PRESENT TENSE: Jonathan Demme’s 1977 film Citizens Band:
At one point, Blaine cries out in frustration, “Everybody in this town is somebody they’re not supposed to be!” The CB handles are Avatars: you can be anything out there on the air. There is some equivalence to today’s internet technology, to the “bots” spreading disinformation on Twitter or the treachery of anonymous comments sections, but Charles Taylor, in his chapter on Citizens Band in Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You, observes “CBs add what texting and e-mail and instant messaging delete: an immediate human presence. Hearing the voice of another person prevents the inevitable misreadings of tone that characterize online communication, allowing you to hear, right away, the effect of your words on the person you are talking to.” In the world of Citizens Band, people put out their Ids on the air, their ultimate wants, desires, needs. This is true for the Nazi, it’s true for the 10-year-old kid calling himself “Hustler.” It’s true for the nerdy virgin “Warlock”, having CB-radio-sex with Electra on a nightly basis.
Some fantasies are destructive, of course. But when you think of someone who lives in a fantasy world, like Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire: does Blanche’s fantasy of herself as a Southern belle really hurt anyone? Isn’t it a way to create a moat around her sensitivity, to shield herself from’ cruelty, but also, crucially, to find love and protection? Maybe we should be kinder towards other people’s fantasies. Maybe we should cut people some slack. The blinding light of reality 24/7 is no great shakes. The people of Union have a lot of reality to deal with: economic hard times, frustration, broken hearts, the universal stuff of life. Their CB call handles are protective coloring, but, as Kabuki masters know: the mask may conceal but it also reveals. When Blaine’s father is just Blaine’s father, he lies collapsed in a drunken heap. When Blaine’s father is “Papa Thermodyne”, he’s engaged with others, he’s enthusiastic: in remembering who he used to be, he remembers who he is. Citizens Band is full of such gentle little revelations. It’s a subversively profound movie.
Rejecting the DIY Citizen’s Band era of the Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter was a profound mistake. Somebody should write a book about the, err, upheaval caused by that!