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Intravenous Video
Are movies our substitute for an illicit drug experience?
By definition (my own), Intravenous Video causes a physical change in the viewer, whether real or perceived.
By this definition I would include any film that makes you vomit. Certain horror movies can give you an intense, drug-like rush. Or pornography. Little doses of sex. Popping a tape into the VCR instead of a pill into your mouth.
It all started when we were kids, this dependence. We didn't have access to real drugs (unless we were Drew Barrymore), so cartoons were our drug substitute. Cartoons are like a bong that kids take hits off when they come home from school. Short, intense tokes of film experience. So as children, we're pretty much in awe of everything. But once we watch a few cartoons, especially Road Runner, we crave increasingly intense cinematic experiences. Like pot smokers, we move on up to something stronger: H.R. Puffinstuff. Liddsville. A Pippi Longstocking movie. Then we discover Willie Wonka.
Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (based on the book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory) is a psychedelic experience for children. Fantasy merges with sensory overload when children indulge in vice and face their worst fears. The movie is not only a drug-like experience for children, but is perhaps the most honest film ever made about drugs. Which brings us to Ken Russell.
Ken Russell makes cinematic drug trips. Even a dumb movie like Lair Of The White Worm has good drug-like sequences. Like in Altered States when a body turns to stone, then dissolves into dust as the wind blows it away. It's mind bending, like dropping acid. Besides the TV-addicted boy in Willie Wonka, the most truthful depiction I've seen of the addictive effects of television is in a shot-on-video feature called Vampire Trailer Park. In it, the vampire lures his victims with his
TV set which places them in a trance, leaving their necks wide open for a bite. Afterward, the vampire vomits, blood splattering against the TV screen. 1 guess independent moviemakers aren't afraid to tell it like it is. A Ken Russell movie is an hallucinogenic.
I've been reading You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips. It confirms my suspicion that everyone in Hollywood is making movies while under the influence of drugs. Phillips produced Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Is it mere coincidence this was the most mind - blowing movie of its kind since 2001: A Space Odyssey? Drug users beget druggy movies beget addicted moviegoers.
So, what's the solution? There is none, except to accept the truth. Movies are drugs and the moviemaker who can give us the greatest high wins. MM
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- Comment by Cristian Star on 5/14/08 at 4:30 am
So I guess that if we are to take Bandura’s social learning theory in serious, our kids will end up quite soon in a drug rehabilitation center because the TV infected their mind with the wrong values and beliefs right?
This story was published in the April 1994 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Intravenous Video / Are movies our substitute for an illicit drug experience?
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