Friday, September 5, 2008

Movie review and filmmaker interview: America the Beautiful

Are you beautiful and just don't know it?

By John P. Meyer

America the Beautiful

In 2004 alone, Americans spent $12.4 billion on cosmetic surgery. With such an abundance of wealth, why are Americans so discontent? In almost 40,000 media messages a year, youthful Americas are being told that, unless you look like supermodels and rock stars, you're not good enough for anyone to love. This is a message that too many people are buying. Filmmaker Darryl Roberts goes on a two year journey to examine America's new obsession. In America, we learn secrets, confessions, and strikingly harsh realities as Roberts unearths the origins and deadly risks of our nation's quest for physical perfection. These same images are found all over Europe, yet their citizens do not have this same obsession. The hope of achieving these 'ideals' has consumers purchasing cosmetics, toiletries, fashion and plastic surgeries at increasingly dramatic rates. Has the 'American Dream' changed so much that it can only be achieved once we can perfectly emulate the super thin and sexy images of Britney Spears or other pop icons? In "America the Beautiful" we see how these increasingly unattainable images contribute greatly to the rise in low self-esteem, body dismorphia, and eating disorders for young women and girls who also happen to be the beauty industry's largest consumers. Does America have an unhealthy obsession with beauty?

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on America the Beautiful

Darryl Roberts premiered America the Beautiful - his documentary about the American obsession with beauty and the industries that avariciously promote it - at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival earlier this year.

Since I missed seeing it during the festival, I was pleased to have the opportunity to view it prior to its Sept. 5 limited release in North Texas. It's a fascinating, often amusing and sometimes disturbing testament to the power popular culture exerts in the shaping of our perceptions. (Or maybe our attraction to extremely young, extremely skinny women is hard-wired? Watch the film and decide for yourself.)

The film focuses on a variety of themes related to beauty, including negative body image and its debilitating psychological effects; eating disorders; plastic surgery; and the potentially dangerous chemicals included in cosmetics - which are not included among the labels' listed ingredients. (Proprietary formulations, don't you know.)

As a connecting thread, the film follows the burgeoning career of 12-year-old Gerren Taylor, a willowy, precocious African-American girl who finds herself strutting the runways of New York wearing togs designed by the crème de la crème of fashion luminaries. She's being groomed as the "world's youngest supermodel," and her middle-school principal isn't happy about it. In fact, she's mad, and she's not going to take it anymore.

John P. Meyer

Darryl Roberts: mild-mannered, yet insightful, guy

Over the course of 105 minutes we hear from a variety of horses' mouths, including:

* men on the street (as to what they consider to be beautiful in a woman)

* the marketing managers of national ad campaigns

* fashion magazine editors (one of whom divulges: "We could change, but we wouldn't make as much money.")

* a fashion photographer

* an attractive female psychologist who tries to convince young women that they are also attractive, regardless that pop culture pundits are doing all they can to disprove this reality

* a variety of celebrities, both beautiful and not so, and...

* a high school teacher who has sponsored the installation of a class bulletin board project she calls "the great wall of porn."

Along the way we discover that Fiji islanders actually favored extremely LARGE body styles in women - prior to the introduction of (presumably American-sourced) television in the mid '90's, and we hear from the semi-apologetic operators of an exclusive online social networking community called beautifulpeople.net, who vote on whether to allow the inclusion of new members based upon their physical appearance.

We get an earful from Darlene Jespersen, who was fired from her bartending job at Harrah's Casino because she refused to wear makeup, as per company policy - even though her customers seemed to think she was doing a mighty fine job of serving them without it. And we weather a spontaneous harangue delivered to the hapless film crew by a respected Ph.D. beauty expert, after an outraged African American lady took offense at his efforts to lighten her skin color - explaining to her that it was going to make her more successful.

John P. Meyer

Popcorn is low-cal without the butter. And I'm betting Darryl knows it.

We find that the way we label things counts for a lot: it's "body enhancement" rather than plastic surgery; it's a "designer vagina" as opposed to genital mutilation. And the pursuit of physical perfection is deemed an exercise in improving "self-esteem," rather than masturbatory ego inflation.

While most of the material covered is palatable (if thematically dark), there are a couple of grisly surgery sequences, and an absolutely horrifying episode during which we - along with the film crew - await the long-overdue resumption of consciousness of a plastic surgery patient. (Most of the recorded deaths resulting from cosmetic surgery result from the anesthesia.)

Filmmaker Roberts narrates the proceedings and conducts the interviews in a credulous, low-key, self-effacing style reminiscent of Columbo - and succeeds remarkably in eliciting unguarded responses from his interviewees. He's a clever guy.

Thus, when we had a chance to talk to Roberts about his film, we jumped at the chance.

Interview: Darryl Roberts

• Listen now
• Subscribe to the podcast

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A NOTE regarding the podcast:

The Angelika Theater lobby is a great place to schmooz, but it's a lousy venue for an informal audio interview because of the ambient noise.

You'll find the first minute or so of the audio file is pretty boomy, but the quality improves as I move the recorder closer to the subject.

Darryl will be in attendance at evening screenings of America the Beautiful on opening day, Sept. 5, to participate in a Q/A following the show.

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