<-- I know this entry is a bit wordy - I apologize, but this is really important to me. And to show how much I appreciate you taking the time to read this entry, there's an extra special present for you at the end of the blog. No skipping ahead! That's cheating! :) Thanks, everybody! -->

    For the past several months I’ve been watching hundreds of vintage educational, industrial, and advertising films from the 1940s through to the 1960’s in preparation for a new pet project of mine – The Heather Show Vintage Video Kitschorama. I’ve watched countless films on dating, innumerable videos on marriage, dozens on the high school social dynamic; I’ve witnessed advertising campaigns that our parents watched as children, and even laughed hysterically at even the most ludicrous of outdated video fluff. But sometimes, even as silly and antiquated as some of these films seem, it never fails to amaze me how timely so many of the messages in this films are, regardless of the relative unfamiliar Golly-Gee-Whiz language and visions of 50’s dresses, lacquered hair-do’s, and giant land yacht Caddys.

    The vast majority of the films I have collected were, in the case of educational films, produced by textbook companies, and the industrial and sales films were naturally created by various companies for the sake of convincing you of the wonders of Push-Button This and Amazing Atomic That. But just now I watched a film that was quite surprising, considering what experience taught me to expect and what I ended up watching. It seemed like just another high school social guidance film, full of typical Americana; clean cut football captians, caring cheerleaders, and what to do when there’s a mistreated outcast amongst the bunch of remarkably white teenagers. This film in particular was entitled “Gossip” – I watched it in a marathon of high school films to try and treat my insomnia tonight, and it followed showings of, “The Bully”, “The Snob”, and “The Trouble-Maker.” Where those three were cookie-cutter, “Gossip” was anything but.

    My first surprise was during the title sequence. Instead of being produced by recognizable names like McGraw Hill or Encyclopedia Brittanica, it was produced by the Police Department of a town called Lakewood. It opened with a shot of a bright green parrot, and the narrator told us that even though a parrot can talk, it isn’t smart enough to realize what exactly it says. We learn to laugh at parrots and the words that they, well, parrot back at us. Unfortunately, as the narrator so rightly says, gossipers are much like parrots, spewing words without any intelligent thought regarding their consequence. These parroted words don’t cause the same amused laughter of the bird; instead the words they so stupidly repeat cause great damage, proving once and for all that the old addage is quite wrong – words really can break your bones, if deployed in the context of gossip.

    Most of the films I watch are from a loving historical viewpoint, but with a tinge of laughter. I’m a big Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan; I love watching this films, and just as much, I love poking fun at their antiquated and sometimes unprofessional nature. But when watching this film, it was a little too painful to laugh at. To me it’s the most serious of topics, because as the victim of exactly the same form of gossip as was depicted in the film, it made it all the more real. I felt the pain of the victim – a new girl in town who made the simple mistake of accepting the offer of going out on a date with a young man, only to find that later, that this young man liked to invent stories of imagined conquests and share them as non-fiction tales with anyone willing to listen.

    It was then that I realized exactly why this film was produced by a police department, as opposed to the typical textbook producers. The implications and consequences of gossip are just as damaging as any crime. In the case presented in the film, as in my own, the girl in question was essentially verbally raped every time that story was retold and embellished, until her reputation was tarnished, her friendships ruined, and control of her own life is suddenly taken out of her own hands. Every move she makes and every word she utters is discolored and tainted by the misperceptions of others, until nothing she does is right, until there’s no chance for her to defend herself against something that never happened.

    Such behavior should be criminal. If the victim were a celebrity, and that same story had been said about them, they’d have recourse in the law. Unfortunately, the average woman whose life is destroyed by such stories rarely has any proof to take the law, and she is therefore left unprotected. From that moment on her life is irreversibly changed, and by no choice of her own. The film showed a la vie en rose ending, where the man who told the lies owned up to his fault, and told all in school of his falsehoods. While that would be a celebrated conclusion in any real life situation, the feathers spread in the wind of gossip are rarely scattered in an easy, recognizable pattern. How then can all of them possibly be found, picked up, and no trace of them left for anyone to see? In the real world, outside of high school, society is never that confined, and gossip can spread throughout it in a chaotic manner. You never know who has heard what; how then could the perpetraitor ever pick up the pieces? How could the victim ever know that the stain on their reputation has ever been entirely scrubbed out?

    The reality is, not many victims are lucky enough to have caring accusers. Rarely is a gossiper ever more coherent than a parrot; if they do not recognize their crime, if they blind themselves to the pain they have caused, why would they ever try to pick up the pieces of the life they broke? The film didn’t answer that.

    Thankfully some victims do move on, regardless of the gossiper’s state of penitence. In my case, I was able to remove myself from the society that shunned me, but at what cost? And is it fair that I had to pay that debt because someone else decided I was unworthy of their civility, their doubt, their kindness? No, certainly not, but that’s the state of affairs, and it will be until this world is nice enough to be free of such people who are so callous with their words. It will always be that way until people learn to be smarter than the parrot in that film, and instead, as the narrator said at the films conclusion, learn to behave like those three little monkeys –
    See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and most importantly, Speak No Evil.

On a happier note, I’d like to announce that the very first episode of The Heather Show Vintage Video Kitschorama has been completed! It’s not quite ready for a full premiere, but I’m desperate for some feedback on it. Once it’s officially “On The Air”, it will be available through this website, YouTube.com, and as a subscribeable podcast at the iTunes Music Store. But until then, I’d love for you to take a look at it and let me know what you think. It’s decidedly more light-hearted than the film I just watched, I promise. 🙂

    Each episode of the video podcast will be around 14 to 15 minutes in length, as this first episode is. However, this episode is unique in that it features only one video – in the future, each episode will contain one featured film, as well as a few old commercials or vintage shorts. So keep that in mind as you watch the very first episode, where we go on a tour of the Corning Glass Factory in Corning, New York, where they’re very proud of the research they’ve been doing with women of America. Oh yeah, and they’re also really proud of Chet’s rocket, but you’ll hear more about that later. 🙂 After you’re done watching the film, I’d greatly apprecite it if you’d leave me some feedback and constructive criticism here on the blog. Thanks, and enjoy!

Without any further ado, I proudly present the very first episode of

The Heather Show Vintage Video Kitschorama!