Emotional Simplicity As Shown in the Brilliant Disguise Music Video

            It’s a simple music video. One shot. No camera movements, just a steady zoom. A man plays his guitar in a kitchen. This restraint may seem to some bland and uninteresting, but it is in fact a testament to the power of developing a narrative and visual style to accompany the core emotions of your project instead of building upon it.

The song Brilliant Disguise, from the Bruce Springsteen album Tunnel of Love, was released as a single 1987. The song’s about the nature of identity in marriage, it is a contemplative piece about the doubts one feels about their significant other in a relationship, and the fears and pains that accompany them. The narrator and his significant other are clearly past the point of blissful love, that period of time where you are blinded by the pure overwhelming emotions of being attached to someone. He is still in love it seems, but now he is looking at who she really is and who he really is. And he can’t help but doubt.  

So tell me what I see

When I look in your eyes

Is that you baby, or just a brilliant disguise?

Is the person he fell in love with the person she really is? I mean, can you ever really know, understand a person’s pains? Fears? Hell, can you ever really understand your own? The song never addresses these questions, which ends up making it that much more powerful. It doesn’t give the answers for the dark underbelly of identity in a relationship, but simply brings them up and ponders the ramifications of them.  It’s a powerful testament to one of the many discrepancies in love, and a powerful one at that.

This is a complicated, unnerving emotion to render into a music video. The video was released around the beginning of the peak of MTV. Videos were starting to get really flashy; they’d have big narrative arcs that the songs would accompany and detail instead of having the images give flavor to the songs. That is not necessarily bad. Sometimes fancy editing and extravagant camera movements empower the creators and help them deliver their message. Sometimes it is simply a show of skill and prowess, unnecessarily clogging up their visual palette and distracting from the core emotions of their piece. So going into the music video, in that era, one would expect some sort of narrative showcase of Bruce with a wife in a variety of situations looking forlornly off into the distance. There’d probably be some real nice dissolves here and there, maybe the woman even stares at the moon from a balcony at some point, her dress waving beautifully in the night time winds.

Instead, in the hands of director Meiert Avis, we have a black and white video of single shot zoom in on Bruce as he plays the guitar. It’s uncomplicated. He just plays his guitar and sings while staring into the camera. At the beginning, we’re something like ten feet away from him visually. The kitchen he’s sitting in looks like a set.  It comes across as surprisingly gimmicky and cheap.

Well I've tried to hard baby

But I just can't see

What a woman like you

Is doing with me

But the song delves into the deeper and more emotionally stirring parts of the song. The camera keeps steadily zooming in on Bruce. His face is browbeaten and weary. Bruce’s singing, which was recorded live on set that day, which is an unusual practice, strains in parts. The polish is gone. Instead, these words are pouring straight from his soul. The kitchen keeps looking like a set, but it takes one a whole other sense of identity. This is where the romantic, idealized marriage should happen. Loved ones gather at the dinner table to bond. These meals should serve as an affirmation of love. It should be perfect. It should be the moment you look forward to at the end of the day. But sometimes our lives don’t live up to the ideals we hope to be true. And so the kitchen becomes foreboding. It is a dead hope; an ideal ransacked by the true nature of life, and this man can’t help but live with it. Love was never going to be this simple, but he can’t help but hope for it.

           The song ends on a final lyrical coda before an instrumental outro:

Tonight our bed is cold

I'm lost in the darkness of our love

God have mercy on the man

Who doubts what he's sure of

The video, in turn ends on a tight shot of Bruce’s face. His very human, soulful stare is almost pleading to the camera as the song and video fade out. The moment haunt, and it fills the viewer with an impression of dread and fear. For the man, for themselves, who knows.

            This is not the convoluted narrative conclusion or a special effects laden spectacle of visual noise and aural bombast. No, this is just a man and his doubts. 

Garden State

Recently, after Hurricane Sandy and it being close to Thanksgiving I’ve been very homesick. So, I decided to watch Garden State directed by Zach Braff because it always reminds me of home. Obviously (hence the title), the film takes place in a suburban town in New Jersey. Zach Braff, the main character, is an overly medicated struggling actor in LA who goes home to jersey because his mother died. Within the first few minutes of this film, we know so much about his character. His room is blank and white, and his medicine cabinet is completely filled with medicine. Without any use of dialogue, we can tell by the cinematography and facial expressions about this character.  I try to use this technique in most of the films I make. Less dialogue, and more cinematography to tell about the character since I have such a short amount of time to convey my story. 

Most of this movie is Andrew (Zach Braff) meeting up with old friends and basically doing nothing around his town, other then drugs and explore abandoned places. This reminds me a lot of my home town, most of the kids are so bored and are always doing nothing. Although people say this movie is about people do nothing, it has a lot of sentimental value to me. All the character’s are very relatable and the situations seem real. Although there isn’t much of a climax other then their love story, or a any action in it, it holds my attention the hold time. 

Another great aspect of this movie is the soundtrack. Zach Braff claims he picked out each song of this soundtrack based on his life at the time of writing this film. I felt this music accurately portrayed the mood of the film at the time and fit to each characters emotions. I didn’t think it was too much and was totally worth obtaining all the copyright information. A lot of my favorite bands today were featured in this film, and it basically started my interest in indie music. This film has a lot of great elements, and whenever I watch it, it reminds me of home. Even if you’re not from Jersey, this is a great film to watch, whatever mood you’re in. It has kind of a sappy love story, but it isn’t cheesy when put in the context of this film. 

When Reality Becomes Surreal

I'm very picky when it comes to watching television. A show has to be well written, funny, with actors who play the part. That being said, I have a secret shame:

I love Real Housewives of New Jersey. I think it's one of the greatest shows on television, possibly all time. It's horribly photographed trash TV at it's finest. The show takes five women who lead lives of luxury in the dirty Jers and follow the petty crap they argue about on a daily basis. I can't even begin to describe the suffering and emotional trauma these upper middle class citizens endure every episodes. Stolen recipes, book deals, recording careers. It's hard not to empathize with them.

I began watching Housewives when the show began following the lives of women from Orange County back in March 2006. Since then, there's been five spinoffs, three international versions, and a new executive producer, Andy Cohen.

When the show first premiered, the premise was simple: follow the everyday lives of five women who live lives of luxury. In the first season of the show, there wasn't a single fight, screaming match, or petty argument. Everyone got along and stood by each other. They actually had real people problems, such as bankruptcy, divorce, and relationships.

Six years later, the show has become a poster-child for a new genre recently coined "Docusoap." The only one I continue to watch, just because it's so ridiculous, are the women from New Jersey. The producers continue to do everything they can to pump drama into the show. Since the first season, the entire cast has just been in a cross-media war, each battle consisting of something stupid being blown completely out of proportion. It's like high school with money.

Just recently, I watched the reunion. These supposedly upstanding members of society, each worth millions of dollars, personally dug in and attacked each other for the entirety of three hours. It was something to behold. They argued about who's mom created a recipe, someone faking an Autistic child, people wearing the same dress to an event, liposuction, nose jobs, lip synching, the list goes on and on. This wouldn't seem so bad, but each reunion shoot takes fourteen hours to complete. What was previously a reflection on the season by the cast has become a therapy session.

It's no secret that these women don't like each other. They apparently hadn't spoken to each other for a year before the reunion show. At the same time, how can people who have everything let something so stupid tear apart previously strong bonds?

People don't watch reality TV to see how other people live normal lives. They don't want to see people sleeping, using the bathroom, cleaning, or eating. People want to see fighting, arguing, hair pulling, drama. The producers have to do something to stir drama. While that may be the case for most shows, there's something pure about Housewives.

These women are truly pure evil. They will do anything to make each other's lives horrible. They constantly attempt to start something through twitter, magazines, celeb websites, blogs. The fights make for great reality TV. One problem: real people don't go that far out of their way to mess up someone's life. Even if they wanted to, most are too busy. The housewives primary paycheck comes from the producers at Bravo to make good TV by any means possible. Everyone involved in the show is choosing money over friendship, family, and public impression.

If the average person was asked to do this and no TV show was involved, they would likely decline. But the women of Real Housewives are incredibly heartless bitches. Therefore, I propose that the "reality tv" moniker be replaced by the much more appropriate "surreal TV."