When I look back on movie and my childhood I notice two discernable periods, the first being a time when movies were an extension of the wonder that I had with the world, and vice versa. The second being when I started to see movies as a means to alleviate youthful angst. In all, movies were an outlet of escape.
I have this special affinity with Michael Eisner, in the mid to late 80s Eisner was the VP of Disney who would host “The Wonderful World of Disney” on ABC many Sunday nights. To me and my elementary school self, Eisner was my Santa Claus. My parents hadn’t ever given me the satisfaction of thinking that Santa existed, so my young need for a magical giver of gifts fell on the shoulders of Michael Eisner.
Probably, Eisner (now CEO of Disney) is greedy scum, but whether I’m reading about his ham fisted handling of Pixar, or his attempts to fend off Comcast, I cheer only for him. He gave me Herby Goes Bananas and The Shaggy Dog Returns, the least I can do is give him my good will. This was the time where Disney ruled my life. Extended family had given me in oversized clunky VHS boxes, copies of Dumbo, Pinnochio, and Sleeping Beauty. I watched these movies almost as much as I read.
As I grew up, Disney got a little old. But never fear! Godzilla came! As a 9, 10, 11, and 12 year old I loved movies with conflict on a wide scale. Not being allowed to see “R-rated” movies meant that my appetite for destruction was limited to two choices. I could watch Japanese monster movies, or 40s and 50s war movies. These were two great choices. For a favorite double header my best friend and I would watch Perry Mason (actually Raymond Burr) defend Tokyo against Godzilla in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, then we would see another American, Robert Mitchum lead the boys in killing the same Japanese in Gung-Ho.
The first glimmerings of the association between cool and movies came up in the same time. Sometimes, (OK, actually quite often) we would watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II. Oftentimes, we wouldn’t even watch the whole movie, just Vanilla Ice singing to the turtles, “Go Ninja, Go Ninja Go.” We’d jump up and down, and feel good.
Sometime after we got our Ninja on I stopped having friends. I still watched a lot of movies. More war movies, more obscure monster movies, anything that could carry me through the loneliness of a Saturday afternoon with no friends. Before I totally dropped off the map into the abyss of geekdom I realized something huge. Watching movies, being able to quote them, talk about them, know them was a window to respect in middle school Hell.
Rather than loving movies for their magic, I started to very self-consciously love movies for what they could do for me. I stopped caring about a genre. Instead, all my focus went to the “R-rated” genre. To use the word genre is a bit of a misnomer. In middle school “R-rated” movies carried currency. Saying you’d seen one of them meant you were cool. You learned bad language, cut-downs, saw cool violence, and maybe, just maybe, someone naked! I could sit down at the lunch table and announce to the kids around me that the night before I had seen Legends of the Fall. This announcement, or one like it, would inevitably be greeted by many oohs and ahhs. However, not one of these kids new anything about Legends plot, or its critical respectability, or cinematic quality, all they knew was that it was R-rated. And that was all that matter, anyone that had seen Legends had to be cool.
My transformation was complete. Movies weren’t cool, cool was cool. It had become a status unto myself in my life, it didn’t matter what I watched, as long as it was cool.
Here's my review of Monster. I pretty much reacted to it in a similar way to Josiah.
On a fundamental level, we want to believe that love can conquer all, that no matter how bad our choices, love can redeem us. There is an element of truth in sentiments like these. Perfect love can redeem us no matter how depraved we are. However, our love is far from perfect. But we persistently hope that within our own power, our love can redeem us.
Monster brutally shatters the illusion that no matter how messed up we are, we can still always fix things. Monster is the “based on a true story” story of a washed out prostitute named Aileen (played by this year’s Oscar favorite Charlize Theron). On the brink of suicide under an overpass, Aileen has been stripped of everything, completely degraded. Shortly before pulling the trigger Aileen realizes that she still has 5 dollars left. Having got that money from a John, she decides that killing herself now would be equivalent to giving him one for free. So she goes to a bar to spend that last five.
At the bar, her life changes. She meets Selby (Christina Ricci), a young lesbian. The child-like earnestness and purity of Selby’s character inspires the desire to love again in Aileen. Aileen is redeemed! Her love has made her want not just life but a better one. But the lifetime of prostitution is too much for her to overcome, sinking back into her old ways, she tries to support Selby as a prostitute. But she can’t really make do with her old ways. Ultimately she resources not to pleasuring her John’s, but to killing them, in order to live off their wallets and cars.
If Monster were just a fiction it could emotionally just be dismissed as a morality play. Don’t become a prostitute. Don’t become a lesbian. Don’t kill people. Watch out, there are really crazy people out there. But Monster is based on truth. Aileen’s life is a real one. And here is where we are really challenged. The love Aileen has for Selby is the same love that we all hope to have for another. Strictly on those terms, Aileen is completely normal. But since, she is so incredibly damaged; her love works itself out in horrible ways. This idea that nothing is separate from the taint of fallen ness in this world is a point that cuts to the heart.
My cousin Amanda Strassner has a blog for World Magazine. While I would have liked my Mom to be the next to join the blogging world, Amanda is cool too. I think that she wants to take over the world someday, or something.
For those of you that haven't noticed the budding flame-war in my archives, enjoy. I am a crass cretin.
Comcast is trying to buy Disney. My gut reaction to any situation where content producers and distributors join up is negative. But if we've already allowed it to happen with AOLTime-Warner and Rupurt Murdoch's News Corporation, I begin to wonder if competition between these media giants becomes desirable. It seems like accountability for these giants, short of making them break up, comes in the form of making more of them, to police each other. I'm still a bit squeemish, but not nearly as much as I was about earlier mergers.
This is a pretty detailed site devoted to helping the average web surder make more helpful queries of Google.
If the MTV music awards weren't enough proof, the Superbowl has finally settled the issue. Pornography is mainstream. Even for geeks, to complement Slashdot and Google, our culture now provides Fleshbot and Booble. I can go to Blockbuster in suburban, rock-ribbed Bible Belt Birmingham and rent a documentary about Ron Jeremy.
Our Pop-stars, especially Britney, Christina, Madonna, and now Justin and Janet, provide a facsimile of Porn-Stardom. They're the Pop-core, they present the message of porn, the exploitation and objectification, but within the framework of the mass audience.
And even though the FCC is raising a big stink, there isn't really anything that they can ultimately do about Janet's "exposure." "Exposure" because what really counts as nakedness anyway? She could of been wearing a bikini that only sported enough fabric to cover the nipple. Really, it was CBS's handling of the event, with the quick cut, that made it sensational, that, and the fact that it happened at an event watched by millions of families, man, woman, and child.
But ultimately our culture permits the sexual message of Janet and Justin's action, voyuerism, exhibitionism, senstational sexuality. Paris Hilton practically went from comic "B" lister to rising star on the merits of a well timed sex tape.
Ultimately when parents complain about our sexual mores being flaunted in front of their children, they ignore the fact that these are our pop-stars, this is what we've payed them to do.
Cory Doctorow, no relation to E.L. Doctorow, is an activist with the Electronic Freedoms Foundation (EFF) and a decent novelist. His first book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is kind of like a Sci-Fi version of High Fidelity, I enjoyed it a lot. His new novel, Eastern Standard Tribe is out under the Creative Commons license and available here.