(Between my last post and some wierd need to write comes this literaturary masterpiece. Kind of just ends, but ehh)
I love lonelygirl15, but more as form than content. Over the past two years I have been watching various episodes of the series. I’ve only seen about fifty or so and with numbers in the 500 range that’s not many so I would hardly consider myself an expert. Also, I watch them out of order but more on that later. What interests me about lonelygirl is the soap-opera nature of the storytelling. I mean, there’s so much pulp you can literally taste it. The first season is pretty much a direct address video blog of Bree, the catalyst of the narrative. I was always surprised by all the haters saying that the video blog was fake and that she’s not a real person, because what are so ‘real’ about all the other young-girl-talking-about-herself videos. It’s not like they are private conversations filmed without their knowledge. These girls broadcast themselves on a public forum and are in control of both image and content not unlike the creators of lonelygirl. Who’s to say that what we’re seeing is not a falsehood as well, or more accurately a construction of an identity that they want to be perceived as.
The second and third (though by that time lonelygirl starts to become a little too self aware) is where things get good, and also where I consider the pulp to be. Although shot with a handheld camera and having all the ear marks that would signify authenticity like camera shake, blown highlights, and touching focusing, the videos are very staged. But in a weird way lonelygirl doesn’t really go out of its way to hide that fact. The acting and dialogue is too good to be ‘natural’, and really it’s not even acting. It’s more like playing or even in another sense pretending. They sit around and talk and pretend to be concerned, angry, interested, troubled, and happy. They’re embracing roles not unlike other ‘real’ YouTube videos out there. The fact that it’s just done with a handheld and on YouTube is probably equal parts economics and following the form of the given medium they have chosen to work within.
The characters presented are so wrapped up in their own lives/stories that the outside world barely exists to them. The narrative moves forward with little guiding principal of logic, but more on the strength of its own conviction. The narrative is raised to a level of importance that is so high that EVERYTHING matters and the most illogical or impossible acts and decisions make sense in the lonelygirl world. That is what interests me, the fact that this story moves on its own power alone.
To expand on my lonelygirl interest (no, I’m not letting it go) is the way it can be viewed. In thinking on how artist are addressing/using the Internet, specifically in thinking of video channels like YouTube, I was reminded of an article I read in comment of the film Afterschool. (This is a must, and I mean MUST see. I saw it at AFI fest last year but the damn thing isn’t out on video. If you’re one of those people who knows how to download movies…) The essay, using Raymond Williams’s argument from his book Television, comments that the Internet expedites the effect that movies and television have on our perception. In thinking of a newscast, he points out that the formal arrangement plays something like War in Iraq/three dead in crash/buy a Ford/shop at Ralphs/Lakers win/local weather/stay tune for late night. On this level everything is fundamentally equivalent and the Internet provides this effect greater and faster, but the article adds two important elements as well; thinking time and interactivity. It stated that compared to movies or television the Internet is slow because it typically doesn’t just keep coming. It requires decision making, the user is in control of what they see and also the rate at which they see it. Unlike television, you can watch something on the Internet and stop to think about it without the next video coming right at you.
So, how does this relate to lonelygirl? With lonelygirl I can watch the episodes in any order I want, and not only that but start and stop them as well. This is preferred because it takes the story out of the equation. Like early surrealist film watching techniques it can jump into a story mid-narrative and leave at the first sign of boredom or when the story becomes too clear. I’m able to focus more on how it is told, picking up on fringe elements rather than focusing on the narrative and as stated before this is just my kind of pulpy pleasure.
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