Mojave Mirage (2003) User Reviews

Visual Anthropology

[acumensch · 18 November 2006]

Kaarine Cleverly Roberto is a recent graduate of a program called Visual Anthropology. This film was part of her thesis project, which explored the Mojave Phone Booth Phenomenon as an anthropological metaphor of the Information Age.

The film centers around a phone booth, in fact, that was placed in the Mojave Desert some time ago for miners (in case they were stranded.) THe miners are gone, and intrepid tourists travel from all over the world to visit California's phone in the middle of nowhere. How does a phone ever become a huge tourist attraction? I looked up the phone number for the Mojave Phone Booth, but too bad it's no longer in service.

Stupid bureaucrats!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 19 December 2008]

This is an odd documentary about something I'd never heard about before I saw this short film on the "Full Frame--Documentary Film Festival: 1" DVD. Apparently, for about a decade, there was an odd cultural phenomenon that centered on a lone phone booth in the middle of no where in the Mojave Desert in California. Why the phone company would even put a pay phone out there is a total mystery, as there's no town nearby. Yet, inexplicably, people were making pilgrimages to the middle of this forsaken wilderness just to answer the phone. And, oddly enough, the phone rang and rang and rang as people from all over the world began calling this booth. People talking to total strangers--what a weird idea and what a lot of trouble for the privilege to use a phone!! Yet, strange as all this seemed, the film was interesting and seeing all these diverse people coming back again and again to this odd Mecca was worth making.

However, in an effort to better serve the people, the US government in all its wisdom decided that the yahoos who were traversing to this site were harming the desert and had the phone company rip out the booth. First, considering it was in the middle of a desert, I can't see how it would ruin the entire Mojave Desert to have these people flocking to this one specific site (God forbid--the planet might be in jeopardy due to this!!!). Second, if people want to do this, why the heck should any free government impede them? So, as you can tell from my rant above that the film, though interesting, might also provoke you to wonder at the wisdom of unelected bureaucrats in removing this cultural phenomenon. In fact, considering how much I felt angry about this, I now realize that the film did a great job in eliciting such a strong reaction!