Hiding from significance: documented disinterestedness in Winnebago Man.

Khan, Amir

Marking the distinction between art and criticism is necessary in a discussion not of film per se, but of documentary film, which arguably straddles worlds of art and/or criticism. Is an effectively rendered documentary an example of art, or criticism, or both? This question bears on what I want to say about Ben Steinbauer's Winnebago Man (2009), a film documentary which is an example, I will argue, of what Robin Wood calls "oppositional cinema". (1) Therefore, we must ask not only if Winnebago Man is oppositional in the sense that Wood uses the term, but also, if it is indeed cinema--in the way Wood conceives of cinema. I will answer this latter question first by differentiating between art and criticism, noting that we are more likely to conceive of documentary film as criticism, as opposed to art. In order to make the case that (this) documentary, is indeed, or can be, art, we must take pains to show that criticism is, or can be, art as well.

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John Grierson, arguing unequivocally in favour of documentary film as art (as opposed to merely "lecture films" (2)) undercuts the salience of dramatic narrative as necessary to art. Grierson makes this convincing plea for his chosen genre of film:

  [D]ocumentary can achieve an intimacy of knowledge and effect
  impossible to the ... mechanics of the studio. ... I do not mean ...
  to suggest that the studios cannot in their own manner produce works
  of art to astonish the world. There is nothing ... to prevent the
  studios going really high in the manner of theatre or the manner of
  fairy-tale. My separate claim for documentary is simply that in its
  use of the living article, there is also an opportunity to perform
  creative work. (3)

In restricting himself to the "use of the living article", much as a critic of literature must restrict him/herself not to the creation of art, but to the description of it, Grierson makes a case that description itself--rather than, say, fiction--can occupy positions of, or "perform", creative work.

The distinction between art and criticism, as though one is doing one or the other, is muddled, I think, even in Matthew Arnold's panegyric to criticism, his classic text of 1864 on "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time". (4) To the proposition that "[t]he critical power is of lower rank than the creative," he answers, quite simply: "True." (5) He notes that "the exercise of a creative power" is truly the "highest function of man." (6) Yet he also warns that in assenting to the truth of this proposition, the following should be kept in mind: "[I]t is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art. ... They may have it in well-doing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticising." (7) If art is necessarily tied to the exercise of a free creative power, and if criticism is also bred of such a power, then what Arnold does in this essay (amongst other things) is tie the function of criticism not to the function of art, but to art itself. If one commits to this proposition, it becomes somewhat hard to follow, as the essay progresses, Arnold's distinction between art and criticism--particularly his emphasis on a critical stance of "disinterestedness." (8) That is, there is no good reason that a stance of "disinterestedness" is not equally necessary for the production of art (let alone criticism).

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Without getting too bogged down on what we or anyone else understands "disinterestedness" to mean or say, I'll quote here from Arnold as a reminder of how he defines the term:

  [H]ow is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from
  what is called "the practical view of things"; by resolutely
  following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of
  the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to
  lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical
  considerations about ideas, which plenty of people will be sure to
  attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them,
  which ... are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but
  which criticism has really nothing to do with.  Its business is ...
  simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and
  by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and
  fresh ideas. (9)

Criticism and art exist at either side of these "true and fresh ideas." The critic engages in "analysis and discovery" (10) of these ideas on the one hand, and the artist in their "synthesis and exposition" (related to "exposure"--I will return to this) on the other. In composing a work of art, the artist synthesises and exposes precisely those true and fresh ideas already brought to bear by the critic. (11) Though we often think of the work of art preceding the act of criticism, Arnold notes that because of the complexity of (his) modern times, the great artist requires criticism in order to create art; so the critical effort must precede the artistic one.

  [E]very one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life
  and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the
  world being in modern times very complex things, the creation of a
  modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort
  behind it. ... Shakespeare was no deep reader. True; but in the
  Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the England of Shakespeare, the
  poet lived in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating
  and nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the fullest
  measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive. And
  this state of things is the true basis for the creative power's
  exercise, in this it finds its data, its materials, truly ready
  for its hand. (12)

The artist is to give shape and meaning to the currents of thought he/she is immersed in. But because such ideas are not so easily forthcoming, a strong critical effort rooted in discovery and analysis must first buttress an act of synthesis and exposition to follow. Great works of art only exist after a great critical effort, which, for Arnold, explains why his particular time or "epoch" (13) is so lacking in great art. Too much criticism is required at the outset; too few willing to commit to it. Why 19th century England should be less easily "permeated by fresh thought" (as opposed, say, to Renaissance England) may indeed have something to do with the complexity of modernity, as Arnold suggests. It is beyond the scope of this paper to pursue the matter further. Whatever the case, I'll note, lastly about Arnold, that when fresh thoughts are not so readily available, the critical effort is not to revive art in the immediate present, but to continue the work of discovery and analysis so that art is given the materials to thrive once again in future. In such a case, Arnold notes, the only true and fruitful creative activity will reside in criticism itself, because "at some epochs no other creation is possible." (14) What this paper will address is the notion that our times mirror Arnold's, as far as film goes, and that a film like Winnebago Man, by virtue of its critical effort, manages to achieve something we can call filmic art.

Winnebago Man documents the Internet fame and fallout of Jack Rebney, a man hired in 1989 by Winnebago Industries to star in a promotional video for the Itasca Sunflyer RV. Shooting for the video was done in 100 degree heat in Forest City, Iowa (as noted by Rebney in the film) and the outtakes depict Rebney, routinely, losing his temper. Prior to completing the project, the shooting crew disseminated these outtakes which were then copied and redistributed widely enough that Winnebago Industries was forced to let go of Rebney. The film less documents the occurrence of these events than their eventual digital distribution followed by Internet notoriety and subsequent hermitry of Jack Rebney i.e. his story as a "viral" phenomenon. It was on YouTube, for example, that Rebney's moniker as the Winnebago Man was entrenched.

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The immediate, knee-jerk denigration of youth, and then, not because of anything they have done, but, more pressingly, what they fail to do, is certainly one characteristic not of the Winnebago man in the selection of clips that "went viral" (first through the somewhat laborious reproduction of video tape in the 1990s, and then, through the digital reproduction of these clips online), but of Jack Rebney as presented to us in Ben Steinbauer's film. The film documents, strangely enough, not the life and times of Rebney (though there is some of that), but, more peculiarly, the making of the very film we are watching. If we take a man like Rebney as someone who is, truly, hiding from significance, what the internal dramatic tension of this film manages to reveal or document is not his exposure to us, but our eventual exposure to him. Near the end of the film, at the conclusion of Rebney's appearance at the Found Footage Festival, Joe Pickett asks Rebney: "Do you hate us?" What this film shows is Rebney coming to terms with his "audience", whom he initially dismisses as "crazies" and "lunatics", but in the end is willing to acknowledge as "my people", "clever, quick and observant". So the key transformation or recognition in this film is not of an audience coming to terms with the existence of characters like Rebney in this world (through, say, the sympathetic recall of what we expect to be his "troubled" childhood or marriage), but of an audience coming to terms with its own stance of disinterestedness in this world, an exposure that risks ridicule.

Much is and obviously will be made about our desire to consume characters like Rebney in this fashion--anonymously, in small doses, as mere spectacle--linking our fascination with the man to baser impulses. The film acknowledges this possibility early on, detailing cases of cyberbullying, juxtaposing Rebney's internet fame and celebrity with that of other modern day "freaks"--notably Ghyslain Raza and Aleksey Vayner. (15) Certainly when listening to the testimony of Charlie Sotelo and Cinco Barnes, we are reminded that many do indeed consume Rebney as mere spectacle, interested in precisely the impersonal appeal of watching a man being degraded, or degrading himself: "It's [only] funny when you don't know him ... there's no reason to know the guy. That really spoils it all."

But it is never entirely clear that Rebney actually degrades himself. He makes a spectacle of himself, but it is certainly not true that Rebney is a victim of cyberbullying the way Ghyslain Raza is, or humiliated in quite the same way as Alexei Vayner. If Rebney feels humiliated, it is in knowing the maliciousness behind the origin and original dissemination of the clips, conceived and distributed by "co-workers" as a means to get him fired. But now, many more years after the fact, it is not the malicious motives behind the videos' creation/reproduction that are on display. The consumption of these videos in anonymity puts this sort of consideration out of reach. The idea that Rebney is still sore because of losing his position as a Winnebago salesperson implies that the job was one he coveted in the first place. But what Steinbauer documents is that this gig was used as cover for an earlier humiliation, that of being rejected by, or in rejecting, the world of professional news broadcasting. It may be a tough pill to swallow, knowing you have been ousted from a position you did not really care for. But this only compounds an original anger and humiliation in being let go as a newsman. So the true source of Rebney's humiliation is nowhere to be found in the Winnebago clips themselves. Whatever it is that Rebney fears, or for whatever reason it is that he is hiding from significance, embarrassment at appearing in these particular clips seems too farfetched a proposition to sustain. Steinbauer expected to have to deal with feelings of schadenfreude, taking Douglas Rushkoff's suggestion that his foray into Rebney's life is the solidification in him of some "collective cultural guilt." But as the movie progresses, these diagnoses seem quaint and unfounded. Whatever the source of Steinbauer's fascination with Rebney, it is not certain that Steinbauer's interest stems from schadenfreude. He is interested to know where his obsession with Rebney comes from. Steinbauer sought out Vayner, but never claimed to be "obsessed" with him in the same way, never made a film about him. He pays lip service to the obvious and conventional reading of "guilt," but the film just as quickly dispenses with it. Because a discussion of guilt does not arise anywhere in the latter portion of the film, Steinbauer certainly leaves room, both for himself and for us as viewers, to explore other options.

What else could be the source of Steinbauer's/our fascination with Rebney? One thing could be that Rebney provides us a rant without content. Rebney's rage is not prescriptive, does not nominate anything (other than trivial things, like files, or the weather, or the slamming of a door) to be angry about. Part of the hilarity is in knowing the reaction is so out of proportion with the circumstances as to elicit awe and wonder. And part of the fascination with Rebney is that he reminds us it is okay to act (seemingly) disproportionately. We all may do it in the confines of our minds, but how many of us, even when the stakes are so small, are willing to entertain such outbursts?

Rebney reminds us there are no ordinary circumstances under which one can express the type of rage he expresses. Yet why are we largely uninspired by Rebney's more "extraordinary" rage (vis-a-vis Dick Cheney, to whom I will return)? Is this an indication of our own aloofness, our own irresponsible stance of precisely the sort of disinterestedness that someone like Bertolt Brecht wholeheartedly opposes in his conception of what aesthetics can do through "epic theatre?" (16) So it seems our fascination with Rebney is of no real aesthetic value at all, and is, merely, an admission of guilt.

Though Brecht may have no business with the Winnebago man, I do think Robin Wood's notion of "oppositional cinema", (17) derived from Brecht, is a pertinent point of departure for discussing this film. And though Wood himself, at times, is dismissive of the "youth market," (18) no one more convincingly places us at the precipice of what movies, in true oppositional fashion, are capable (or incapable) of, hence helps us to understand why viewers of movies nowadays, seemingly, have every reason to be drawn to (mere) spectacle. The youthful stance of disinterestedness in the world is perhaps the result of a certain type of aloofness, but this aloofness is itself the result of being unable to wage an effective opposition, a sentiment Wood is sympathetic to when he asks: "is an oppositional cinema possible?" (19)--which does not mean that its impossibility is the result of a disengaged movie audience, but that movies themselves are incapable or unwilling to mobilize resistance.

An "oppositional cinema" is not one that fosters and demands immediate social change but merely lays the groundwork for changes in consciousness. The three films Wood calls "masterpieces" (20) of oppositional cinema are Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo (1959), Leo McCarey's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), and Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment (1949). The content of these films is less at issue here than Wood's discussion of the conditions in which these films were created. Despite their true oppositional status, he notes that it is "not just possible but probable that their makers were completely unaware of their potentially explosive content". (21) So precisely what makes these films effective as radical oppositional cinema is their disinterested stance, what Wood characterizes as a "lack of self-consciousness."

  Crucial to these works ... was the relative lack of
  self-consciousness. Hawks, for example, could become,
  intermittently, a great artist: the circumstances of Classical
  Hollywood permitted it, even encouraged it, without the least
  awareness of doing so. ... Rio Bravo can be read as offering a
  complete and satisfying (if primitive) philosophy of human existence,
  developed spontaneously and organically out of a whole complex of
  interlocking factors (genre, writers, actors, cinematographers),
  while Hawks himself appeared to believe that he was just 'having
  fun.' That kind of unself-consciousness, a prerequisite of full,
  free-flowing creativity, is no longer possible. (22)

Here is an aloofness or disinterestedness that Wood is championing, the sort that may not lead to an immediate and sudden social change or realization, but whose work is carried out slowly and gradually. Noting that "there is no indication whatever that [these films] led to any social change," (23) Wood asks, promptly, what "was/is their use?" (24) His answer is precisely that these films began to stir the pot, as "those tensions that finally erupted in the great radical movements of the 60s/70s are already demonstrably there [i.e., depicted in those films]. They just hadn't been recognized for what they were." (25)

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Yet Wood, admirably, does not establish any causal link between these films and, say, the uprisings that occurred in America in and around the Vietnam war. What he suggests is that the "use" of these films comes only in hindsight. We cannot, in the moment, use these films to predict what may come; yet these films stand as evidence to the sorts of tensions and frustrations that have already passed. So in one sense, oppositional cinema is never possible, because an oppositional cinema cannot know, or be aware of, beforehand, the sorts of dragons it is out to slay. But in another sense, the type of opposition we need now is precisely the sort rooted in a disinterested free-play of ideas, come what may. Whether this sort of cinema is possible nowadays is, according to Wood, doubtful:

  Fifty years from now, circa 2053, will critics be discerning
  comparable radical impulses in today's Hollywood movies? It's
  possible, I suppose, but it seems unlikely. For a start, we have
  become far more self-conscious, hence more wary, more on our guard.
  Films may have become more "daring" in terms of sexual explicitness
  and extreme violence, but such things have nothing to do with
  social/political subversion and our internal censors will warn us
  against anything more dangerous than the spectacle of crashing cars
  and exploding buildings, created with the aid of the latest
  technology. The grotesquely reactionary period we live in is not far
  enough removed from the upheavals of radical feminism, black power,
  gay rights, to have lost awareness of them; their partial cooption
  into the mainstream does not entirely remove their potential threat.
  Filmmakers are now largely under the control of vast capitalist
  enterprises whose aim seems to be distraction, not disturbance. ...
  But the majority [of people], as yet, remain in the state of stupefied
  mystification that corporate capitalism requires for its continuance:
  Shock us, make us laugh, but please, please, don't encourage us to
  think. (26)

Perhaps it is unfair to suggest, as I did earlier, that Wood is entirely dismissive of the "youth market." What Wood is dismissive of, rather, is the "youth market" that "laps ... up" (27) Hollywood films. But the "youth" in this film are clearly not (at least not solely) consumers of Hollywood films. Nick Prueher says to Rebney: "You're our Harrison Ford," and the line-ups here occur not in front of the AMC but the Red Vic Movie House. So does it follow necessarily that those who demand to be shocked, to laugh at Rebney (and viral videos on the Internet more generally) are merely an extension of the same sort of people who demand "not-to-think" when viewing a Hollywood movie, as though Hollywood itself is not spectacle enough for these souls who must, inevitably, turn elsewhere? Does Steinbauer, in his fascination with Rebney, truly "not-want-to-think"?

The swift condemnation of Rebney for going a little "Bono on us," recorded in Steinbauer's post-mortem of Rebney's appearance at the San Francisco Found Footage Festival, suggests that any attempt by Rebney to try to get his audience to think (i.e., to think like he does, to view the world as he does, with Dick Cheney at the epicentre of American corruption, disintegration) risks marginalizing him. This is further to suggest that the easy consumption of the spectacle of Rebney is all the audience in question is after, and not the consumption of, say, any overwrought political message. How are we to read such a stunning exposure?

At one point in the film, Steinbauer, unsure as to how to proceed with, or make due on, the work he has done in tracking Rebney down, initially suggests setting up a weekly pod-cast, to which fans of Rebney can tune in to hear, presumably amongst other things, some of his political thoughts/rants. Yet Rebney himself refuses, unwilling to make his political thoughts subject to spectacle/ridicule. Indeed, one wonders why Ben proposes the ludicrous project at all, particularly when, later, he admonishes Rebney precisely for ranting about Dick Cheney: "This is maybe going to be the last piece of film that you ever shoot, the last time that you can be on camera, and this is what you want to say? You've been up here for fifteen years studying the great works ... and this is what you want to impart, is Dick Cheney?--is how bad Dick Cheney is." The question then is: what exactly is Rebney supposed to say? Ben has tried to get Rebney to talk about his childhood, and then his marriage, but all "serious" topics are off limits. Ben can only wonder, indeed, what the hell he is doing.

This maddening oscillation, between interested social engagement (i.e., Steinbauer's personal quest to humanize the man in the videos) and disinterested free-play (precisely the desire by both Ben and his viewing audience to consume characters like Rebney anonymously) means that a true clash is allowed to take place before our eyes and the result is a synthesis; that is, our consumption of Rebney can be viewed as a sort of play, or, rather, a disinterested form of social engagement in the name of creating (however primitive) a community--which will, of course, be interpreted/dismissed by some as merely a vulgar indulgence in spectacle. (At around the four minute mark, Mike Mitchell says: "You come upon someone that's seen it and you speak the same language. You just start quoting: "My mind's a piece of shit this morning; I'm blinded by this hotlight.") But this is not the sort of social engagement occurring elsewhere. Rather, the debates around which we are normally thought to construct our lives and identities (i.e., Dick Cheney) are themselves elsewhere, not immediately here, providing no currency or language of community, only discord. If the charge to "think", to be oppositional necessarily fractures, ensuring "all human relations [are] characterized by power, dominance, possessiveness, manipulation," (28) why would anyone--logically, emotionally--want to think, or rather, think about the things we normally believe thought ought to coalesce around? Can a community of Winnebago man fans provide a launching pad for revolution? Are they and the viewers of this film participating in any sort of "oppositional cinema"?

The distinct achievement of this film is in its inadvertent documentation of a political stance of disinterestedness which thrives only in anonymity. That is, there is no reason for the avoidance of significance as a political stance to be registered at all in the public consciousness, certainly not through the "traditional" public means of (mass) discourse (i.e., movies, television, newspapers, radio, the Internet). Any interested attempt at pursuing such documentation only risks highlighting interested charlatans anyhow. How to record and then disseminate mass disinterestedness? It is easier to scoff at such a stance precisely because one cannot engage with it. Ben Steinbauer was not out to document a political stance of disinterestedness and showcase this to the world; he was out to humanize Jack Rebney. By (disinterested) fluke, he manages to record something deep and lasting--the effective doubling of Rebney and his audience, both of whom are hiding from significance. Hence the source of the latter's fascination with the former, and hence Rebney's moving acknowledgment and startling acceptance of this doubling. He has found his community in anonymity, and subsequently, an anonymous community is given voice--though we only know of it through Ben's disinterested efforts. Listen to Rebney's remarkable, and wholly accurate, assessment of events at the end of the film:

  In fact what it is, is that, there is apparently really a true
  camaraderie, with people who see that and who commiserate with this
  poor belaboured person who says pretty much what comes to his mind
  when he's met with adversity ... And that's good ... That's really the
  human condition, is it not? Right there, in simple terms.

But the miracle cannot now be unachieved so it is up to us, simply, to take notice and realize what is demonstrably there. Is this cinema oppositional? It is conceived of and executed away from Hollywood. More directly: yes, because it shows that the youth cannot be co-opted, that social engagement will occur on their terms. Power may scoff for now, but if things are happening under the radar of so-called mass popular appeal, who can tell, to be sure, where such efforts will lead.

Arnold reminds us that the work of culture is "slow", (29) that its trajectory marks the perfectionist aspiration of human beings. Now the example of Jack Rebney is not what we would assume Arnold to have in mind when he invokes culture, nor does our fascination with Rebney revolve around an aspiration to be like him (he does not set off, say, perfectionist longings). Rebney is clearly not a model of the perfect human. But what the image or screen tends to offer up are unrealistic versions of perfectionism, usually through advertising (30) designed to skew or manipulate our tendency to want perfection in the first place--as though the achievement of such perfection could be achieved in this lifetime through easy consumption and a definitive commercial transaction with a beginning and end. The only way to reject this branded sort of perfectionism is not by saving or redeeming or curing (through therapy or what have you) an imperfect human before us, but by asserting or reclaiming his imperfections, which is, in a way, to champion his perfect humanity.

Ben Steinbauer set out to "discover" and "analyze" the case of jack Rebney, as well as the source of his own fascination with Rebney. In this way, he is acting as critic, as Arnold intends and employs the term. The work of "synthesis and exposition" is less obvious in this film, and if these two roles characterize the work of the artist, then what Steinbauer has achieved is not art, or, perhaps, not grand art, art projected on a grand scale in terms of drama and narrative. Yet if grand art is not so easily forthcoming these days from the more traditional institutional vehicles of filmmaking (i.e., Hollywood), then what filmmakers can try in the interim is to buttress their creative effort with engaged social criticism, and not the sort that demands interested analysis of politics or society, but which achieves its artistic merit through the disinterested documentation of "real life"--more specifically, what others take to be real, i.e., significant. Has Steinbauer produced great art or great criticism? He has, in fact, given us semblances of both; what he intended to produce was criticism--a commentary on a social phenomenon after the fact, which does not a priori disqualify him as an artist, particularly if we believe that criticism can function as art. Steinbauer's film gains its unique artistic merit because, in its honest pursuit of truth, it manages, tangentially, to "synthesize" and "expose" not Jack Rebney but the stance of disinterested engagement afforded him by his fans (which, ultimately, speaks to reasons behind his own fascination with Rebney; so Steinbauer has exposed, if less fully "discovered," himself in the process as well). In exposing the source of our engagement/disengagement with the world, Winnebago Man stakes its claim as true cinematic art, both oppositional and aloof. Here are some concluding words from Grierson:

  The best of the tyros [i.e., those apprenticing, or beginning, in the
  trade of documentary filmmaking] ... believe that beauty will come in
  good time to inhabit the statement which is honest and lucid and
  deeply felt. ... They are sensible enough to conceive of art as the
  by-product of a job of work done. The opposite effort to capture the
  by-product first (the self-conscious pursuit of beauty, the pursuit of
  art for art's sake to the exclusion of jobs of work and other
  pedestrian beginnings), was always a reflection of selfish wealth,
  selfish leisure and aesthetic decadence. (31)

That art or creation is a by-product of the disinterested and honest documentation of life (which alone characterizes meaningful "work") is the maxim behind Grierson's impressive defence of documentary film as art. Through such exposure (i.e., exposure as "by-product") is the true revelatory power of documentary film made manifest. And though documentary film is not the sole means of achieving cinematic art in our time, its generic power, one feels, has yet to be brought to bear fully.

Notes

(1.) Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Regan ... and Beyond (New York: Columbia UP, 2003), 333.

(2.) John Grierson, Grierson on Documentary, ed. F. Hardy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1947), 100.

(3.) Ibid., 101 His emphasis.

(4.) Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" in Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold, ed. A.D. Culler (Boston: Houghlin Mifflin Co., 1961), 237-58.

(5.) Ibid., 238.

(6.) Ibid.

(7.) Ibid.

(8.) Ibid., 246.

(9.) Ibid.

(10.) Ibid., 239.

(11.) Though I am using the term "art" so as to include film in my discussion, Arnold is, very explicitly, discussing literature: "I will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature that the question [of how the creative power works] arises,--the elements with which the creative power works are ideas" 239.

(12.) Ibid., 240-41.

(13.) Ibid., 243.

(14.) Ibid., 258.

(15.) Ghyslain Raza is better known (online) as the "Star Wars Kid". In late 2002, he made a video of himself swinging a golf-ball retriever in the manner of Darth Maul swinging his light saber in Star Wars: Episode I (1999). Aleksey Vayner is better known by the title of his video resume, "Impossible is Nothing", posted online in 2006, in which he performs rather superhuman and cartoonish feats in a sincere attempt to land an entry-level finance position with VBS. Both Raza and Vayner's videos were surreptitiously uploaded to the Web and the notoriety received by each was both unwanted and humiliating. The videos remain online today.

(16.) In Brecht's schema, what is traditionally taken to be "aesthetic" is that which is given freedom within established conventional constraints, what he calls "apparatus". Yet the apparatus "at present ... do not work for the general good; the means of production do not belong to the producer". The role of "epic theatre" is to arouse the spectator's "capacity for action", which is, ultimately, to usurp the "aesthetic point of view" in favour of a "sociological point of view", where a consideration of existing power relations are brought to the fore. Bertolt Brecht, Bertolt Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic, ed. J. Willet (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 20-22, 35, 37.

(17.) Wood, 333.

(18.) Ibid., xxx.

(19.) Ibid., 333.

(20.) Ibid.

(21.) Ibid.

(22.) Ibid., 334.

(23.) Ibid., 333.

(24.) Ibid., 334.

(25.) Ibid. His emphasis.

(26.) Ibid., 335.

(27.) Ibid., xxx.

(28.) Ibid., 66.

(29.) Arnold, 250.

(30.) Alan Berliner is documented in the film saying: "Commercials are meant to be these picture perfect, pristine things, with everything being scripted and every composition being carefully composed. It's [i.e., the Winnebago outtakes] our chance to look behind the curtain."

(31.) Grierson, 105.