MSNBC, the Left-Liberal cable news network, is screening a short, minimalist documentary called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. With commercials, the picture, directed by Christopher Stoudt, is about forty minutes long. The film focuses, primarily, on the aftermath to the infamous press conference held by Rudy Giuliani on November 7, 2020 at a family run landscaping company locatee between a crematorium and porno place in East Philadelphia. During the press conference, Giuliani proclaimed that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. His timing was bad -- it was also announced during his wild-eyed and maniacal presentation that the Networks had "called" the election for Biden. This was whispered to Giuliani which prompted a spectacular display of sarcasm in which the former New York Mayor and Trump factotum raised his arms in supplication to the Gods of TV news networks, mocking the heavens, it seemed, for their insolence in declaring the President the loser in the election. Giuliani's performance was demented and rendered even more surreal by the baffling mise-en-scene -- a garage door plastered with Trump posters in a grimy and, decidedly, low-rent part of town. The media speculated that Trump's staff had made some kind of spectacular mistake, somehow confusing Four Seasons Total Landscaping's parking lot with a tony ballroom at the expensive Four Seasons Hotel downtown. The show's tease, as it were, is that the documentary purports to reveal how the press conference came to be located in a moribund industrial neighborhood, hosted by an unknown family-run enterprise.
The politics of the film are a bit inscrutable. This is, perhaps, intrinsic to the enigmatic quality of the events depicted. Four Seasons Total Landscaping is a business run by an Italian matriarch, Maria Saviro. (Apparently, her husband works in some other enterprise.) Saviro's operation was small, hand-to-mouth, and, even, possibly failing at the time that Fame plucked the business out of obscurity. The movie shows that the mother, Maria, was, apparently, planning to retire and leave the enterprise to her burly and handsome son, Mike. Mike's lieutenant was a man named Sean Middleton, one of the architects of the business' sudden efflorescence as a purveyor of on-line memes and high-camp merchandise such as sardonically embossed tee-shirts -- for instance, "Lawn and Order" imprinted on one shirt and another stenciled "Make America Rake Again." In the post-show discussion with a MSNBC host, Sean Middleton, portrayed as Michael Saviro's closest friend, is mysteriously absent and one can only conclude that some sort of squalid dispute has arisen resulting in bad blood between the former best buddies. (Mrs. Saviro, who seems to change hair colors frequently, appears in the post-show conversation as a a vibrant youngish-looking sixty year old woman with strawberry blonde locks; her original hair color was probably black as witness one picture showing her as a young woman, a sultry-looking Mediterranean siren with ebony hair, looking, for all intents and purposes, like the moll of a successful gangster -- a notion that leads to unsavory speculation as to her husband's unnamed trade.) The viewer suspects that the family were probably Trump supporters, although of the increasingly rare sane variety, but, then, cashed in on the ignominy of the FSTL press conference when they discovered that their bread was buttered by mockery and not fidelity to the lost cause. The show's brief trajectory is clear enough: Trump staff contact the failing business and set up a press conference at their garage, possibly because animus between pro- and anti-Trump protesters downtown made holding the event there too dangerous and too susceptible to being overrun by enemies who outnumbered the President's supporters in the central city. Giuliani with entourage (arriving in two big and sleek black SUVs) appeared at the Saviro business. Giuliani is an avuncular fellow and he obligingly posed with family members and was filmed seated at Mrs. Saviro's desk behind a plaque that read "Boss Lady." Giuliani then performed his operatic denunciation of the election (and the Networks). After the event, which is scarcely shown, the business was deluged by "haters" -- presumably, progressives who despised FSTL for hosting the noxious presser. The business received thousands of emails threatening FSTL and its members with all sorts of mayhem, including incendiary destruction of the business' humble garage and warehouse. Michael and Sean shrewdly discerned that there was a business opportunity in the furor and began posting amusing memes on the Internet and, then, selling all sorts of tee-shirts. People began to make pilgrimages to the unprepossessing facility and one group of admirers even ate their Thanksgiving dinner in front of the shop. The business began to thrive on the sale of curios and funny tee-shirts. Millions of dollars were made and Maria Saviro even got to appear in a big budget TV commercial aired at the Super Bowl. Trump proved the axiom that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The FSTL story confirms this proof -- somehow, the little company transformed a sea of rage and indignation in a warm swamp of lemonade-flavored love: "the outpouring of love," someone remarks was "overwhelming." The show has a happy ending. Michael is now running the business and the enterprise has, indeed, morphed into a sort of event center. Presumably, the business will host weddings and develop a catering service as well.
The show doesn't really satisfy its "tease". It remains unclear why Trump (or Giuliani) chose the FSTL parking lot for his weird press conference. The explanations offered by the documentary are that the Trump organization wanted to exploit Giuliani but keep him on the sidelines -- hence, he was exiled, as it were, to the grungy east Philly location. Trump's campaign was out of money and FSTL didn't charge anything for use of their site. A press conference downtown would have been disrupted by protesters and the landscaping business was easy access on and off I95, possibly the definitive reason. Finally, Trump's PR people were probably in on the joke -- choosing the location for its ironic, "meta" qualities; some of Trump's staff were undoubtedly quite willing to satirize their own activities and this campy sensibility seems on display on the choice of FSTL as a location for Giuliani's over-the-top performance. The film ultimately raises far more questions than it answers: what was the politics of the Saviro family? how was the place really selected (were they campaign donors)? what happened to Sean Middleton? how exactly was the pivot made away from being accused of treason to becoming a humorous, much-beloved punch line to a joke about Trump and his supporters? The phenomenon that the show documents is increasingly familiar if a little sinister: someone becomes instantly famous for an internet post, the butt of a million jokes, and either thrives or is destroyed by the sudden explosion of world-wide interest. A Japanese woman allows her toy poodle to defecate on a Tokyo subway and is hounded to suicide by millions of Internet trolls; a Mexican girl of humble background invites people to her quinceanera in a naive and amusingly primitive on-line video: millions of people threaten to attend and people post memes of the Pope blessing her at a special mass convened in her honor. Andy Warhol observed that everyone would one day have their fifteen minutes of fame and proved the point by promoting two-bit hustlers, drug addicts, and hangers-on to the specious glamor of "Super Stars." Fame and glory are available to everyone. This is evident at all levels in our society: people posting on TikTok become stars with millions of followers; the disreputable host of a disreputable TV reality show rises to become President of the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment