Online Response #1 Bill, Ted, and Intro to Theory

The Commodity of Identity and Expectation
    The reality of viewing versus the myth of expectation is a conflict often battled in the darkened movie-houses that dot our planet.  When presented with a set of possibilities the mind instantly begins anticipating results based on past experience.  For example, we hear a sound and we pass through potential causes of that sound from the least likely to the most.  Upon settling on the most likely, we determine a plan of action.  If identified as benign, we may well ignore said sound, but if our possibilities are defined by less likely, yet more frightening cause then we venture.  Between the moment of decision and the final viewing there is anticipation, anxiety, and perhaps outright terror.  When the source of sound is viewed it either meets, exceeds, or fails our expectations we respond elated, deflated, or perhaps relieved.  This pattern repeats itself often and is the basis of our reactions to viewing media.  We are introduced to a film via commercial, or trailer, or word-of-mouth.  We begin to anticipate the possibilities based on past experience.  Who’s the director?  Who penned the play?  What genre does it fit?  What’s the rating?  Has it been reviewed and by whom?  These bits of information help us to anticipate what  we will see on the screen.  Our expectation is set.  We drive to the theatre watch the film and begin the process of matching the film to our expectation. When the final credits roll we finalize and walk out satisfied or disappointed.  This is all nothing new.  However, the reality of expectation is that audiences prefer their expectations over reality.
    In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, we are introduced to two high school slackers who represent not any real person, rather an expectation for what teenagers who are in garage bands in southern California are supposed to be.  Had they been subtle and grounded in the reality of a pair of high school slackers, we, as an audience, would likely have found them less relatable.  The concept of the high school slacker becomes codified into a specific set of traits that represent the audience’s expectations.  This is done to the end that audiences will not be disappointed, rather gratified that their expectation was met and perhaps return or encourage others to participate in the enduring of the teen myth.  The motivations become, therefore, monetary.  The teenage slacker is dehumanized and commodified.  Packaged to sell.  The reality is no longer what is being represented, but the representation itself.  The representation has value since it can be bought and sold and the real-life slacker has lost his identity to the copy of himself.   To be human is to be represented.  Those not represented are not human.  As the representation becomes more typified and commodified , it bears less and less relation to the reality and the original slacker is left with a choice: remain true and face oblivion of identity or relinquish control and adopt the traits of the representation thereby meeting expectations and falling into a false reality.  They are, essentially left “To be, or not to be”.  And if left with the two undesirable choices of being in oblivion of reality, or the oblivion of its commodified vision some may choose to not be at all, the oblivion of death.
    Granted, it may be hyperbolic to imply that expectations regarding a teen comedy from 1989 will result in suicide, but there is the very real danger of lost identity.  When one’s identity is co-opted and bastardized by a corporate entity to meet the expectations of an audience, one can not help but feel the inferiority of their reality when compared with their peers.  This becomes more apparent in the representation on Genghis Khan.  Kahn is portrayed in his home-time as dirty, hungry, and sexist.  The women surrounding him are scantily clad (in a 1980’s PG-13 sense) and serve the purpose of looking pretty and giving food to their lord.  The clothes are jagged and dangerous looking and there is virtually no spoken language beyond grunts and moans. There is honestly little difference between Khan and the neanderthals of 10,000 BC.  This  presentation of Khan is, like the slacker teen, a specified type designed to meet audience expectations.  He is a version of the western view of the Mongol: a Barbarian in every negative sense of that word.  True Mongols bear very little resemblance to that image that is sold on the screen, but they, along with most of east-asian or southeast asian descent, are dehumanized by its portrayal and must choose to become commodities themselves or be discarded with the refuse of reality.  Their history is bastardized.  Their roots are twisted and they are left without a laudable foundation.  They float, for they cannot claim the wretched past portrayed on the screen, and without those roots must establish an new identity or adopt a different pre-packaged corporate perspective.  This loss of roots is perhaps more tragic than the slacker teen’s loss of age specific identity.  Identity in the western world is forged through choices and consumption, while much of the rest of the world founds their identity on family and tradition.  The commodification of Ghengis Khan represent a form of colonization of Mongolian genealogy, infiltrating their history with monetary goals.  If one’s cultural history can be bought, repackaged, and sold, what is left of one’s self?
    The battle of expectation vs. viewing experience has its casualties and they are not just our emotional state upon leaving the theater.  The efforts of corporate media to make identity a commodity to meet our expectations is resulting in an identity conundrum of those commodified, not to mention the dehumanizing effect it has on those in the audience who are mere dollar signs in seats for the corporations.  It becomes imperative to educate the public on the realities of representation and the corporatization of identity.  Only thereby, can the expectations of an audience be grounded in reality, and true identity be regained and preserved.