Story

Peter and Talley have just met. Talley, a young, idealistic woman, likes TV and her phone and the way they connect people. Peter, a pragmatic bike messenger, fears that digitally-altered reality, purveyed by media corporations, diminishes his life.

Their beliefs and nascent attraction are put to the test when they and four other strangers inexplicably find themselves to be characters in the movie Nothing In A Rectangle Is True. The movie's scene structure prevents Talley and Peter from connecting and discovering more about each other. Meanwhile Roy, a world-wizened older man, regrets mistakes he's made in life: he vows to live the rest of it more directly. This proves hard to do inside a movie.

The characters, who also include a middle aged housewife, a media-savvy young boy and a matter-of-fact Thai student, end up on a green-screen special effects stage well stocked with media equipment. They experiment with storytelling by making this movie.

As both media-makers and characters, they arrange revealing interviews and encounters with real life media wizards, net hackers, app entrepreneurs, scientists, filmmakers, philosophers and other tricksters, including film director Martin Scorsese, Buddhist scholar Wes Nisker, cyborg anthropologist Amber Case and historian Yuval Noah Harari, to substantiate their differing beliefs about digital life, media, truth, human nature and reality.

We've wedged technology between us and reality: we now experience each other and much of our world through the narrow bandwidth of digital media. Peter and Roy find that the personalized stories told on our screens are fragmenting our society into a constellation of micro-communities organized around The Self, which subverts the marketplace of ideas and makes working together for change impossible. Talley thinks that they should relax and wonders what it means when Peter won't return her texts.

Rectangle's characters gain insights but not solutions from the experts that they interview. Talley and Peter, attempting to get closer, struggle to overcome ideology, media illusion, delusion and, perhaps most bothersome, the relentless pace of film narrative. Roy searches for authentic experience and a way to escape the boundaries of the screen. In the process, they challenge our perception of mediated and actual reality.

Through her search for truth in digital life, Talley learns what is and isn't real. Turning the tables at the end of the movie, she shows the other characters and the audience a sure-fire way to find real life.

Kiss Reality Goodbye

Nothing in a Rectangle Is True is a fast-paced, provacative and entertaining romp through life in digitized culture, inspired equally by Sesame Street and Jean-Luc Godard. It is a unique blend of documentary and fiction that attempts to change society by challenging its increasingly fictional center.

Rectangle's characters ask the questions we should all be asking: Are virtual relationships real? Does gadget augmentation make us more cyborg and less human? What are we giving up when we view our lives and each other increasingly through media? Does knowing more about each other foster world citizenship and increase the peace? Are we more or less free when we live in a mediated world?

Ironically, Nothing In A Rectangle Is True is itself a movie and is therefore not true. This leaves the viewer holding the bag, responsible for his or her own ideas and questions about media, truth, culture and, to some extent, life itself.

About The Filmmaker

Don Starnes has a deep practical knowledge of the media after decades behind and beside the camera. He has been backstage at the culture carnival and knows how media is used to manipulate and construct reality. An inveterate observer of culture, Don has discussed mediated life with people around the world for more than twenty years. He's found a growing concern about our competing, differing realities.

Don needs to make this movie to atone for his sins: he has photographed media training as politicians and CEOs learn to spin messages in order to exercise power over people. He has constructed “reality” while filming reality shows and “news” while making video news releases. Watching gifted practitioners such as Donald Trump or Joe Biden, Don sees the craft behind the art, as they lead millions of people by telling stories, for better and for worse.

Viewing all of this through the lens of humanism and social justice, Don would like to help people understand how media works, how it assimilates them and uses them to gain corporate power and capital. Don would like to help people to be less at the affect of media and thus more free.

Approach, Structure and Style

Rectangle gives its characters a quest: understand how media works and prove or disprove the problem of mediated life – from inside a movie. This forces Peter and Talley to focus on their conflict about media and reality, when what they want is to get to know each other better. This awkward love story positions essential human frailty and desire against the modern pursuit of digitally-augmented reality.

Rectangle resembles Sesame Street in structure; it is episodic, ostensibly didactic and its story is told simply – smooth movements or static camera, long takes, little cutting.

Much of the story takes place in three types of segments:

• A green-screen special effects stage:
  Rectangle's characters mess around with film making equipment, making this film and being made by it.
• Tutorials:
  The characters give imaginative and concise lessons in the audience manipulation techniques employed by digital media professionals. These are heavily stylized and say as much about the characters as they do about the media.
• Documentary clips:
  To support their differing beliefs about mediated life, the characters go on location to film classic documentary clips with noted experts and scholars.

The movie is mischievous: it frequently provides the characters and audience with a reality and then, with a stroke of movie magic, pulls the rug out from under everyone. This causes the audience, as well as Talley, to experience the falseness of media constructions.

Initially a believer in media and its connectivity, Talley comes to find that these connections aren't necessarily authentic and that media stories, while potentially moving, can't be true. Her journey will lead the audience to doubt the mediation of their own lives.

Theme

Every social issue is understood or misunderstood, resolved or perpetuated through media.

We believe the structure of life itself has changed for most people, with virtualized, fictional life largely replacing real life.

Digital media is personal: algorithms craft individual experiences for us. For example, your Google results for the same query are different from mine. Our digital “me” boxes create differing fictional worlds that divide us into exclusive cultures. Witness, say, the 2024 presidential election and the divides between [red state/blue state, urban/rural, 99%/1%, etc.] people. Mediated life tends to benefit the few, who own or control the media, to the detriment of everyone else.

Rectangle attempts to teach people how media works on them so they can be more free of it.

Mediated Life

The Denial of the Real

Life lived on screens is indirect life, mediated, as if you were watching life through the camera on your phone instead of experiencing it with your physical senses. When you post on Instagram, you are digitizing a small part of your life, telling a story about it, making it smaller. However, you and your Instagram audience proceed as though that reduced copy of that bit of your life, that story, is real. Mediated reality is moderated by someone else (in this example, Instagram), leaving you less free. Nothing in a Rectangle Is True, challenges this constructed reality.

In our postmodern culture, mediations of life range from stories about life and people on screens, to the compulsion to enjoy a concert by recording it on your phone, to eating processed food, to thinking about real people as metaphors for fictional characters.

For much of this century, Don Starnes has been noting trends and filming segments for the movie that show the seductive and insidious effects of living, as the modern French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote, “sheltered by signs, in the denial of the real” ^[i]. We are losing the ability to relate to the world and to each other except through a secondhand culture dispensed to us by the media. We organize this subset around ourselves (my music, my news feed, my favorite shows), confusing choice with freedom and further shrinking our world.

The architect and mathematician Christopher Alexander believed that people see reality in terms of Cartesian mechanics, assuming everything is a machine. “With the onset of the 20th-century mechanistic world-picture, clear understanding about value went out of the world,” he writes ^[ii]. In this world, we see each other's significance as objects, overlooking the shining reality of each other. When we're unable to see the innate value of real things, he suggests, they don't matter very much to us.

Reality is disappearing

The Boomers questioned reality. Generation X achieved freedom from reality by, for example, abstracting people into avatars on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the other digital foundations of modern life.

These generations had children. Boomer parents allowed their Millennial children, who knew life before smartphones, to choose between real life and digital life: they chose digital. Nearly 100% of Millennials use the internet; 93% own smartphones ^[iii]. US Millennials average 9.25 hours on screens per day ^[iv]; 48% are online almost constantly ^[v].

But Generation X was able to give their children, Generation Z, a digital life from birth. Zs clock nearly 7 hours a day online, plus about 1.5 hours of offline TV ^[vi]; they stream an average of 23 hours of video each week. ^[vii] Most use more than one device at a time, ^[viii] including while watching TV– chatting, gaming and shopping. ^[vi] They communicate primarily through social media and texts. ^[ix]

According to a 2019 study, 55% of Gen Z can't comfortably go more than four hours without the internet. ^[x] Most spend their free time online ^[viii]; some joke that the Z stands for Zoom (the virtual conferencing app made popular during the COVID-19 pandemic). ^[xi] Thirty percent of US Gen Z say they spend most of their time outside of work or school watching streaming movies and shows. ^[xii]

They are on social media more than previous generations ^[xiii] and trust it more than other types of media. ^[xii] Most prefer to communicate by touching screens over talking. ^[xiv] They feel more insecure without their phone than their wallet. ^[vi]

Is reality possible?

Jean Baudrillard believed that postmodernism has led us to a disassociation from reality that he called hyperreality (post reality; an inability to distinguish reality from a constructed world).

Baudrillard describes a “precession of simulacra” or succession of the types of copies of things; these are stages that society has gone through in recent years, as technology and culture feed back on each other and culture remodels itself through the latest technology. Each new type of copy leads us further away from real experience. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations of culture that construct perceived reality.

In our current, media-saturated, hyperreal stage of this precession, the elements of our lives tend to be copies of copies, with no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Baudrillard suggests that we consume reality through signs of signs, with events, meaning and history no longer being produced from shifting, contradictory real experience, but produced as artifacts of media. “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it.”

Actual reality, he suggests, is not possible in this mediated culture.

One thing is obvious: unmediated life is real. Less mediated life is more real than mediated life. The self-evident world beneath the signs and symbols of digital culture, reality, is still there, more luminous, substantial and powerful than any indirect experience of it.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” – Philip K. Dick ^{[ xv ]}

Gen Z: the lab test for virtual life

The form and content of Nothing in a Rectangle Is True are designed for Generation Z who are 30% of the world's population, about 2 billion people. ^[xvi] Many who we talk with wonder if the virtual life they were born into is all that it is cracked up to be.

Influencing Gen Z is a key to social change. Corporations study Gen Z, potentially lucrative consumers and valuable employees, carefully. Sociologists study them as the first fully cybernetic generation. Their many studies provide some insight into them.

Many Zs use virtual life to escape real life: 66% use the internet primarily for entertainment. ^[x] Three-quarters of Gen Z uses social media to keep up with celebrities and celebrity news. ^[vi] Eighteen percent prefer their news to be more entertaining than accurate. ^[x] Forty percent of US Gen Z would rather be gaming than doing anything else in front of a screen. Forty-seven percent of Gen Z gamers would rather game than be outside; 52% say they game to escape from the world. Twenty-seven percent would rather watch an expert gamer than game themselves. ^[xii]

Many Zs like to be immersed in media: 60% say they're likely to use VR; 55% want to be able to determine the plot line of shows that they watch. ^[xiv]

Meanwhile, 70% of eligible Gen Z did not vote in 2018, the first midterm election of their adult lives. ^[xvii] Zs are 18% less likely than average to be interested in local issues. ^[vi] Media figures are more important to young people than politicians. ^[x]

While generations from Boomers to Millennials continue to view the internet as bimodal, Gen Z is the first generation to intrinsically combine the personalized virtual world with the physical one, ^[xviii] converting analog life to digital life, fictionalizing themselves.

They seem particularly compelled to create a personal brand, assembled online from off the shelf parts. Almost 80% of our 13-year-olds agreed that you can tell how popular a peer is by looking at his or her social media profile, and about the same number indicated that their social media profiles accurately portrayed their own popularity. ^[xix] Fifty-five percent of US Gen Z say their social media image is very or somewhat close to who they are in real life. ^[xii] Nearly a quarter of Gen Z adults say being famous is important to them. ^[xx]

Zs seem anxious to integrate with the corporations that sustain them: 44% will provide their personal data to enable a more personalized experience. ^[x] Content from their favorite brands appears on their newsfeeds: 4 in 10 are following brands they like on social media, with 1 in 3 following the brands they are thinking of buying from. 6 in 10 regularly inform friends and family about new products. ^[vi]

Seventy-six percent of Gen Z follows an influencer on social media, ^[xxi] 45% follow more than 10. ^[xii] Seventy-two percent of major brands stated that they were outsourcing a significant portion of their marketing resources to online influencers. Followers feel as though they're getting a product recommendation from a friend, making them more likely to buy quickly. ^[xxii] Eighty-six percent of Gen Z and Millennials want to be brand influencers; 11% of Zs already consider themselves to be. ^[xxi]

However, virtual identities don't always work out in real life: 72% of Gen Z worry that their online actions, including social media posts and past purchases, will affect job offers. More than half believe their online reputation will determine their dating options. ^[x] Many admit to feeling emboldened by social media to say things they would not say in-person. ^[xii] Sixty-two percent of Gen Z worries about how their personal data is being used by companies. ^[vi] More than half prefer to be anonymous online. ^[vi]

Most measured stressors, such as work, money and health, stress Zs more than other generations: 91% of Gen Zs between ages 18 and 21 say they have experienced at least one physical or emotional symptom due to stress in the past month compared to 74% of adults overall. Sixty-eight percent of Gen Z adults feel very or somewhat significantly stressed about our nation's future; 46% report feeling impostor syndrome at work ^[xxix] and 27% report their mental health as fair or poor. Thirty-seven percent report receiving help from a psychologist or other mental health professional. ^[xxiii]

Perhaps because digital life starts early, this depression starts early, too: seven-in-ten U.S. teens said anxiety and depression is a major problem among people their age. ^[xxiv] In recent years, the percentage of youth struggling with anxiety has risen by around 25%; teenage depression and anxiety have both been at an all-time high. ^[xxv] Meanwhile, rates of mental-health incidents among older adults have remained relatively unchanged. ^[xxvi]

Zs feel besieged and alone: 79% of US Gen Z do not feel other generations understand them well. ^[xii] Nearly three-quarters of Zs say they could have used more emotional support in the past year. Fifty-five percent say that social media provides a feeling of support. However, nearly half say social media makes them feel judged, and 38% report feeling bad about themselves as a result of social media use. ^[xxiii] Nearly 20% of teenaged girls were cyber bullied during recent school years. ^[xxvii]

But, as Gen Z live primarily in media, they look there for answers to their problems. They trade depression memes as a coping mechanism ^[xxviii] and otherwise depend on social media to make sure they don't miss out on anything. ^[vi] Nearly a quarter of US Gen Z think that having more social media followers makes a person more likable. Nearly half of US Gen Z gamers think their gaming skills will help them later in life. ^[xii] Seventy-eight percent of Zs predict that augmented reality and virtual reality will impact our view of the world constantly, wherever we are. ^[x]

But actual reality continues to exist whether we notice it or not. Zs we talk with consistently remark that they feel circumscribed, judged, limited, undermined, overwhelmed and incapacitated. In reality, they don't feel free.

Those who experience reality directly are free to live in a world unencumbered by the meanings and references manufactured for us by commercial algorithms. They are able to see the simple beauty of the real world.

This Movie Could Help Change Our Culture

Nothing In A Rectangle Is True will draw, entertain and intrigue its audience; it will pull back the curtain on digital reality and its makers, and on subjective reality itself.

We are soliciting partners to help make Rectangle.

The project is currently in the very early stages of development. Digital culture is a fast moving target, and so we are constantly researching the latest culture, networking, revising the script and writing grant proposals. We have photographed some documentary interviews and made a few of the film's quirky tutorials, primarily as a proof of concept.

Distribution and Marketing Strategy

Theatrical Release

Rectangle is on the leading edge of a cultural curve and requires targeted and effective audience development.

All competent media experiences are immersive and preclusive. This means that you can't effectively criticize television on TV, or the web on the web. We believe that a theatrical experience is more meaningful than a television or web experience and that Rectangle works best in theaters. It is particularly important this film be shown theatrically, at least initially, while it is building its audience.

We will first submit to film festivals, intending to attract awards and attention. We will then fund a six-city theatrical release, with the goal of qualifying for industry awards. Audience numbers collected from the screenings plus awards will help obtain wider release by a major distribution company.

Social Networking

Paradoxically, the most important avenue for audience building for Rectangle will be social networking throughout pre-production, production and post-production. Some of the film's supporters have already followed its prototype Facebook page. The page has a form similar to the film: its fictional characters will post there (courtesy of the film's writers, of course), usually with links to interesting / confounding / provocative items about mediated life. Some of the subjects of the film's documentary sequences have already posted, interacting with the characters as well.

All of this does what the film will do: explore mediated life by blurring the lines between real and virtual, cheerfully subverting the medium (which, in this case, is Facebook).

We will also do public relations and outreach to many constituent groups, including the Media Education Foundation, The Norman Lear Center and The Journal of New Media and Culture.

Networks, Public Television and Streaming

We then plan to further enlarge our audience with a sale to either a network aimed at documentaries, film festival hits or youth culture, such as Sundance Channel, Documentary Channel or VICE, or to PBS, on shows such as P.O.V. and Independent Lens. We expect to stream the movie through these networks and, subsequently, through more generalized streamers such as Apple, Netflix and Amazon.

Educational Distribution

We are very interested in students, which includes our core Gen Z audience. Social networking will leverage an understanding and interest in the issues by young people. Our public relations campaign, directed at college and university clubs, will focus on sociology, cultural anthropology, marketing and communications, politics and international relations students.

Audience Engagement and Social Impact

The last moments of Rectangle point the audience back to real life, suggesting that they take a new look at objective, analog, authentic reality. We plan to work with leaders in interpersonal engagement and social capital– scholars, entrepreneurs, civic and social organizations– to develop and promote real life connection and community between people through screenings, community events and targeted educational guides. For example, service club partners could hold events where former strangers work together to help others. Participants could use our media cookbooks to make their own media to promote and develop their own community programs.