Not sure what this all means – it’s a fight on an Oakland transit bus that has morphed into something of an online cultural phenomenon, now chronicled by this two-part documentary.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The “star” of the show is Thomas Bruso, now known as “Epic Beard Man.” He has a long and somewhat tangled history – he’s apparently the unruly fan who got tasered at an Oakland A’s game last summer (he tells the story in Part 1, to the rather disturbing approval of the little gang gathered around him in his tiny apartment).
I can’t quite decide if this guy is a rambling nutcase who should be incarcerated before he goes off with his homemade “shank” on some random individual – or just a deeply damaged burnout, blinking in the unexpected glare of internet celebrity. The stories he tells about his past make it clear that his life has been no bed of roses, but the rapid-fire aggression of his half-yelled stories are immediately recognizable to anyone who’s spent time among hair-trigger tweakers. Maybe he is actually a Vietnam vet, and that’s why he’s always yelling. Maybe he’s just a delusional pathological liar. Maybe all of the above.
But the thing to pay attention to, is the technical skill and obvious love that went into making these short films. The camerawork, the original music, the multiple locations and moving camera — this ain’t just a kitty dancing on a piano. This is at least as good as 90% of the indie documentaries I’ve seen in theaters, shot on 35mm film with a crew. This was shot with a Canon 7D, and the distortions from the fisheye lenses used in the establishing shots really make you feel the queasy hyper-reality of the world this guy exists in. I gotta say that the sound quality is not all that bad; they must’ve been using some sort of external recorder, though, because the mike on these SLRs is still pretty vestigial.
DamnifyIknow what the revenue stream is for the filmmakers here – I do know that Epic Beard Man is now getting snarfed up by internet squatters, trying to figure out ways to sell t-shirts, supposedly speak for him via a blog, and generally adopt him as some sort of White Power symbol.
As with most pointless & inexplicable internet memes, this one started out on 4chan.org and then to a wiki page where all sorts of pencilnecks & assorted anonymous cretins poured out the ugly dregs of their racial hate. I won’t do those pages the favor of linking to them; if you really want to see them, do a search for “Epic Beard Man Wiki,” which brings up a page with the flashing read warning “This page is a WARZONE.”
When analysts start the joints-after-midnight pontificating about the “emerging visual language” of the internet, I think that the the Epic Beard Man meme is the kind of thing that they mean – but that, were they to actually dive deep into what’s going on, would make their hair pretty much fall out. It doesn’t take much to figure out that outside of the well-policed & civilized areas like the discussion boards on The Daily Beast and Huffington Post, the reality that is emerging on the net is raw, disturbing and in yer face.
Kinda like Epic Beard Man himself.
