i remember this time last year
you had a show and everyone was already everyone
I’d hasten to say that she is a departure from the conventionally attractive bottle blond. She’s savvy. She possesses a refreshingly realistic type of beauty. Bebe Zeva wants you to fall in love with her.
Since learning about a snarly little piece back in March that Bret Easton Ellis published in The Daily Beast, I’ve been fascinated by the new phase of celebrity. Ellis posits that Charlie Sheen represents a new style of celebrity, but the piece reads as generational. Ellis is reacting to the particular transition that’s happening in the way we perceive and experience the speed of media. The image of the grandiloquent, apologetic celebrity kowtowing to the demands of the press dates back to an era Ellis refers to as “empire.” Empire is associated with tradition and post-empire is a uniquely post-modern state intricately tied up in technological advances.
Ellis makes the point that the recent Charlie Sheen Drug Death Watch is actually about “a well-earned mid-life crisis played out on Sheen’s Korner instead of in a life coach’s office somewhere in Burbank…. the mid-life crisis is the moment in a man’s life when you realize you can’t (won’t) maintain the pose that you thought was required of you any longer.”
Not only do I find his statements have alacrity about Sheen’s conflict, but Ellis is also correct to relate these to technological expression, given that is how we are recording our own life events. He mentions that Sheen acquired recognition for tweeting about #winning, babes, etc. People like Charlie Sheen for playing his part. He’s so good at being a celebrity that he’s perfected his own demise.
II.
But, what of, say, a James Franco who is scorned for wanting to be anything more than an actor? What about a co-director who has largely channeled a media presence through her relationship with the first writer to figure out how to make it on the internet? What about a girl who gchatted with Tao Lin before, face it, 75% of the country even knew that was cool? I like learning about how people deal with these suppositions and figuring how that changes my personal opinions about life, hypermedia remediation, girlhood, etc.
Critically, I could say that I think Bebe Zeva is potentially exploitative because it is about a teenager in Las Vegas and filmed by two adults familiar with the New York art scene. Those are very different worlds. Just because we are starting to be aware of these other words doesn’t mean that we have to portray them in ways that attempt to relegate them an us vs. them position based upon an imbalanced power dynamic. I mean that only in terms of its always important to consider who has the resources to produce the film vs. who is being portrayed. Also, that’s not to say there aren’t other counter-reactive power dynamics at work.
When executed without concern to these power dynamics, I think the result is a movie like Catfish, another film about meeting people from the internet. Catfish was about a young man who fell in love with someone on the internet, but it turned out to be a complete fabrication. But, instead of sympathizing with the lead in the film, I was still drawn to the woman who was compelled to construct an entirely different identity on the internet to escape the constraints of her own life. Maybe, witnessing empathy for both characters was what actually distinguished that film, aside from then novel factor of the Facebook storyline.
The point is that as we grow more connected, as we all become video editors, we have to do so with delicacy. There are issues of class, demographic conflict and even regional differences that posit polemical issues of who is going to represent them, how, and why. I can see the facet of the film that could be harmful, as is anything that’s been produced, as is anything that sells an identity or sculptured one therein. But like anything I look at that’s been produced, there is also a positive element for each negative statement I can potentially expound upon.
The positive element of this movie is who Bebe Zeva is, what kind of person she is becoming and (based upon what I know about Tao and Megan) the desire to convey to other people the potential of our generation.
III.
The first sequence opens with a shot of Tao adjusting the camera. The movie starts without further ado. The credits air. Bebe adjusts her sunglasses, she throws them back like an identity. She watches the skyline. She looks at the light pollution.
She mentions something about disclosing something, but then states that it “might make it too vulnerable.”
She’s met her friends on Facebook because she dislikes the ones in her immediate life.
She went to T.G.I. Friday’s on a date, then they stayed up and watched the sunrise. Such Americana. She knows her emoticons, knows more about a stats counter than me, can cite Pitchfork ratings and knows her way around form-spring. Kudos.
She is an experience of youth.
Now, if only millennials would stop snagging all the xs shirts, I’d be appeased.
Sundays were the worst of the post-grad dregs. After college, I struggled to find something to fill the time on a Sunday afternoon/ early evening from when I used to do homework. In September, by the time the flashes and sunspot-like splotches had faded from my eyes after all those party pictures, I started to hang out with a slightly older crowd. We watched movies on Sunday afternoons in the winter instead of doing homework: Louis Malle (ALL LOUIS MALLE ALL THE TIME), Robert “Striker” Altman, Todd “Total Creeper” Solondz. I wanted my friends to come over and watch Bebe Zeva at my house. I filled out entry fields on Facebook with characters. I selected a date and time. I clicked through a chain of embedded_featured links on YouTube while searching for an image to set to a mood I can’t quite define.
I settled on a screen shot of Bebe Zeva, after all, she is supposed to be the central female muse in this, so that made her something like the spitting image of image itself. I uploaded clips of Tao and Megan in Taiwan looking of dubious sobriety and doing their best nonsensical commentary (“riffing”). The image I thought could potentially best apply to the film was one Jordan Castro posted. At least, I should note that I assume this is Jordan Castro, but I’ve never met him. I am only vaguely aware of his internet presence, so I can’t be entirely positive. He could be a figment of my imagination, some weird permutation in an invented hyper-reality for the lack of empirical sense data….
His video caught my attention because I hoped it was a nod toward the type of meta, self-referential critique/ irony that I want in media. The clip next to Castro read, “Bored, depressed rich kid does homework,” which kind of made me want to loathe him immediately. I proceeded to show it to a friend who immediately erupted into a fit of what could only be described as a cackle-that-shook-the-whole-undercrust-of-the-molten-earth-and-its-shiny-insides kind of cackle.
Castro, or at least the vlogger that I presume to be him, JordanCastrolsFucked, hit on a recognizable image associated with writing and within just a few characters. I think that “bored, depressed, rich kid” is a particular brand of writer, one that is painfully self-aware.
The new writer is one that is capable of engendering a virtual social space with recognizable citations to past moments of culture. But, given that this all exists in a removed arena of circuitry or a pause within mind, I wanted to see how other people react to Bebe Zeva, the same way I had introduced them to Tao Lin when I was obsessed with “figuring out what it all meant. And, here, I must note that the stylistic appropriation of scare quotes in front of the text is a riff on the scare quote phenomenon.
Incidentally, this style is a feature that I did not create, but I like this idea that my friend came up with and I’ve started to use it, occasionally. I think the quotes in front of the word are another movement or thought past citing irony. You might use the double quotes when you’re supposed to be all ironic and clever and sarcastic and shit, but you sort of don’t want to be like that. You sort of just want to acknowledge that all of that is there and, yes, the damnable fallacy of words always exists, but you’re choosing momentarily to only acknowledge that it can be addressed.
This sentiment suits my personal perspective, though, and I recognize that. Part of why I decided to invite people over was because I wanted to see how other people would respond to this film. I get a coffee-jittery feeling on Sunday. I hate waiting to see who shows up. I walk to the store. I get something arbitrary like dish soap. I find things to do with my hands, with my time, with waiting. I feel like something important is going to happen, but I can’t pinpoint what it is, only that that is what motivates me to screen this movie.
One thing that Megan Boyle mentioned in the Rumpus interview that I liked was how she said, “My thought activity before meeting was split between the expectations created from discussing the night’s plans with Tao, the image I had Bebe, feeling excited about what we were doing, and trying to quiet my awareness of the camera/ environment/ social anxiety so I could focus on ensuring Bebe would have fun and feel comfortable.”
Because, face it, making things/ creating/ churnin’ culture can be a daunting task. I had no idea how my friends were going to react and part of me is motivated by a desire to have others lead me through paths of thought I wouldn’t otherwise consider. The things I learn become part of my internal monologue, the things I repeat to myself to remain calm. Even referencing my internal monologue is something a different friend taught me. I want to point it out I didn’t come up with. Because I don’t know everything. I just keep a collection of helpful mementos in my pocket, ones than I can take out and consult in the leaflet of my mind.
I want to say that nothing can be replete in and of itself. There is always, perennially, some notion or element of depth that the very act of writing fails to encapsulate by its unique nature. Some part of a person or an idea is lost in the very act of generation. All I mean to say is, this is a reconstruction of an event that is now in my ”past events on Facebook and here is one way of describing the tangents we traced.
There is a grouping of about 4-7 people at the room in any given time including two dudes playing Magic Cards. If such a thing can be cool. They are the type of guys who dislike this type of writing on principle. They might disapprove of the facets of this style that have potential to conscript them into a moment of being or a caricature of themselves. One mentions that the beginning of the movie where Bebe, Megan and Tao are in the car reminds them of the beginning of a porno. I drink too much wine and mix up plot lines.
I ask/ we all ask questions like, Why is Tao Lin force-feeding her ice cream? Is it to show that they’re using these roles to sculpt her persona or something? Why is it so psycho-sexual? Is this ironic or unintentionally so? What does it mean?
My questions are, “What am I supposed to write about this? What if I write something negative and no one in this industry ever ever publishes me? What if I they take everything I say way too critically? What if I’m not used to rejection? What what I have to say offends someone? What if there is no real thing as free speech–”
We just get questions.
And, then, I would say a sort of complacent mood descend upon us all. I wonder if the point of post-ironic movies, then, is to generate these conversations. To get us to question how recipient we are to perceiving media.
The next day, I’m watching this movie again. Someone else comes in while I’m watching the movie and talks about how they don’t necessarily think Bebe is pretty. They say that all the comments she makes are like what a fat person thinks about food (“Did she just say she found gratification in hot pockets ‘cos that’s kind bad ass”). It’s a boy who makes this statement. I glare at him, but by the end of the movie he is saying, like, I guess she is kind of hot.
He asks me whether I’m going to be telling any of this to Tao Lin (“He seriously sounds like he’s on tons of pills. He sounds like Corey Haim. Should he be driving? You’re sending this to Tao Lin? Tell him I said that. Are you writing this down? (I nod.) Tell him I said that. Yea, good.) when I write this down.
The first slurred sounds on Bebe Zeva seem innocuous enough: “Nice to meet you, finally.” But, then, you have to consider who is saying them and why. After all Bebe Zeva documents the first (irl) meeting between Megan 'Ass' Boyle (blog, co-honcho of MDMA films), Tao Lin (e-livre ici) and Bebe Zeva (muse of Richard Yates and fashion blogger). If you sift though the always emanating from blue-to-purple hyperlinks, you're going to find an equally convoluted story.
urious about what happens when someone primarily considered a writer translates their experience into film. The first theorist that came to mind after I actually watched the film was Susan Sontag (left). Since Sontag addresses the narrative of the image, I revisited her work because she, like myself, attempts to describe the cultural meaning of a photo (or in the case of Bebe Zeva, a series of images generated in a loop or stream) in a style of words most resembling critical theory. 
What I understood from conversation was that the implications of directors producing their own film without editors could transform the industry. The role of the editor could evolve into something like being relegated into big budget projects with visually demanding pieces. However, it must be noted that Tao Lin is radicalizing the genre as is specific to his style. Tao's walking around Las Vegas with his Macbook and arms extended, but this is part of what I perceive to believe is what he considers art.
Posts
All Comments
