Question Reality

Caught a movie last night: "The Invasion" - another remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

In this day and age of corporate media consolidation, mass marketing, and the global homogeneous integration of economies and societies around the world, this new take has lost none of the allegorical eerie relevance that the original did, back in the fifties, when the perceived moral, social, and political significance of the movie was affected, then, with concerns over communist totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and McCarthyism in the US.

The critics have been pooh-poohing it - but, hey, "don't trust anyone"---or so the tagline of the movie says, perhaps with good reasons.

I find such criticisms - both from the right side and the left side of the political spectrum - actually a reassuring sign for the integrity of the movie, considering the nature of the whole industry, these days. This remake, without being politically-minded per se in its purpose, is of course naturally colored just like its predecessors with the zeitgeist of the times, and it has in it just enough to offend those who, in our times, "know" the "Truth" and wish to create a "better world for all" by extending forcibly their truth to the unbelievers.

To that regard, the movie doesn't take sides. Depending on how one looks at it, and even though such was perhaps not its intended purpose, the film is pretty much an equal opportunity offender: it has enough in it (though just barely - but that's apparently enough) to offend the "United We Stand" neo-conservative "if you are not with us, you are against us" lemmings, on the right, AND the "We are all one" New Thought new age Borg, on the left. No wonder the film ended up being so bizarrely maligned in the overall movie reviews (with an average rating of 4.4/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, and 5.5/10 on Metacritic).

I had made plans to meet with Goldberry at Lounge 12 beforehand, where we stopped for a drink and a quick bite to eat before catching the movie.


Lounge 12!

I like the sound of it.

The name brings images of this:


Or this:


Lounge 12 is really neither of those. No "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" either. For some reason, the name carries such high expectation - which makes it a tough name to live up to. But they do make a wicked martini.

You can go there even though it doesn't exist.



Or can you, now?

As the Total Perspective Vortex will have it, you will be shown "how infinitely small you are," or made to see that you are the most important thing in the universe. And, well, it all does come down to a matter of perspective, I suppose.

It might depend on what kind of a day you had...or what kind of a drink.