Me And You And Everyone We Know Should Take A Cue From The Movie And Be Sleeping Together Like Babies

I have friends who have friends who watch movies, and sometimes those movies land in my P.O. Box. Me And You And Everyone We Know is one of these.



The movie as a whole, encompassing the different, intertwining plot lines that make it up, endeavors to remedy the psychological and physical isolation that is pervasive for all of the characters. It is a purely sentimental movie, however, failing to address the modern, social causes of this isolation, even if it does expose them in the art museum which showcases representations of human interaction in the "digital age." The beauty of the art show is that it mirrors the relationships that exist throughout the majority of the film that are, in fact, merely representations of real interactions. Two people strolling down a sidewalk, for instance, create a scene that is, via their conversation, symbolic of the phases of a real relationship that may, or may not, come to pass. The happy ending, of course, is that it does come together, but only for the central couple of the film. The other characters are, for the most part, left disconnected, often with the realization that their personal, imagined representations of relationships were incongruous with reality.



In addition to this, there is a motif of age displacement running through the length of the film in which children attempt to act like adults and adults end up acting like children (occasionally even admitting this themselves in dialogue). The resulting blur of age distinction tends to lump the characters of the film together as a whole, contributing to its feel of social togetherness that is exemplified in the ASCII art that Peter produces in the scene where he speaks the movie's title. A sense of unity between the otherwise disparate characters is thus created from which the viewer is left to wonder what is causing the painful disconnections between the individuals, a question that the movie fails to deliver an answer to.



The film feels like it is on the fringe of grabbing at an answer, but sadly, it ends up being what I consider a "lament." These are the books and films, most especially of the artistic genre, that identify and illuminate ills in our society, most specifically emotional ones, and then simply seem to lay down and accept them. Often, they close with a suggestion that all you need is love, which, to anyone in touch with classical pop music, is a popular and readily digested tune. This is not to say that I disagree with it, because I think John was right when he penned those endearing words, as right as this film is when it puts human hand into hand in its next-to-final moments. What I feel forced to inquire about, however, is the fate of the others who aren’t as lucky as our aspiring artist and her confused shoe salesman. What about a middle-aged man who sits at home on his couch every night and is forced, in lieu of real human interaction, to put up sexual slogans on his window? What about a museum director whose only avenue of personal expression ends up being with a 5 year old? Where is the movie that protests the machine that causes the human disconnections that this film is awash in? Again, the film hints at the cause of the widespread social estrangement but seems unwilling to rebel against it (but for the personal moment between the couple at the end when such an act of defiance is condoned, and thus, is no longer a rebellion at all).



The moment where our outrage should be sparked occurs early on, where the teeth of the machine make themselves outwardly known, in the scene where the shoe salesman fails to put the outlandishly blue sneakers on the old man. He will not touch his feet. He may not, in fact, touch his feet. The man must put on the shoes himself. Company policy. What is company policy but social code? This is our society: Touch in private, but not in public. It is the world that Humbert Humbert already has exposed to us, where all of his perverse desires are bred from an unfulfilled TOUCH as a boy that, though harmless (and wonderful, really), was denied by the society that raised he and his first, his true, Lolita. The girl that he kidnaps, that he ruins, as she ruins him, is merely a representation, and here again, an erroneous one that fails to live up to the promises that it makes in its fantasy form.



What sort of a diseased society is this? What sort of world do we create where we build walkways of gravel and stone that are abhorrent to the naked, touching foot, forcing upon our feet sheaths to separate us from our most basic and daily form of sensation? Where cold, electronic chatrooms, filled with characters who state that they are touching themselves, substitute for the physical heat of bonfires and the psychological heat emanating from sexually charged movements of the eyes and hands? Where we are forced to live out the majority of our lives in work environments and taught that relationships with those whom we see the most must be left strictly "professional"? Where a coworker of mine, a school teacher during the academic year, felt guilty for taking a student kayaking during the summer, a trip taken at the student's request? What sort of society takes an act of genuine mentorship and personal, assembly-line-free interaction and imbues it with feelings of impropriety? Where is the challenge to this society that takes all of our native happiness, built of our most innate and simple physical desires, and pours isolation and unhappiness over it, setting in generational concrete a standard of physical and sexual condemnation? A limb could be hacked from a body, a bullet sent into a head, and such material would garner only an “R" rating; sex, touch, by the standards of our community, is the more forbidden fruit.



I have heard it said that artists are those among us who are the best able to represent our emotions and desires, and I agree with this, but what are representations? Are they not just images and sounds and words that substitute for the authentic sensation? Should we admire the person who writes about her smile, who paints her perfect lips into imperfect recreation, or should we burn our books and tear our canvases and have the kiss instead, back and forth, forever? Where is the art that asks why we need art, that asks why we suffer and are forced to create mere representations? We should do more than simply lament. We should smash the mirror. We should touch everything, everyone, we see.




Where are the prophets, where are the

visionaries, where are the poets

To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary?



Fish

“Fugazi” - Fugazi (1984)