--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:

> For the record, I'm 31, and I'm pretty sure the
> particular "demographic" SIDEWAYS is being accused of targeting is
> quite older than me. And my problem with your post wasn't ageism,
> although ageism isn't a particularly nice -ism. My problem is this
> propensity (we all do it, myself included) to sublimate our contempt
> for a particular group into the criticism of the film itself.
> SIDEWAYS as a film deserves to be judged on its own terms. Not on
> whether you or I like balding middle-aged critics, or tortoiseshell-
> eyeglass-wearing hipsters, or 350-pound comicbook geeks, or ageing
> auteurists still raging about unjustly neglected Red Scare flicks by
> has-been hacks. (See how easy it is to be snidely dismissive?)
>
> -Bilge

This reminds me of the LOST IN TRANSLATION debate last year and me speculating
aloud
as to which kind of viewers fell for that crap. So for my own benefit, this
deserves further
unpacking. I'll play the -ism side for the sake of devil's advocate. Because
the problems
that Gabe identifies in SIDEWAYS are problems I see too, what I described as a
"Starbucks/
Barnes and Noble aesthetic". Because I think the reasons why this movie appeals
to people
is not unlike the way Starbucks or Barnes and Noble appeal to people -- it's the
product
branded as a lifestyle. As with LOST IN TRANSLATION, the film presents not just
a story
but a way of life, one that has its share of pleasing idyllic epicurean
qualities.

But before you rail at me for indulging in extra-cinematic generalities and not
engaging in
the film for its qualities as a film in itself, let me propose that the way the
film is
constructed supports my argument, in how it invites us to experience the space
of
pleasure it has mapped out. In having us experience this weeklong roadtrip, the
film is
brilliant at pingponging us back and forth between Giamatti and Hayden Church's
complementary subjectivities -- we share Hayden Church's wide-eyed, bedazzled
admiration of Giamatti's bona fide, lingo-slanging wine expertise, as well as
his happy go
lucky enjoyment of all that happens. This viewpoint alternates with Giamatti's
gentle
disbelief at his companion's lasciviousness, teamed up with his own gnawing
sense of
middle class middlebrow inadequacy. This film, like other Payne films, is very
clever at
playing up and down middle class values and self-image, alternately criticizing
and
congratulating it. The scene in the tasting room of the large outlet winery is a
brilliant
example of this, where Giamatti's intellectual approach to wine falls apart like
a snobbish
facade and he's the one acting like a pathetic slob guzzling a spittoonful of
wine amidst a
horde of tourists who have far worse taste than he. Payne's position in the
film in regards
to his characters is slippery -- there's one moment at the end of a montage with
the four
principals picnicking in a vineyard underneat a tree with the evening sun
setting them all
aglow -- an image practically stolen from a Mondavi commercial. Is Payne
sending up this
image in all its cliched banality, or is he celebrating it as a rare and
fleeting moment of
middle class bliss shored up against an encroaching sea of suburban chaos and
fear? For
one to accept the latter, one has to accept that middle class life is
fundamentally pathetic,
eliciting a feeling of simultaneous sympathy and disdain consistent to all his
work thus far.
I happen to think this feeling appeals to a lot of viewers -- myself included.
What I
wonder about is whether this is really laudable, because ultimately I think
Payne's method
of seduction, playing both sides, the loathing and loving of petty
connoissuership and
middle class values, ultimately keeps us contentedly in the middle, consuming
his
product. Even if Giamatti and Virginia Madsen do get together in the end, what
really has
changed? He's just become a more well-adjusted consumer, having hooked up with
someone who seems the wet dream embodiment of petty middle class male values, as
Gabe has already described. The Virginia Madsen character is the most obvious
sign of
Payne's strategy of middle class seduction.

Anyway, my point is that instead of repressing our own impulse to visualize how
the film
appeals to other audiences in order to justify how it doesn't appeal to us, I
say we should
exercise our imaginations all the more fervently in ascertaining who these
suckers might
be -- because inevitably they may be us. If we really want to implicate a film
and its
foolish audience, we must risk implicating ourselves. Somewhere in Gabe's
diatribe
against the SIDEWAYS crowd is a critical autobiography that describes him, as
well as
everyone. This is something Serge Daney understood.

The awful truth is that films are marketed to audiences, and that marketing has
its role in
every step of production and beforehand, from the moment the writer pitches the
project
and who it might appeal to. So i think it's a bit disingenuous to think that
the things Gabe
and I are talking about are things that are off-base in what a film is up to,
those very
terms by which you insist the film deserves to be judged. But you're right in
that for us to
be effective at doing this, we have to own up to our own values and subject them
to as
much scrutiny as we are to the phantom audience we've identified.