Caught on Film

Some things just shouldn’t be caught on film.

No one looks good sweaty, first thing in the morning, or in a pair of Crocs. All pictures of me from middle school should be burned.

And whoever snapped those photos of kittens in “hilarious” poses – you’ve most likely seen these in an e-mail forwarded from your mom or grandma – should be condemned.

And it’s not just photographs.

A whole lot of video footage is unnecessary as well. Who really needs to see another episode of “Maury”? (Spoiler alert: He’s never the father.) And most of the videos on YouTube do little to enhance society. We get it. Charlie bit your finger. Now get over it. 

However, for better or for worse, we live in an imaginative society. We love to look, watch, see and witness. We’re obsessed. We’ve uploaded more than 10 billion pictures to Facebook. And we add 20 hours of new video to YouTube each minute. We take pictures with our cell phones and film late-night rants on our webcams.

Everything is visually documented, and that’s not a good thing.

There are places cameras aren’t appropriate and times photographs shouldn’t be snapped. While we risk being obnoxious, there’s a fate that’s worse. We might become witnesses to our own lives.

And that can really mess things up.

Take Jon and Kate Gosselin, the parents of two sets of multiples – twins and sextuplets – and stars of TLC’s highest-rated show, “Jon and Kate Plus 8.” Allowing cameras into their home, the Gosselins let audiences watch as they potty-trained their toddlers and took family vacations to Disney World.

But between the birthday parties and dirty diapers, things got a little too public. The cameras were around a bit too much. The focus shifted to the public outings and book tours. Somewhere along the way, the family quit looking inward. Jon and Kate neglected their marriage.

And now, the Gosselins’ rumored divorce is the talk of the tabloids.  

Should we be surprised?

This is what happens when everything’s shared, when we don’t observe the sacrament of secrecy. From Facebook to Photobucket, the intimacy of relationship is being culturally cheapened and traded for cute, picnicked pictures with the besties. But I can’t conclude without confessing. This past weekend, as friends from school visited me at home, I snapped 114 digital images. Go ahead and call me a hypocrite. But in this case, the addict knows what’s wrong with himself.

While their visit was fast-paced, fun and needed after a few weeks away from Bloomington, parts of it were dominated by gathering, posing and plastering on a fake smile.

It was in those moments that I sympathized with the Gosselins and shared an imagined bond with Charlie’s parents. These memories would not be my own. They were being recorded – staged for others to see.

And though I might gain the thrill of a notification and photo comment, I can’t help but think that something’s being lost. When home movies aren’t just for the home and everyone knows your youngest son loves to bite fingers, there’s a problem. Some things just shouldn’t be caught on film.