Distracting for Aim

"How do you know if a person is restless? Is it so easy to tell, the sight so self-evident, like fidgeting for a cigarette, fumbling for a lighter, sniffing for a magnificent obsession?"

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Dear Alex,

Aiming for distraction - how much are you willing to pay for it?

Today’s ads in modified and codified versions through influencers are aiming at our restlessness. It’s not about what you get but what gets you. You are uniquely you and that fizzling high-octane soda magnified in luscious bubbles on cinematic preview screen knows you, digs you, accepts you. It fits your flavor and mood within the edges of your moving frame, your “mis-en-scène”. It is chic, clever, restless as a romantic and idealist, genie in a bottle. It - whatever it may be - it distracts you to settle you down at rest. Distractions aiming for us.

Last month I watched Cannes-winning “Parasite” written and directed by Boon Joon-ho. The course of the film in 132 minutes leeches on you by distractions hooked upon distractions. You are at once host and parasite altogether in alternating distractions by consent or guile aimed at feeding your fear and pride. And no wonder Boon’s characters stay slimy all over us after we gorge in their magnificent obsessions: the fidgeting and fumbling and fuming for a cigarette, a dream, a puff of dynamite.

Now re-imagine a viewer watching a sub-octane chase scene in slo-mo with the shiny, sluggish cars throwing themselves improbably across the road. She gets distracted, gazes at an electric pole by a restaurant that electrifies her with its spicy duck offer and wonders, Ooo...what’s gonna happen to my spicy duck dinner, I worry? Metals and flesh inconsequential on camera and stage, consequently a projection, distraction.

She must be missing the point. The cars are crumpled and bloody, carrying limbs far and deep at the forefront of wonder, the slow unveiling of a booming tragedy too distracting, too disappointing and underwhelming for woman or man, child or parasite in numbing spirit at the epicenter of restlessness to feel the blazing absence of care. Distract to aim at the distraction of aimlessness.

Yours, Kate