My brother wanted me to watch the thriller Cloverfield, so I put it in one evening. The premise of the movie is a home video, shot to record the going-away party of a twenty-something. The video records much more than people’s farewells – apparently something is attacking the city (how many times has Manhattan been destroyed? By giant gorillas, giant lizards, global warming, asteroids?). You don’t really know what’s happening, what the giant monster wandering through the streets is, wreaking havoc and causing pandemonium. You just follow the youngsters, reveling in their distress, pain, loss. Manhattan looks like a warzone.
Why do we make movies like this for entertainment? There was recently a huge earthquake in southern China. 40,000 people are dead. Burma suffered a tidal wave and subsequent flooding. Tens of thousands gone, there as well. There is chronic war in Iraq, Sudan, multiple places around the world. The events depicted in Cloverfield happen to real people around the world (barring the alien monster, of course). Are we so numb to the pain of the world? To the real loss and suffering elsewhere? We not only transplant that destruction into our own cities (because it’s more exciting when it affects a place that we’ve visited) but we do it for entertainment. For pleasure. For a thrill. I doubt that watching Cloverfield inspires many Americans to care about people around the world who experience tragic events such as earthquakes or war. My guess is that they snuggle deeper into their chair and relish the safety they possess.
When something really does happen in New York City, say, attacks by extremist terrorists, we make that into a movie, too. So we can sit, enjoy buttered popcorn, and watch real events mesh into sensationalized thrillers.
David, my brother, I don’t really like the movie. Sorry.
