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September 11, 2005
Photographing Six Degrees
Back in 1994, all the cool kids were listening to grunge rock while playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," the party game in which participants attempt to link Hollywood actors to the Footloose star in fewer than six links. The game grew in popularity at around the same time (mid 1990s) that everyone started noticing the Internet, and the game spawned a website, The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia and, apparently, a board game. It's also probably not a coincidence that this Will Smith film came out in 1993. The six degrees concept is an enticing one, especially when it functions as a way of making sense of the world as network.
More recently, according to The Observer, photographer Andy Gotts became fascinated by the concept and pursued it as theme of his most recent book, Degrees, in which he connects over one hundred actors, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt, to Kevin Bacon. I'm curious to know what Gotts does with the "six degrees" logic beyond merely photographing celebrities, but the project sounds like an interesting one. Meanwhile, I'm trying to ignore the fact that I'm nostalgic for the good old days when I could link Charlie Chaplin and Kevin Bacon.
Gotts' royalties from the book will go to diabetes research. Thanks to GreenCine Daily for the link.
Posted by chuck at September 11, 2005 11:33 PM
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The connection you make to the film is not coincidence, although I think you may misconstrue causation. The party game comes out of a concept suggested by the play that the Smith film is based on, John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation which posits that all people on earth are linked by six degrees: The "My-brother's-high-school-girlfriend's-hairdresser-knows . . ." phenomenon writ large.
That they both got the mass media metamorphosis (film production for the play, and translated into filmic terms for the concept) seems to say a lot about the moment in which they arose.
Posted by: Ryan at September 13, 2005 8:08 PM
Okay, that history makes a lot of sense. I knew the film was an adaptation of a play (it always felt clunky to me in the way that poorly adapted dramas sometimes do), but didn't know that the game creators took their cues from the play.
Posted by: Chuck ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://chutry.wordherders.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 13, 2005 10:50 PM