Comments on: Reggie Watts – Transition http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/ Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:29:54 +0000 hourly 1 By: Dusty Hoesly http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-779 Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:02:43 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-779 I am reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. The first chapter, called “This is Emo,” bares a lot of similarity to points in Transition. For example, Klosterman discusses how people model themselves on media stars and situations: “Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake.” He also shows how When Harry Met Sally provides the cultural archetype for people who are in love with their best friends and believe a non-platonic relationship could work, but in real life people don’t want to have sex with their friends yet do with their enemies: “Because that’s all it ever comes down to in real life, regardless of what happened to Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf.” Like Watts’ Shakespearean riffs or between-scene improvs, Klosterman’s “witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived.” We are who we see on TV. Perhaps, as I keep reading, more parallels will emerge.

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By: abe http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-778 Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:02:42 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-778 I love “Ill Communication,” and I agree that the theme of decomposing communication relates directly to new technology, so we’re on point there. Here’s how I can see those pieces you mentioned relating: I think the Teen Wolf thing fits in because it shows how life imitates (bad) art. I took the racism remark to be some kind of bad-PSA message, that, to be honest, I didn’t try to analyze that much, and I’d have to see again to really think about, and I see the Nabisco Commercial as a hyped up example of corporations using “new media” to target certain groups and failing miserably.
Those, of course, are just defenses. To be honest, I don’t think these were “cornerstone” pieces to drive home the message, I think the other parts that I mention in the review take the bulk of the load for that. I suspect that this piece came together from lots of different pieces, some of them more “on message” than others.

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By: Dusty Hoesly http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-777 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:17:56 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-777 Abe,
Fair enough. I had read your review beforehand, but I’m still not clear how the heavy metal commercial, the Teen Wolf reenactment, or the racism-as-museum-piece scenes show us “characters unable to communicate with each other,” as you say. I think the main themes are self-representation and ill-communication (newer technologies are facilitating worse communication), but it’s still not clear to me how those showpieces evince either the theme you mention or the ones I mention.
Dusty

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By: Abe Ingle http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-776 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:51:47 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-776 I had a different take on the show, that “Transitions” didn’t relate as much to the transitions between material, (as that’s just Reggie’s thing,) but to the transition (or “Devilution”) of human relationships, as all of the sequences showcased characters unable to communicate with each other. My review is here

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By: Dusty Hoesly http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-775 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:02:00 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-775 Reggie,
Thank you for responding to the post; it’s not always clear who reads the blog and it’s certainly a treat to hear from you. From what I can tell, the transitions in the piece are largely connected to self-representation, how we choose to present ourselves to the world.
From the Scottish-accented speaker early on to the webcam bit (with the girl in the contraption) to you filming yourself towards the end, there is a string about how each of these characters chooses to present themselves in society. Even the playfully racist “ching chong racist song” bit brings up questions about when we think racist jokes are funny and who we tell such jokes to.
We are living in an age where young people especially are increasingly concerned to groom their profiles, online and in person, to share a lot of information with the public (again, selected to deliver a particular image of the individual), and to communicate in new ways (SMS, IM, webcam, texting, Facebook, cell phone, etc.). The pieces mentioned above speak to this cultural shift, this transition. Your use of technology enhances your critique of this phenomenon, the pitfalls and the pleasures. Technology marks so many of our latest transitions, from global to personal.
But how does the heavy metal commercial for Nabisco fit into this? Or the Teen Wolf reenactment? Or the sharp line about racism bringing people together (racism as a statue in a museum)? Should there be a more explicit or pointed connection to the theme in these pieces, if this is an intended theme?
Maybe the point of the performance is to show a state of flux, to highlight the transitions themselves and not the connections (in which case the show becomes a sort of latest hits compilation). But that still begs the question, why these elements and why this arrangement?
Of course, there needn’t be a theme running through Transition. A friend of mine said it’s funny and wonderful as it is. And she’s right.
Still, to find one way of thinking how it might be brought together more, I thought of one of my favorite lines from that night. Around the Devilation bit, someone says, “We just drifted apart, together.” This line symbolizes for me the incisive and funny work to be found throughout Transition. It connects the scene with the theme of transition and of representing ourselves away from each other, more concerned with our own navel-gazing than caring for the very people with whom we live our lives.
What kinds of lines like this are found in the other scenes, the ones that seem inserted perhaps more for comedic effect than thematic coherence? Or that touch upon another theme rather unrelated to whatever the central theme is? Perhaps more lines like this, subtle or explicit connections, could be a string linking together these transitions.
Dusty

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By: Reggie Watts http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-774 Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:35:59 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2008/09/11/reggie_watts_transition_3/#comment-774 Thanks for the write-up and your strong observations. Its good to get an outside eye.
I was curious what you think would string these Transition events together, besides the transitions themselves. What did you find yourself needing or wanting?
L,
Rw

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