Chronicle of A Summer ---Blog Response (Week of Sept. 27th, 2010)

Are We All Just Boiled Frogs?

In the 1960 cinema veriété documentary, Chronicle of a Summer, directors, Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, set out to discover if people are happy and what determines happiness. Around the time of this film’s creation, the main form of employment is factory work where the central goal is efficiency. Factory work is notorious for being highly standardized and rationalized. Morin and Rouch’s interview with factory worker, Angelo, reflects negatively on the fact that “everyday is exactly the same; we wake up at the same time, eat the same breakfast, take the same train, do the same mundane work, eat the same dinner, and go to bed at the same time.” (COAS, 1960) and reveals a direct correlation between work and happiness.

Angelo’s statement still applies to today’s working society because the routine of everyday life, specifically work life, virtually remains the same as that of the 1960s. Office computers and blackberry cell phones are the equivalent of the 1960s’ industrial hammers and machine belts. Many modern self-reflexive media forms shine a light on work conditions and show how people have and continue to suffer through everyday routines. Two recent alternative rock songs demonstrate how work-life has not changed much since the 1960s.

      NIN’s Everyday Is Exactly the Same (2006)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31jenMJ0UOc

Lead singer, Trent Reznor’s cold and mellow voice signifies his dissatisfaction with everyday life’s predictability.

      Alexisonfire’s Boiled Frogs (2006)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJcZaS0JthA

Alexisonfire’s song does not need its video or lyrics to convey a message because the title, Boiled Frogs, evokes a meaning on its own. Commenting on his dad’s experiences in the workplace as well as his own, lead singer, George Pettit, explains the boiled frog analogy with regard to the workplace,“ if you take a frog and put it in boiling water, it will jump right out immediately, but if you put it in cold water and then you slowly turn the heat up, they will just eventually fall asleep and die; the same way with people in the workplace. If it is too hectic when they first get there, they will just quit and get another job, but if you slowly up the work load, lower the pay, they are more likely to sit there and just boil.”

             A variety of media forms such as: Alexisonfire’s Boiled Frogs, Studs Turkel’s Working, and Morin and Rouch’s Chronicle of A Summer, do not only show listeners, readers, and viewers how work affects happiness, but also how to escape the mundane nature of everyday life. At the end of Boiled Frogs, the band members make the best of their situation by finding ways to escape; for example, drummer Jordan Hastings cuts a hole in the floor of his room. Compared to the more symbolic meaning of escape in Alexisonfire’s video, “many of Morin, Rouch, and Turkel’s subjects have avoided becoming [boiled frogs] because they found the meaning they are looking for...” in their workplace; “...Obviously I don’t make much money, a bookbinder says, but she still loves repairing old books because ‘a book is a life’. (Turkel, Forward X)