The Queue: March 2013

Sidney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

Oh, the humiliation...so horrible to experience yet so engrossing when at the expense of others.

Over the past two decades, our veracious addiction to "reality" fused with "entertainment" has become somewhat of an unwavering plague, keeping millions of viewers inexplicably and numbingly captivated. From Survivor to Celebrity Rehab, Housewives to Honey Boo Boo, we thrive in an age of spectacle, drawn towards people's struggle, grotesque behavior and exposed vulnerabilities. Although it could be considered an excruciating flaw in our current cultural direction, it's actually a cyclical phenomenon that seems to be embedded in our nature. In a word (or in a German word), it can be defined as schadenfreude: pleasure rooted from the misfortune of others. The attraction to this spectacle is the perfect form of the mob mentality. It defines the human desire to repress all personal pressures and flaws, stripping away any ethically-driven characteristics and submitting to becoming a "face in the crowd", safely watching the carnage from the sidelines.

Michael Sarrazin and Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

Sidney Pollack's 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (based on the 1935 novel by Horace McCoy) is one of the most stylistic interpretations of the social symptoms of schadenfreud-ianism, using the bizarre and horrifying backdrop of a Dance Marathon at the Santa Monica Pier in Depression-era Los Angeles. Featuring an ensemble cast of Jane Fonda, Gig Young, Red Buttons, Michael Sarrazin and Bruce Dern, They Shoot Horses is one of the earlier cinematic interpretations of disparate and flawed individuals that would soon molded the character-driven movement of American film throughout the 1970s. The metaphoric title (given from the perspective of "Robert", played by the late Sarrazin), explores the cryptic parallels between the hardship of people broken with misfortune with the irreversible injury of a horse with a broken leg. When a horse breaks its leg, the immediate outcome is to euthanize; however, when a human being is broken beyond repair, what happens then?

Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern, Jane Fonda and Red Buttons in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

The iconic style and theme of the film has been cultural inspiration for a variation of artistic reenactments, from Vanity Fair's "Ain't We Got Style" Issue to Alexander McQueen's 2004 Spring/Summer Collection, bringing a vivid despair to high design and haute couture.

-MTK