Marion Stokes was undoubtedly a very unusual person. Consistently described as intellectually rigorous and demanding, she was a television producer, librarian, activist and civil rights figure. She was also a hoarder, and a difficult personality for almost all who knew her.
'Recorder' attempts to reckon with her life, and why it was that she methodically hoarded some 70,000 VHS tapes of TV footage. Starting in the late 1970s, she had begun diligently recording multiple channels for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Recognising that mass media was constantly shaping public perceptions of the world, she decided it was necessary to archive the way in which this happened.
It's clear from early on in this film that Marion was not what one might imagine a garden-variety hoarder to be - i.e. a recluse living in squalor, surrounded by piles of detritus that threaten to topple over with fatal consequences. This may be in part to due to her wealth enabling proper living conditions, but it is also her intellectual motivations, taken to the limits. Though her observations of the 24 hour news cycle appear sound, the obviously extreme conclusion of 'record everything' lends itself to quite a bit of absurd humour.
As Marion's son notes, her obsessive tendencies certainly fed right into her role as a self-appointed archivist. There is some hint at an explanation for her inability to just 'let go', as it's revealed that she had been adopted as a child and moved between different foster families growing up. This apparent wanton abandonment perhaps explains to some extent her pathology later in life. She would also go on to collect tens of thousands of books, many of which she read, children's toys, and Apple computers.
Ultimately, despite the explanatory childhood trauma, Marion remains something of a tragicomic and enigmatic figure. She was knowledgeable, intelligent, and outspoken, but having never really been understood, she increasingly withdrew into herself, her legacy being the posterity of the tapes. They became a lot of what she was, and this film faithfully tracks their happenings - the Iran Hostage crisis, the LA riots, 9/11 - alongside her personal life and relationships with others.
'Recorder' attempts to reckon with her life, and why it was that she methodically hoarded some 70,000 VHS tapes of TV footage. Starting in the late 1970s, she had begun diligently recording multiple channels for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Recognising that mass media was constantly shaping public perceptions of the world, she decided it was necessary to archive the way in which this happened.
It's clear from early on in this film that Marion was not what one might imagine a garden-variety hoarder to be - i.e. a recluse living in squalor, surrounded by piles of detritus that threaten to topple over with fatal consequences. This may be in part to due to her wealth enabling proper living conditions, but it is also her intellectual motivations, taken to the limits. Though her observations of the 24 hour news cycle appear sound, the obviously extreme conclusion of 'record everything' lends itself to quite a bit of absurd humour.
As Marion's son notes, her obsessive tendencies certainly fed right into her role as a self-appointed archivist. There is some hint at an explanation for her inability to just 'let go', as it's revealed that she had been adopted as a child and moved between different foster families growing up. This apparent wanton abandonment perhaps explains to some extent her pathology later in life. She would also go on to collect tens of thousands of books, many of which she read, children's toys, and Apple computers.
Ultimately, despite the explanatory childhood trauma, Marion remains something of a tragicomic and enigmatic figure. She was knowledgeable, intelligent, and outspoken, but having never really been understood, she increasingly withdrew into herself, her legacy being the posterity of the tapes. They became a lot of what she was, and this film faithfully tracks their happenings - the Iran Hostage crisis, the LA riots, 9/11 - alongside her personal life and relationships with others.