A Different Kind of Reality TV

The heat must be getting to us all – wacky dreams, migraines, bug bites. It’s enough to make one want to go on vacation (thanks, Amanda). Anyway, after reading Kate’s dreams piece, I thought it only appropriate to continue the theme after checking out the new exhibit at the Hirshhorn, “The Cinema Effect: Realism” this past weekend.

For my first week in India last fall, I probably looked like a female version of the main character in Julian Rosefeldt’s ‘Lonely Planet’: backpack, sunglasses, looking perpetually out of sorts, sitar music making up the soundtrack in my head. But a few minutes into the film, I started recognizing the stereotypes that Rosefeldt is trying to portray: the overwhelmed tourist, the endless cubicles of call centers, the crowded streets and gats of Calcutta. And I got upset. I was no typical tourist! I met families, ate all kinds of food, saw small towns as well as big cities, and only once gave in to the lure of coffee at a western coffee shop in the land where tea created an empire. Who was this Rosefeldt to tell me I was a textbook blind follower of the Lonely Planet series?

That’s where the reality part sinks in. The film descends quickly, and you realize this character is not a backpacker at all, but a character in a Bollywood movie – playing the silly American tourist who sees only the stereotypes that Indian filmmakers think we see. It works on multiple levels.

The whole exhibit explores this concept and toys with our ideas of what is real, on film and in life. Plus, it’s air-conditioned.