Rumblings of Change: The Future's So Loud, I Gotta Wear Earplugs

(Sistine Crustacean by Erik K)

The Internet is a wonderful thing. As a member of the highly-coveted 18-64 age demographic (you can sell me anything from gaming consoles to erectile dysfunction medication) I can remember a time before every home and office had access to the Internet--or even a computer. Back then, when I was somewhere between 1 and 47 years old, we couldn't just forward each other videos of heavyset men who look like Tad Doyle riding around in thongs. Instead, we had to re-enact them in person at work or in the schoolyard through an elaborate series of pantomimes, or else recreate the video by obtaining a pad of Post-it notes (this was new technology at the time--Post-it notes were SMS messages 1.0) and turning it into a rudimentary flip-book.

However, the Internet also has its drawbacks. For example, there's the increasing problem of identity theft. Even worse, if your identity gets stolen or you don't even have one in the first place it's way too easy to download one. See, "back in the day," you couldn't just see an identity on the Internet, gauge its popularity and "cool factor," and then decide to adopt it, all within a matter of minutes. Instead, you maybe saw or heard about something that seemed interesting (perhaps in a friend's Post-it note flip-book or while traveling into town to see the village blacksmith for new horseshoes) and then spent weeks or months obtaining more information and the necessary equipment before you even got to try it out. (Sure, people copied other people back then too, but you at least had to get near those people in person in order to copy them. And sometimes they smelled bad.) Plus, unlike now, there were no guarantees about how the world at large would react to your new "steez." Your new identity might get you laid (although "back in the day" people said "getteth you lain"), or you might be severely beaten (or, in the language of the times, "catch a beatdown"). I remember "hitting up" the blacksmith many years ago wearing my brand-new George Frideric Handel World Tour 1733 poet shirt and the bastard called me a "poseur," stuck a hot poker in my eye, and hobbled my Mongolian cyclocross bike, Ol' Dynamite. Sadly, those days are gone--nowadays I could have at least deflected the blow with my iPhone.

As for cycling, it looked a lot different in the pre-Internet days:

Road Bike

Mountain Bike

Track Bike

Power Meter

Pro Cyclist

"Fred"

"Collabo"

Yes, back then, you didn't "drop" a "collabo." The "collabo" dropped you.

But perhaps the worst thing of all about the Internet is the proliferation of documentary films. It used to be that people would wait until after something happened to make a documentary about it. In fact, once in awhile filmmakers would even wait until the subject or person had disappeared altogether. (I know it's hard to believe, but it's true.) At the very least, they'd usually wait until the subject they wanted to document had had some significant cultural impact. Like, you probably could have gotten away with making a documentary about the Vietnam "Collabo" while it was still happening, since it was what people back then used to call a Big Fucking Deal.

Things are different now though. Take for example the upcoming documentary "Made in Queens," about some young people who attach giant speakers to their bikes:

You may have read about this in the New York Times awhile back, but in any case here's the description:

Last summer in a rented garage on the outskirts of Queens, NY something incredible was happening. A group of imaginative tinkerers from Trinidad were working late into the nights creating something nobody had ever seen before: enormous stereo systems jury rigged onto ordinary bmx bikes. Traveling together, each behind the handlebars of his or her own massive homemade creation, they treat the neighborhood to an outrageous impromptu music and dance party on wheels. Directed by Randall Stevens, Made In Queens is a film celebrating America's first stereobike crew.

Is this "something incredible," really? I mean, clearly these kids have some ingenuity, and using ingenuity to have fun is in many ways what youth is all about. So too is figuring out novel ways to enjoy really loud music. But it seems to me like a lot more has to happen before young people enjoying loud music warrants a documentary. Probably the most famous instance in modern times of young people enjoying loud music was the Woodstock Festival, and that just barely qualified for a documentary due to the various artists who played, the number of people who attended, and the historical context in which it took place. Even then, "Woodstock" the film is only slightly a documentary and it's only separated from concert films like the unintentionally hilarious "The Song Remains the Same" by the width of a hippie's pubic hair. (In fact, given the hairy hippie bathing scenes "Woodstock" is mostly a "nature documentary.") Nothing against these kids in Queens, but until half a million of them gather somewhere together in a massive self-indulgent show of dissatisfaction with the status quo while their poorer peers are being conscripted and getting their heads blown off then they're just really into sound systems.

Again, this is not a criticism of the kids, who are just doing what they do; it's a criticism of the director, who is using what they do to sell himself. Here's what the film's marketing materials have to say:

In other words, since these people have no intention to design and package themselves for public consumption, he's going to go ahead and do it for them. There may be "nothing calculated or self-conscious about who they are," but the director is another story, which is why he's good at making commercials and music videos:

I have nothing against commercials or directors of commercials either, but when they start using people's lifestyles as the basis for films that seem like pretentious commercials designed to sell the director it starts making me a little uncomfortable. ("I'm going to portray your recreation as a cultural phenomenon in order to show the world how insightful I am and maybe get hired to do something big.") The truth is, your lifestyle is only as safe from plundering as the rights to it are difficult to obtain, and I'm guessing in this case it was pretty easy.

Then again, maybe I've got it all wrong. I haven't seen the whole thing after all. Maybe it's transcendent, and people with giant speakers on their bikes are going to change our culture forever. Or else they're all going to open stereo shops in 15 years and get rich installing expensive aftermarket audio equipment in the next generation's SUVs. I guess until we can popular search engine the future we'll have to wait to find out.

Posted in: cycling films