Stuff I hate that everyone else likes...

A few weeks ago the Onion's A.V. Club (the only bit on the site I'm inclined to read nowadays) had a short bit entitled, "Classic Movies it's Okay to Hate". A poster on the site pointed out that this is the type of 'controversial' piece usually saved for Entertainment Weekly or Us magazine. They list Network, The Shawshank Redemption, Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Fantasia, Caddyshack, Roger and Me, Carrie, and The Big Lebowski as talking points in their theme. Fair enough, but it kinda got me thinking. I'm sure everyone has their "Pfft. You gotta be kidding!" moments when it comes to popular movies (and t.v. shows), so I thought I'd just beak off on mine...

Network- I'm totally on board with their assessment of this one. Paddy Chaefsky's script is smug, self-righteous, and condesending. Coming out when it did, in the 70's, beating on televison would be like beating on a cripple in a wheelchair with one hand tied behind his back. Every character is shrill and didactic. It's Chaefsky's passive-aggressive revenge on an industry that didn't kiss his fat ass enough in the thirty-odd years he wrote for it. Of particular contempt: Max Schumacher's (William Holden) wife's speech to him after he informs her of his affair with Diana Christensen(Faye Dunaway). Up to this point, she's been essentially a non-entity in the film. After Max confronts her over his infidelity, we get this bit of histronics...

"Get out, go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, and don't come back. Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly."

Boo-fuckin'-hoo. Then she drops off the face of the movie. The actress, Beatrice Straight, won a best supporting actress Oscar.I envision Chaefsky sitting in front of his typewriter, cackling to himself about how he'd love to see the faces of every network executive when they screen his little magnum opus. What was his reaction, I wonder, when Network got all those Oscars in '77? It's too bitter and heavy-handed to work as satire. In an interview at the time, he disingenously claimed that, "he wasn't writing satire; all t.v. execs aspire to be Diana." Bullshit.

I'd argue the Onion's other choices are just attacking mainstream entertainment for doing its job. I mean, come on, no one is going to compare The Shawshank Redemption to, say, Renoir's Grand Illusion. And their take on 'The Big Lebowski' is wrong. Just. Plain. Wrong.

So here's some of my other personal picks for Movies (and T.V.) that everyone likes but I think suck:

Napoleon Dynamite- I am told that this is a comedy. I am told that the title character is a loveable outsider with a eccentric family. I've been told it is a coming of age tale that takes a loving look at growing up in small-town Idaho. I had to turn this movie off about two-thirds of the way through. The main character comes across as a victim of Asperger's syndrome in such a chronic manner that he could replace Dustin Hoffman's Rainman character. When another student crushes his cache of tater tots in his cargo pants, I felt a small twinge of pleasure at Dynamite's abuse. Because the character is closed off from everyone else in the film, you can't empathize with him. In the South Park t.v. show, one comedic bit is to have a character say or do something incredibly absurd, then cut to a reaction shot of other characters giving that character a blank stare of hostile incomprehension. The whole movie of Napoleon Dyanamite's humour is essentially relying on the audience staring blankly in hostile incomprehension at the goings on in the movie. There's another bit where Dynamite is part of an extracuricular school club called 'singing hands', where he and some blank-faced girls wave their hands about to sappy new-age music. There's a cut to their audience, some other blank-faced students. (If we had got a shot of a student snickering at this display of absurdity, followed by being cut short from a faculty member's disapproving stare, THAT would've been funny.) I felt exactly like those kids after watching this.

Sex and the City- It's been mentioned that if a man truly wants to understand women, he will watch this show. In theory, it has a lot on its side; modern single women seeking sexual gratification for its own sake, and not suffering any backlash or societal disapproval for their actions. It's not hard to figure out why it was so popular during its run. The main characters have vibrant, successful lives, and the conflicts that they face in the course of the show are the type of problems that their audience would give their eye teeth to have.

The problem for me, after I bit the bullet and actually watched a few episodes, is that it's like some odd disease swept through Lower Manhattan and removed any trace of empathy or selflessness or altruism from every single human being in that region. While some of the dialogue is clever, I'm reminded of a point the television writer, Maria Semple, made. If anyone ever said to her even one of the things that the people on sitcoms routinely say to each other she would probably burst into tears and go running out of the room. When the four main characters get together to 'dish' about their love lives, I got the impression that they hung out together not because they had formed a sisterhood of like-minded mutually suportive libertines, but that the unspoken agreement amoungst them was, "I'll endure listening to all your petty whinging, but in return, you all have to listen to my epic life story, because I am such a fascinating and unique person, and no one in history has ever faced the dillemas and struggles of me." It would've been more interesting a series if it was revealed that the four main characters in fact, hated each other, and sought to undermine the others at every opportunity. In reality, I've endured self-obsessed 'tards like this many a time in my life, and the only reason they aren't dead, or beaten within an inch of their lives, is because it's illegal for me to inflict damage on them...

As an example, one of the episodes I saw had as it's plot the dilemma Carrie Bradshaw faced when her apartment went condo, leaving her facing the inconvience of apartment-hunting in Manhattan. In steps her boyfriend of three months, offering her to move in with him. Just as she is about to accept, her friend Meredith reveals that Carrie's boyfriend went shopping with her for an engagement ring for Carrie. (Why Meredith didn't try and give Bonehead the "aren't you moving kinda fast?" speech isn't explained.) I missed the rest of the story, but let me guess-Carrie finds her own place, refuses boyfriend's offer of marriage, Samantha makes some comment about her cooze you'd expect to come from a crazy homeless woman of sixty, The End.

I hate to get all preachy on you, but if this show, is in fact, how all women everywhere aspire to be, then I must chop my genitals off and fling 'em into the ocean. It's based on a series of columns by a woman named Candace Bushnell, written, no doubt, in the same smug,devil-may-care-hurray for sexuality tone of the series. I can't help thinking, however, about some single mother in the midwest stuck making under twenty four grand a year at her shitty, dead-end job with no real free time for a social life watching this show and being made to feel like she's not only missing the party, but that she's not welcome in the first place.

...And more stuff...

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang- Shane Black does a parody of Shane Black movies, and by god, it works. Robert Downey Jr. plays a New York B-and-E man of the hopeless fuckup variety transported by a fluke to Los Angeles. He's being groomed for a part in a movie, and Val Kilmer plays a private eye, Gay Perry, who's coaching him on 'private eye stuff'. The consciously chaotic plot is something about a prominent producer's daughter's stand-in getting killed, so the real daughter's lawsuit against her dad is dropped, or something. Actually, if you
don't pay attention to the plot, you'll have a better time. The whole movie is a self-conscious take on the cliche's of Black's action-movie genre. Lovable fuck-up hero, straight-laced sidekick, cute girl in peril, it's all here. I'm more willing to go with it here then in, say, Kevin Smith's work, mainly since Smith's self-consciousness in his films comes across as whiny and defensive. Plus, Black's stock in trade, coming up with zingers for his characters, has never been better. Part of the fun for me was figuring out Black's mindset in writing this. Why is Gay Perry, well, gay? So there wouldn't be any conflict over Michelle Monaghan, the dame who's the pivot of the plot. Also, because in traditional Hollywood, gay is shorthand for 'sexually non-threatening, but gets all the best lines'. As he's gotten older, Val Kilmer's starting to get some of the mentor roles usually reserved for Liam Neeson. He's too boyish to ever have been a successful leading man, anyway.

It's unfortunate how drug abuse fucked up Robert Downey's career, but in this role, it seems to have given him a much needed humility. If Downey had played his character as smug and world-weary, the whole movie would've crashed on take-off. His tone through the movie is shellshocked, and his little bits of twitchy delivery send his role off into the sky. It's like everyone in the movie is in on a private joke, and Downey's character's attempts to get in on it make the gag that much funnier.

Venture Brothers- Did you ever wonder what Johnny Quest, boy adventurer, would've turned out as when he grew up? Me neither, actually. Venture Brothers takes a 'The Tick'-like premise, (Boy adventurer grows up, becomes under-achieving pill-popper, has two sheltered teen sons and a frightenly competent sidekick) and actually does something with it. I suppose the comparisons to 'The Tick' were what kept me away from it for so long. Well, now I'm a fan. While the stories have the same 'heros in their underwear doin' their laundry' theme that the Tick had, the writing is much sharper, (Christopher McCulloch, the series creator, worked on both the animated and live-action Tick) and the understated Alex Toth-inspired design is perfect. Another thing; unlike Family Guy, when Venture Brothers dives into 'non-sequitur' gags, they actually connect with the characters. It's the type of series that can only get better with time.

Tom's Media Round-up, Part 3

Television:

Samurai Champolo- The anime invasion into North America has left me mostly indifferent towards anime as a genuine creative outlet. You watch enough of this stuff and it all starts to blur together. My antipathy towards it is due to the utterly undiscerning tastes of anime fans. (I suspect Japanese fans are as low in their standards as audiences are over here.) Quantity over quality, as they say. Anyone wanting to see what all the fuss is about might watch, say, Yugi-oh, or Inayusha and quite understandably, give the rest of the subgenre a pass. Which is a shame, since Samurai Champolo isn't going to get the casual viewer as an audience that it deserves. It's a solidly crafted piece of work, about an unemployed waitress in 1880's Japan on a search for her father, accompanied by two very different swordsmen that she's hired as bodyguards.

The thing is, given the limited financial resources animation's given in Japan, stuff like Samurai Champolo and Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex wind up being the 'prestige' titles of animation studios, when ideally, they should be the meat-and-potatoes of the industry. Pandering to your lowest common denominator might pay off in the short term, but in the long run, you're only cutting off your nose to spite your face...

The Boondocks- "Did that little coloured boy just say 'Nigger'?" "Oh, it's okay if they say it!" Maybe it's my latent liberal sentiments kicking in, but Aaron McGruder's use of the 'n' word tends to grate on me after a while. He has to realize that racial slurs, used even in an 'ironic' context don't numb the impact of them after repeated use, as I had previously thought. Rather, it sends a message that it's okay to hurl hateful epithets at people to intimidate them, and then, when called on the rug to account for one's behavior, claim that you were 'kidding', and disingenuously attack your accusers of being 'overly sensitive pussies'. I suspect that one of the influences behind Dave Chapelle walking away from his massively successful t.v. show, besides the awesome responsibility Comedy Central was putting on his narrow shoulders, was the question that was his mostly white audience laughing with him, or at him? It's a tough thing to face for any black comedian, and the only one I've seen to even reach a stand-off was Richard Pryor. I'd be more ambivalent about Aaron McGruder, but the style choice he took in animating his comic (low-budget anime that rips off Samurai Champoloo in the opening credits) clinched the deal for me.

Deadwood- Well, it isn't 'Gunsmoke',for sure. Using the setting of the pre-annexed South Dakota gold-mining boom town, 'Deadwood', creator David Milch gives us one of the best shows on cable. It's a struggle for control between the aptly-named saloon-brothel owner/unofficial mayor Al Swearengen(Ian McBride) and upstart saloon-brothel owner Cy Tolliver(Powers Boothe). The pivot of the series is store owner Seth Bullock(Timothy Olyphant). Swearengen and Tolliver are respectively, a bad man and a worse man. While Swearengen is a thief, a cheat, and a murderer, he has an agenda to maintain order in Deadwood, mainly since too much stealing, cheating and killing is bad for business. Tolliver, on the other hand, is a locust; he swoops in from Chicago and is in the process of sucking the town dry. Tolliver is gratuitously cruel, as well. Seth Bullock, starting a drygoods store in Deadwood, falls into the position of the unofficial law in Deadwood.

Swearengen hates and fears Bullock, not only because Bullock interferes with Swearengen's plots, but because Bullock is the first real authority to make his presence in Swearengen's little corner of Paradise. For Swearengen, Bullock's arrival indicates that his days of limitless power and wealth are numbered. The series doesn't make it explicit, but I believe that America's taming of the west in the late 19th century was due to amoral dirtbags like Swearengen, but credited to decent,moral men like Bullock.

Deadwood's run into some controversy in regards to its use of foul language, and in Deadwood's case, harsh language is a vital component of the series. In the Victorian-era setting, and in the pre-civilized state it's set, swearing is done by uneducated men to denote their authority. (It's why series creator Milch put cussin' in N.Y.P.D Blue) Note how Swearengen curses the most of any other character. Note that when Bullock curses, we're genuinely shocked. I don't think the swearing in Deadwood is distracting, especially considering the care the characters put into their everyday conversations. The dialogue is literary.

Brasseye, Jam!, and Nathan Barley-the world of Christopher Morris- While 'missing the point' seems to be replacing baseball as the national pastime in the Colonies, 'taking the piss' is replacing football (that's British for 'soccer') in Dear Old Blighty. I suspect most t.v. people in Britain figure that since nobody really gives a shit about what England's point of view in global discourse is these days, British television's taken up the role of the disenfranchised A.V. high school nerd. 'Ali G' sets up the pompous to make retarded statements, and 'The Office' tore apart day-to-day workplace politics.

Dropped into this comes Christopher Morris, a acolyte of the late comedic writer Michael O'Donoghe's belief that 'making people laugh is the lowest form of humor'. Jam! was a collection of sketches so dark that light bent around them. (a six year old girl works as a Jean Reno-in-the-Professional-type cleaner, fr' instance) His most controversial series was a send-up of hysterical, melodramatic 'life-style' t.v.news magazines called 'Brasseye'. In the 'drugs' episode, he manages to get an actual m.p. propose a bill in the House to ban the made-up drug, 'Cake'. The delivery is so dry, dust hits you in the face. The most controversial episode, the special on pedophilia, essentially ended his career as a producer in T.V.

He bounced back, sort of, with 'Nathan Barley', a six-episode series depicting a column writer, Dan Ashcroft, for an urban weekly newspaper called 'Sugar Ape', Dan's sister,(a struggling documentary filmmaker) and the writer's nemesis, Nathan Barley, a self-obsessed, vulgar lout. Dan is in a constant struggle to discredit Nathan. The paradox of the tale is that whilst Dan dislikes everything about Nathan Barley, Dan achieves the least in his life and is incapable of staying true to any of his own morals making him the real 'idiot'. On the other hand, it's Barley with his own 'Jackass'-style website who's becoming more and more popular as the series continues. It's funny as hell, and believe me when I say that I've felt more and more like Dan Ashcroft as days go by...

Wonder Showzen- One of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in my life. The only way to understand it is this: Imagine a troupe of avant-guarde performance artists influenced by Amand Artaurd are approached by an NPR-type leftist production company to put on a six-episode children's t.v. show. After signing the necessicary contracts and receiving the budget, the troupe collectively realizes that they have signed a deal with the Devil and decide to put on the most vile, offensive, insane and mean-spirited t.v. show for children that has ever been conceived by the human mind. Their intent that if any human child glimpses even five minutes of their production, the child will look like a progeria victim. The production company will immediately cancel the contract, hire a Catholic priest to sprinkle the video tapes with holy water, and the avant-guarde troupe will keep what's left over of the budget. Fornicating puppets, blasphemy, and little kids asking inappropriate questions at the race track. ("Here's my impression of you, Mr. Race track tout.-'Gamble,gamble,gamble-Die.') It's got too much vitriol in it to last past a second season, but as they say- 'Take a long look at it, miss...You may never see it's like again..'(Addendum: I should, of course, point out that Wonder Showzen falls under the same category of 'shock humour' as 'Jackass' and 'the Tom Green show'. The comedy is based on 'oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-seeing-this-how-do-they-get-away-with-it?'. Once the shock wears off, the show wears somewhat thin after the first viewing.)

House, M.D. -Took me a while to watch enough of it to get an impression, but now I'm hooked. Hugh Laurie's anti-social doctor plays Sherlock Holmes while infectious diseases play Moriarty. What blew me away was Laurie's internalized performance. He's a miserable, rude, passive-aggressive asshole. When he gets shot at the end of the second season, your first thought is, 'Well, that figures..". I had taken him for granted in 'Jeeves and Wooster' and 'Blackadder' where his stock in trade was British upper class twits played for comedic value. I really didn't expect this type of performance from him. Usually in television, when you have a character like this, we get a glimpse of the soft, mushy center in the course of a show. Not in Dr. House's case. When he makes biting zingers, he's really being a prick.