Jon Jost, independent filmmaker. the first movies
8. Chameleon
Terry from ‘Chameleon’ (1978) is a character who seems to have lost touch with normal human feelings and whose life lacks love, happiness or purpose. But, being smarter than Tom and having an ability for self-examination, Terry is a more complex character. While Tom was beginning to find his place in society, Terry is already established in his, he is a drug dealer and an art dealer (more or less the same thing in Jost’s opinion), and as such it is a feat and a blessing. victim. of the dehumanizing currents of society.
Terry is like a chameleon in that he adapts his behavior to suit the person he is dealing with, in order to exploit their weak points. We first see him dealing with a printing press, and part of the film’s message, that art is a meaningless glare on a world of impoverished, corrupt human beings, is done in a scene thick with meaning.
Terry pressures the printer to make some additional illegal copies of a limited edition, and it’s clear from the dialogue that the printer has done such work before. The printer resists, in an effort to save his professional integrity, but Terry ruthlessly presses.
So Terry leaves, though he will return to settle the matter at the end of the film, and we see the printer, alone in his workshop, pull out a bottle and set about drowning his problems with alcohol. The printer is a craftsman, only marginally involved in the art, but this marginal involvement is enough to get Terry hooked.
In the rest of the film we follow Terry through a series of encounters; with a girl on top of a hill, a gallery owner in his house and an artist who lives in the desert. Every person Terry meets is, through his profession and environment, placed within a recognizable facet of human society. The printer in his workshop is a craftsman. The girl, outdoors with the sun and the animals, is a lover of nature. The gallery owner, in her luxury home, is a businesswoman and society figure. The artist, with his sculptures, astronomical telescope, and makeshift home in the desert, is a creative recluse living among the mysteries of the universe. Terry, however, does not have a fixed place in society. We never see his home; the only space that is his is the inside of his car, and he flits from one of these people to another, temporarily borrowing his surroundings, doing his business, then moving again.
Terry’s encounter with the girl at the top of the hill is the only purely social encounter in the film. It’s an illustration of how love is slipping away from Terry’s life while also debunking the “young romantic love” scenes in Hollywood movies. The setting is ideal for the cinema-romance; The young couple climbs to the top of a hill together, the girl is pretty, a breeze blows her summer dress, and her straw hat catches the sunlight. But all they do is stand there like a pair of excited but awkward children, talking about the old days when they used to be happy together.
The first time we see him alone, driving his car, he is listening to a tape he has made to remember all the visits and phone calls he has to make during the day. The tape is extremely long and shows how his life is defined by the dozens of deals he is making with other people, and also, considering the amount of time he has spent making the tape and the time he now spends listening to it. that he is extending his business to as much of his life as possible, putting off the terrible moment when there is nothing left to do and he has to face himself.
When Terry confronts himself, it’s not a pleasant experience for him or the audience. We’re back with him in his car and, with no tape to listen to, he’s thinking about his life. He knows that he has grown emotionally cold and that nothing means anything to him, and he is distraught to find himself like this. But, in the absence of any meaningful contact with something or someone outside of himself, he can see no hope of his own salvation. “Am I human at all?” He asks. “Maybe I’m just a gorilla. One day someone will come up to me and say ‘Fuck you, gorilla.'” He then starts a chant: ‘F-off you gorilla, f-off you gorilla’, which he goes on and on like he can’t stop. He seems to be trying to hold on to a sense of self through the sound of his own voice, but unable to get out of the trap of equating his own identity with how others see him. The image is that of a man in whom sadness and loneliness have metamorphosed into self-hatred.
At the end of the film, Terry returns to the print shop to find that, in a last-ditch effort to save his integrity, he hasn’t made the copies or found the money, so Terry kills him. For this scene, Jost takes up the motifs introduced in the opening scene and Terry symbolically kills the printer, both with his own printing inks and with the gun he had used as the subject for his prints.
While this is happening, a short scene takes place that gives us perspective on the inhumanity and corruption of the art world Terry lives in. Terry’s partner, a figure we only see at the beginning and end of the film, is waiting for Terry in the printing office and starts chatting with another man who is also waiting there.
“You are an artist?” says Terry’s partner.
“Oh no,” the man says sheepishly, “not me.”
“What is your job?”
“I’m a builder,” the man says, apparently embarrassed by the fact. “I build houses. It’s not much, but I guess everyone sinks to their own level.”
“That’s not a bad thing, being a builder.”
“I guess not. People seem to like it.”
The thing is, the builder seems like a normal, decent, sensitive human being, the only one we’ve seen in the whole movie. And in the midst of Terry’s corrupt and deadly art world it seems like a breath of fresh air to meet someone who earns a living by doing honest work, doing something constructive. He builds houses for people to live in; he seems so simple and yet, against this background, quite touching. The irony that his man obviously thinks of artists as superior beings, and that he has sunk down to being a builder, is almost tragic. It makes us feel that a society in which artists are held in higher esteem than builders must have their values turned upside down.
The builder gets in Terry’s way when he runs off after killing the printer, and Terry threatens him with the gun. The scene is reminiscent of the end of ‘Last Chants for a Slow Dance’, with the empty and desperate character threatening the life of the ordinary citizen. But this time, fortunately for the builder and the public, Terry doesn’t shoot.
“What happened back there with the printer?” ask Terry’s partner as they exit the building. “Don’t worry,” Terry says, uttering the last line of the film, “it had nothing to do with the art.”
‘Chameleon’, in addition to being a powerful character study, tells us two things about our society. First, that the drug dealer is not some alien being imposed on an innocent society, but an integral part of the society we have created for ourselves. And second, that the value we place on art, like the value drug addicts place on their drugs, is dangerously misplaced.
The films ‘Angel City’, ‘Last songs for a slow dance’ and ‘Chameleon’ have shown us a society permeated by the media; cinema, newspapers, television and the visual arts, which in the name of capitalism cause harm to individuals and to society as a whole.
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