How Bizarre

Cameras and video recorders are cheap enough that everyone can have one. With websites like Flickr and Photobucket, you can upload photos. With YouTube, you can upload videos. With digital cameras, you can take hundreds of photos and never have to buy film again. Indeed, it's becoming difficult to get film anymore. And who needs the hassle?

A few years ago, I attended an engagement ceremony. This was, apparently, a Vietnamese tradition. The groom-to-be brings along several male friends and his parents to the bride-to-be's house, where the groom-to-be's parents ask permission for the daughter's hand in marriage.

A tea ceremony followed where bride and groom-to-be serve tea to family members.

Throughout this rather ancient ceremony, cameras and video cameras were everywhere, snapping shots, and video. It was ancient meeting technology.

And furthermore, there was some leftover technology right in the middle. Vietnam, perhaps much like the rest of Southeast Asia, practices ancestor worhip. Thus, a black and white photo of some elderly relative, a grandfather or great grandfather, most likely passed away, was hung on the wall, overlooking the ceremony.

This relatively recent technology (admittedly over a hundred years old now) has become even more widespread with cheap cameras, and it means people now photograph and video many things.

Yet, photography can be thought of as, well, creepy.

Recently, I was in Rockville with Gabe of Memeorandum and some people who were fans of the website. During this time, the cameras came out, and pictures were taken. Now, I've know Gabe for a while, and he enjoys photography and such, but by nature, he's a bit of an introvert. In the past, he might have felt some discomfort at all this picture taking, and indeed, I think he still does. But it's become the norm among the Web 2.0 cognoscenti to take photos and not even bother asking if it bothers anyone.

This is the age of reality TV, and photo taking has become the norm.

I was watching some home videos of Reggie Bush somewhere, when he was in high school. They were showing how dazzling he was, even in high school, and certainly how dazzling he is in college.

Parents routinely video their kids accomplishments. Soccer moms taking photos of their kids playing soccer. Sports parents taking videos of basketball and football games. And maybe if a daughter was doing ballet, or a beauty contest, well, there'd be videos of that too.

Recently, I saw a video. On the surface, it seems none too interesting. There's a teenaged guy weight training. He has a home gym with free weights. He's mentioning how much weight he's lifting, and whether he was able to do it the last time he worked out.

Because he's shirtless, you can tell he's worked out quite a bit. He's not at the level to do bodybuilding professionally (perhaps because he's not taking performance enhancing drugs), but he might be able to model or something.

Dad's spotting. He doesn't seem like a pushy dad, though he's encouraging the son. Dad could spend some time working out himself. His gut hangs over his belt. Wisely, he's kept his shirt on.

All in all, there's nothing untowards about his behavior.

Except it's all on video.

And I'm watching it on YouTube.

So think about this mindset. Dad wants to video tape his son working out, and put it on the Internet? (It's not clear he's the one that has done this, but it seems certain dad is running the video camera).

Is this strange? Or, is it no different from parents taping their kids at a sporting event? Perhaps it's the narcissism that's involved in bodybuilding (or something approximating that) that seems creepy, but I'd imagine that a parent taping a daughter doing a talent performance at home might seem less odd.

And that started to make me think, why do I think this is strange behavior from a parent? After all, there are many things like this that seem innocent. Is it like those Calvin Klein ads? That this isn't sport, but some kind of exploitation?

You could point out the motivation. Why is dad so concerned with son's workout? Maybe because he was never fit and this gave him troubles in life, at least, he thought it did, and he wanted his son to be fit so he could, um, well, meet women? Or something.

But how different is that from a sports parent who was never that good who wants their kid to be a star athlete? Is it so different? Mothers may want their daughters to look pretty, be thin, all the traits the media presents as ideal.

Of course, from my view, I think dad has made some odd decisions. What about education? What about a job? The sports parent has, at the very least, deluded themselves into thinking their child will become a star athlete, make lots of money, and take care of them. What about a parent that wants their kid to work out?

Now, he's what's worse.

Like many folks, I'm making a judgement on very little information. A ten minute video tells you nothing, and yet, you fill in the pieces, assuming that the son must be devoted to working out, and since there's no particular reason you can imagine why dad would want this, there's all sorts of strange scenarios that can be worked out.

Perhaps in context, this would be weird. But I'm already making judgements with very little information, and yet, people do this all the time. We believe, with our lifetime of experience, of watching situations, that we know what's happening.

Yet I know that this ability is very culture specific. My mother reasons about the world quite a bit differently than me, because her personal experiences with people are different. She feels people are out to take advantage of you, and yet that's not been my own experience with people. I can only attribute this to having grown up in a different culture than my mother.

The video I'm watching is within (roughly) my own culture, yet I'm willing to say that the US is broad in its background that I can't make judgements that apply universally to all Americans.

But let me get to the point I was originally trying to make.

Perhaps, ordinarily, dad working out with son at home is no big deal. OK, so he wants his son to be ripped. Other parents want their kids to play soccer. Whatever.

But, what makes it more peculiar is the act of videotaping it. Something makes that different. (It's a theme that Atom Egoyan hints at in most of his films, but I don't think he's really made a film that really digs at this). Videotaping means you can show it to others, that you (in principle) want to show it to others. And that's a different psychology.

But who would have thought that today's teens would decide privacy is not that important. That putting out their daily schedule for their friends to see is fine. My brother finds that this loss of privacy is too much, and yet today's teens think of Big Brother as something they want.

Is this merely an extension of this idea that our lives are public, and the oft-repeated maxim of Andy Warhol, that we'll all be famous for fifteen minutes?