When something is getting social media play and there is no clear answer, what is the answer?
Why, turning everything into a Rorschach Test, of course.
Thing is, we all have opinions and there is nothing wrong with saying them out loud, no matter how poorly informed we are. Tell your friends what you think. Tell your family what you think. Tell your shrink what you think.
But if you are living in the temple of journalism… even as an opinion journalist… you and me and all of us need to start doing better… demanding more… actually having a standard other than offering every “open issue” through the perspective we were walking around with long before we ever happened upon The Issue of The Week.
I started writing this piece a couple of weeks ago, at a moment of peak. Then, I put it on the backburner, not wanting to be a raging ass. But it never seems to stop anymore.
“Mommy… make it stop!!!”
I started having opinions in public 28 years ago. And in those early years, when I was one of the very few doing this publicly, I certainly overreached a bunch of times. I have told the story many times about the writer who I met at a party who eventually told me that I had written something very mean about him. I was sure I had not. But I checked… and I had… and I apologized immediately. For me, the sin was compounded in that I had forgotten even attacking the guy and his work because I guess I thought to have an opinion on everything.
Of course, I do have opinions on a lot of things, especially in the film and television business. I had about 20 years of lived experience in the industry (theater, tv, and film) and I have now had almost 30 years of experience as a journalist, chewing on the industry. I certainly have the tendency to lecture. But even then, what I am really seeking is truth. Simple truth. Complex truth. Truth I do not yet understand.
Much of this industry is opinion. I really can’t think of any other business where so much is reliant on the creation, selling, and results of so much new content every year. Libraries do exist and they are of great value. But the constant conversation tends to be about the exploitation of the new. And the ultimate reality is that we only know what the result is, the details of the process blurred by those results. Sometimes a clear truth emerges. But even when it feels clear… it usually isn’t.
Every single week, movies open, well or poorly, and various highly-paid people go out and lie about how it happened. And yes, I mean “lie.” Because regardless of the outcome, even the people who are in charge of the distribution of these films, responsible for result of spending many millions of dollars, have to embrace the lies that must be told to get through the day.
It’s not that the executives are delusional or evil. If you talk to them off the record, for the most part you can tell that they know when their giant hit is a steaming mound of dino-poop or when they just can’t find a way to get more people to see the masterpiece they are selling.
But we all have roles to play and perspectives to maintain and secrets to hide… at every level, from the lowly film journalist to the head of the studio to the in-control owner of the conglomerate.
So as often as not, it’s not just a Rorschach Test… it starts with choosing the identity that the individual taking the test chooses to put on at that time. The same person can easily code switch - that is so much of so many jobs in this industry - and honestly offer at least 3 different responses to the inkblot.
So maybe “lie” is too harsh a word.
I guess it depends what you think of the word, “lie.”
The current President of the United States lies pretty much every time he opens his mouth. It’s not a feature… it’s his foundation. When he bumps into something that is actually true, he gets a surprised look on his face, almost like a baby playing peek-a-boo. I think it actually delights him.
But look at his results. Not in the quality of life in America. That’s an ongoing disaster of his making after just a few months. But his success in convincing enough people to elect him and then, even after being marked and convicted as a criminal in a dozen ways, most of which were factually undeniable, to get elected again.
Lying, for lack of a better word, works. When he lies, he is the funhouse mirror image of the eloquence of Lincoln. Powerful.
The people who support him - and I know that some of you do… I have the angry e-mails - and indeed, often those of you who do not, have both been pulled into the Rorschach of it all. Reality is what we think it is, not anything more or less.
These days, The Left can be provoked into a frenzy by an old man putting 2 new flagpoles on the White House lawn and cementing over The Rose Garden. Meanwhile, as so many understand, there are more Americans who are hungry, more Americans being threatened for purely political reasons, and a rising tide of anger on both sides of the bottle blonde. But that is too complicated to argue about.
There is a reality… there are true things… but no one bothers indulging such petty things as facts anymore. You have to find the target to maximize opinion creation. So the Democrats are leaning into Medicaid to enrage the public about Trump’s budget…. and completely ignoring so many other things that are demonstrably as bad if not worse. Can’t muddle the message.
How many dead people can dance on the head of a pin? How have we gotten to the point, as a culture, in which mass death is used as a political cudgel on both sides? Where are we when one team insists on focusing obsessively on a handful of deaths caused by undocumented immigrants, suggesting that all undocumented immigrants should be suspect, while the same folks dismiss deaths in much greater and consistent numbers by guns in the hands of white men, more often than not from their tribe, as irrelevant… hopes and prayers.
On the other team, how did we allow former President Biden to allow the border, which Trump made into a mountain out of the molehill left him by Obama, to be as wide open as it was for a couple of years as he waited for legislation that was then killed because it was too reasonable and would minimize a key election topic. Were we responding to Trump’s brutality by being much too blithe… even if the claims that jails were being emptied into America was (and is) absurd. Maybe. And this may have cost Democrats the election and created a (widely overstated) crisis in America.
Though you know, it’s another funny thing about living in a Rorschach… after a while, the people who are not accepting of some of the bad facts from “the other side” start to believe them too, forgetting the history. It happens on both sides of the spectrum. Modern mythology is a double-edged sword.
On a morning like this, as Texas is still collecting a count of the missing from the floods, the public keeps being challenged to pick a team when there should be only one team. Nature isn’t political. And FEMA’s failures in responding over the decades are truly bi-partisan. Did the Texas legislature vote down protective equipment to warn about flooding? Yes. Would it have been in place this week had they voted for it? No.
A massive tragedy should not be a Rorschach test.
We should want answers to prevent future deaths, not to score points… for anyone.
And as I watched it on TV today, I was also struck by how comparatively lacking in empathy this country is about other countries suffering with similar natural disasters. I mean… we care for a minute as we see bodies on TV, but then we have to get back to picking a side to fight amongst ourselves. Our hearts only have so much bandwidth, it seems.
Just think of the enormous importance of the fight of Justin Baldoni vs Blake Lively… a massive and pointedly frivolous controversy being pulled out of an unexpectedly successful movie that has lost its value to almost everybody but the financiers.
This New York Times Opinion piece makes the grave mistake of having an opinion. And I might agree that it is a little too facile. But it doesn’t matter whether it is true or false, it is just more rocket fuel in that Rorschach War.
Superman has had people lining up on the unseen-Gunn side or the long-dormant-Snyder side… so much so that the 2 directors made fun of the divide on an episode of WBD’s Rick & Morty.
And indeed, my weekly rage about how box office is covered and discussed… so small in light of the brutal realities of the world. On the other hand - code switch! - there are businesses with billions of dollars riding on how this industry of entertainment manages itself moving forward.
Smallball.
I, personally, want to know what everyone thinks. I want to be informed and challenged in my ideas. I embrace change, though sometimes what seems like change is actually the same old thing repeated in a new way.
I have a dear friend who disagrees with me passionately about the future of the Democratic Party. So we wrestled a little. But I have thought about what he thinks every day since. I still disagree, but I am working on an answer for his perspective and if I can craft it in my brain, maybe it will move my perspective. Maybe not. But the engagement should expand us, not narrow us.
We all see the world a little differently. It’s as individualistic as fingerprints.
But there are truths, as the old guys wrote, that are self-evident. All people are created equal, but all bets are off after that. All people should be endowed with certain unalienable rights… but there will always be someone who isn’t so sure about yours. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are hard to come by, and would not be in a better world.
Where do my equality, rights, and freedoms end when they overlap with yours? I guess we can fight it out on Tik Tok.
Or maybe we should just keep obsessing on Diddy and the baby oil…
The world keeps revolving.
Until tomorrow…