FilmFemme

Ira Glass basically forced me to watch How’s Your News? because he talked about it for a while on This American Life about a thousand years ago when I could still podcast. So I got it from Netflix and it sat on top of my DVD player for 2 or 3 weeks until I tried to watch it last weekend.  I got about 15 minutes into it and it was just too much! 

A group of developmentally disabled adults get in a Winnebago with some filmmakers and interview people on the street and sing songs.  I guess it’s meant to be heartwarming and/or provocative but I just found it incredibly uncomfortable.  The part that made me turn it off was when they put a camera in some glasses (you know, like those ones they use on the blowjob [btw, this text editor thinks blow-job should be hyphenated?] amateur porn videos, um, not that I know anything about that) on this one guy who doesn’t speak English.  I should rephrase that – he doesn’t speak *any* language.  Rather, he communicates with grunts and pointing and some very scribbly writing.  And they just sent him up to people on the street with a little notecard that said “How’s your news?” (this phrase annoys me too – is it a colloquialism?  Who says this?) and he proceeded to grunt at them and they either ignored him or smiled politely and looked horribly uncomfortable.  I mean, what is the point of this, really?  What does that prove?  How does that give me insight into the human condition?  I would argue that it doesn’t, because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, the people don’t know what he’s doing and it’s just, like, creepy.

There was one lady, Susan Harrington, who was kind of awesome and would sing crazy songs in this loud operatic voice and maybe I could stomach more of that.  But like, if I’m going to be that uncomfortable, I expect a Happy Ending…

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