, seen from two angles . . . scenes of the road (I've been out there. It does look like that.) . . . a city viewed from above . . . a partially thawed river.

And there's the finale, which features Mr. Dylan, in character as the auto spokesman, leaning on a pool table and declaring, with a group of workers behind him, that "We will build your car." One of the workers, nodding slightly, wears a big hat and bears a weird, blurry resemblance to an officiant in clerical garb as the background goes out of focus. Those scenes of baseball pitches and athletic cheerleaders might seem more innocent if it weren't for glimpses of characters and situations that seem to have strayed out of Double Indemnity, The Hustler, or The Road more than Norman Rockwell.

So while some reviewers seem dismayed at this commercial's "boosterism," which they see as shallow, I take it instead as a rather layered statement. The opening question, "What's more American than America?" Does it mean, simply, that many have imitated but none have duplicated the spirit of America? Or does it refer, more darkly, to something else? It's an open question, one I think the viewer is invited to actively consider. A commercial that makes you think? Apparently so, since viewing it merely as a simple attempt to sell cars creates some puzzling questions. It's really more like a poem, I think.

Moss Could Never Grow on You

One of the more interesting 2013 media events I'm aware of is the release of the interactive Bob Dylan video for "Like a Rolling Stone." When I first came across it on author Neil Gaiman's Facebook page, I hadn't heard any of the pre-release buzz and had no preconceived ideas. The first time I watched, I didn't even realize there were 16 videos. By happenstance, the video from the Moviez channel was the one I caught, and it floored me.

All of the videos are alike in that each one features characters (in some cases, actual TV personalities) lip-synching to "Like a Rolling Stone." The Moviez video shows a couple coming out of their brownstone on a city street, engaged in a somewhat passive-aggressive dialogue consisting of the lyrics to the song. The peaceful morning street contrasts sharply with the malice in their expressions; the woman starts to walk away but comes back; the man smiles knowingly. I was reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, in which hell is in the interaction between characters, and also of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage also comes to mind.

We see the couple walk through a park, enter a diner, and order food, while continuing to bicker via the song. At the end of the video, the couple are seated at the counter and have just begun to eat breakfast. She leans toward him and smiles in what might seem a friendly way if not for the vindictiveness of their previous interaction, which consisted entirely of mutual recriminations.

This plays out like an unpleasant (but humorous) send-up of romantic comedies and certainly works on that level. I might have left it at that, except for one thing. The waitress in the scene reminded me inexplicably of a friend who told me a story about the time she cooked dinner for a now-famous political couple. That reminded me that the video could be read as more than just a satire on marriage. You don't have to look far to see why bickering, accusations, and politics might come to mind in such a context.

In the other 15 videos, I was frequently reminded of events large and small that I've seen or heard about. Mythologists caution people about reading stories too literally, and I support that caution. Nevertheless, I was continually struck by resemblances to actual events. One of the videos, depicting a sports network's coverage of a tennis match, features two opponents, one a handsome, Kennedy-esque figure, and the other quite reminiscent of Lee Harvey Oswald. It's hard to escape the feeling that the video references an assassination, especially when you notice the names of the players: Diovesky and Plotnivich. Certainly, thoughts about JFK's assassination have been floating in the culture this year, with even John Kerry weighing in, so it isn't surprising that they emerge here as a theme.

A seemingly ordinary episode of The Price Is Right, until you notice the body language of the participants and audience members . . . an episode of Bachelor's Roses with several women interested in one desirable man . . . a cooking program with a remarkably dead-pan chef . . . the irrepressible Property Brothers and their clients, one of whom has a very red face . . . a radio personality dominating a less than amicable interview with a man in a striped shirt . . . rapper Danny Brown on the Music 1 Bass channel, innocent and childlike, at play on the neighborhood swings . . . a Pawn Stars exchange in which an owner seems to be of two minds about a valuable item . . .  a notably witchy fashion reporter (on Broome Street!) who doesn't seem to notice the effect she has on her interviewees . . . three wizened professors on the History Network (and who are those people in the upstairs window?) . . . a news anchor on a business desk who can't stop blinking . . . Mr. Dylan himself, in concert footage.

Bob Dylan has long had the stature of a prophet and soothsayer, albeit one who occasionally trades personas. I think this video, directed by Vania Heymann, has a lot of him in it. This is the first official video for "Like a Rolling Stone," one of Dylan's signature songs. The video reinterprets the song for our time, something that's bound to happen when a theme is archetypal to begin with. I doubt whether anyone has captured all the nuances of meaning in the video, but "Like a Rolling Stone" - Interactive, while parodying the channel-flipping experience, gives you a chance to "see through" what appears on the surface.

This collection of videos weaving in and out of a single theme or themes is very postmodern. I admit to having a mixed reaction to it; like the media experience it satirizes, it can produce vertigo and a feeling of the ground shifting under your feet. Ultimately, though, I think the video challenges us to both notice and question. Truth can emerge in surprising ways; often, it appears in popular culture, in movies, TV, and songs, before you see it anywhere else. It's not uncommon.

To me, the ultimate criteria for evaluating truth or falsehood, no matter who tells you something, are in your own mind and heart. Does what I'm seeing and hearing ring true? Does it fit in with the facts? Is it consistent with the rest of my experience of the world? Knowing that my knowledge is limited, can I imagine it being true?

I'm sure the video is even now being analyzed and hotly debated among music, video, and technology lovers everywhere. All of this makes me hope we can turn that same careful eye toward all the media we're exposed to. It takes close attention sometimes to sift through the gossip, sound bites, and misinformation of the day to discover what's true, even though the truth is always there. Sometimes we just don't see it.