Scott Stark in "More That Meets The Eye: Remaking of Jane Fonda"

In class we watched "More That Meets The Eye: Remaking of Jane Fonda" by Scott Stark. The purpose of his video is to make fun of Jane Fonda's change from a political activist to a fitness guru. "More That Meets The Eye" is a twenty minute comedy, where Stark workout to Jane Fonda's best-selling Jane Fonda's Workout, made in the 80s. Stark is seen wearing unreasonably tight sweat pants, a baggy red sweatshirt, and a little t.v. In each scene, Stark is in a different place, rather it's a grocery store parking lot, on the balcony in the rain, a patio over-looking a baseball game or his living room. Besides two stills (one at the beginning and one at the end), we never see Fonda and her workout class. Instead, we hear her as we watch Stark, and various images of influential political activists such as Malcolm X. Running vertical is text, quotes from various political statements Jane Fonda has made. On the bottom, running horizontally, are snippets from her book, My Life So Far talking about her personal battle with sexuality, image, and health.

The point is to contrast the two Fondas: the one that was very controversial and outspoken about the Vietnam war and the one that was a leader in the workout business. In a letter to Jane Fonda, Stark wrote:

"The original idea for the video, which I began shooting in the early 1990s, was that your exercise video series, coming as it did at the cusp of the 1980s, was emblematic of a cultural shift from the politicized, activist climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s into the me-decade of the 80s. You, as Jane-Fonda-the-activist morphing into Jane-Fonda-the-exercise-queen, were certainly a symbol of this cultural shift, and even in many ways one of its driving forces. Some have seen this shift as a betrayal of a certain kind of selfless idealism, replacing it with a more self-centered view of changing the world through self-improvement."

After watching the video, I was curious to know what was the real story behind Fonda, and sought out the book (I haven't read it yet). In my opinion, this spark of interest on my part makes Stark successful. He seemed to have both awe and disgust for Fonda's different personalities, and through each and every scene we saw that. My favorite scene is him working out in the grocery store parking lot with a picture of Fonda on a car nearby. I would highly recommend this for those who are interested in finding a different perspective of Jane Fonda.