Our sermon today, children, concerns a matter of great spiritual import. I’ve given it the title: “What to do if you are a likeable comedian wandering through America’s nightmare of free-ways, adverts and listless consumers in traffic jams... and you’re out there in it with a BBC audience.” Amen?
Dave Gorman decided to create a show called America Unchained, which is reality TV with a touch of whimsy, and in the breezy Morgan Spurlock tradition, has an underlying activist plot. Reality TV is just improvisation inside a set of rules, and Gorman’s is this: I will try to drive across the United States, coast to coast, and I will attempt to discover the old independent America by spending all my money in Mom and Pops, never go to chains, including for gas, motels and meals. The set-up assumes that the British audience agrees with Gorman naming all the chains “The Man”. It leaves open the question of whether Americans agree – but that’s a big part of the nationwide conversation that he drives: “Do you see this? This sea of identical details? What do you think of this?”
Our undaunted funnyman starts out in California, where he buys a 1970s Ford station wagon and heads east. Then he has an epiphany. Why not look for the independence in towns called “Independence”? Off he goes, from Independence to Independence, zigzagging into the continent. His likeability dares us not to accept his shaky reality premise. In Survivor – if you lose – you’re tossed back into obscurity. The only darkness that looms for Gorman is falling back into the miles of corporate sameyness and spending money the way most of us do. However, at one point Gorman does become stranded. Trapped in a Best Western bereft of independent supplies, he suffers bewilderment and depression. He decides to eat burgers, then, puking his guts, he has his dark night of the toilet. In the process he has none of the richly textured, unhurried conversations that he enjoyed off-chain. I do understand that we must paint our villain darkly, but Gorman missed that there are millions of Americans trapped inside the Demon Monoculture who maintain their eccentric selves – they are, in fact, making an effort in spirit – much like his.
One scene is worth the whole reality game. Gorman comes upon, I believe it’s in Independence, Oregon – Taylor’s Coffeeshop. This venerable community hub is closing its doors this very day, after more than half a century. Everyone in town is coming back in and reminiscing – “I fell in love with Fred right over there. And he proposed two months later, over there by the window...” And the clincher, “Madelyn’s waters broke on that third stool.” Then we pan to the child that resulted – she’s the brown-haired beauty serving Gorman his breakfast! This brings home and distills all the talk recently of the importance of Place in our lives. Will someone give me a “Place-a-lujah!”
The great challenge for Gorman is gas – the comic has bought a charming guzzler from the old GMC big boat days. He runs out of gas between Independence, Oregon and Independence, Kansas. There he is, standing on the highway with an old car, then, magically, local volunteers appear on the road and sweep him up and save him. It is the gift economy from the precorporate era. I believe that viewers will be enlightened here, and feel saddened by loss. These people who save Gorman seem to come from some indigenous past. Their generosity has an unreal quality. They are laughing, knowing everyone, waving at passersby, just here to help – so utterly outside of the policies of corporate “service”. He stands there, incredulously, as the moral mayor of the little town, Susan, who owns the diner, cheerfully rouses her neighbours on their days off, who come down to their non-Exxon gas pump, just for him. They are fiercely loyal to giving for its own sake. They refuse his apologies and his tip.
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The power of that kind of self-willed service, which is not explained by money but by a half-forgotten common sense, is the secret of Gorman’s project. That is the thing that rises to the comic Prometheus of his title. You wonder, in our corporate world, what these fiercely creative and funny people would do to the larger culture if they had power again. The fact that we ask that question is Gorman’s success.
While we watch Al Gore and Bono sitting in the centre of the biggest big box – Davos – trying to get the powerful to change their ways and save us, Gorman identifies power in a new place. A healthy neighbourhood may be more radical than any NGO. The creativity of the ordinary folks in a local economy may be more sophisticated than the globalised jet-set managers. Certainly, if Gorman’s ordinary Americans decided to “Go Green”, it wouldn’t be an advertising campaign.
America Unchained doesn’t manage to cross paths with the activist-citizens who are actually rising to save themselves from chains and malls. Such protests are ongoing in hundreds of communities throughout the world. In his gentle and jocularly nonpartisan way, Dave Gorman has helped those who are defending their communities. I could exorcise a Starbucks cash till with this wandering soul...
Dave Gorman in America Unchained, Tues, More4, 10pm. The film is out on DVD on Feb 11. A book of the journey will be published by Ebury in April. See www.davegorman.com