In his compelling 2008 book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, director Alex Cox delivers a powerful insight about modern movie audiences that helps illuminate the bizarre, amnesiac nature of modern political audiences as well.

The book as a whole provides a riveting account of the circumstances surrounding the making of ten films shot by the Liverpudlian director, from his film school days at UCLA in the late seventies to his groundbreaking "microfeature," Searchers 2.0, in 2006. One of the films put under the microscope of Cox's affable, witty but hard-hitting analysis is Three Businessmen, from 1998. A work of hyper-realistic surrrealism, the film tells the story of two vaguely and dubiously employed salesmen who meet in a Liverpool hotel then set off to find a place to eat -- and somehow traverse the entire earth in a single night, popping up in such places as Tokyo, Rotterdam, and the Spanish desert (where they meet the titular third companion), yet believing all the while  they are still just a few blocks from their hotel.

Falling outside recognizable genre categories, the film puzzled many viewers -- and more importantly, many movie execs and money men. Looking back at its reception, Cox writes:

This brings me to the bigger problems of Three Businessmen -- the way we watch a film. Consider the scenes with Benny and Frank (Miguel Sandoval and Cox) aboard the Metro. While we're aboard the train, it's pretty similar to the Liverpool Merseyrail: a Metro interior is a Metro interior, after all. The train that Miguel and I boarded in Liverpool was painted yellow; the train from which we emerged in Rotterdam was green. You might think this was a pretty clear visual clue: trains don't change colour, after all. Yet almost no one in the audience noticed it. This taught me that people watch films on a shot-by-shot basis. What they see now, they accept as 'reality' within the frame; what was on the screen five minutes ago is already forgotten.

This passage is a near-perfect description of the mechanics of political perception in our day, especially in the land that Gore Vidal famously dubbed the United States of Amnesia. And how could it be otherwise? For almost all of us, politics exists largely (if not solely) on the screen -- the television, the computer, the Blackberry, the iPhone. The electorate is almost entirely an "audience," and nothing else;  actual political engagement is left to the "experts": the vicious in-fighters of power-gaming factions (and the witless sycophants who dance attendance on them in the media, the think tanks and academia), and the handful of "cranks," on both right and left, who still raise hell at public hearings and sometimes even take to the streets -- where they are invariably herded into nice, neat "free speech zones," far from any point where their "unserious" opinions might inflict discomfort on the powerful.

The flattened images, the passing wads of constantly updated, continually washed away digital text, throw up their limited frames -- without depth, without history, without context -- and imprint them on our chaotic mental receptors with the frantic, primeval urgency of "now". Now is all there is, now is all we see, now is what we are relentlessly conditioned to accept.

What color is the train? It looks green today. Wasn't it yellow yesterday? Maybe not. Maybe it's always been green. 

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Michael J. Petro said:

Modern? Nice insight. You say "modern times," "in our day," "especially... the United States of Amnesia." I would think it is more ubiquitous than that, through space and time. Television has arguably exacerbated the problem, made it more frenetic and (ironically) visible, but prior generations were subjected to framing and encapsulations as well ("serious" novels, pamphlets, town criers, etc.) Add to that the fact that "popular" relevance in political machinations is an historically recent fact, I'm inclined to think that "We The Sheeple" is a human condition, with no need for further qualifications. Just a thought...

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December 26, 2009 | url
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Jimmy Montague said:

We the sheeple -- Public Opinion, as a concept, came into being in 18th century London with the invention of what we call news journalism. People such as James Mill wanted to influence politics and political realities and so they first invented and then promoted "public opinion" in the pages of their journals as if the public actually had an opinion, as if the public's opinion made sense, and as if the public's opinion actually mattered to anyone who actually held actual power. News journalism never intended to report news, except as reporting news might gain them influence, which they could then sell to those who wanted to buy it. News journalists used "public opinion" as a club to beat politicians and government, and they used "news," in turn, as a cudgel with which they shaped "public opinion" to their liking. Foolish people believe what they see in the news. People who are yet more foolish try to discriminate between "good" journalism (what they want to hear) and "bad" journalism (what they don't want to hear). Power elites correctly recognize all news journalists as parasites and tolerate them only so long as they are useful. In extremity (i.e.: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot), power elites round up journalists and kill them like insects while at the same time they install what they themselves like to think is a useful form of journalism. In my own opinion such actions are (in human terms) probably never appropriate but are at least understandable given the vicious, mercenary nature of news journalism. The gullibility of the public at large to my mind gives the lie to Thomas Jefferson's oh-so-beautiful, revolutionary thought. True, Jefferson wanted a government that would protect the public from much of that which now afflicts us, but his logic relied on the sheep to defeat the wolves. It simply does not work in practice and in the end (if we hope to salvage at least a few of our freedoms) we will have to do as Lippmann hinted and -- with large, sharp, legal teeth and claws -- regulate the practices of journalism and advertising. Short of such regulation, what we call "public opinion" will always be water from a poisonous well.

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December 26, 2009
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Steven Jardine said:

Thanks Cris and commentors above. It's always amazes me when in conversation with people, with some of the thing they say and believe in but then again if watch just some tv and read what is called newpapers I can see why they think that way. This war, FWOT (rangeragainstwar) and any other rip off is brought to by Madison Ave. Yes, it will take pitchforks in the streets before we get any of the rights back and it won't be until corp. looses their citizenship and money is taken out of elections. I don't see that happening any time soon but just maybe A. Cockburn might have something today over at counter punch.

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December 26, 2009
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Bill Jones said:

	Well Chris, As a native born Scouser, you've intrigued me with this one and your timing is perfect with the latest "terrorist threat" being hyped. These FBI/CIA shills are getting to be really pathetic. As with all government programs the quality really deteriorates quickly over time. 9/11 wasn't bad as a brand introduction but this latest product roll-out is just plain sad.
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December 26, 2009
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john kelley said:

... The U.S. public long ago lost the ability to extrapolate from memory or imagination. Public opinion = brand allegiance. "...in the far future, a huge rail network connects the planet. The world is a vast dystopia, and lonely souls all try to reach a mysterious place called 2046 in order to recapture lost loves. In the world of 2046 nothing ever changes, so there is never loss or sadness." (Wikipedia on Wong Kar-wai's extraordinary 2004 film, '2046'.

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Grandma Jefferson said:

... The average citizen here has an attention span of about 15 seconds and the memory of a goldfish, which I'm given to understand is about three seconds. This is probably why they never get bored in their little tanks, which are ever new to them. Just like the idiots here, who remember nothing to the point of buying into any media whore's revisionism and lying, and fall for any polical pimp's latest fairy tale promises of change and hope and "I never campaigned for a Public Health Care Option." INRE the latest farce of a "terror attack", which is certainly banking on the public's intellectual incapcity being discussed, I suppose we can expect full body searches at the airports now, maybe strip searches too, just in case somebody has incendiary stuff taped to their legs, or some other parts. Do you think they remember the days when you could get on a plane without surrendering your perfume or handcream, and have family members with you to see you off, or greet you? I doubt it.

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NomNomNom said:

	... has one ever noticed a cat coming into the yard: it immediately notices if something has been moved or added or taken away. people are the opposite of that, lol.
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December 27, 2009
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