About a month ago, we were stuck in town during spring break to await the arrival of our first child. It is a blessed event, to be sure, and I’m sure there will be many more posts related to it, this is not one of them. Anyways, we needed something to do, so we checked a couple of recommended documentaries out from the library. (I wanted to get “Tron,” too, but apparently the library’s catalog “misplaced” it somewhere, but if you haven’t seen the trailer for the upcoming “Tron: Legacy,” I suggest you go here).
First up: “HELVETICA”
A whole documentary on a font? Surely you jest! Nope, that’s what it is, entirely devoted to the font Helvetica. It was fascinating. Sandi was going to go to sleep (and was leery in the first place) but she became intrigued and watched the whole thing with me. It tracks the development of the font from the old typecasts up to today. I’ve always been somewhat interested in fonts, and I don’t know why. I have an attraction to serifed fonts, and a strong hatred for the crap that is Comic Sans. The documentary traces how Helvetica shaped the modern world and the backlash against it. In fact, since we’ve watched it, we have picked up on how ubiquitous Helvetica is and how we sometimes do not even notice it. Mike: 7/10. Sandi: 6/10. Watch the trailer here.
Next: “KING CORN”
Almost as ubiquitous (am I using that word right? And do I get bonus points for using it twice in one post?) as Helvetica is High Fructose Corn Syrup. It is delicious (to some) and it just about everything Americans eat. Rather than turn this into a rant about how the combination of corn subsidies and sugar tariffs make us fat, I’ll talk about this documentary. It was filmed by two college aged friends from Boston, who, oddly enough, have great grandparents from the same small town in Iowa. After discovering that most of what we eat comes from corn, they decide go back to their ancestral home and grow one acre of corn. It follows their ups and downs, including trying to make their own high fructose corn syrup. So, they discover, that most of the corn that is planted in Iowa and the rest of the Midwest is not fit for human consumption and rather it goes to livestock feed and high fructose corn syrup. Hence, because what we eat is sweetened by corn, and what we eat EATS corn, we are therefore made of corn, but I think my Idahoan tendencies would show a good percentage of potato in my person, too.
It is an interesting premise, but I think this documentary could have been better. The two documentarians seemed to long for the day of the family farm, where all the farms were small and owned by families rather than larger corporations. One thing they overlook, however, is that without the consolidation of the smaller farms into larger ones, their grandfathers never would have been able to leave Iowa and they probably would not have been able to get their college degrees. A marvel of technology is that we now grow a lot more food than we can eat, and since we aren’t getting by with subsistence farming any more, we can do other things other than working on the farm.
Anyways, it was kind of interesting, but I thought the guys came of a little “toolish.” Good food for thought, but, not too much for my liking. Mike: 5/10, Sandi: 3/10. More info here.
Helvetica? I am SO there.
I liked King Corn, myself. I would give it a 7/10 just for the little corn animation.
The animation was good, I have to admit. But as I stated (or meant to state), the fact that we no longer are made up of family farms making do on subsistence agriculture, whose demise they seemed to lament, larger farms let their grandfathers leave and provide for them a better life not on the farm in “the big city.” And granted, it would be much better for such farms to be producing actual food product, rather than just crappy corn for high fructose corn syrup.
I got Helvetica from Net Flix. It was so fascinating I watched it twice. And, like you, now I see it everywhere.
Thanks for the recommendation!