Monday, August 17, 2015

CMT - Chinatown (1974)



As we go about our daily lives, we make numerous assumptions regarding people and their relationships. For example, if a man is walking with someone that could be his daughter, we assume that's the case. If a woman is in a car with children, we take it for granted that she is their mother. We might also walk past a couple, thinking about an arrangement that isn't there and misinterpreting the appearance of normalcy.

Classic Movie Trailers - Chinatown (1974)

I often wonder if "The Jerry Springer Show" is scripted. With the multitude of crazy, scandalous and hard to believe affairs, I question the authenticity of it all. Is that stuff really going on? Is that really his grandmother? Are so many people really that clueless, about the father of a child?

I don't want to give the impression of naivety. I'm sure that these things are a part of life, I just can't say how prominent they are. If we could see behind the veil of everyone's public face, would we be shocked at some behavior, or would we be forced to change how we think? Perhaps if we took every celebrity headline, true or false, and multiplied them to cover the world population, we might learn the truth.

Personally, I'm not one to read the gossip rags. I see them there in the racks by every checkout line, but I never give them more than a passing glance. What famous people do and who they do it with, is business I don't care to know, but avoiding it all is impossible. Maybe shows like "Jerry", "Maury" and "Judge Judy", tell us that celebrities are simply a fraction of humanity, lit up in a spotlight. If everyone was under such scrutiny, imagine what we'd learn about ourselves.

I'm the kind of guy that asks only the relevant questions. People tell you the information they want you to know, so I don't pry any further. Beyond the facades however, are complications I'd rather avoid. A detective, on the other hand, lives his life in that sea of details.

He finds out about those "kissing cousins". He knows about every taboo fetish, every secret rendezvous and every closet skeleton. If it's relevant to his case, he might travel to another state, just to verify employment and personal history. With enough years on the job, gathering data from numerous places, I imagine that there wouldn't be much left to surprise him.

After encountering every type of obsession, perversion and delinquency, at some point he has to find something criminal. Danger is a real possibility, while searching for the truth and when it does rear its ugly head, there might not be any backup. The wonderful thing about films like this, is that we get to be a private eye, from the safety of an armchair.

Unfortunately, "Chinatown" was a film and not a television series. It didn't continue to dive into depravity, immorality and everything in-between. With more time, we might have gained a better understanding of people. Maybe we could have looked at so-called normalcy, with the knowledge needed in order to redefine it.





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@ChannelSeals

(See "Chinatown" on Netflix!)

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