Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film posted a film by Bill Mousoulis called The Experimenting Angel. I liked it. So I’ve posted another of Mousoulis’ films. It features Jennifer Levy who returns from a long absence to Australia and feels dislocated while visiting a city. She wonders why the people seem so ‘deflated’ as they wander through various public/corporate spaces like malls. The film captures something increasingly common worldwide which is that quiet, blank, but seemingly normal behavior encouraged by any structure designed and erected with a corporate idea behind it. We all know how we are expected to behave when we walk past a row of Gaps, Starbucks, Banana Republics and Wetzle’s Pretzels. We obey. We perform the routine and go about our business making sure that we are perceived as correctly normal. We are guests in someone else’s house, even in our public spaces. We behave like new guests, ingratiating ourselves to the dome camera in the ceiling.  The cell phone is the absolute symbol of complete obeisance to the corporate superstructure looming above us.  We are told to engage in meaningless chatter while we walk, drive, breathe, eat, date, watch movies, run, bike, and work.  We are told to do this until it seems like normal and seems to make perfect sense.  It is as logical as being told to drop a penny on the ground every third step for every day of your life.  Steve Jobs tells you to leave him a penny on the ground every third step of every day of your life… and you damn well do it.  You know how many times Steve Jobs uses a cell phone during an average day?  None.  Why?  Because he’s much smarter than you are.