George Clooney Motorbike Crash and Our Brave New World

Three years ago George Clooney was in a motorbike crash that could have killed him. “I was waiting for my switch to turn off,” he says. He was in Sardinia, going at 75mph, when a car turned in front of him and he flew over the handlebars. Groggy, lying on the ground and screaming, he realized a crowd was gathering — he was being filmed by people on their phones.

So begins an exclusive interview with George Clooney that appeared this past week in The Times. The experience disturbed him not because he'd almost been killed, but because he became keenly aware that human empathy had vanished. Moments like these were to be captured and shared. His near death experience was being used as entertainment. 

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Yesterday I finished reading Brave New World again, Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel about the future and the dehumanization of man. For those unfamiliar, a primary character in the story is a man named John, also known as "the Savage" because he grew up on a reservation in America and has now been brought to civilization to see the wonder of it all. 

It's not a wonder to him, however. Everyone there is happy and blissful, free of worry and stress and any vestige of humanity. They have been literally brainwashed since pre-infancy, living in a soma-induced state till they die. "One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments." 

One of the features of this world is the use of technology to experience movies called Feelies. When you sit in the Feely theater, what's happening on the screen is being imparted into your mind so that when you watch porn you are experiencing the porn. (There are no morals here, sex is for everyone and with everyone.) 

Well, the effect that this world has on the Savage, who is still human, is heartbreaking. He has retreated to a tower, isolating himself. He's made a whip with which he flogs himself out of despair. But he is not alone. The Feely movie-makers have their cameras out and will transform his suffering into a Feely for the masses.

THIS SCENE FROM THE BOOK IS WHAT I'D JUST READ when I saw the George Clooney interview. Brave New World supposedly takes place 600 years in the future, but in less than a hundred we're already there. Maybe it's not Feelies yet but it's definitely become a world in which everyone is filming every shocking thing and turning it into entertainment for "friends" in social media.... and some of these go viral.

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As I read the Clooney piece it brought another memory to mind. About four or five years ago I was pumping gas at the Holiday Station on 27th Avenue West when I noticed that a young man and a neon green bicycle was lying in the middle of the road. He'd been hit by a car. There were no police or first responders there yet, but a couple people from one of the cars were attending to him until professional help could get there.

My first reaction, though, was to reach for my phone. As I did so, I felt a prick of conscience. I felt that this was a private moment. Cameras don't belong here. 

All the technology in our contemporary culture has been a challenge because we've had to wrestle with new ethical issues we hadn't previously encountered before. Certainly no one in 1650 or 1310 reached for a camera to capture photos of a stranger who was gored by a bull or mauled by a bear, just to entertain friends in their "social network."

It's a strange new world for sure.  

Gravity Is More Than SFX

Two years ago if you did a Google search on the word "gravity" I am guessing you would have found some variety in the list of URLs offered up, most of them dealing with gravity, as in the kind of gravity that pertains to apples falling from trees or that keeps us from floating away when we walk to the store. This morning, the entire first page of Google reveals links to web pages about the film Gravity.

When the trailer for this film was being shown in theaters last year my first response was, "Ho hum, another special effects movie." Apparently a lot of folks in Hollywood weren't of that same mindset. The film garnered a full slate of Oscar nominations, a brought home its share.

You probably already know the storyline, so I will be brief here so I can add my own perspective. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on her first mission to the space shuttle out there orbiting our planet. One of the other space stations somewhere out there get shattered and is transformed into missiles of space debris. The shuttle is seriously damaged and the two survivors, herself and the soon to retire veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) must find a way home.

One can't watch a film like this without making comparisons to others. I couldn't help but think of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both films conveyed the otherness of outer space and the marvel of hovering over the earth. Both films also utilized the sound track to good effect. Kubrick used classical music to convey the lyrical sense of unhurried movement through ethereal. unimpeded space. Director Alfonso Cuarón used the soundtrack to amplify the tension that Dr. Ryan felt in her various circumstances as she battled to survive in her various scenarios.

Apollo 13 is another film that one might readily think of, especially with regard to the interactions with ground control in Houston. One difference between the films is that we never leave the point of view of Dr. Ryan. The only characters in Gravity that we really meet are Clooney and Bullock. We do hear other voices, including Ed Harris reprieving his role as the voice of Houston Ground Control.

A third film that came to mind at one point as I watched was Jurassic Park, not because of the similarity of story, but rather because of the similarity of emotional pacing. Both films seem designed to create a super-intense emotional rush followed by a catch-your-breath period only to take you to more intensity again, often in very unanticipated ways. To full engross yourself in the film you have to tamp down that inner critic that wants to say, "Isn't this getting a little formulaic?"

The film is more than a masterful re-creation of the weightlessness of outer space and astronaut life. There actually is a storyline woven through the heart of all the close calls and survival challenges. Dr. Ryan has to face the meaning of her life. Little by little her inner story emerges. It's a hero's quest of sorts, one we ourselves must wrestle with now and again. Why am I here? Or in this battle for survival, what am I fighting for?

She'd lost something precious. Would she find something to take its place?

It's worth renting if you missed it in theaters.