ulitave

A little while back, I went on a few dates with a beautiful and well-known playwright. The dates went nowhere, but we had a very interesting, ongoing conversation. I'll summarize:

( background...the 4th WallCollapse )

The fourth wall, and breaking the fourth wall, are very old concepts. The idea I came up from this conversation was the fifth wall - the wall that has previously insulated the performers from the audience. This still exists on stage, screen, and in printed literature. Online, it's a whole different story.

the fourth wall is no "wall" at all, it's better described as an out box. The performer on stage allowed content out, but the audience had no ability to put content back into the performance (or the book, the movie, the television show, etc.) Online, we not only have that ability, we have the expectation that we can change someone's blog, a news story, a financial transaction, anything we want. This is the fifth wall - the audience's wall, the ultimate remote control.

The internet allows for instantaneous reactions, interactions, between the producers of art and the "receptors" of art, so much so that the idea of a passive audience has become itself passe'.

On a mission from their leader, five young men arrived in Chicago to open a little fish shop on Elston Avenue. Back then, in 1980, people of their faith were castigated as "Moonies" and called cult members. Yet the Japanese and American friends worked grueling hours and slept in a communal apartment as they slowly built the foundation of a commercial empire.

They were led by the vision of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who sustained their spirits as they played their part in fulfilling the global business plan he had devised.

Moon founded his controversial Unification Church six decades ago with the proclamation that he was asked by Jesus to save humanity. But he also built the empire blending his conservative politics, savvy capitalism and flair for spectacles such as mass weddings in Madison Square Garden.

In a remarkable story that has gone largely untold, Moon and his followers created an enterprise that reaped millions of dollars by dominating one of America's trendiest indulgences: sushi.