wild hearts can't be broken

scenes from the cereal aisle

I saw THE HURT LOCKER last night. It's a great film. SPOILERS AHEAD: There's a scene at the end that takes place in a supermarket. In a wonderfully jarring cut we go from Iraq to an American supermarket. The main character, who has been diffusing bombs in Iraq, is lost in the cereal aisle. The scenes in Iraq are very hot, lots of reds, dirty and then the supermarket is cool colors, bright artificial lighting, a stark contrast to everything that has come before. In the film the supermarket is a bleak, sterile, boring place.

Other examples of supermarkets: Radiohead's video for "Fake Plastic Trees"













FANTASTIC MR. FOX ends with dancing in a supermarket and at first glance it seems like a happy ending but the more I think about it the more it seems full of sadness. The apples have stars on them and that's cool, but should we just sit back and be ok with that and try and live as best we can within the system? All the animals, who used to live in trees and in tunnels, are now living in concrete bunkers underground. The last shot leaves the supermarket and shows an empty parking lot. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Another film that has dancing in a supermarket: PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. Barry Egan finds a loophole in the supermarket system and dances with giddy joy.



The opening scenes of THE BIG LEBOWSKI:


Moments before the Ramjammer has a supermarket freakout in THE WRESTLER


Seconds before Wendy shoplifts in WENDY AND LUCY



Where does this neon sadness come from? Perhaps it stems from the fact that there is such an abundance of food in supermarkets but we are personally removed from it. The food magically appears. We have no connection to it. We don't see the hours of labor and transport and devastation that comes before the food appears on the shelf. We just get the colorful packaging, bright lights and soothing music. And most of the "food" is totally artificial, manufactured to taste like food and make us happy and comfortable. Food is supposed to sustain us and give us life but modern supermarket food is slowly killing us, making us fat and unhealthy, but dang it sure does taste good! Ok ok, calm down. So what about the sadness? Well if energy cannot be destroyed, and it continues to resonate in all things, and in a supermarket there's hundred of dead animals who lived sad, tortured lives and thousands of manufactured food products that generate tons of waste and pollution, then supermarkets must surely have some of the most negative and noxious energy of any of our modern institutions, right?

Oh girl, you know I'm jus' messin'! I love supermarkets and I'm gonna keep looking for more supermarket scenes in movies and you should too! Until then, happy shopping!

are you the keymaster?

This past week I watched CITY LIGHTS, MODERN TIMES, GHOSTBUSTERS, GREMLINS and BLACK DYNAMITE.