Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot! For good reason, this is what we were taught, and what we teach. But some people learn best by experience. Only pain sinks a lesson in.
So how about you? Do you need the burn to learn?
Frankie might. She feels a failure. Just another struggling bartender adding nothing to the world. If only her YouTube videos were popular! Then she’d be making a difference. When she meets Link—a charming, captivating (homeless?) man—she feels a spark. This is someone who can get people’s attention. Who can help her make a difference.
Link likes Frankie, too, but only because he likes most people. He values connection with ourselves and the world around us—and thinks that phones remove us from all of that. Why can’t Frankie see this? Well, maybe she can. Maybe she—and everyone else—can, if the two work together. If they satirize to open eyes.
With a writer friend (who completes our love triangle, of course), the couple makes videos critiquing the shallow, destructive nature of life with social media. And their videos hit it BIG. So big, in fact, that it becomes hard to remember the reasons for creating them in the first place . . .
In the end, Mainstream is a careful, desperate plea to all of us not to touch the stove. The characters are well-written, and the acting—particularly by Link—is simply riveting. The movie’s self-aware soundwork and editing only highlight how far we’ve come, and how complicated our relationship is, with attention drugs.