Phalluses, Flip Phones, and Judgment in a Tech World

Back in the day-like maybe 5 years ago-on a couples' date, we waited in line to see a comedy revue in Hollywood. One of the men in our party reached into his pocket and removed his cellphone. He cocked his hips forward and flipped his phone open. This triggered a reaction with more men, up-and-down the line, also flipping their phones open. They looked so manly and assertive. The women didn't take their phones out, but we all had them, of course. If flip phones had existed in ancient Egypt or Pompeii, the statues of sovereigns would have revealed them regally seated on their thrones . . . holding a flip phone in their laps like a gigantic phallus. 

Cell phones are status symbols, but it's only with the introduction of smart phones that women seem to be equally consumed with them. They're as likely as men to walk with head bowed over phone. When just standing in line, no one talks to strangers anymore. They're too busy tweeting that they're standing in line.  I don't have a smart phone.  I'm on and off my computers all day so a walk without being wirelessly connected to the world is a blessing. Plus, I like to people watch and I'm curious which of my "friends" will glance at me with pity when I pull out my . . . flip phone.

The following letter is from Peggy, a friend of 40 years (A 70's Redux). She wrote to me in response to a link I sent to her regarding my Huffington Post blog, Bullied: Diversity, Differentiation, Distinction. Her letter has no condescension when discussing technology . . . only wonder.

Sandra, 

Well I clicked on the HuffPost site. I realized that technology for me is like an octopus.  You can be very comfortable with one appendage (doing texts and using a smart phone at the beginner level), but what goes on in other appendages can make us feel like blithering idiots (envision a resident of an asylum, straight jacketed, drooling after a session of drugs and electricity to the brain!)  

The day we met at Venice beach, I got there way before you.  So I did what anyone would do.  I tried to call you to see where you were. Gerald answered your home phone and told me you don't always have your cell on! So after several attempts to contact you that day, I resorted to the old-fashioned method for coping in today's world: I sat and waited for you to show up.  What to do when you can't instantly reach your friend? Made my skin crawl as I had nothing to do till you showed up.  Oh, there was people watching.  I enjoy it.  But honestly, I felt I was so superior thinking I was so advanced cuz I USE MY PHONE CONSTANTLY THROUGHOUT THE DAYLIGHT HOURS, BUT YOU OBVIOUSLY DIDNT.  

Fast forward to this blog thing and I am right back at the idiots table.  In the old days everything on machines was obvious!  There were buttons and their functions were instantly recognizable.  We knew what each button did cuz it only did one thing: on/off, channel, volume, horizontal control, vertical control! That was it. Now you have to know the codes for each letter, number, icon before you can encode the messages and negotiate anything on technology!   

So my dear friend, I read the info about you and I have too many questions to type.  I guess I'll just have to do the old fashioned thing- and call you.  That modality still is available and it doesn't involve magical icons and codes.  

I'll try to call this week.  I must say I'm so proud to be the friend of such an accomplished author.  And Im very happy that you are working on the next installment.  Which pleases me so much.   I loved the first one and knew as I read each precious page that I wanted to spend more time with the Sandoval sisters than just one book. 

Talk soon.  Congrats.  Much love! Peg

Sent from my iPad

Only Lovers Left Alive

     How about a vampire movie with no biting, no sex, and no thrill-a-minute action sequences, but where the millennial-old vampire lovers sleep a lot, don’t comb their hair, but really really love each other?  Sound like a hot date movie?

         

Wait, there’s more. Well, kind of more. Yeah, these vampires sleep a lot during the movie, but it’s Tilda Swinton, whose natural vampiric good looks require little enhancement, and Tom Hiddleston, both sleeping naked atop a chaste coverlet. Your heart rate might go up just listening to their light snores, but only if you’re a Jarmusch hipster and so totally cool that you feel his aesthetic. If so, Only Lovers Left Alive is the vampire love story for you.

A testimony to Adam and Eve’s eternal love is that although they live apart–he, in the abandoned and economically desolate suburbs of Detroit; she, in a surprisingly clean Tangiers–they keep in touch via Skype. “I want to see you,” Adam says to Eve. She presses the video display on her iPhone. Yes, Eve has the Apple. Adam does it his way. He’s using a gigundo dinosaur of a cell phone with a pull out antennae, then connects a few wires and aims an equally ancient remote at a TV console similar to the one my grandma owned. Eve’s face appears. He looks momentarily happy; this soon passes. He’s embraced technology, but not the latest thing. He’s stuck in a vinyl world of classic 45s and bemoans the loss of the Packard plant.

The tree of bummed out vampires is vast and includes Louis in Interview with the Vampire, Angel in Buffy and even Bill Compton in True Blood, but they were known to glory in the occasional bite or have sex with the woman they loved. Adam puts the bleak dollop of mope on brooding. If he had a lawn, he’d be screaming at the kids to get the hell off it.

          Only black market blood is good enough for Jarmusch’s vamps, and not because they’ve morally put aside their predatory ways. “It’s how they treat their world,” Adam says, explaining his disillusionment with humans and their self-destructive lifestyles. He calls the humans zombies.

“Who you calling a zombie, bro?” I longed to hear those words from some soulless musician in the nightclub Adam and Eve deigned to visit.

I’m sure Adam and Eve sucked blood from the occasional syphilitic or plague ridden human in the past, but in Jarmuschland, vampires no longer tolerate diseased blood. Or, is it that like many humans who prefer bottled to tap water, these vampires are the ultimate consumers? They like their human blood bottled or packaged and with advance hype. In Eve’s words, “The good stuff.”

Adam and Eve are mismatched lovers, proving that opposites attract.

She’s more books, art and using the latest technology, he’s more music and scientifically inventive. She maintains contact with others, he prefers cruising Detroit’s abandoned manufacturing hub, its decaying buildings etched in moonlight like Roman ruins. She’s intent on surviving into the next millennia, he’s stuck in the past and contemplates suicide with a wooden bullet. There is an upside to all of this: the music is very good and my favorite scenes involved those nighttime cruises through Detroit.

Only Lovers Left Alive is not a story so much as a whimsy, and a conceited one at that. Their snobbery is dangerous. It leads to estrangement from all that they value. Creativity and destructiveness are part of humanity, their life source. If they lose that connection, what good is their art?

An acute appreciation of irony is at the core of their aesthetic, as it must be with all intellectual snobs. In the end, they must return to their primitive state and prey on young lovers in order to live. “What choice do we have,” Eve says.

Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch; director of photography, Yorick Le Saux; edited by Affonso Goncalves; music by Jozef Van Wissem; production design by Marco Bittner Rosser; costumes by Bina Daigeler; produced by Jeremy Thomas and Reinhard Brundig; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes.

WITH: Tom Hiddleston (Adam), Tilda Swinton (Eve), Mia Wasikowska (Ava), John Hurt (Marlowe), Anton Yelchin (Ian) and Jeffrey Wright (Dr. Watson).

  

 Vampire Musings and Reviews: 

Byzantium: the Eternal

The Dark Good

Mortals and Vampires

Vampires and Evil: The Romantic Antihero Reborn

The Vampire Priest and His Nemesis in "Thirst"

Let the Right One In