Sitcoms

The best part of a routine life is there is always a new episode waiting for you on the television set. It does not matter how pathetic the in-law drama or the crime solving all mighty multi-(sci-fi)-gadget-ed hero/heroin of the act is. It is what makes a regular-all-alike-daily life adventurous and audacious. No, I do not mean to support or justify the cons and pros of these sitcoms. But it merely provides the lonesome, less outgoing teen or too-tired-to-meet-her-gossip-friend housewife or the 9-to-5 working class metropolitan fatigue feeling cyborg with miniscule of entertainment. Is it really that hard for us all to believe that the people that work the whole day and have been following the same regime for the last few months find it relaxing to watch mindless and unfathomable sitcoms? There was a time I always wanted to know if people are really that childish to watch some in-studio sitcom posing to be a military campus or are they proven to be so much incompatible to distinguish between the funny and unjustifiably torturous mind shirkers or rather have gone completely insane so as to believe in a joint family with no aging members keeping useless secrets and problems to themselves just for the shake of completing thousands of continuous episodes that most of the time do not even follow the chronology of the events such as ‘death’. And I think I found these people aren’t insane or acting dumb or childish. They are simply trying to figure out a reason not to do anything else when you can mindlessly watch a play of words and characters that makes no impact whatsoever. There might be thousands of other explanations and reasons for people watching sitcoms but I prefer to believe that each one even though may provide a personalized rationality for these occurrences, they all are just making a effort to create a space and time block for their brains and/or minds to not work. So I realized this is mere an argumental discussion for the text book based definition for relaxation which eventually may lead to entertainment. Now the ‘relaxation-eventually-leads-to-entertainment’ expression might be too much for many. But over a course of time when your mind feels free of all the clutches that couple it with an over active brain it’s a basic form of relief. This relief is cost effective and refreshing like superior cup of brewing coffee. That leads us to feeling of being entertained rather than being only tranquilized or relaxed. Importantly so, people do not merely prefer their judgment on taste of high quality edutainment but just …do nothing and be peaceful. Another rational explanation I found to be realistically believable is that people tend to watch whatever the idiot box has to offer between their individually independent free time. By that I mean distinguishing the spectators with age, sex and other such differentiating analogies. Housewives and a lot of family men prefer the only free time to saas-bahu sitcoms i.e. 9 to 11 pm slot or the primetime. In fact the husbands fancy watching a decent or indecent English movie for that matter over the crappy sitcoms but they choose not to argue over worse or worst. However, with time, little do family men realize that they’ve been already addicted themselves to saas-bahu sitcoms. Kids are on the bull’s eye for Saturday and Sunday mornings with kiddie stuff which seemingly has changed and transformed to more religious – spiritual stuff. Grandmothers and local dialect fanatics have a mid-afternoon to evening slot that most of the time is a rerun of late primetimes that tend to be sing lullabies to the old ones. Now some channels do not provide preference; these are for the die-hards. The real geeky stuff is on all day, all time. National geographic, the animal planet, the history channel, the discovery channel or CNBC TV18, etc. constitute such demographic. No matter what the reason is, I realized its all with a specific rational argument on the watcher’s part. Steal of the deal is, sitcoms no matter which ones have found a way into our daily lives and are fixated such that they look no different that our routines.

Duel - the movie

Duel – The movie (1971)

Director: Steven Spielberg

My Rating:

Please note: Some parts of the article may ruin the climax /thrill point/ suspense of the movie.

ADVISABLE NOT TO READ FOR WOULD BE SPECTATORS OF THE MOTION PICTURE!

What do you think makes a good movie? I know, hard to predict. But then this is why we believe beyond doubt that ‘movie business is speculative and insecure’. Should you fail, there may not be a second chance imposing a far more complex and vulnerable situation at your disposal. Movie making is one thing that is judged by not one but many evaluators with different tastes and different definitions of entertainment.

However one name emerges in unison with appraisal for his work and its details that he engrosses himself into. He is crafted to be a dream merchant. Magnanimously recognized the world over as ‘Spielberg’! Friday night comes and goes but this name never fades its charm. No doubt we, the generation today, know him through ‘A.I.’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Minority Report’, ‘Catch me if you can’, ‘The Terminal’, ‘The lost world’, etc.

A Plymouth Valiant, a Peterbilt tanker truck, California deserted back roads and anxiety-ridden David Mann (Dennis Weaver) were the only props that bolstered this psychological thriller. A feat no director could/would ever try to pull on their spectators- just one character, almost no dialogues and nothing but two vehicles in a ‘duel’. Unrealistically heart- crunching, nail biting and mysteriously angst are all just words that I can use to describe my experience with the movie. However they’ll mean ‘nada’ unless one retrospects the experience. Maybe I’m incorrigible to my bad taste with movies but this one surely is an exception.

‘Duel’ - a weapon-ed fight between two non-synergetic entities to rule out the possibility of weaker surviving the conclusion. Dennis Weaver has been true to his part. He successfully portrayed an anxiety ridden business person traveling for a meeting. The internal voices of David Mann make sure you aren’t left out the loop in the mystery. A clear idea of David’s mental condition and the reclining grip over his emotions. A Peterbilt tanker truck makes for a perfect villain, with its honking air-horn and unchallenged power. Much more interesting to note during the movie is that the Peterbilt has multiple license plates on its front bumper as if each represented a mark for each of its prey. Such personification gave the movie-goers something to hate, a villain, a tanker truck; Completing the missing part of showing the actual face of the truck driver.

Spielberg admits that he owes his big career to Duel. He has used the tanker truck’s honking air-horn in Jaws. He explains that this is the way he had to thank Duel for being his spring board.