SWIMMING IN A SEA OF DOPEY FICTION

UNHOOKED: Am I the only person reading this who's not on drugs? Maybe it
was the gratuitous dope deal in Memento and other videos rented over the
holiday. Or the three-in-a-row network TV dramas with plots radiating from
druggies and addicts. Wait a minute, sez I. Is everybody now on drugs? Is
there no other reason to put $200,000 in a briefcase? To murder a stranger?
To sweet-talk a friend? To close a bathroom door? Drugs are the all-purpose
plot device of choice. Are there more than a handful of areas in Toronto
where drugs are more common than gum? When did the rest of us become unhip
extras in the continuous chases, swindles and mayhem of Traffic and Blow?

Thanks to big and small screens, I know all too well how to heat crystals
in a teaspoon, find a good vein for a needle, laugh whenever a teen
"comedy" tosses "bong" into the script. Yet I can't recall a recent flick
in which the hero cashed a paycheque, went to an honest job on a subway or
took his kid to McDonald's.

"Bo-ring," goes the chorus. That, sir, is my point. Real life is rarely
breathless and Technicolor. It's pastels, pleasures, frustrations,
anxieties, problems that aren't resolved in two hours, two days, or two
years. Until fairly recently, it wasn't knives or guns either. Or swearing,
proud thuggery, swarms and beatings, pipe-bomb plants in the garage,
fantasies of high school massacre and the quick wink for chemical
refreshment at raves.

What Bill Clinton did for oral sex, pop entertainment peddlers have done
for drugs and da gangsta life. It's celebrated on the screen: live fast and
die young. Mouth off. Act up. Even TV characters who don't, find themselves
cleaning up after, morgue eye-balling and reacting to the characters who
do. Is it any wonder Sept. 11's early reference point was "it looked like a
movie?" The smoky inferno outtakes, without Bruce Willis. This is how we
judge reality. Is this a re-run?

DEADHEADS

You'd have to be as wrecked as the deadheads who actually laughed at a
Cheech & Chong movie to think the glorification of drugs and violence to
the exclusion of all else is a good thing. Are there no other story
markers? Drugs are motive, reward, prize, pay off. Pound or be pounded to
get to the happy ending. Shoot everybody. Maybe in slo-mo.

"Are you using heroin, cocaine, meth or ecstasy?" I quizzed people at a
party the week before New Year's. Ages 25-60, none of them admitted as
much, tho two snuck out to the car to smoke pot. "Do you know anybody
personally who does?" Nope. "Have you ever been part of a dope deal?" One.
"Do you own a gun or know anybody who does?" One.

Yet to watch a week's TV, you'd think the dramatic world revolved around
drugs, crime and violence. Odds are better than even the next video you
rent has a near-mandatory drug buy, character-detailing doobie or cop
drug-bust plot point. Drugs are exotic, attractive, interesting, great viz:
proof to audience and peers the producer involved is with-it and hip.

Stranger still, a third of the people at the party are on prescription
happy pills, mood adjusters and anti-depressants. They don't count them as
drugs. Thanks to the clean wash of media articles and ads, these are merely
anti-pain pellets. Protection against what? Real Life. Hello! Where would
they get such a warped idea?

POP A PILL

Half of daytime TV's ads show impossibly happy folk who've found the ideal
cleaner/car/soda/insurance plan. The remaining ads are cheery cartoons for
the "little purple pill" or "social anxiety" tablet for folks
less-than-happy, in their pre-purchase state. Pop a pill and consume, dammit.

Yet there is no pill, pet food or insurance plan that will make you as
happy as the giggling idiots in TV commercials. It's a con. Reality always
falls short. Drugs help. This strikes me as a dangerous, self-fulfilling
prophecy.

A way-station between Alice in Wonderland and A Clockwork Orange.

"You don't take after a rock," my gypsy grandmother used to tell grandkids
behaving badly, just as their parents had, copying her husband, true
patriarch of bluster and bad behaviour. We're all copycats, following the
beacons that blink brightest or most often. At century's start, we are
swimming in a soup of drug fiction. Eye candy for brats.

Here's my first New Year's resolution. I have seen my last cinematic dope
deal. I'll take the next offending video back to the store, stopped right
where it appears on the tape, announcing: "This is low-life bulls--t. Do
you have any flicks about real life? Something about ambition or achievement?"

What if we all did?