Hobermen, film critic for the Village Voice, writes about film. A lot. In fact, he wrote such a great book about midnight movies (called Midnight Movies, written in collaboration with Jonathan Rosenbaum) that I now pick up everything with his name on it. I was not disappointed in this case, but this is a different sort of film book.

The Dream Life works less as a piece of film criticism than an attempt to line up film history with “real” history; that is, align the political and social events of the sixties with the films that people were producing and watching at the time. It's a map overlaying politics and movies. Which sounds like a very dangerous prospect

Dangerous in the sense that it could quickly become the sort of pointless exercise that posits an actual relationship between entertainment and real life; one could suspect Hoberman of placing too much emphasis on mere movies if he thinks there's a grand political significance to, say, The Alamo. But he avoids these traps at every turn. Instead of promoting a concrete link between events, he illustrates the social scene at the time significant pictures were made and viewed. He traces the involvement of figures like John Wayne and Elvis in the political arena. He points out the media resources of presidents and would-be presidents. He pinpoints how many times Nixon may have watched Patton; and where it showed up in his speeches and policy. Instead of sweeping generalizations about what The Chase might have been explicitly saying about the political scene, Hoberman contents himself with comparing its implicit views with other, similar films. In short, this book ties together the bizarre words of politics and the media. They mirror each other, though what the reflection says about us is up for interpretation.

I read this book because I was not around for the sixties, and what films I've seen from the period have been, by necessity, out of context. I unexpectedly found this book to be even more helpful than I thought in this area. As a master list of Must-See Films from the Sixties, it falls short. Likewise, it is not a comprehensive history of the decade. But as a guide to understanding what was behind some of the big films of the era, or a primer of where Vietnam or the counterculture showed up in Hollywood, it's invaluable. No aspect of history should be studied in a vacuum; everything it touched by everything else. As an example of how to view culture as continuity, too, this book is invaluable.

The problem with a book as funny as Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is that it's funny in precisely the way I want things to be funny. That is to say, it examines terminally unimportant aspects of culture (The Real World, breakfast cereal, Coldplay) in such a maddeningly entertaining way that one is convinced that it can't possibly be useful. Have you ever encountered a pundit who seems amazingly brilliant until you realize you think that because he's saying exactly what you, yourself, think? Of course it seems right. I get the feeling reading Klosterman that he's tapped into some Nintendo-playing, Full House-raised, anti-depressant zeitgeist that I, as a late Gen-Xer, am socially programmed to respond to. I can't help but be suspicious of the fact that he blames John Cusack for the way no one approaches romance with any sense of realism. I would really like to believe that there's some connection between Reality Bites and The Empire Strikes Back. Really. But the fact that that feels so right must mean that it's wrong. That is to say, it can't be that easy.

This crap can't be that important.

How does the guy who wrote it get over it?
The goal of being alive it to figure out what it means to be alive, and there is a myriad of ways to deduce that answer; I just happen to prefer examining the question through the context to Pamela Anderson and The Real World and Frosted Flakes... And while half my brain worries that writing about Saved by the Bell and Memento will immediately seem as outdated as a 1983 book about Fantasy Island and Gerry Cooney, my mind's better half knows that temporality is part of the truth. The subjects in this book are not the only ones that prove my point; they're just the ones I happened to pick before I fell asleep.

In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever “in and of itself.”
So there's his justification. Does this really absolve me of any guilt at enjoying an exploration of the Real World personality types, or the implications in having met a serial killer, or theory that amateur porn fuels the innovation of internet technology?

In the end, like Klosterman says, it really doesn't matter. Because it's not important whether you believe that Cusack erased Chuck's chances at romance, or whether the Trix rabbit is a meaningful icon for your generation. What matters, to me, is that these things matter somehow. That commercials and MTV and bad modern country music and cover bands say something about our world, just by existing. And the connections Klosterman, or you, or I can make between these things are meaningful enough just because they can be made.

But, please, only if you're as funny as he is.