In Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Travis is adrift, caught in the comma between the liminal ‘Paris’ and the redemptive ‘Texas’, between lost futures and the impermeable present.
Through the glow of comfort television, we experience communitas – that feeling of “the lost heaven” of the collective – and, for a time, we are relieved of our existential alienation.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s ambiguous 1988 album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, suffered a memeified atrocity. But the tides of public opinion rise and fall, and memes come and go.
