Ritual and Repetition

The Reluctant Narrator (Gus, Murder, Subway), 2006
6 min – 3 excerpts
Written by K. Mockler – Filmed & Edited by K. Mockler / D. Poolman
David Poolman / Kathryn Mockler – Toronto Ontario Canada

When Donald Rumsfeld briefed his press secretary on how to deal with the media he said, “begin with an illogical and proceed perfectly logically to an illogical conclusion.” Then he said, “They [the media] do it all the time.”

In constructing the narratives in these videos, we are juxtaposing the rational against the irrational through quotidian imagery of contemporary North American life. In this collection, we introduce scenarios that are simultaneously familiar and opaque, and create a narrator who is anonymous and whose gender, ethnicity, age, and economic status is deliberately vague yet is defined by the characteristics with which it is associated. The world we are creating is a world in which the viewer is forced to suspend his or his disbelief, and at the same time asked to critique the ambiguity of the narrative that has been presented. The reader is then left to come to his or her own conclusions about not only what is true or believable but also what he or she understands to be the underlying message of the narrator.

This way of reading is similar to the way we decode media and information which is presented to us under the guise of a “narrator” that is unbiased and neutral but that is systematically partisan.

Gus, Murder and Subway are three excerpts from this body of work.

www.davidpoolman.com