Much like my review of The Stooges' Raw Power, I would suggest that if you haven't seen this film, stop reading, set aside two and a half hours and watch the film all the way through.
When I first watched Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life in its entirety ten years ago, I was a nineteen year old recent high school graduate in a state of transition. I was about to shake free from the confusion of high school and enter the most carefree, joyous times I'd enjoyed up that point. The film's jubilant mood and inspiring message of appreciating life itself will always carry that association with me. I'll always remember the first time I saw the film just after Thanksgiving and shedding real tears of joy by its conclusion. The next day, I declared it to be my new favorite film of all time. Ten years later, it has not only retained but also strengthened that position.
Simply put, It's A Wonderful Life is more than a great film. It's a spiritual experience, one that transcends the purpose of art and entertainment. It utilizes the storytelling aspect of film to deliver a message that is simple, yet noble. No other film in history has so effectively communicated both the humbling pain and unexpected glory of the human experience.
Most people would balk at the idea of calling an almost universally acknowledged classic "underrated", but I will say that there's a certain stigma surrounding the film, which diminishes its depth. Skeptics (who usually haven't seen the film) tend to critique its ubiquitous, unrealistically "happy" ending or dismiss it as simply that black and white Christmas movie that plays every December on NBC. It's a classic example of a message losing its meaning when removed from its context. Yes, the premise of an entire town chipping in to donate thousands of dollars to the downtrodden protagonist seems to be a ending out of a typical holiday fairy tale, especially in today's world of greed run amok. But is it really that inconceivable? Or are we entirely missing the point?
Apart from its relieving conclusion, It's a Wonderful Life is actually quite bleak in nature. It spends its first half exploring the life of George Bailey, a man whose grand dreams of exploration and glorious innovation are slowly taken from him by fate. Whether it's the call of work, family or simply his morality, George's plans to attend college and become a worldly architect are crushed when he's a teenager, in his mid twenties and his late twenties. As I watch this film every year, I find something newly relevant in George's story. One of the most subtle, yet heartbreaking moments in the film is when he realizes that he's reached his mid twenties and will likely never have a chance to see the exotic countries he'd been dreaming of since childhood. He tosses his brochures to the ground after holding onto them for almost twenty years. This frustration reaches a climax when his business loses an irreplaceable $8000, leading him to contemplate suicide.
As he makes suffers throughout the film, he also makes numerous sacrifices on behalf of his family and the townspeople, often beyond his knowledge. The film makes this important distinction to suggest the probability of all of us having a similar impact on the world around us. Some critics have also pointed out that not everyone can relate to George if they haven't lived life in a similarly altruistic fashion, performing good deeds left and right. The point Capra makes is that even a "saint" like George is completely unaware of the purpose he serves in life. From his perspective, he believes he has very little to show for his life and concludes that life would be better if he were never born.
Capra's message was ultimately for us to appreciate our unlikely purpose in life. Despite our outlook in the worst of times, we're never fully aware of how much we impact others with even the most minute gestures. Whether he's saving his brother from drowning or speaking on behalf of a friend in need of a loan, George spends the film giving to others as often as he laments his own unexpectedly sad life. Through a masterful performance by James Stewart, the audience feels every ounce of pain experienced by George Bailey. While the ending conjures up tears of joy and relief, Stewart also makes it impossible for us not to cry along with more than a few moments of despair more dramatically visceral than one would expect from a "family friendly" film. While it may have earned that classification over the years, It's Wonderful Life is also unequaled in its heavier moments.
While it has deservedly become a ritualistic holiday classic, the emotional sweep of It's a Wonderful Life bears a universal appeal which only becomes more relevant as millennials begin to face a harsh reality not unlike George Bailey. It's not a Christmas story or even an American story, despite its very American character. It's a film which extols the sometimes unrecognized yet increasingly scarce glory of goodwill toward others. Art often attempts to communicate this message, but very little of it succeeds in reigning us in as well as It's a Wonderful Life.
As society in general grows ever distant and resolves to build walls of separation, this film should become required viewing. If I had to describe just one piece of art as truly life-changing in a positive way, this would be it. Watch it. If you've already seen it, start watching it every year and find something new to love about it each time.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Fra-gee-lay....Must be Italian! Remembering "A Christmas Story"
Whenever the subject of quintessential holiday films is raised, A Christmas Story is undoubtedly one of the first choices that comes to mind. In many ways, it is the definitive Christmas film. More than a story set around the titular season, A Christmas Story is one of the few films to be about little more than the holiday itself. Even though the traditions and culture of the December season explored in the film's 1940's Indiana setting may not apply worldwide, audiences still continue to find something familiar in its idyllic depiction of a childhood Christmas.
There's not much of a story to A Christmas Story. Ralphie wants a Red Ryder b.b. gun for Christmas, and he'll stop at nothing to convince someone in buying him one for Christmas. The story is little more than an excuse to explore all of the facets of a typical white Christmas in America. Everything from snowball fights to a somewhat disillusioning visit with a department store Santa Claus is explored. Some of the most memorable moments are standalone vignettes that are only loosely tied to the main plot, such as the unforgettable tongue-frozen-to-a-pole scene or Ralphie's friends dealing with a local bully. Each explores a different aspect of the Christmas season, one the audience may not have personally experienced yet still strikes a chord within everyone.
That's really what drives the legacy of A Christmas Story. Though holiday customs have changed in the decades since the film's setting and vary in different parts of the world, the film still manages to tell a universally familiar story, namely one of innocence. Few other films have equaled its portrait of the innocence of childhood, a time in one's life where nothing else matters but the acquisition of that one toy. Everyone can relate to Ralphie's drastic, elaborate fantasies or his never-ending schemes to manipulate different adults into helping him get his prize.
Though it's a family-friendly film with an accordingly light-hearted touch, it never feels overly saccharine or toned down. There are overtones of satire and an irreverent sense of humor at its core. Ralphie doesn't always win, and film finds more to laugh at in his blunders. The adults in Ralphie's world are depicted in a warts-and-all fashion, from his stern but understanding father to his sweet but overbearing mother. His parents have no names, as they aren't meant to be unique characters. They're universal stand-ins which function as reflections of our own parents, or at least our impression of them when we were young.
One of the film's most notable achievements is itself pitch-perfect, sweetly evocative direction. There's hardly a more appropriate setting for the vision of a classic American Christmas than a Midwestern suburb in the 1940's. The film plays like a film version of a Thomas Kinkade painting, complete with organically vintage toys and visuals that are colorful, but never flashy. Though Ralphie's fantasy sequences are shot with an exaggeratedly blurred effect, the entire film has a similarly muted, dreamy look to it.
When I first saw A Christmas Story in 2006, it had already been classified as a classic holiday film for more than two decades. I'd never seen it before, but it somehow seemed extremely familiar to me, as if I'd grown up watching it as much as the next person. There's a timeless, universal quality to the film that transcends typical "family" fare, to the point where it could be considered a true work of art. As its audience grows with every year and its broad fan base continues to wear out its most memorable quotes, A Christmas Story continues to be essential holiday viewing.
There's not much of a story to A Christmas Story. Ralphie wants a Red Ryder b.b. gun for Christmas, and he'll stop at nothing to convince someone in buying him one for Christmas. The story is little more than an excuse to explore all of the facets of a typical white Christmas in America. Everything from snowball fights to a somewhat disillusioning visit with a department store Santa Claus is explored. Some of the most memorable moments are standalone vignettes that are only loosely tied to the main plot, such as the unforgettable tongue-frozen-to-a-pole scene or Ralphie's friends dealing with a local bully. Each explores a different aspect of the Christmas season, one the audience may not have personally experienced yet still strikes a chord within everyone.
That's really what drives the legacy of A Christmas Story. Though holiday customs have changed in the decades since the film's setting and vary in different parts of the world, the film still manages to tell a universally familiar story, namely one of innocence. Few other films have equaled its portrait of the innocence of childhood, a time in one's life where nothing else matters but the acquisition of that one toy. Everyone can relate to Ralphie's drastic, elaborate fantasies or his never-ending schemes to manipulate different adults into helping him get his prize.
Though it's a family-friendly film with an accordingly light-hearted touch, it never feels overly saccharine or toned down. There are overtones of satire and an irreverent sense of humor at its core. Ralphie doesn't always win, and film finds more to laugh at in his blunders. The adults in Ralphie's world are depicted in a warts-and-all fashion, from his stern but understanding father to his sweet but overbearing mother. His parents have no names, as they aren't meant to be unique characters. They're universal stand-ins which function as reflections of our own parents, or at least our impression of them when we were young.
One of the film's most notable achievements is itself pitch-perfect, sweetly evocative direction. There's hardly a more appropriate setting for the vision of a classic American Christmas than a Midwestern suburb in the 1940's. The film plays like a film version of a Thomas Kinkade painting, complete with organically vintage toys and visuals that are colorful, but never flashy. Though Ralphie's fantasy sequences are shot with an exaggeratedly blurred effect, the entire film has a similarly muted, dreamy look to it.
When I first saw A Christmas Story in 2006, it had already been classified as a classic holiday film for more than two decades. I'd never seen it before, but it somehow seemed extremely familiar to me, as if I'd grown up watching it as much as the next person. There's a timeless, universal quality to the film that transcends typical "family" fare, to the point where it could be considered a true work of art. As its audience grows with every year and its broad fan base continues to wear out its most memorable quotes, A Christmas Story continues to be essential holiday viewing.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Top 10 Christmas Films (Part 2)
5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Though it technically deals with Halloween in equal measure, no list of great Christmas films would be complete without Tim Burton and Henry Selick's iconic, imaginative stop motion masterpiece. On a visual level alone, Nightmare introduced memorable characters like Jack Skellington, Oogie Boogie and Sally the Rag Doll, the likes of who have been featured in endless merchandising since the film's 1993 release.
Though the animation and visuals are unforgettable, so is the story and characterization. Drawing inspiration from fairy tale television specials like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Burton expands the format into feature length and includes more than a hint of satire, but an equal amount of affection for such holiday tales.
One of the most enduring elements of Nightmare is its music, composed by frequent Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, who also provides the singing voice of Jack Skellington. Many of the songs have seeped their way into the mainstream, including "This is Halloween" and "Making Christmas". So enduring is Nightmare that it has been revisited as a stage show and a feature of Disneyland. Truly a modern classic that can be enjoyed twice a year.
4. Die Hard
Though it's not a necessarily a film about Christmas, there's enough tongue in cheek references to eggnog, reindeer and miserable family get-togethers to qualify Die Hard as a genuine Christmas film. Best known as one of the films that launched the action craze of the late '80s. It's also one of the best. Directed by genre heavyweight John McTiernan (Predator, The Hunt For Red October), it's as silly as it is violent. Nearly every instance of the scruffy, reluctant hero John McClane killing a conniving terrorist is accompanied by a perfectly timed, crude wisecrack.
One of the reasons Die Hard stands tall above other action movies is its ability not to take itself seriously. Even with all of the executions and on-screen neck breaking, there's not a glum or grim moment to be found. Much of this results from the almost cartoonish characterizations; McClane is almost an archetypal beer-bellied American Joe who happens to be a resourceful cop and his rival Hans Gruber is a worldly, clever terrorist straight out of a superhero comic.
While it has a very different character from say, the next entry on this list, Die Hard nevertheless deserves a spot due to its break-neck (no pun intended), non-stop fun and for taking a very different spin on a Christmas film. Set in L.A., it's the only one of these films that doesn't feature a touch of snow!
2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street isn't so much a film about Christmas as it is a film about the loss of whimsy that comes with being an adult. Centered around a department store Santa Claus who believes he is the real 'Kris Kringle', the entire film is a parry between the innocence of fantasy and the cynicism of commercialism around Christmas. It isn't necessarily a tale of youth vs. adulthood, as one of the most initially jaded characters is a young child from a single parent family, and one of the most whimsical characters is a capable adult attorney. The film follows Kringle as he gradually makes "believers" out of the skeptics around him.
It's such a time-honored message that has grown beyond the film's humbler 1947 settings, as commercialism has only tightened its reign on the world and innocence in a lifetime is seemingly more fleeting than ever. Though the film has undergone a few more dramatic remakes, the original version is the most moving and the best-made film of them all, due in no small part to Edmund Gwenn's definitive, Academy Award winning performance. One may not expect it from a "family" film, but its story holds up in terms of depth compared to just about anything out there today.
2. A Christmas Story (1983)
In many ways, A Christmas Story is the definitive Christmas film, as one may guess from its straightforward title. Unlike almost every other film, A Christmas Story really is a film about Christmas itself, with no particular focus but the general scope and feeling of the weeks leading up to December 25. There really isn't much a significant plot, as the film is loosely framed around the story of a kid doing everything in his power to receive a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Everything about the direction perfectly lends itself to the definitive "Christmas" feeling, from author Jean Shepherd's folksy narration to film's setting in 1940's Indiana. It's a picturesque coming of age tale that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being a young child excited for the holidays, fit for the warmest of greeting cards.
1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
And here it is. This is an obvious pick for anyone who knows me, as it's my all time favorite film, regardless of holiday affiliation. There never was and hasn't been such a powerful statement on the human experience as the one detailed in Frank Capra's 1946 magnum opus. In the years before I'd actually seen the film, I was familiar with critiques of its fantastical outcome and status as that old black and white movie that plays in every house on Christmas Eve. When I'd finally taken the time to watch it from beginning to end, I was moved to tears which has NEVER happened to me while watching a film, even Titanic. It's almost as if everyone who disparages the film as light family fodder only watched the last fives minutes.
It's a Wonderful Life is far beyond just a Christmas film, or even the tale of a man who plans to commit suicide only to be deterred by a vision of life without him. With each repeated viewing, I took more notice of the part of the film that leads up to its famous conclusion. It's really a tragic story of how one's dreams evades them and they subsequently end up feeling trapped by a life much humbler than they'd imagined. Yet the film's parting message is that even the most insignificant of lives can have the most profound impact on the world around them. It manages to impart that message with overtones of both the Great Depression and post-war optimism.
There's really too much I could write about this movie. All I can say is that everyone needs to watch this film all the way through at least once. I've seen very few films that are this moving, and it only grows more relevant as life becomes ever more complicated. It's one of a very few films I could say has had a profound impact on my outlook. It was an easy choice for no. 1.
Though it technically deals with Halloween in equal measure, no list of great Christmas films would be complete without Tim Burton and Henry Selick's iconic, imaginative stop motion masterpiece. On a visual level alone, Nightmare introduced memorable characters like Jack Skellington, Oogie Boogie and Sally the Rag Doll, the likes of who have been featured in endless merchandising since the film's 1993 release.
Though the animation and visuals are unforgettable, so is the story and characterization. Drawing inspiration from fairy tale television specials like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Burton expands the format into feature length and includes more than a hint of satire, but an equal amount of affection for such holiday tales.
One of the most enduring elements of Nightmare is its music, composed by frequent Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, who also provides the singing voice of Jack Skellington. Many of the songs have seeped their way into the mainstream, including "This is Halloween" and "Making Christmas". So enduring is Nightmare that it has been revisited as a stage show and a feature of Disneyland. Truly a modern classic that can be enjoyed twice a year.
4. Die Hard
Though it's not a necessarily a film about Christmas, there's enough tongue in cheek references to eggnog, reindeer and miserable family get-togethers to qualify Die Hard as a genuine Christmas film. Best known as one of the films that launched the action craze of the late '80s. It's also one of the best. Directed by genre heavyweight John McTiernan (Predator, The Hunt For Red October), it's as silly as it is violent. Nearly every instance of the scruffy, reluctant hero John McClane killing a conniving terrorist is accompanied by a perfectly timed, crude wisecrack.
One of the reasons Die Hard stands tall above other action movies is its ability not to take itself seriously. Even with all of the executions and on-screen neck breaking, there's not a glum or grim moment to be found. Much of this results from the almost cartoonish characterizations; McClane is almost an archetypal beer-bellied American Joe who happens to be a resourceful cop and his rival Hans Gruber is a worldly, clever terrorist straight out of a superhero comic.
While it has a very different character from say, the next entry on this list, Die Hard nevertheless deserves a spot due to its break-neck (no pun intended), non-stop fun and for taking a very different spin on a Christmas film. Set in L.A., it's the only one of these films that doesn't feature a touch of snow!
2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street isn't so much a film about Christmas as it is a film about the loss of whimsy that comes with being an adult. Centered around a department store Santa Claus who believes he is the real 'Kris Kringle', the entire film is a parry between the innocence of fantasy and the cynicism of commercialism around Christmas. It isn't necessarily a tale of youth vs. adulthood, as one of the most initially jaded characters is a young child from a single parent family, and one of the most whimsical characters is a capable adult attorney. The film follows Kringle as he gradually makes "believers" out of the skeptics around him.
It's such a time-honored message that has grown beyond the film's humbler 1947 settings, as commercialism has only tightened its reign on the world and innocence in a lifetime is seemingly more fleeting than ever. Though the film has undergone a few more dramatic remakes, the original version is the most moving and the best-made film of them all, due in no small part to Edmund Gwenn's definitive, Academy Award winning performance. One may not expect it from a "family" film, but its story holds up in terms of depth compared to just about anything out there today.
2. A Christmas Story (1983)
In many ways, A Christmas Story is the definitive Christmas film, as one may guess from its straightforward title. Unlike almost every other film, A Christmas Story really is a film about Christmas itself, with no particular focus but the general scope and feeling of the weeks leading up to December 25. There really isn't much a significant plot, as the film is loosely framed around the story of a kid doing everything in his power to receive a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Everything about the direction perfectly lends itself to the definitive "Christmas" feeling, from author Jean Shepherd's folksy narration to film's setting in 1940's Indiana. It's a picturesque coming of age tale that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being a young child excited for the holidays, fit for the warmest of greeting cards.
1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
And here it is. This is an obvious pick for anyone who knows me, as it's my all time favorite film, regardless of holiday affiliation. There never was and hasn't been such a powerful statement on the human experience as the one detailed in Frank Capra's 1946 magnum opus. In the years before I'd actually seen the film, I was familiar with critiques of its fantastical outcome and status as that old black and white movie that plays in every house on Christmas Eve. When I'd finally taken the time to watch it from beginning to end, I was moved to tears which has NEVER happened to me while watching a film, even Titanic. It's almost as if everyone who disparages the film as light family fodder only watched the last fives minutes.
It's a Wonderful Life is far beyond just a Christmas film, or even the tale of a man who plans to commit suicide only to be deterred by a vision of life without him. With each repeated viewing, I took more notice of the part of the film that leads up to its famous conclusion. It's really a tragic story of how one's dreams evades them and they subsequently end up feeling trapped by a life much humbler than they'd imagined. Yet the film's parting message is that even the most insignificant of lives can have the most profound impact on the world around them. It manages to impart that message with overtones of both the Great Depression and post-war optimism.
There's really too much I could write about this movie. All I can say is that everyone needs to watch this film all the way through at least once. I've seen very few films that are this moving, and it only grows more relevant as life becomes ever more complicated. It's one of a very few films I could say has had a profound impact on my outlook. It was an easy choice for no. 1.
Monday, November 28, 2016
Top 10 Christmas Films (Part 1)
In continuing the lightheartedness of my last post, I'm going to share my top ten favorite films and to watch around this time of year. Once Thanksgiving passes, it's open game on all things Christmas.
Before I begin, I should note that I'm evaluating these films based on nostalgic factors and their adherence to the "holiday spirit" rather than artistic merit. You will see some complete cheese-fests on here, but to my estimation, they're very enjoyable cheese fests. Also, the entire film has to revolve around Christmas, so The Godfather and L.A. Confidential won't appear on account of their brief but memorable Christmas scenes. Lastly, this is a list of films not TV specials, so you won't see Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Beavis & Butthead Do Christmas here, as much as I love both.
So turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas album and take warm trip with me down nostalgia lane...
10. Reindeer Games (2000)
Do you love Christmas movies and cheesy 1990's action films in equal measure? Reindeer Games may already be one of your favorites, if you've seen it. It wouldn't be surprising if you haven't seen famed director John Frankenheimer's last film, because it was a bomb then and still incites Grinch-like jeers when it's brought up today, due to its ludicrous plot scenarios which feature more unbelievable twists than a peppermint.
Rudy (Ben Affleck), a car thief is released from prison and poses as his cellmate, who was murdered the day before. He begins an affair with his cellmate's pen pal girlfriend (Charlize Theron), whose criminal brother enlists him to help him rob a casino.
Though it's a completely silly film, it earns its spot on this list due to its insistent humor and odd replay value. I'd taken this film out "for the hell of it" at least ten times before I realized it had become something of a de facto custom around the Christmas season. There's plenty of dark humor involving people being beaten or tortured, yet there's enough references to the holiday to give it almost a lighthearted touch. No matter how much blood is being shed, its insistent humor makes it more similar in spirit to Home Alone than The Boondock Saints. If you can stomach a little violence, don't miss this one.
9. The Santa Clause (1994)
Definitely one of the titles which found its way on the list due to nostalgic factors, The Santa Clause was funnyman Tim Allen's turn as Father Christmas after playing the quintessential American father on Home Improvement. The film concerns a father who witnesses Santa fall from his roof on Christmas Eve, and finds himself literally donning the big man's beard as he becomes the new Santa.
As is the case with many Christmas films, The Santa Clause was very much intended to be a family-friendly film. At times, the fantasy elements and saccharine "Christmas spirit" monologues can upset the stomach of even the most obnoxiously gung-ho holiday nut, but the film's colorful direction and funny, natural performance from Tim Allen make it all worthwhile. The scenes at Santa's workshop are gaudy,
Allen really is the film's greatest asset, and the best jokes revolve around his wisecracking or complete disbelief in the face of magic taking place before his eyes. One of the funniest scenes revolves around his first night as Santa, in which he chides a young girl for leaving him milk when he's lactose intolerant. It may have the same effect on someone who didn't first watch it as a child, but it's still one of the better Christmas comedies.
8. Love Actually (2003)
Set around the intertwining lives of multiple people in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Love Actually is the most recent addition on the list. Thanks to more than a few memorable moments which resonated with audiences almost as deeply as Home Alone, the film has become a staple on TV rotations during the holiday season.
Billed as a "romantic comedy" and featuring an ensemble of the U.K.'s premier actors in that genre (including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley and others) - one might mistake Love Actually as a garden variety chick flick, with the same basic plot redressed in a new context. While there's certainly some of that to be found, Love Actually takes a different approach, compiling many different subplots which each tell a story about love from a different perspective. There's the dissolution of a marriage, reinforced familial bonds, newfound romance between people foreign to each other and unrequited love. It borders on an overabundance of plot at times, but all of the stories coalesce together to remind us that nothing is stronger than love. Is there a more appropriate message to share at Christmas?
The film is aging very well, and one of the most fun aspects of watching it every year is seeing just how much of the supporting cast has gone on to international stardom. It was already bubbling with A-listers upon release, but now we can go back and recognize The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln as the guy who held up confessional cue cards to his romantic interest to the sound of "Silent Night".
7. Elf (2003)
I find Will Ferrell to be a bit much at times, and he was at his most obnoxious in Elf. The idea of casting him as a man-child raised by elves who goes to New York in search of his biological father sounds like the kind of idea spawned from an all night eggnog bender. Ferrell's basic "if it's gay or childish, it's funny" mantra is played out to the extreme in this film, and James Caan phones in a completely wooden performance as Ferrell's earthbound father. To add insult to injury, my least favorite actress Zooey Deschanel is cast as the love interest. On paper, it sounds like a horrible film.
However, all these elements ties together to make up something greater than the sum of its parts. Elf isn't just a fluke, it's an extremely memorable fluke. To have a character answer the phone with "Hi I'm Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?" isn't exactly sharp comedic writing, yet it's somehow entered the public consciousness as an enduring catch phase. Most of the fish out of water jokes in Elf are completely on the nose and somewhat predictable, yet the film is chock full of memorable lines and scenes tied together with Ferrell's controversial but undeniable charisma.
It's one of the sillier entries, but along with Love Actually, it's a relatively newer film which has become arguably the classic Christmas comedy for younger millennials.
6. Jingle All the Way (1997)
In some ways, this is the most personal pick for an entry on this list. It's the bottom of the barrel of silliness, a film which either incites cold criticism or the warmest memories of being a kid in the '90s. Jingle All the Way is the most critically derided film here along with Reindeer Games, and understandably so. It's a comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger about a inattentive father who attempts to hunt down the hottest toy of the year on Christmas Eve, brought to you by the director of Problem Child 2 and The Spy Next Door, the Jackie Chan family film from 2010. Remember? No, me neither.
In spite of all its artlessness, Jingle manages to be an extremely fun and likable film for its manic humor, but also for the unintended hilarity of Schwarzenegger's interpretation of the script. Many of the film's innocuous lines have become comedic gold ripe for endless imitations due to the action star's thick Austrian accent. As a lightweight slapstick comedy, it also elicits many genuine laughs thanks to the performances of Schwarzenegger, Sinbad as an antagonistic mailman and Phil Hartman as a sleazy neighbor. The latter two are completely in their element and Schwarzenegger gives a perfectly credible comedic performance, although he sneaks in a few chances to kick some ass in Jingle All the Way.
If anything, Jingle All the Way stands as one of the last Christmas films for toy-obsessed youths before the smartphone generation stepped in. Any child who grew up in the '80s and '90s can recall mass marketed, must-have toys which inspired the kind of insanity portrayed in the film every Christmas season. For my older brother's generation, it was Cabbage Patch Kids. I was a child of the Power Rangers generation. Though action figures and dolls have lost the power to incite such obsession among children, Jingle All the Way has become all the more relevant now that Black Friday has nearly become a holiday in its own right.
Before I begin, I should note that I'm evaluating these films based on nostalgic factors and their adherence to the "holiday spirit" rather than artistic merit. You will see some complete cheese-fests on here, but to my estimation, they're very enjoyable cheese fests. Also, the entire film has to revolve around Christmas, so The Godfather and L.A. Confidential won't appear on account of their brief but memorable Christmas scenes. Lastly, this is a list of films not TV specials, so you won't see Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas or Beavis & Butthead Do Christmas here, as much as I love both.
So turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas album and take warm trip with me down nostalgia lane...
10. Reindeer Games (2000)
Do you love Christmas movies and cheesy 1990's action films in equal measure? Reindeer Games may already be one of your favorites, if you've seen it. It wouldn't be surprising if you haven't seen famed director John Frankenheimer's last film, because it was a bomb then and still incites Grinch-like jeers when it's brought up today, due to its ludicrous plot scenarios which feature more unbelievable twists than a peppermint.
Rudy (Ben Affleck), a car thief is released from prison and poses as his cellmate, who was murdered the day before. He begins an affair with his cellmate's pen pal girlfriend (Charlize Theron), whose criminal brother enlists him to help him rob a casino.
Though it's a completely silly film, it earns its spot on this list due to its insistent humor and odd replay value. I'd taken this film out "for the hell of it" at least ten times before I realized it had become something of a de facto custom around the Christmas season. There's plenty of dark humor involving people being beaten or tortured, yet there's enough references to the holiday to give it almost a lighthearted touch. No matter how much blood is being shed, its insistent humor makes it more similar in spirit to Home Alone than The Boondock Saints. If you can stomach a little violence, don't miss this one.
9. The Santa Clause (1994)
Definitely one of the titles which found its way on the list due to nostalgic factors, The Santa Clause was funnyman Tim Allen's turn as Father Christmas after playing the quintessential American father on Home Improvement. The film concerns a father who witnesses Santa fall from his roof on Christmas Eve, and finds himself literally donning the big man's beard as he becomes the new Santa.
As is the case with many Christmas films, The Santa Clause was very much intended to be a family-friendly film. At times, the fantasy elements and saccharine "Christmas spirit" monologues can upset the stomach of even the most obnoxiously gung-ho holiday nut, but the film's colorful direction and funny, natural performance from Tim Allen make it all worthwhile. The scenes at Santa's workshop are gaudy,
Allen really is the film's greatest asset, and the best jokes revolve around his wisecracking or complete disbelief in the face of magic taking place before his eyes. One of the funniest scenes revolves around his first night as Santa, in which he chides a young girl for leaving him milk when he's lactose intolerant. It may have the same effect on someone who didn't first watch it as a child, but it's still one of the better Christmas comedies.
8. Love Actually (2003)
Set around the intertwining lives of multiple people in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Love Actually is the most recent addition on the list. Thanks to more than a few memorable moments which resonated with audiences almost as deeply as Home Alone, the film has become a staple on TV rotations during the holiday season.
Billed as a "romantic comedy" and featuring an ensemble of the U.K.'s premier actors in that genre (including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley and others) - one might mistake Love Actually as a garden variety chick flick, with the same basic plot redressed in a new context. While there's certainly some of that to be found, Love Actually takes a different approach, compiling many different subplots which each tell a story about love from a different perspective. There's the dissolution of a marriage, reinforced familial bonds, newfound romance between people foreign to each other and unrequited love. It borders on an overabundance of plot at times, but all of the stories coalesce together to remind us that nothing is stronger than love. Is there a more appropriate message to share at Christmas?
The film is aging very well, and one of the most fun aspects of watching it every year is seeing just how much of the supporting cast has gone on to international stardom. It was already bubbling with A-listers upon release, but now we can go back and recognize The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln as the guy who held up confessional cue cards to his romantic interest to the sound of "Silent Night".
7. Elf (2003)
I find Will Ferrell to be a bit much at times, and he was at his most obnoxious in Elf. The idea of casting him as a man-child raised by elves who goes to New York in search of his biological father sounds like the kind of idea spawned from an all night eggnog bender. Ferrell's basic "if it's gay or childish, it's funny" mantra is played out to the extreme in this film, and James Caan phones in a completely wooden performance as Ferrell's earthbound father. To add insult to injury, my least favorite actress Zooey Deschanel is cast as the love interest. On paper, it sounds like a horrible film.
However, all these elements ties together to make up something greater than the sum of its parts. Elf isn't just a fluke, it's an extremely memorable fluke. To have a character answer the phone with "Hi I'm Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?" isn't exactly sharp comedic writing, yet it's somehow entered the public consciousness as an enduring catch phase. Most of the fish out of water jokes in Elf are completely on the nose and somewhat predictable, yet the film is chock full of memorable lines and scenes tied together with Ferrell's controversial but undeniable charisma.
It's one of the sillier entries, but along with Love Actually, it's a relatively newer film which has become arguably the classic Christmas comedy for younger millennials.
6. Jingle All the Way (1997)
In some ways, this is the most personal pick for an entry on this list. It's the bottom of the barrel of silliness, a film which either incites cold criticism or the warmest memories of being a kid in the '90s. Jingle All the Way is the most critically derided film here along with Reindeer Games, and understandably so. It's a comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger about a inattentive father who attempts to hunt down the hottest toy of the year on Christmas Eve, brought to you by the director of Problem Child 2 and The Spy Next Door, the Jackie Chan family film from 2010. Remember? No, me neither.
In spite of all its artlessness, Jingle manages to be an extremely fun and likable film for its manic humor, but also for the unintended hilarity of Schwarzenegger's interpretation of the script. Many of the film's innocuous lines have become comedic gold ripe for endless imitations due to the action star's thick Austrian accent. As a lightweight slapstick comedy, it also elicits many genuine laughs thanks to the performances of Schwarzenegger, Sinbad as an antagonistic mailman and Phil Hartman as a sleazy neighbor. The latter two are completely in their element and Schwarzenegger gives a perfectly credible comedic performance, although he sneaks in a few chances to kick some ass in Jingle All the Way.
If anything, Jingle All the Way stands as one of the last Christmas films for toy-obsessed youths before the smartphone generation stepped in. Any child who grew up in the '80s and '90s can recall mass marketed, must-have toys which inspired the kind of insanity portrayed in the film every Christmas season. For my older brother's generation, it was Cabbage Patch Kids. I was a child of the Power Rangers generation. Though action figures and dolls have lost the power to incite such obsession among children, Jingle All the Way has become all the more relevant now that Black Friday has nearly become a holiday in its own right.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS! Remembering Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Given the chaotic nature of this year and the social discord that resulted in the wake of this month's presidential election, it seems that what we all need is a bit of levity and humor. In my house, this film was a staple of every Thanksgiving
dinner. My family would wear out the same old quotes and repeat genuine
laughs for the thirtieth time together. So here's a review of the greatest Thanksgiving comedy of all time, just one year short of its thirtieth anniversary..
Planes, Trains & Automobiles was teen drama bard John Hughes' attempt to break his own mold of making films focused on the lives of outsider teens, a niche he'd carved with '80s staples such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. With Planes, Trains & Automobiles, he refocused his absurdist deadpan talents to adults. Instead of high school kings, queens and peasants however, Planes pairs uptight yuppie Neal Page (Steve Martin) with the lower-middle class lovable goofball Del Griffith (John Candy). Like his earlier teen films, the film reveals some genuine social commentary beneath a basic Murphy's Law buddy comedy about two people trying to get home for the holidays without killing each other.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles doesn't aspire to be a deep film by any means, instead straddling a fine line between low and high-brow comedy. There aren't many lewd sex jokes or gross-out moments, yet a man can be seen being lifted by his testicles and an entire conversation is carried out about whether or not one of the characters "plays with his balls" a lot. There's a good amount of slapstick humor, but much of the film's humor is derived from the tension between straight-man Neal and the clumsy antics of Del, who is the main source of Neal's catastrophes over their journey together. It's one of those rare films that manages to balance a silly tone with sharp writing.
While it's a goofy comedy at heart, the film also has a surprisingly touching side that tames the funniest moments with a sobriety made all the more tragic with the loss of John Candy less than a decade after the film's release. The audience comes to sympathize with Del Griffith as much as Neal Page grew to resent him in the first half of the film. Nevertheless, the chemistry of Martin and Candy makes their friendship all the more genuine and warranted by the film's end. Like Hughes' earlier films, upper class characters like Neal are portrayed as stiff, cold and pretentious. Blue collar everyman Del is accordingly uncultured, oafish and easygoing. Yet each character learns from the other by the film's end, with Neal learning to be more easygoing and open-minded, and Del learning to mind his overbearing nature.
It feels silly to write so much about a film with no inherent message. This endearing piece of Thanksgiving popcorn fodder was meant for little more than pure entertainment. I do wonder if it will have the same effect on people who didn't experience it at a young age. A large part of the film's charm is undoubtedly its legacy as the ultimate Thanksgiving comedy. Its relatively mild, slow-paced humor seems like it would be completely lost on the smartphone generation. For those who were lucky enough to grow up watching this film as I did, it serves as a nostalgic reminder of a more innocent time. Can you imagine a comedy today earning an R-Rating due to just one (very memorable) F-word laden scene? Still, I can think of few films which prelude the Home Alone season better. Everyone should watch this film at least once.
Planes, Trains & Automobiles was teen drama bard John Hughes' attempt to break his own mold of making films focused on the lives of outsider teens, a niche he'd carved with '80s staples such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. With Planes, Trains & Automobiles, he refocused his absurdist deadpan talents to adults. Instead of high school kings, queens and peasants however, Planes pairs uptight yuppie Neal Page (Steve Martin) with the lower-middle class lovable goofball Del Griffith (John Candy). Like his earlier teen films, the film reveals some genuine social commentary beneath a basic Murphy's Law buddy comedy about two people trying to get home for the holidays without killing each other.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles doesn't aspire to be a deep film by any means, instead straddling a fine line between low and high-brow comedy. There aren't many lewd sex jokes or gross-out moments, yet a man can be seen being lifted by his testicles and an entire conversation is carried out about whether or not one of the characters "plays with his balls" a lot. There's a good amount of slapstick humor, but much of the film's humor is derived from the tension between straight-man Neal and the clumsy antics of Del, who is the main source of Neal's catastrophes over their journey together. It's one of those rare films that manages to balance a silly tone with sharp writing.
While it's a goofy comedy at heart, the film also has a surprisingly touching side that tames the funniest moments with a sobriety made all the more tragic with the loss of John Candy less than a decade after the film's release. The audience comes to sympathize with Del Griffith as much as Neal Page grew to resent him in the first half of the film. Nevertheless, the chemistry of Martin and Candy makes their friendship all the more genuine and warranted by the film's end. Like Hughes' earlier films, upper class characters like Neal are portrayed as stiff, cold and pretentious. Blue collar everyman Del is accordingly uncultured, oafish and easygoing. Yet each character learns from the other by the film's end, with Neal learning to be more easygoing and open-minded, and Del learning to mind his overbearing nature.
It feels silly to write so much about a film with no inherent message. This endearing piece of Thanksgiving popcorn fodder was meant for little more than pure entertainment. I do wonder if it will have the same effect on people who didn't experience it at a young age. A large part of the film's charm is undoubtedly its legacy as the ultimate Thanksgiving comedy. Its relatively mild, slow-paced humor seems like it would be completely lost on the smartphone generation. For those who were lucky enough to grow up watching this film as I did, it serves as a nostalgic reminder of a more innocent time. Can you imagine a comedy today earning an R-Rating due to just one (very memorable) F-word laden scene? Still, I can think of few films which prelude the Home Alone season better. Everyone should watch this film at least once.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Some Thoughts on 11/9
When Donald Trump started to win a majority of the electoral votes only two hours into the night of the election, I was nervous. As the wins began to pile in, it became apparent that Hillary Clinton needed to win all of the five or six remaining states to pull off a tight victory. But it was not meant to be. By 9:00 PM, my French class had ended for the night and everyone was shell shocked. Within 24 hours, the world had responded. Social media was a firestorm where nasty political discussions degenerated into people publicly denouncing their own friends online. News piled in about attacks on minorities and anti-Trump protests mobilized a mere hours after he'd officially won. This only further solidified right wing skeptics, with many using the liberal outcry as an excuse to further distance themselves. In other words, all of the differences people had on a political level suddenly ballooned into borderline hateful arguments.
It's easy for one to dismiss his followers as gullible hate-mongers, but there's more to it than that. Many of the people he reached are well-meaning, good citizens who simply feel marginalized by a mainstream culture that alienated them with the cultural changes that came with Obama's presidency. When Obama won in 2008, there was much rejoicing but also a significant amount of backlash. The far-right didn't take it to the streets as the left is doing now. They let it brew, voicing their frustrations at political correctness at every turn and doing everything in their power to oppose the president out of sheer resentment. Their intentions and ideals may be misguided, but their feelings are as real as the rest of us.
Trump did not create this, he merely took advantage and exploited it. He gave fuel to this disenfranchised portion of Americans and made them feel passionate about reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. He gave the simplest solutions to the most complicated issues facing the world today, regardless of whether or not his solutions were even logical. It didn't matter in the end, because he set fire to the underdogs. While the specific messages and overall tone of the campaign is the diametric opposite of Obama's more unified theme of change after eight years of George W. Bush, the dynamic between the two campaigns feels extremely similar. They both worked because they successfully capitalized on the voice of the most passionate, and generally the underdog's voice rings more passionate than that of the establishment.
Why would any of this make a mostly liberal independent optimistic? I'm not at all optimistic about the policies Trump has detailed or the normalization of negativity he will instill from his position. They're irrelevant, as he's begun to renege on many of his more outlandish campaign promises, as I'd expected. I'm optimistic because a more positive message of unity now has a chance to prevail in response to the establishment, similar to the way negative concepts propelled him to win.
When I first started seeing footage of protests, my first reaction was one of apathy. I've seen a similar (though not as impressive) outcry directed at George W. Bush and we endured eight years of him. The movements to Occupy Wall Street similarly resulted in very little policy change, and Wall Street remains just as corrupt today as it did then. I thought protestors were simply wasting their energy and were going to feel disappointed when absolutely nothing happened as a result of their demonstration.
I was completely missing the point. What have we learned from Trump's rise to prominence in the first place? While I completely disagree with his messages, I think we can all agree that he was right about corruption in Washington. He beat the odds, a broken political system and won not due to his political connections, but the support of everyday citizens, even if he earned their trust with nefarious methods. If anything, Trump showed us that power does indeed lie within the people.
Ultimately, I don't view the battle as liberal vs. conservative or right vs. left. The fact that the strife between the two schools of thought has reached such a peak is the real issue. No positive changes can be made when our national identity is so fractured. The idea of having political parties is not to contest which will reign supreme. Parties are formed to offer multiple perspectives, all of which should contribute ideas in a healthy debate. They exist to work together. Unfortunately, we've reached a peak in American history where political debates are merely a facade, an excuse for people to lash out at each other for no good reason. Indeed, I've noticed when my friends engage in "debates" on social media, discussions degenerate into petty insults very quickly.
How can we even pretend to be a liberal or conservative with the country's ideals in mind when we're all equally contributing to this poisonous division? I'm constantly surprised at how people from all ends of the spectrum from common citizens to the politicians themselves seem to forget a very important yet fundamental fact about this country. We're all in this together; liberal, conservative, moderate, etc. We're spending all of our time blaming the other team for what's wrong with this country, but we need each other, whether we like it or not.
I believe this division has only so far left to go before the trend starts to buckle and reverse itself. Despite what the more radical thinkers say, we are not going to engage in a secession or a civil war. It's a fun idea, but this isn't the nineteenth century. As upset as people are, we're more ingrained within each other than we'd like to admit. There will certainly be shocking unrest and violence, but no one has the resources or power to organize half the country against the other half. It's a logistical impossibility.
Social trends come and go in this volatile time. We wear out ideals as quickly as memes these days. Although I'm perplexed at how stubborn people can be in the political arena, I'm confident that we will eventually stop questioning each other and turn that inquisition inward. Eventually, we'll be forced to question ourselves; what are we doing and why? Mulling over the same tired arguments with people of the staunchly opposing view will not prevail and make our lives better. Eventually, we're going to have to try something new.
While I do fear the changes Donald Trump brings with him through policy and cultural influence, I know that it's simply an Empire Strikes Back dynamic at play. The tide will turn again in due time, thanks to the people. Unless he miraculously changes the country and our lives for the better, he will become the target of our collective frustration, not unlike Obama. People will be ready to try something new. Let's just hope we don't lose too much before then.
It's easy for one to dismiss his followers as gullible hate-mongers, but there's more to it than that. Many of the people he reached are well-meaning, good citizens who simply feel marginalized by a mainstream culture that alienated them with the cultural changes that came with Obama's presidency. When Obama won in 2008, there was much rejoicing but also a significant amount of backlash. The far-right didn't take it to the streets as the left is doing now. They let it brew, voicing their frustrations at political correctness at every turn and doing everything in their power to oppose the president out of sheer resentment. Their intentions and ideals may be misguided, but their feelings are as real as the rest of us.
Trump did not create this, he merely took advantage and exploited it. He gave fuel to this disenfranchised portion of Americans and made them feel passionate about reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. He gave the simplest solutions to the most complicated issues facing the world today, regardless of whether or not his solutions were even logical. It didn't matter in the end, because he set fire to the underdogs. While the specific messages and overall tone of the campaign is the diametric opposite of Obama's more unified theme of change after eight years of George W. Bush, the dynamic between the two campaigns feels extremely similar. They both worked because they successfully capitalized on the voice of the most passionate, and generally the underdog's voice rings more passionate than that of the establishment.
Why would any of this make a mostly liberal independent optimistic? I'm not at all optimistic about the policies Trump has detailed or the normalization of negativity he will instill from his position. They're irrelevant, as he's begun to renege on many of his more outlandish campaign promises, as I'd expected. I'm optimistic because a more positive message of unity now has a chance to prevail in response to the establishment, similar to the way negative concepts propelled him to win.
When I first started seeing footage of protests, my first reaction was one of apathy. I've seen a similar (though not as impressive) outcry directed at George W. Bush and we endured eight years of him. The movements to Occupy Wall Street similarly resulted in very little policy change, and Wall Street remains just as corrupt today as it did then. I thought protestors were simply wasting their energy and were going to feel disappointed when absolutely nothing happened as a result of their demonstration.
I was completely missing the point. What have we learned from Trump's rise to prominence in the first place? While I completely disagree with his messages, I think we can all agree that he was right about corruption in Washington. He beat the odds, a broken political system and won not due to his political connections, but the support of everyday citizens, even if he earned their trust with nefarious methods. If anything, Trump showed us that power does indeed lie within the people.
Ultimately, I don't view the battle as liberal vs. conservative or right vs. left. The fact that the strife between the two schools of thought has reached such a peak is the real issue. No positive changes can be made when our national identity is so fractured. The idea of having political parties is not to contest which will reign supreme. Parties are formed to offer multiple perspectives, all of which should contribute ideas in a healthy debate. They exist to work together. Unfortunately, we've reached a peak in American history where political debates are merely a facade, an excuse for people to lash out at each other for no good reason. Indeed, I've noticed when my friends engage in "debates" on social media, discussions degenerate into petty insults very quickly.
How can we even pretend to be a liberal or conservative with the country's ideals in mind when we're all equally contributing to this poisonous division? I'm constantly surprised at how people from all ends of the spectrum from common citizens to the politicians themselves seem to forget a very important yet fundamental fact about this country. We're all in this together; liberal, conservative, moderate, etc. We're spending all of our time blaming the other team for what's wrong with this country, but we need each other, whether we like it or not.
I believe this division has only so far left to go before the trend starts to buckle and reverse itself. Despite what the more radical thinkers say, we are not going to engage in a secession or a civil war. It's a fun idea, but this isn't the nineteenth century. As upset as people are, we're more ingrained within each other than we'd like to admit. There will certainly be shocking unrest and violence, but no one has the resources or power to organize half the country against the other half. It's a logistical impossibility.
Social trends come and go in this volatile time. We wear out ideals as quickly as memes these days. Although I'm perplexed at how stubborn people can be in the political arena, I'm confident that we will eventually stop questioning each other and turn that inquisition inward. Eventually, we'll be forced to question ourselves; what are we doing and why? Mulling over the same tired arguments with people of the staunchly opposing view will not prevail and make our lives better. Eventually, we're going to have to try something new.
While I do fear the changes Donald Trump brings with him through policy and cultural influence, I know that it's simply an Empire Strikes Back dynamic at play. The tide will turn again in due time, thanks to the people. Unless he miraculously changes the country and our lives for the better, he will become the target of our collective frustration, not unlike Obama. People will be ready to try something new. Let's just hope we don't lose too much before then.
Sunday, November 6, 2016
Reviewing a Show I Didn't Attend: Prince at Coachella 2008
Prince's death was perhaps the most unexpected to occur this year. Unlike David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Lonnie Mack, Merle Haggard and Lemmy, Prince was relatively young at 57 years old. He was also a notorious vegetarian who (at least to the public) didn't appear to have any notable issues with substance abuse. With his youthful good looks and boundless energy as a performer, no one would have expected the Purple One not to make it to 60. Unfortunately, we were wrong.
I was a major Prince fan from 2008 until about 2012. Though I was initially turned off by the definitively '80s production sounds in the music and his colorful (to say the least) vibe, I couldn't deny the masterfully catchy pop of "When Doves Cry", "Kiss" and later, "Little Red Corvette". It wasn't until I heard "Raspberry Beret" when I was completely sold on Prince's genius as a musician. It mixed the synthesized elements of Kraftwerk, baroque touches of latter day Beatles AND a soulful vocal worthy of Al Green at his best. No one else could mix such disparate elements to great success. More importantly, it's one of the catchiest songs ever written!
I became a full blown fan when he headlined the Coachella Music Festival in 2008. I didn't personally attend, but I obtained footage and high quality audio of the entire show. It was enough to completely sell me on his talent. Prince is one of the most notoriously dynamic and energetic performers in popular music, often featuring flashy set pieces, stunning choreography and most importantly, music so thrilling it reaches out to people from all walks of life.
That's exactly what made his Coachella show such a monumental experience. If it had happened ten or twenty years prior, it would have become as iconic as Otis Redding's appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival 41 years before him. Like Redding, Prince played to a crowd brought up on a diet of Indie Rock, Trip Hop, early EDM and anything that might be classified as "Alternative". Prince was one of the biggest stars in popular music before Nirvana paved the way for darker, more rock-oriented music in the early 1990's. Who was Prince to these millennial music fans? An unforgettable face from the '80s? The guy who sang "Purple Rain", "Kiss" and those other good songs you might not have known were his?
Regardless of who he was to them before the show, no one who left that show would ever forget him. There he was, a black performer who announced cockily that they were in the coolest place on Earth, due entirely to his presence...just before letting his proteges from Morris Day and the Time take the stage. Prince didn't sing a lead vocal until a good twenty minutes into the show, choosing instead to play one hot guitar solo after another, as if he knew he was so good he reveled in teasing the audience. He didn't even play a song he technically recorded himself until he sang "1999". By then, the party had truly taken off.
Prince's shows by then were approaching a new peak. After a long period of commercially disappointing, self indulgent albums which sometimes focused on his Jehovah's Witness faith, he'd made a comeback to (relatively) commercial music in 2003 with Musicology. There were still elements from his more experimental phase, such as the habit of performing sometimes unexpected covers in concert. Coachella's set list of mostly hits was interrupted near the end of the show with a cover of Alt. Rock favorite Radiohead's "Creep", which he'd utterly made his own with his less 'sinful' lyrical changes, R&B falsetto and a roaring guitar solo worthy of Van Halen.
If there's one thing I can say about Prince's shows in general, it's that they were all about diversity. When I finally saw him a year later at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, his own crowd was made up of people from literally all backgrounds and tastes in music, from fans of left-of-the-dial indie rock to older R&B fans. There were college students and concertgoers who looked like they had just come from Hollywood's flashiest clubs. Of course, there were also more than a handful of celebrities in both sports and music, including Magic Johnson.
His catalogue of music reflected this diversity. Only Prince could fearlessly play the ultra-smooth R&B of "Shhh" back to back with the hard rocking "U Got the Look", the old school blues funk romp "Musicology", the aforementioned Radiohead song and a set of true-to-form Santana jams, topping off almost every song with a jaw-dropping guitar solo worthy of Jimi Hendrix.
Near the end of the show, he followed an emotional cover of Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" (sung by backing singer Ledisi) with the one-two gospel punch of his own "7" and a pounding version of the Beatles' "Come Together", in which he announced to the mostly youthful audience that they as a whole were at the brink of a new golden age. Of course, it was all wind and sail but he had such an explosive charisma that it really seemed plausible.
Throughout the recording, people could be heard audibly gasping at stunts like that, or when he reached a crescendo in his magnum opus power ballad "Purple Rain". One concertgoer exclaimed, "He thinks he's Jesus!" While Prince would have certainly taken offense to that specific comment, that person wasn't completely wrong. Whether he was playing virtuoso-level guitar, keyboards, bass or making the most daring jumps between vocal ranges, Prince knew he had the talent to wow thousands of skeptics at a show and took pride in it.
Though it's never officially been released apart from a clip of "Creep", Prince's Coachella set can be found by only the most loyal and least ethical of his fans. Perhaps that's why it's faded into relative obscurity in this volatile time for media. His notoriously aggressive protection of his intellectual property has also aided this.
It's a shame that not everyone will be able to experience a Prince concert now. I caught one of his smaller shows, plagued with sound difficulties yet still brimming with excitement. Never before have I seen a figure with such a broad crossover appeal, a star who truly had the power to bring people together under the influence of his music. I don't think we'll ever see such an artist in popular music ever again.
I was a major Prince fan from 2008 until about 2012. Though I was initially turned off by the definitively '80s production sounds in the music and his colorful (to say the least) vibe, I couldn't deny the masterfully catchy pop of "When Doves Cry", "Kiss" and later, "Little Red Corvette". It wasn't until I heard "Raspberry Beret" when I was completely sold on Prince's genius as a musician. It mixed the synthesized elements of Kraftwerk, baroque touches of latter day Beatles AND a soulful vocal worthy of Al Green at his best. No one else could mix such disparate elements to great success. More importantly, it's one of the catchiest songs ever written!
I became a full blown fan when he headlined the Coachella Music Festival in 2008. I didn't personally attend, but I obtained footage and high quality audio of the entire show. It was enough to completely sell me on his talent. Prince is one of the most notoriously dynamic and energetic performers in popular music, often featuring flashy set pieces, stunning choreography and most importantly, music so thrilling it reaches out to people from all walks of life.
That's exactly what made his Coachella show such a monumental experience. If it had happened ten or twenty years prior, it would have become as iconic as Otis Redding's appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival 41 years before him. Like Redding, Prince played to a crowd brought up on a diet of Indie Rock, Trip Hop, early EDM and anything that might be classified as "Alternative". Prince was one of the biggest stars in popular music before Nirvana paved the way for darker, more rock-oriented music in the early 1990's. Who was Prince to these millennial music fans? An unforgettable face from the '80s? The guy who sang "Purple Rain", "Kiss" and those other good songs you might not have known were his?
Regardless of who he was to them before the show, no one who left that show would ever forget him. There he was, a black performer who announced cockily that they were in the coolest place on Earth, due entirely to his presence...just before letting his proteges from Morris Day and the Time take the stage. Prince didn't sing a lead vocal until a good twenty minutes into the show, choosing instead to play one hot guitar solo after another, as if he knew he was so good he reveled in teasing the audience. He didn't even play a song he technically recorded himself until he sang "1999". By then, the party had truly taken off.
Prince's shows by then were approaching a new peak. After a long period of commercially disappointing, self indulgent albums which sometimes focused on his Jehovah's Witness faith, he'd made a comeback to (relatively) commercial music in 2003 with Musicology. There were still elements from his more experimental phase, such as the habit of performing sometimes unexpected covers in concert. Coachella's set list of mostly hits was interrupted near the end of the show with a cover of Alt. Rock favorite Radiohead's "Creep", which he'd utterly made his own with his less 'sinful' lyrical changes, R&B falsetto and a roaring guitar solo worthy of Van Halen.
If there's one thing I can say about Prince's shows in general, it's that they were all about diversity. When I finally saw him a year later at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, his own crowd was made up of people from literally all backgrounds and tastes in music, from fans of left-of-the-dial indie rock to older R&B fans. There were college students and concertgoers who looked like they had just come from Hollywood's flashiest clubs. Of course, there were also more than a handful of celebrities in both sports and music, including Magic Johnson.
His catalogue of music reflected this diversity. Only Prince could fearlessly play the ultra-smooth R&B of "Shhh" back to back with the hard rocking "U Got the Look", the old school blues funk romp "Musicology", the aforementioned Radiohead song and a set of true-to-form Santana jams, topping off almost every song with a jaw-dropping guitar solo worthy of Jimi Hendrix.
Near the end of the show, he followed an emotional cover of Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" (sung by backing singer Ledisi) with the one-two gospel punch of his own "7" and a pounding version of the Beatles' "Come Together", in which he announced to the mostly youthful audience that they as a whole were at the brink of a new golden age. Of course, it was all wind and sail but he had such an explosive charisma that it really seemed plausible.
Throughout the recording, people could be heard audibly gasping at stunts like that, or when he reached a crescendo in his magnum opus power ballad "Purple Rain". One concertgoer exclaimed, "He thinks he's Jesus!" While Prince would have certainly taken offense to that specific comment, that person wasn't completely wrong. Whether he was playing virtuoso-level guitar, keyboards, bass or making the most daring jumps between vocal ranges, Prince knew he had the talent to wow thousands of skeptics at a show and took pride in it.
Though it's never officially been released apart from a clip of "Creep", Prince's Coachella set can be found by only the most loyal and least ethical of his fans. Perhaps that's why it's faded into relative obscurity in this volatile time for media. His notoriously aggressive protection of his intellectual property has also aided this.
It's a shame that not everyone will be able to experience a Prince concert now. I caught one of his smaller shows, plagued with sound difficulties yet still brimming with excitement. Never before have I seen a figure with such a broad crossover appeal, a star who truly had the power to bring people together under the influence of his music. I don't think we'll ever see such an artist in popular music ever again.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Heeeere's Johnny! Deja Vu-ing THE SHINING
For my first post after an extended working break, I've decided to offer a few thoughts on one of the greatest horror films of all time just hours before Halloween. It's my personal favorite horror film of all time, having been traumatized by it as a young child. The film is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
It's important to stress that we're discussing Stanley Kubrick's take on Stephen King's 1977 psychological thriller novel, not the television miniseries endorsed by King himself or the Simpsons parody, The Shinning. King's tale of a writer gone mad while serving as a winter caretaker at an isolated hotel serves as the framework for the 1980 film, but Kubrick's distinct spin made it a truly iconic and unforgettable story.
Though King himself has disagreed, Kubrick's Shining is one of the few instances in which I would say a film completely surpassed the book upon which it was based. King's novel is full of plenty of genuinely disturbing elements and imaginatively spooky moments, but Kubrick truly brings us to the haunting Overlook Hotel, creating a visceral experience which comes about as close to recreating a nightmare as any filmmaker ever could.
It's hard to pick the single most notable feature of the film as the "star", but the atmosphere is undeniably one of them. While there are a handful of shocks, the film relies less on making the audience scream and more on haunting them long after they've seen the film. There are many lingering, wide shots of the dimly lit lobby or a simply mesmerizing hallway, creating unease of something lingering around the corner. More than half the time, it turns out to be nothing, but there's enough tension in the cold expanse of the hotel set and its lifeless color scheme to turn knuckles white before the first ghost makes an appearance.The film's score drives the chilling atmosphere as much as the visuals. From the monstrous horns set to the winding labyrinth of the Rockies in the film's intro to the vaguely Native motifs heard in the more shocking cues, Wendy Carlos' soundtrack is easily one of the most disturbing and iconic when it comes to modern horror.
The film's spooky atmosphere would be the star of the film if not for two words on the marquee: Jack Nicholson. In easily one of his most iconic performances, Nicholson brings his trademark sardonic attitude and effortless craziness which truly brings the Jack Torrance character to life onscreen. Viewers are already rendered uneasy before any of the madness or mayhem begins, thanks to Nicholson's natural menace. Of course, the rest of the cast serves as the perfect foil to his descent into madness. I remember as a child (what kind of parents show this to their 9 year old??), my parents would make merciless fun of Shelley Duvall, remarking on her ghostly appearance and often over the top hysterics. Danny Lloyd turns in a prodigious performance as the clairvoyant son Danny, whose innocence is downright frightening when he makes a psychic prediction as his alter ego "Tony".
There is a great deal of contention regarding the film's "message", if there is one. Indeed, it almost seems as if Kubrick littered the film with contradictions to confuse the viewer. Was this an attempt to place us in the ghostly mental haze of the Overlook Hotel? That in itself would be one of a hundred ways to explain why the "Grady" characters have two different first names, or why Jack's undeniable connection to hotel is explained with only a photograph. Was he "always" the caretaker in the sense that his reincarnations keep returning to the hotel in a sort of generational ritual? Unlike King's novel, there aren't any clear explanations. The sense of mystique makes the film all the more intriguing and unsettling.
One of the more common interpretations of the film is that it's a statement against Native American genocide. This theory is hard to ignore, with one line essentially explaining the reason for the hotel's haunted history being that it's built on an Indian burial ground. True to Kubrick's bid for mystery in the film, the line evades most audiences on the first view. However, there are fairly obvious undertones that support this theory throughout the film, from the Native-inspired imagery throughout the hotel's decor to aforementioned musical cues that have a vague Native flavor. The hotel itself can represent white settlers' disregard for indigenous history, as they have no qualms about creating a new place to live in at the expense of Native lives. The blood that flows from the elevator can be interpreted as the blood of people who are buried (both literally and figuratively) beneath a behemoth of white colonialism.
I read all of these theories and made these analyses long after I decided The Shining was my favorite horror film. I'm sure all of this cohesiveness (or lack thereof) was Kubrick's intent, but what matters is that it all culminated in one of the most truly unsettling, albeit slow-paced films in the genre. It revels not in jump scares or gore, but in dread and atmosphere. It says more not with what it shows, but what it doesn't show. For myself, some of the most frightening moments in the film are of characters simply having a discussion or walking through the hotel.
It's a must see for horror fans and film fans alike. I think everyone should watch it at least once. Just be prepared for a few sleepless nights.
It's important to stress that we're discussing Stanley Kubrick's take on Stephen King's 1977 psychological thriller novel, not the television miniseries endorsed by King himself or the Simpsons parody, The Shinning. King's tale of a writer gone mad while serving as a winter caretaker at an isolated hotel serves as the framework for the 1980 film, but Kubrick's distinct spin made it a truly iconic and unforgettable story.
Though King himself has disagreed, Kubrick's Shining is one of the few instances in which I would say a film completely surpassed the book upon which it was based. King's novel is full of plenty of genuinely disturbing elements and imaginatively spooky moments, but Kubrick truly brings us to the haunting Overlook Hotel, creating a visceral experience which comes about as close to recreating a nightmare as any filmmaker ever could.
It's hard to pick the single most notable feature of the film as the "star", but the atmosphere is undeniably one of them. While there are a handful of shocks, the film relies less on making the audience scream and more on haunting them long after they've seen the film. There are many lingering, wide shots of the dimly lit lobby or a simply mesmerizing hallway, creating unease of something lingering around the corner. More than half the time, it turns out to be nothing, but there's enough tension in the cold expanse of the hotel set and its lifeless color scheme to turn knuckles white before the first ghost makes an appearance.The film's score drives the chilling atmosphere as much as the visuals. From the monstrous horns set to the winding labyrinth of the Rockies in the film's intro to the vaguely Native motifs heard in the more shocking cues, Wendy Carlos' soundtrack is easily one of the most disturbing and iconic when it comes to modern horror.
The film's spooky atmosphere would be the star of the film if not for two words on the marquee: Jack Nicholson. In easily one of his most iconic performances, Nicholson brings his trademark sardonic attitude and effortless craziness which truly brings the Jack Torrance character to life onscreen. Viewers are already rendered uneasy before any of the madness or mayhem begins, thanks to Nicholson's natural menace. Of course, the rest of the cast serves as the perfect foil to his descent into madness. I remember as a child (what kind of parents show this to their 9 year old??), my parents would make merciless fun of Shelley Duvall, remarking on her ghostly appearance and often over the top hysterics. Danny Lloyd turns in a prodigious performance as the clairvoyant son Danny, whose innocence is downright frightening when he makes a psychic prediction as his alter ego "Tony".
There is a great deal of contention regarding the film's "message", if there is one. Indeed, it almost seems as if Kubrick littered the film with contradictions to confuse the viewer. Was this an attempt to place us in the ghostly mental haze of the Overlook Hotel? That in itself would be one of a hundred ways to explain why the "Grady" characters have two different first names, or why Jack's undeniable connection to hotel is explained with only a photograph. Was he "always" the caretaker in the sense that his reincarnations keep returning to the hotel in a sort of generational ritual? Unlike King's novel, there aren't any clear explanations. The sense of mystique makes the film all the more intriguing and unsettling.
One of the more common interpretations of the film is that it's a statement against Native American genocide. This theory is hard to ignore, with one line essentially explaining the reason for the hotel's haunted history being that it's built on an Indian burial ground. True to Kubrick's bid for mystery in the film, the line evades most audiences on the first view. However, there are fairly obvious undertones that support this theory throughout the film, from the Native-inspired imagery throughout the hotel's decor to aforementioned musical cues that have a vague Native flavor. The hotel itself can represent white settlers' disregard for indigenous history, as they have no qualms about creating a new place to live in at the expense of Native lives. The blood that flows from the elevator can be interpreted as the blood of people who are buried (both literally and figuratively) beneath a behemoth of white colonialism.
I read all of these theories and made these analyses long after I decided The Shining was my favorite horror film. I'm sure all of this cohesiveness (or lack thereof) was Kubrick's intent, but what matters is that it all culminated in one of the most truly unsettling, albeit slow-paced films in the genre. It revels not in jump scares or gore, but in dread and atmosphere. It says more not with what it shows, but what it doesn't show. For myself, some of the most frightening moments in the film are of characters simply having a discussion or walking through the hotel.
It's a must see for horror fans and film fans alike. I think everyone should watch it at least once. Just be prepared for a few sleepless nights.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Look Out Honey, Cause I'm Using Technology - The Stooges' Raw Power
In today's musical ever-volatile environment which finds rock music almost completely pushed off the public radar, it seems appropriate to share a few words about what I feel is undoubtedly one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, Iggy & the Stooges' Raw Power.
Though it's become associated with a plethora of sub-genre labels including glam, garage, punk and the obnoxiously misappropriated "classic rock", Raw Power can only be accurately described as rock and roll in all its visceral purity. It almost seems bizarre to write about about an album whose experience is so intensely physical. As a matter of fact, if you haven't heard the album and you're reading this review, get off my blog and TURN IT UP, pronto. Thank me later.
Raw Power couldn't be more aptly titled. Decades of more extreme forms of Rock music (all of which owe something to the Stooges and Raw Power) have followed in its path, but very little Punk, Metal and Grunge have matched its grand intensity and aggression. The Stooges raise hairs not simply with volume, speed and attack but with their nihilistic attitude and approach to playing rock music.
For those new to Iggy & The Stooges, here's a brief history. Led by extreme rock icon Iggy Pop, The Stooges rose out of the late 1960's Detroit rock scene, which was something of an antithesis to the hippie movement. Along with New York's Velvet Underground and the Motor City's own MC5, the Stooges directly prefaced Punk, Metal, Grunge and "Alternative" music as a whole with their violent, noisy and technically primal take on Garage Rock. Their early shows regularly featured Pop smearing himself with blood and peanut butter over the band exploding their gear or using vacuum cleaners as instruments.
With two albums and a growing reputation as cult favorites under their belt by 1973, The Stooges were all but finished due to internal strife and the members' regular consumption of drugs, until rising star and Stooges fan David Bowie swept Pop off to England to revitalize his fading career. This resulted in the Stooges reforming, with guitarist Ron Asheton taking over the bass and the more technically accomplished yet just as violent James Williamson taking the guitar.
This combination and newfound focus resulted in the genius of Raw Power. Whereas their previous two albums featured fuzzed out, primal jams which often resulted in classic songs, Raw Power features more ambitious songwriting. Rather than mute the band's intensity, this approach resulted in the band's most punishing and aggressively melodic songs yet. Pop screams and howls hauntingly violent lyrics of sex and war over Williamson's eardrum-slashing guitar riffs, which sound like a deranged mix of Keith Richards and Jimmy Page on 11.
In terms of songwriting, the album's track list never lets up. The rampaging opening track "Search & Destroy" has become the album's (and arguably the band's) signature song, which blends a statement of purpose with Vietnam war imagery. The sophomore ballad "Gimme Danger" almost gives the audience a rest as a minor-key acoustic ballad, until the bridge kicks into an inferno with Pop's ambiguously threatening refrain "Swear you're gonna feel my hand..." Nearly straightforward hard rock songs like "Penetration" and "Raw Power" feature an unsettling menace with extreme sexual overtones and serene instruments like piano and celesta sprinkling in the background of the band's aural chaos. By the time the album closes out on a pair of rockers ("Shake Appeal" and "Death Trip") more intense than the opening, your heart is racing and everything else will be numb from the experience.
There has much been contention over the years over the album's production. Bowie's original mix has been critiqued as being thin and brittle, yet that very sound ended up influencing many punk bands as it brought out the album's primitive qualities. Pop's late '90s remix with Bruce Dickinson has been categorized as the single loudest album of all time at -4 dB's, with the original group criticizing its natural distortion. I personally prefer the latter mix, as the album's very nature is not in its subtlety but its brute force. Why not let Williamson and the rhythm jump out of your speakers and tear them to shreds?
Though the new lineup of the Stooges only made this one album, it's endurance in Rock history has been a lasting one. No other album has captured the genre's commanding, exciting and dangerous nature as effectively as Raw Power. Thanks to Almost Famous, "Search & Destroy" was introduced to the mainstream in a memorable scene featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as iconic Rock critic Lester Bangs. While their popularity will never approach that of Black Sabbath or even the Sex Pistols, the Stooges' influence is just as important. Artists from disparate sub-genres cite Raw Power as an influence including Nirvana, Guns 'N Roses, Rage Against the Machine, the Clash, Sonic Youth, Metallica and even Cee-Lo Green. Its importance is immeasurable.
As I said, it's somewhat moot to write about this album. It simply must be turned up to 11 to be experienced. Just be ready for irritated neighbors, torn eardrums and heart palpitations. But it will all be worth it to have your life changed.
Though it's become associated with a plethora of sub-genre labels including glam, garage, punk and the obnoxiously misappropriated "classic rock", Raw Power can only be accurately described as rock and roll in all its visceral purity. It almost seems bizarre to write about about an album whose experience is so intensely physical. As a matter of fact, if you haven't heard the album and you're reading this review, get off my blog and TURN IT UP, pronto. Thank me later.
Raw Power couldn't be more aptly titled. Decades of more extreme forms of Rock music (all of which owe something to the Stooges and Raw Power) have followed in its path, but very little Punk, Metal and Grunge have matched its grand intensity and aggression. The Stooges raise hairs not simply with volume, speed and attack but with their nihilistic attitude and approach to playing rock music.
For those new to Iggy & The Stooges, here's a brief history. Led by extreme rock icon Iggy Pop, The Stooges rose out of the late 1960's Detroit rock scene, which was something of an antithesis to the hippie movement. Along with New York's Velvet Underground and the Motor City's own MC5, the Stooges directly prefaced Punk, Metal, Grunge and "Alternative" music as a whole with their violent, noisy and technically primal take on Garage Rock. Their early shows regularly featured Pop smearing himself with blood and peanut butter over the band exploding their gear or using vacuum cleaners as instruments.
With two albums and a growing reputation as cult favorites under their belt by 1973, The Stooges were all but finished due to internal strife and the members' regular consumption of drugs, until rising star and Stooges fan David Bowie swept Pop off to England to revitalize his fading career. This resulted in the Stooges reforming, with guitarist Ron Asheton taking over the bass and the more technically accomplished yet just as violent James Williamson taking the guitar.
This combination and newfound focus resulted in the genius of Raw Power. Whereas their previous two albums featured fuzzed out, primal jams which often resulted in classic songs, Raw Power features more ambitious songwriting. Rather than mute the band's intensity, this approach resulted in the band's most punishing and aggressively melodic songs yet. Pop screams and howls hauntingly violent lyrics of sex and war over Williamson's eardrum-slashing guitar riffs, which sound like a deranged mix of Keith Richards and Jimmy Page on 11.
In terms of songwriting, the album's track list never lets up. The rampaging opening track "Search & Destroy" has become the album's (and arguably the band's) signature song, which blends a statement of purpose with Vietnam war imagery. The sophomore ballad "Gimme Danger" almost gives the audience a rest as a minor-key acoustic ballad, until the bridge kicks into an inferno with Pop's ambiguously threatening refrain "Swear you're gonna feel my hand..." Nearly straightforward hard rock songs like "Penetration" and "Raw Power" feature an unsettling menace with extreme sexual overtones and serene instruments like piano and celesta sprinkling in the background of the band's aural chaos. By the time the album closes out on a pair of rockers ("Shake Appeal" and "Death Trip") more intense than the opening, your heart is racing and everything else will be numb from the experience.
There has much been contention over the years over the album's production. Bowie's original mix has been critiqued as being thin and brittle, yet that very sound ended up influencing many punk bands as it brought out the album's primitive qualities. Pop's late '90s remix with Bruce Dickinson has been categorized as the single loudest album of all time at -4 dB's, with the original group criticizing its natural distortion. I personally prefer the latter mix, as the album's very nature is not in its subtlety but its brute force. Why not let Williamson and the rhythm jump out of your speakers and tear them to shreds?
Though the new lineup of the Stooges only made this one album, it's endurance in Rock history has been a lasting one. No other album has captured the genre's commanding, exciting and dangerous nature as effectively as Raw Power. Thanks to Almost Famous, "Search & Destroy" was introduced to the mainstream in a memorable scene featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as iconic Rock critic Lester Bangs. While their popularity will never approach that of Black Sabbath or even the Sex Pistols, the Stooges' influence is just as important. Artists from disparate sub-genres cite Raw Power as an influence including Nirvana, Guns 'N Roses, Rage Against the Machine, the Clash, Sonic Youth, Metallica and even Cee-Lo Green. Its importance is immeasurable.
As I said, it's somewhat moot to write about this album. It simply must be turned up to 11 to be experienced. Just be ready for irritated neighbors, torn eardrums and heart palpitations. But it will all be worth it to have your life changed.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Smile, You're at Mr. Smiley's! First Impressions of "American Beauty" (SPOILERS)
"I'm just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose" Kevin Spacey delivers this smugly defiant line as the unforgettable every-man protagonist in 1999's American Beauty, which earned Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Spacey) and Best Original Screenplay. Those of us who were watching television in 1999 may remember seeing parodies of a nude Mena Suvari covered in roses surfacing everywhere, particularly sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live.
It's been almost twenty years the film's release, but I finally made it through the entire film this year, thanks to Netflix. When I was younger, I was taken aback by the film's frank sexuality. How many Best Picture Oscar winners feature someone masturbating in the shower within the first two minutes? American Beauty is bold. It's stirring. It's dark, funny and of course it's very beautiful.
The film's beauty isn't found in a glamorously hot cast or lush scenery. In fact, director Sam Mendes assembled the perfectly drab looking cast and nondescript filming locations to construct what is essentially a post-modern farce. Everyone looks all-American and they all live in a picturesque town which is essentially Brentwood, Los Angeles standing in for a nameless Chicago suburb. The film is a complete send up of the archetypes which inhabit and characterize American suburban culture.
Though one learns more with subsequent views, American Beauty isn't a film of nuance. It is one of overtones and hyper-conscious symbolism. The film has inspired countless interpretations, and the filmmakers concur that there isn't a definitive way to view the film.
The heart of the film is Lester Burnham, whose spiritual journey is the film's centerpiece and driving story. But all of the main characters represent different facets of suburbia. Lester's wife Carolyn (played brilliantly by Annette Bening) is shrewd, materialistic and shallow, yet even she is pushed to the limits when her portrait of perfect life is shattered by her husband's nonconformity. Like her father, the Burnhams' daughter Jane (Thora Birch) gradually stands up to her parents' disguised dysfunction by running away with their outsider neighbor Ricky Fitts.
The Fitts' serve as secondary characters, yet their story reveals just as much about suburban life as the Burnhams. The family patriarch Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) dons the guise of a staunch, violent homophobic traditionalist, yet his malice is revealed to a repression of his own homosexuality. His wife has become nearly catatonic due to years of romantic distance and neglect. Their misfit son Ricky is conversely viewed as an alien in the eyes of conformist society, and as the free-spirited voice of reason when Lester and his daughter conclude their character arcs.
All of the characters are essentially actors within the film. As one character mentions in his best advertising voice, "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success". Many of the characters present images different from their true selves. Carolyn barely hides her contemptuous venom for her husband with a cold, wifely etiquette. Angela appears to be a lusty, sexually precocious young woman but she is in fact a virgin. This is an overall commentary of what lies beneath the postcard-ready image of the picturesque all-American culture.
Perhaps the most touching and insightful message of the film comes in the form of Lester rejecting middle age, one in which he spent the best years of his life developing. He sacrificed his youthful freedom to earn the American dream; a successful wife and a daughter who both appear to be normal on the surface. Yet he feels completely disillusioned and lost, as they both resent him and love is essentially implied to be dead in his household. When Lester finds inspiration in his daughters' friends Angela (Mena Suvari) and Ricky, he decides to reclaim his youth by working out, listening to rock music and quitting a corporate position to work at a fast food drive-thru.
That's how it appears on the surface, but really Lester is freeing himself from conformist imprisonment. Early in the film, there's an abundance of prison symbolism, from the reflection of bars in his work's computer screen to his demeaning wife, who is essentially a prison warden rushing him from one place to the next. When Lester begins to fantasize about Angela and envy Ricky's exuberance, he begins to free himself and reclaim his character. At the beginning of the film, Lester is a nameless inmate caught up in a system of conformity, and eventually gains enough confidence to push back against the system, symbolized by his by-the-book wife.
Lester's journey doesn't conclude with him abandoning adulthood and embracing a lost adolescence. While it was necessary for him to undergo his mid-life crisis to refocus his priorities, he comes full circle by learning to be a father again. At first he views Angela as an object of desire, but his fatherly instincts are reborn when he sees her as a naked, vulnerable child in need of comfort. When Lester is finally killed, he remarks that he's nonetheless happy, because there's so much beauty in the world.
Like Fight Club (released the same year), American Beauty is a message of hope wrapped in dark humor and sometimes disturbing content. It's a cautionary tale for one to treasure life before it slips away, and to not overlook beauty around us every day, even in the most unusual places. Through all of the sexual depravity and cynical humor, American Beauty is one of the few films I would say is truly thought provoking and has the potential to inspire real change in one's life.
Plus, the soundtrack kicks ass.
It's been almost twenty years the film's release, but I finally made it through the entire film this year, thanks to Netflix. When I was younger, I was taken aback by the film's frank sexuality. How many Best Picture Oscar winners feature someone masturbating in the shower within the first two minutes? American Beauty is bold. It's stirring. It's dark, funny and of course it's very beautiful.
The film's beauty isn't found in a glamorously hot cast or lush scenery. In fact, director Sam Mendes assembled the perfectly drab looking cast and nondescript filming locations to construct what is essentially a post-modern farce. Everyone looks all-American and they all live in a picturesque town which is essentially Brentwood, Los Angeles standing in for a nameless Chicago suburb. The film is a complete send up of the archetypes which inhabit and characterize American suburban culture.
Though one learns more with subsequent views, American Beauty isn't a film of nuance. It is one of overtones and hyper-conscious symbolism. The film has inspired countless interpretations, and the filmmakers concur that there isn't a definitive way to view the film.
The heart of the film is Lester Burnham, whose spiritual journey is the film's centerpiece and driving story. But all of the main characters represent different facets of suburbia. Lester's wife Carolyn (played brilliantly by Annette Bening) is shrewd, materialistic and shallow, yet even she is pushed to the limits when her portrait of perfect life is shattered by her husband's nonconformity. Like her father, the Burnhams' daughter Jane (Thora Birch) gradually stands up to her parents' disguised dysfunction by running away with their outsider neighbor Ricky Fitts.
The Fitts' serve as secondary characters, yet their story reveals just as much about suburban life as the Burnhams. The family patriarch Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) dons the guise of a staunch, violent homophobic traditionalist, yet his malice is revealed to a repression of his own homosexuality. His wife has become nearly catatonic due to years of romantic distance and neglect. Their misfit son Ricky is conversely viewed as an alien in the eyes of conformist society, and as the free-spirited voice of reason when Lester and his daughter conclude their character arcs.
All of the characters are essentially actors within the film. As one character mentions in his best advertising voice, "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success". Many of the characters present images different from their true selves. Carolyn barely hides her contemptuous venom for her husband with a cold, wifely etiquette. Angela appears to be a lusty, sexually precocious young woman but she is in fact a virgin. This is an overall commentary of what lies beneath the postcard-ready image of the picturesque all-American culture.
Perhaps the most touching and insightful message of the film comes in the form of Lester rejecting middle age, one in which he spent the best years of his life developing. He sacrificed his youthful freedom to earn the American dream; a successful wife and a daughter who both appear to be normal on the surface. Yet he feels completely disillusioned and lost, as they both resent him and love is essentially implied to be dead in his household. When Lester finds inspiration in his daughters' friends Angela (Mena Suvari) and Ricky, he decides to reclaim his youth by working out, listening to rock music and quitting a corporate position to work at a fast food drive-thru.
That's how it appears on the surface, but really Lester is freeing himself from conformist imprisonment. Early in the film, there's an abundance of prison symbolism, from the reflection of bars in his work's computer screen to his demeaning wife, who is essentially a prison warden rushing him from one place to the next. When Lester begins to fantasize about Angela and envy Ricky's exuberance, he begins to free himself and reclaim his character. At the beginning of the film, Lester is a nameless inmate caught up in a system of conformity, and eventually gains enough confidence to push back against the system, symbolized by his by-the-book wife.
Lester's journey doesn't conclude with him abandoning adulthood and embracing a lost adolescence. While it was necessary for him to undergo his mid-life crisis to refocus his priorities, he comes full circle by learning to be a father again. At first he views Angela as an object of desire, but his fatherly instincts are reborn when he sees her as a naked, vulnerable child in need of comfort. When Lester is finally killed, he remarks that he's nonetheless happy, because there's so much beauty in the world.
Like Fight Club (released the same year), American Beauty is a message of hope wrapped in dark humor and sometimes disturbing content. It's a cautionary tale for one to treasure life before it slips away, and to not overlook beauty around us every day, even in the most unusual places. Through all of the sexual depravity and cynical humor, American Beauty is one of the few films I would say is truly thought provoking and has the potential to inspire real change in one's life.
Plus, the soundtrack kicks ass.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Meanwhile...Maddie Jay & the pH Collective's Arrival
I followed the Berklee-trained bass prodigy Maddie Jay in late 2014, when she would post note-for-note covers of Jazz and R&B heavyweights from Jaco Pastorius to Stevie Wonder. Though tastes are changing with the implementation of such artists in the curriculum of music colleges, it was still striking to see someone so young do justice to some of the most technically demanding music from long ago. Jay's cover of Weather Report's lightning speed bass classic "Teen Town" even caught the eye of Metallica's Robert Trujillo.When Jay launched her Facebook music page and billed herself as a "singer, songwriter and rapper", her cult of followers responded with great intrigue. After having gained some notoriety as a bass pro, did she decide overnight that she wanted to expand into other creative ventures, or had she been working on a career behind the scenes?
The latter turned out to be the likely case, and the result is the fan-funded Meanwhile.., the recording debut of Jay, backed by a collective of Berklee musicians dubbed the pH Collective. In the months before its release, Jay & the pH Collective released the serenely funky single "Throw Away Your Hate" and several live performances. This provided insight into the band's tight interplay and Jay's potential as a bandleader, but revealed little about the end production en route.
One of the greatest strengths of Meanwhile... is its difficulty to place into any existing category, much like Jamiroquai before them. It's an album of subtle contradictions. The whiny envelope filters and laid back grooves recall 1990's R&B or Hip-Hop, but Jay's dense chord progressions and the band's organic playing root them squarely within an "acidic" take on jazz. Even the cover of the Spice Girls' "Say You'll Be There" augments the post-disco pop song with a complex slash chord arrangement worthy of Steely Dan.
Like Steely Dan, the production on the album is as tight as any state of the art pop record, impressive for a relatively large group. Even the distorted guitar solos and drums never sound harsh or muted, finding the middle ground usually heard in large studios. For a band featuring many virtuoso players, the arrangements are surprisingly economical and song-oriented. Even Jay's bass spends very little time dominating the spotlight. Whenever a solo is taken, it's usually melodic, groovy and lasts not a bar too long.
At times, the pH Collective sound very much like jazz school favorites in the vein of the Yellowjackets or Lettuce, but Jay's equal emphasis on storytelling and youthfully urbane verses set the group apart from such instrumentally-focused groups. Lyrically, Jay mixes post-millennial disillusionment with her own innate optimism on songs like "Let's Talk (Trade in Your Vice)" and the upbeat "Freaky Lady". Even the caustic urban tale "This City" teeters on cynicism without embracing it. "I'm Tired (Of You)" is the darkest song on the album, yet its ?uestlove-like beat and elastic bass line make it sound as fun as "Freaky Lady".
Meanwhile... is a refreshingly original debut, something of an anomaly in today's music scene which features more electronics and fewer piece-by-piece bands. While Jay is indeed the visionary and commanding presence of the pH Collective, this is the sound a group of equally-weighted musicians, with no audible weak links. It's the sound of a band defying any existing convention in Jazz, Pop or R&B. The band is indeed young, but possessive of an immense amount of skill. The only question is what direction Jay and the band will take next.
As a rock fan, I would absolutely love to hear Maddie adopt the draggy cynicism of Lou Reed, or the pH Collective bending the rules they've mastered by taking a note from Talking Heads.
4.5/5
Sunday, September 18, 2016
On the Death of Rock Music - And Why it's a Good Thing
"Rock is Dead" - Believe it or not, this statement has been floating around for decades. Before the last five years or so, it was mainly uttered by purists who lamented the loss of rhythm and blues influences and the joyously cathartic simplicity of pioneering artists like Chuck Berry. This authenticity has been challenged by changing conventions with every generation since he first sung "Johnny B. Goode", from the excess of early 1970's progressive rock to the moody aggression of grunge in the 1990's. While rock and roll has certainly evolved and devolved in its sixty odd years of popularity, it remained the fantasy of every youthful outsider who dreamed of conquering the world with his electric guitar and a couple of friends.
With the gradual surge of hip-hop and electronic music's popularity over the past two decades, that statement has taken on a different meaning. Now it seems less like the ramblings of an old person and rings more true than ever. For some reason, Gene Simmons of all people is most widely credited as being the first famous musician to speak this truth which has been boiling over for years. While Simmons has a history of making farfetched and controversial statements, he's not entirely off-point in this particular case. He's also not the only one to make this point. The infamously straightforward Tom Petty has likened the current state of rock to the decrease of popularity that befell jazz and blues as rock took the main stage.
Today's Billboard top 40 charts features no rock artists in the traditional sense. Every once in awhile, pop rockers such as Maroon 5, Twenty-One Pilots and the like will have a charting hit, with the only qualifier of their "rock" credentials being the presence of a few live instruments. While rock bands and artists could be seen in live television interviews as late as the 1990's, today's talk show hosts seldom hold extended conversations with rock artists. While it was once difficult not to see a rock band in Los Angeles' sprawling and eclectic music scene, today's venues find it much more convenient and appealing to book self contained artists such as solo performers or DJ's.
This claim has elicited much controversy, especially from those who champion independent music and claim that exciting rock music is still being produced well below the public radar. I don't doubt that. As a matter of fact, there are still notable bands making rock music today, even in the public eye. Bands like the Black Keys, Alabama Shakes and Arctic Monkeys do their part to keep the tradition of an interwoven, organic (for the most part) band alive. Still, none of these bands have truly had a hit which endured in the same fashion as The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" and apart from the very countable Black Keys, it's hard to name the secondary members of these groups.
This revelation has understandably made rock musicians all over the world nervous. It's as if the door finally closed on the gamble upon which every unsightly guy with a guitar depended. It was once our escapist fantasy; the back entrance to a glorious world of money, fame and the opposite sex. Even if you didn't end up becoming famous, there was at least a shallow appeal to playing guitar, drums or sometimes bass guitar which would at least draw some favorable attention from the ladies. Now it's just as common, if not more so to see women crowding around a DJ instead of the guy with a Gibson SG.
One of the most telling signs of rock's demise as a cultural influence is the shift of demographics. As the voice of disenchanted youth for multiple generations, rock's fan base now generally seems to be comprised of people seldom younger than twenty five. Of course this makes sense, as rock was last wildly popular two decades ago. It hasn't been around to endure the post-millennial generation. In its absence, the broadly categorized Electronic Dance Music art form has become the defining voice of youth. Featuring blockbuster festivals, bona fide stars and the hippest drugs, EDM has essentially taken rock and roll's place in the cultural zeitgeist. Even the once indie-rock oriented Coachella has become more electronic than ever. Young people flock to its festivals the way they once would to Lollapalooza or even the Vans Warped Tour. They invest in the musical equipment in a genuine effort to learn the craft. Barely legal college students meet, take an illegal substance, engage in casual sex and proclaim to their incensed parents that they had a good time. Sound familiar?
Why would I, the most rabid rock fan of all sub-genres from punk to prog feel good about the currently critical endangerment if not extinction of rock music? I've had a mix of reactions to the realization that the world wasn't going to open the door to glory just because I'd learned to play blues guitar and perfected my goofy Jimmy Page-influenced stage antics. When I turned twenty-five, I finally had to look around and see that the people around me who were gathering the attention I sought looked drastically different from myself. It was as if I'd practiced all of my life for the wrong challenges. I should have worked on my vocals, my image and listened to a lot more pop music. Or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, as the only unsightly Asian musical figures over nineteen to gain any success in recent years did so at the expense of dignity. Think PSY or William Hung.
As a social outcast, I finally feel ecstatic about rock music fading from the mainstream because in a sense, it's finally been returned to its outsider roots. It's no longer the corporately corrupted pop culture exploit it had become. It's not the norm for a couple of weirdos to take the stage and hit loud, rude power chords. The coolest artists on the music scene don't play flashy minute-long guitar solos. I've done that and stuck out like a sore thumb. I love driving around and seeing the surprise of people hearing the Clash or ZZ Top emanating from my car. I love the mixed reactions that come from playing a Lou Reed dirge after three other singers play the same Sia song.
Rock music has never been about conforming to social norms or "making it", so to speak. It's the voice of social frustration and the accompanying cathartic release. It's a loud, rude and crude way for those on the fringes of society to express themselves. It's not a ticket to popularity, nor does it exist to please capitalist goons looking to exploit young people. It was born the mutant child of carefree youth and irreverence. It was once the true music of the people, not a big business trend. While it will never enjoy the same widespread exposure and sales numbers it enjoyed in its heyday, it finally feels "underground" once again. And that's a beautiful thing.
If you feel the same way I do, get off that Twenty One Pilots video, put on Raw Power by the Stooges and tell your neighbors to fuck off.
With the gradual surge of hip-hop and electronic music's popularity over the past two decades, that statement has taken on a different meaning. Now it seems less like the ramblings of an old person and rings more true than ever. For some reason, Gene Simmons of all people is most widely credited as being the first famous musician to speak this truth which has been boiling over for years. While Simmons has a history of making farfetched and controversial statements, he's not entirely off-point in this particular case. He's also not the only one to make this point. The infamously straightforward Tom Petty has likened the current state of rock to the decrease of popularity that befell jazz and blues as rock took the main stage.
Today's Billboard top 40 charts features no rock artists in the traditional sense. Every once in awhile, pop rockers such as Maroon 5, Twenty-One Pilots and the like will have a charting hit, with the only qualifier of their "rock" credentials being the presence of a few live instruments. While rock bands and artists could be seen in live television interviews as late as the 1990's, today's talk show hosts seldom hold extended conversations with rock artists. While it was once difficult not to see a rock band in Los Angeles' sprawling and eclectic music scene, today's venues find it much more convenient and appealing to book self contained artists such as solo performers or DJ's.
This claim has elicited much controversy, especially from those who champion independent music and claim that exciting rock music is still being produced well below the public radar. I don't doubt that. As a matter of fact, there are still notable bands making rock music today, even in the public eye. Bands like the Black Keys, Alabama Shakes and Arctic Monkeys do their part to keep the tradition of an interwoven, organic (for the most part) band alive. Still, none of these bands have truly had a hit which endured in the same fashion as The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" and apart from the very countable Black Keys, it's hard to name the secondary members of these groups.
This revelation has understandably made rock musicians all over the world nervous. It's as if the door finally closed on the gamble upon which every unsightly guy with a guitar depended. It was once our escapist fantasy; the back entrance to a glorious world of money, fame and the opposite sex. Even if you didn't end up becoming famous, there was at least a shallow appeal to playing guitar, drums or sometimes bass guitar which would at least draw some favorable attention from the ladies. Now it's just as common, if not more so to see women crowding around a DJ instead of the guy with a Gibson SG.
One of the most telling signs of rock's demise as a cultural influence is the shift of demographics. As the voice of disenchanted youth for multiple generations, rock's fan base now generally seems to be comprised of people seldom younger than twenty five. Of course this makes sense, as rock was last wildly popular two decades ago. It hasn't been around to endure the post-millennial generation. In its absence, the broadly categorized Electronic Dance Music art form has become the defining voice of youth. Featuring blockbuster festivals, bona fide stars and the hippest drugs, EDM has essentially taken rock and roll's place in the cultural zeitgeist. Even the once indie-rock oriented Coachella has become more electronic than ever. Young people flock to its festivals the way they once would to Lollapalooza or even the Vans Warped Tour. They invest in the musical equipment in a genuine effort to learn the craft. Barely legal college students meet, take an illegal substance, engage in casual sex and proclaim to their incensed parents that they had a good time. Sound familiar?
Why would I, the most rabid rock fan of all sub-genres from punk to prog feel good about the currently critical endangerment if not extinction of rock music? I've had a mix of reactions to the realization that the world wasn't going to open the door to glory just because I'd learned to play blues guitar and perfected my goofy Jimmy Page-influenced stage antics. When I turned twenty-five, I finally had to look around and see that the people around me who were gathering the attention I sought looked drastically different from myself. It was as if I'd practiced all of my life for the wrong challenges. I should have worked on my vocals, my image and listened to a lot more pop music. Or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, as the only unsightly Asian musical figures over nineteen to gain any success in recent years did so at the expense of dignity. Think PSY or William Hung.
As a social outcast, I finally feel ecstatic about rock music fading from the mainstream because in a sense, it's finally been returned to its outsider roots. It's no longer the corporately corrupted pop culture exploit it had become. It's not the norm for a couple of weirdos to take the stage and hit loud, rude power chords. The coolest artists on the music scene don't play flashy minute-long guitar solos. I've done that and stuck out like a sore thumb. I love driving around and seeing the surprise of people hearing the Clash or ZZ Top emanating from my car. I love the mixed reactions that come from playing a Lou Reed dirge after three other singers play the same Sia song.
Rock music has never been about conforming to social norms or "making it", so to speak. It's the voice of social frustration and the accompanying cathartic release. It's a loud, rude and crude way for those on the fringes of society to express themselves. It's not a ticket to popularity, nor does it exist to please capitalist goons looking to exploit young people. It was born the mutant child of carefree youth and irreverence. It was once the true music of the people, not a big business trend. While it will never enjoy the same widespread exposure and sales numbers it enjoyed in its heyday, it finally feels "underground" once again. And that's a beautiful thing.
If you feel the same way I do, get off that Twenty One Pilots video, put on Raw Power by the Stooges and tell your neighbors to fuck off.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Huh Huh...You Said "Anus": Remembering Beavis & Butthead
Enough time has passed for the 1990's to have become a nostalgic decade with its own recognizable cultural and social movements. It's hard to look back upon an immediately preceding decade with the same deep insight. Generally speaking, society becomes nostalgic about an era about twenty years after it's passed.
One of the the most iconic cultural touchstones of the 1990's was MTV's Beavis and Butthead. As a cable show, it didn't endure the same lasting influence as the Fox network monolith The Simpsons, but it did attain a similarly controversial notoriety for a short while. Mike Judge's on-the-nose commentary on the purported "degradation of morality" in America's youth raised as many eyebrows as the comparably childish antics of Bart Simpson, a character who similarly stirred up trouble with social conservatives. Many passed off Beavis and Butthead as crude, immoral and anarchistic pop culture garbage which glorified stupidity and anti-social behavior.
To be fair, early episodes proved these allegations to a certain degree. In its first few seasons, the show was undoubtedly crude in both its writing and animation. That's the case for most animated series. In the first season, the series' protagonists could be seen engaging in vandalism on hapless victims and randomly uttering such non-sequiturs as "I don't like stuff that sucks!" Watching those episodes now, it makes sense that viewers weren't able to see the social commentary in all the mindless mayhem.
As the show progressed, Judge subtly tweaked the show to focus more on the duo's stupidity, neutralizing their malicious tendencies to a certain degree. Three or four seasons into the show, Beavis and Butthead were not so much destructive thugs as they were clueless losers. At times, they even appeared to be well meaning, yet they would still unwittingly cause the same amount of pain due to their idiocy. Make no mistake, their victims suffered just as much, but Judge shifted the malice of the protagonists away from other people and towards each other. Of course with this maturity, the show itself also reached a new peak in terms of writing. It was still stupid, but the stupidity was well-crafted and brilliantly applied.
I may lack the authority to write this article, because I mainly experienced Beavis and Butthead through videotapes. Growing up without cable, I was only able to see the story segments and mostly missed the duo's commentaries on music videos interspersed throughout the show. Mike Judge essentially improvises a conversation as two characters while a music video plays, which is no easy feat. I have seen a few of them, and while they obviously lack the same quality of animation and writing seen in the stories, they do have a certain off-the-cuff charm.
Unlike The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead ended before the millennium and is forever tied to '90s culture and society. Everything from the show's take on a run down San Fernando-like suburb (most likely set in Texas) to the very notion of two teenagers being obsessed with heavy metal screams early '90s. This was made clear when Judge revived the show for a short while in 2011. It was an awkward shock to see B&B taking it somewhat easy on easy targets like MTV's Jersey Shore and attempting to become vampires after watching Twilight.
While Beavis & Butthead is distinctly a '90s creation, I love it in spite of that fact. Like many other subversive '90s shows, it stood in stark contrast to the tradition of shows like Home Improvement, The Cosby Show and Friends. Beavis and Butthead glorified depraved, moronic losers and gave them character in the tradition of Homer Simpson or Al Bundy. One of my favorite elements about the show are the unwritten rules that Beavis and Butthead can never win, nor can they ever learn. This gave the characters an "everyman" quality that was as hilarious as it was relatable.
Since the 1990's, comedy has shifted between empty shock value, intentional awkwardness and witless sarcastic deadpan. I really miss shows that weren't afraid to be silly, random or self-deprecating. They were more subversive of mainstream culture (before they ended up defining it) and made us all feel a little better in our humble lives in a way you won't see in a Seth Rogen movie. The message then was that life sucks, but you've got to learn to be okay with it. Huh huh huh huh....
One of the the most iconic cultural touchstones of the 1990's was MTV's Beavis and Butthead. As a cable show, it didn't endure the same lasting influence as the Fox network monolith The Simpsons, but it did attain a similarly controversial notoriety for a short while. Mike Judge's on-the-nose commentary on the purported "degradation of morality" in America's youth raised as many eyebrows as the comparably childish antics of Bart Simpson, a character who similarly stirred up trouble with social conservatives. Many passed off Beavis and Butthead as crude, immoral and anarchistic pop culture garbage which glorified stupidity and anti-social behavior.
To be fair, early episodes proved these allegations to a certain degree. In its first few seasons, the show was undoubtedly crude in both its writing and animation. That's the case for most animated series. In the first season, the series' protagonists could be seen engaging in vandalism on hapless victims and randomly uttering such non-sequiturs as "I don't like stuff that sucks!" Watching those episodes now, it makes sense that viewers weren't able to see the social commentary in all the mindless mayhem.
As the show progressed, Judge subtly tweaked the show to focus more on the duo's stupidity, neutralizing their malicious tendencies to a certain degree. Three or four seasons into the show, Beavis and Butthead were not so much destructive thugs as they were clueless losers. At times, they even appeared to be well meaning, yet they would still unwittingly cause the same amount of pain due to their idiocy. Make no mistake, their victims suffered just as much, but Judge shifted the malice of the protagonists away from other people and towards each other. Of course with this maturity, the show itself also reached a new peak in terms of writing. It was still stupid, but the stupidity was well-crafted and brilliantly applied.
I may lack the authority to write this article, because I mainly experienced Beavis and Butthead through videotapes. Growing up without cable, I was only able to see the story segments and mostly missed the duo's commentaries on music videos interspersed throughout the show. Mike Judge essentially improvises a conversation as two characters while a music video plays, which is no easy feat. I have seen a few of them, and while they obviously lack the same quality of animation and writing seen in the stories, they do have a certain off-the-cuff charm.
Unlike The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead ended before the millennium and is forever tied to '90s culture and society. Everything from the show's take on a run down San Fernando-like suburb (most likely set in Texas) to the very notion of two teenagers being obsessed with heavy metal screams early '90s. This was made clear when Judge revived the show for a short while in 2011. It was an awkward shock to see B&B taking it somewhat easy on easy targets like MTV's Jersey Shore and attempting to become vampires after watching Twilight.
While Beavis & Butthead is distinctly a '90s creation, I love it in spite of that fact. Like many other subversive '90s shows, it stood in stark contrast to the tradition of shows like Home Improvement, The Cosby Show and Friends. Beavis and Butthead glorified depraved, moronic losers and gave them character in the tradition of Homer Simpson or Al Bundy. One of my favorite elements about the show are the unwritten rules that Beavis and Butthead can never win, nor can they ever learn. This gave the characters an "everyman" quality that was as hilarious as it was relatable.
Since the 1990's, comedy has shifted between empty shock value, intentional awkwardness and witless sarcastic deadpan. I really miss shows that weren't afraid to be silly, random or self-deprecating. They were more subversive of mainstream culture (before they ended up defining it) and made us all feel a little better in our humble lives in a way you won't see in a Seth Rogen movie. The message then was that life sucks, but you've got to learn to be okay with it. Huh huh huh huh....
Friday, September 9, 2016
The Time I Played Music for Scientologists
I'd like to relate a story of one of the most memorable musical performances I've ever had. It's a story I tell to break the ice at a bar or to entertain new friends in class. It's not memorable on account of being a great performance. It was actually quite disastrous, yet it was also one of the most fun nights I've ever had playing music to people. Why? I was playing to Scientologists.
In early 2011, I was casually jamming with James (drums) and Anthony (bass) in the former's garage. We had just begun playing together for the first time in a few months, having been a consistent outfit in the years leading up to an extended break in late 2010. We were a ramshackle group with no real musical training, but we had kept at it so steadily that we had developed a tight rapport and a sizable repertoire, rooted in Tom Petty and Prince covers. Every once in awhile, the elusive and enigmatic multi-instrumentalist Waldo (nicknamed by me) would join us on keyboards, mostly when he felt like it. Together, we had gleefully and tastelessly dubbed ourselves "The Erotic Four". The joke's funnier when you can actually see us.
I had also been speaking to a singer named Dana on craigslist. I had just attempted to start an R&B / Funk oriented group which was pronounced dead before arrival, so at this point I was attempting to return to my classic rock roots, so to speak. Dana was the perfect fit, heavily identifying herself with the culture and music of the '70s as explored in Almost Famous. She was the classic example of an ambitious girl from a small town in Virginia taking her first optimistic steps on the gory glory of Hollywood Boulevard. I had negotiated for the Erotic Four to become her backing band.
I don't even think we even had a chance to rehearse before Dana enlisted us in a "showcase" at a Hollywood hotel on Franklin Boulevard. We were obviously nervous at the idea of playing a show without a chance to rehearse with our lead singer, but she assured us we would only be playing two songs and it would be an opportunity worth taking. We decided to play "Cherry Bomb" by the Runaways (one of Dana's favorites) and Tom Petty's "Free Fallin", a three chord song we already knew by heart and could not possibly bungle.
In the afternoon before the show, I rehearsed "Cherry Bomb" with James and Anthony. We figured it could only help to rehearse the song, even without the singer. We had listened to the recording and played it instrumentally over ten times. By 4:00 PM, we had the song down pat. We didn't even bother with the other song, as it had become second nature to us. We had also been talking to Waldo throughout the day. Whenever he would make the effort to show up to practice, it was something of an event. When he called on this particular day, we invited him to join us just for the joy of playing with him again, even though we hadn't practiced with him for about six months. He remembered "Free Fallin" as well as we did and I figured he could fake his way through the easy "Cherry Bomb", so we weren't concerned.
By 5:30 PM or so, Anthony, James and myself loaded our gear into James' truck and headed to Hollywood to try and find the hotel before the show, which began at 7:00 PM. Waldo decided to meet us there later, though we were all skeptical as to how he would successfully navigate his way through Hollywood during the traffic infested evening. We already knew he would confidently leave at 6:30 and arrive an hour after the show had commenced.
We turned out to be the lost ones, as the traffic and poor phone coordination with Dana led us all over Hollywood in the healthy evening traffic, from her apartment near Miracle Mile to the edge of Silverlake. Even she had trouble finding this mysterious hotel. Twenty minutes before the show, we had all given up and decided its existence must have been some sort of grand hoax. I remember there were half-serious talks of just cutting our losses and going home. Then we received a call from Waldo, who not only found the hotel but was wondering where we were! Somehow he had made it to Hollywood in twenty odd minutes and found what we'd all been seeking for an hour.
Miraculously, we found time to stop at a Tommy's Burgers nearby before we met Dana in the parking lot of the hotel. She presented us with two very interesting surprises. Firstly, she had brought her friend Brittany (who we'd never even met) to join us for both songs on guitar. I took one look at her $80 bedroom practice amplifier and already knew how this would affect our sound. Secondly, Dana had just learned that the entire event was being curated by the Church of Scientology. We all looked at each other and shared a million punchlines without uttering a word.
The evening was already escalating as we carried our gear into the hotel. I was amused to see that Dana had convinced a manager (unaffiliated with the church) into securing us a "dressing room" behind the auditorium stage, even though he meekly reminded us that it was highly unorthodox to allow a band performing just two songs to use it. We certainly made great use of it. With Brittany and Waldo joining us, our group was now a six piece mini-orchestra. We sprawled two metric tons worth of amplifiers, instruments and purses across the tiny room we had demanded of the staff.
After we were allowed to set up our gear onstage, we were ominously invited to sit down in the audience and enjoy a "presentation". Again, we shared a million nervous jokes just by glancing at each other. Along with about five or six other groups and their collective entourage, we watched as a middle aged man in glasses and a business suit take the stage. He began his speech with a disclaimer: "People say a lot of things about us, but most of it's untrue." This eased my fears until he showed us an eight second silent video of flashing green lights, after which he asked the audience "So what did you think of that?" I was convinced that I would wake up brainwashed the next morning.
A minute later, he made an odd joke about the Holocaust which drew dead silence apart from an unusually loud yawn from James, who was tired of driving us around all day. Anthony later informed me that whenever the speaker would share something ridiculous every few seconds, I would very obviously grin and elbow the person sitting next to me. Along with our demand for a dressing room, we were turning out to be something of a rude crew.
When we were finally invited to take the stage, the manager read our set list as a cue card and introduced us as THE RUNAWAYS, performing our song "Cherry Bomb". Thankfully, Joan Jett wasn't notified. James, Waldo and I walked directly from the front row to our places onstage. We were unaware that Dana, Brittany and Anthony left the auditorium to go around and make a more suitable stage entrance. The three of us onstage awkwardly stood in front a silent audience for what felt like an eternity. Unable to deal with this truly uncomfortable situation, I led the trio into an impromptu version of one of our old set pieces, Prince's "Kiss" while we waited for the rest of the band. I figured it was more compelling than standing there in silence.
We cut the song after a few bars when the other three members finally took the stage. Dana half jokingly exclaimed "Jerk!" as she passed me. We kicked into a shambolic version of "Cherry Bomb", in which Waldo and Brittany were finding their way through the song. It didn't matter, because no one could hear Brittany's guitar through that tiny amp. I thought to myself, "We're better prepared for the next song. We're going to save ourselves."
I hadn't taken into consideration the fact that rehearsal works best when the whole band rehearses together. James, Anthony, Waldo and I played "Free Fallin" a hundred times together before. We knew every line and every block of its structure by heart. That didn't prepare us for the moment when Dana prematurely led us to a point in the song where we were supposed to stop. Hearing her sing that line, half of the band improvised and stopped. The other half ignored her and kept playing. This threw us off balance so much that I ended the song with the worst guitar solo I've ever played on stage.
Afterward, we were invited to hear the rest of the bands play. Of course we declined, opting to collect our gear and leave immediately. After rampaging in at the last minute, demanding a dressing room and snickering during the entire presentation, we were leaving with the faintest of goodbyes. We all went to Mel's Diner in the heart of Hollywood to discuss the experience and reclaim our brains with salty American diner fare. Waldo left a two dollar tip and we loudly announced it for kicks.
A few days after our bumbling performance and disruptive behavior, Dana informed us that the Church invited us back for another performance.
In early 2011, I was casually jamming with James (drums) and Anthony (bass) in the former's garage. We had just begun playing together for the first time in a few months, having been a consistent outfit in the years leading up to an extended break in late 2010. We were a ramshackle group with no real musical training, but we had kept at it so steadily that we had developed a tight rapport and a sizable repertoire, rooted in Tom Petty and Prince covers. Every once in awhile, the elusive and enigmatic multi-instrumentalist Waldo (nicknamed by me) would join us on keyboards, mostly when he felt like it. Together, we had gleefully and tastelessly dubbed ourselves "The Erotic Four". The joke's funnier when you can actually see us.
I had also been speaking to a singer named Dana on craigslist. I had just attempted to start an R&B / Funk oriented group which was pronounced dead before arrival, so at this point I was attempting to return to my classic rock roots, so to speak. Dana was the perfect fit, heavily identifying herself with the culture and music of the '70s as explored in Almost Famous. She was the classic example of an ambitious girl from a small town in Virginia taking her first optimistic steps on the gory glory of Hollywood Boulevard. I had negotiated for the Erotic Four to become her backing band.
I don't even think we even had a chance to rehearse before Dana enlisted us in a "showcase" at a Hollywood hotel on Franklin Boulevard. We were obviously nervous at the idea of playing a show without a chance to rehearse with our lead singer, but she assured us we would only be playing two songs and it would be an opportunity worth taking. We decided to play "Cherry Bomb" by the Runaways (one of Dana's favorites) and Tom Petty's "Free Fallin", a three chord song we already knew by heart and could not possibly bungle.
In the afternoon before the show, I rehearsed "Cherry Bomb" with James and Anthony. We figured it could only help to rehearse the song, even without the singer. We had listened to the recording and played it instrumentally over ten times. By 4:00 PM, we had the song down pat. We didn't even bother with the other song, as it had become second nature to us. We had also been talking to Waldo throughout the day. Whenever he would make the effort to show up to practice, it was something of an event. When he called on this particular day, we invited him to join us just for the joy of playing with him again, even though we hadn't practiced with him for about six months. He remembered "Free Fallin" as well as we did and I figured he could fake his way through the easy "Cherry Bomb", so we weren't concerned.
By 5:30 PM or so, Anthony, James and myself loaded our gear into James' truck and headed to Hollywood to try and find the hotel before the show, which began at 7:00 PM. Waldo decided to meet us there later, though we were all skeptical as to how he would successfully navigate his way through Hollywood during the traffic infested evening. We already knew he would confidently leave at 6:30 and arrive an hour after the show had commenced.
We turned out to be the lost ones, as the traffic and poor phone coordination with Dana led us all over Hollywood in the healthy evening traffic, from her apartment near Miracle Mile to the edge of Silverlake. Even she had trouble finding this mysterious hotel. Twenty minutes before the show, we had all given up and decided its existence must have been some sort of grand hoax. I remember there were half-serious talks of just cutting our losses and going home. Then we received a call from Waldo, who not only found the hotel but was wondering where we were! Somehow he had made it to Hollywood in twenty odd minutes and found what we'd all been seeking for an hour.
Miraculously, we found time to stop at a Tommy's Burgers nearby before we met Dana in the parking lot of the hotel. She presented us with two very interesting surprises. Firstly, she had brought her friend Brittany (who we'd never even met) to join us for both songs on guitar. I took one look at her $80 bedroom practice amplifier and already knew how this would affect our sound. Secondly, Dana had just learned that the entire event was being curated by the Church of Scientology. We all looked at each other and shared a million punchlines without uttering a word.
The evening was already escalating as we carried our gear into the hotel. I was amused to see that Dana had convinced a manager (unaffiliated with the church) into securing us a "dressing room" behind the auditorium stage, even though he meekly reminded us that it was highly unorthodox to allow a band performing just two songs to use it. We certainly made great use of it. With Brittany and Waldo joining us, our group was now a six piece mini-orchestra. We sprawled two metric tons worth of amplifiers, instruments and purses across the tiny room we had demanded of the staff.
After we were allowed to set up our gear onstage, we were ominously invited to sit down in the audience and enjoy a "presentation". Again, we shared a million nervous jokes just by glancing at each other. Along with about five or six other groups and their collective entourage, we watched as a middle aged man in glasses and a business suit take the stage. He began his speech with a disclaimer: "People say a lot of things about us, but most of it's untrue." This eased my fears until he showed us an eight second silent video of flashing green lights, after which he asked the audience "So what did you think of that?" I was convinced that I would wake up brainwashed the next morning.
A minute later, he made an odd joke about the Holocaust which drew dead silence apart from an unusually loud yawn from James, who was tired of driving us around all day. Anthony later informed me that whenever the speaker would share something ridiculous every few seconds, I would very obviously grin and elbow the person sitting next to me. Along with our demand for a dressing room, we were turning out to be something of a rude crew.
When we were finally invited to take the stage, the manager read our set list as a cue card and introduced us as THE RUNAWAYS, performing our song "Cherry Bomb". Thankfully, Joan Jett wasn't notified. James, Waldo and I walked directly from the front row to our places onstage. We were unaware that Dana, Brittany and Anthony left the auditorium to go around and make a more suitable stage entrance. The three of us onstage awkwardly stood in front a silent audience for what felt like an eternity. Unable to deal with this truly uncomfortable situation, I led the trio into an impromptu version of one of our old set pieces, Prince's "Kiss" while we waited for the rest of the band. I figured it was more compelling than standing there in silence.
We cut the song after a few bars when the other three members finally took the stage. Dana half jokingly exclaimed "Jerk!" as she passed me. We kicked into a shambolic version of "Cherry Bomb", in which Waldo and Brittany were finding their way through the song. It didn't matter, because no one could hear Brittany's guitar through that tiny amp. I thought to myself, "We're better prepared for the next song. We're going to save ourselves."
I hadn't taken into consideration the fact that rehearsal works best when the whole band rehearses together. James, Anthony, Waldo and I played "Free Fallin" a hundred times together before. We knew every line and every block of its structure by heart. That didn't prepare us for the moment when Dana prematurely led us to a point in the song where we were supposed to stop. Hearing her sing that line, half of the band improvised and stopped. The other half ignored her and kept playing. This threw us off balance so much that I ended the song with the worst guitar solo I've ever played on stage.
Afterward, we were invited to hear the rest of the bands play. Of course we declined, opting to collect our gear and leave immediately. After rampaging in at the last minute, demanding a dressing room and snickering during the entire presentation, we were leaving with the faintest of goodbyes. We all went to Mel's Diner in the heart of Hollywood to discuss the experience and reclaim our brains with salty American diner fare. Waldo left a two dollar tip and we loudly announced it for kicks.
A few days after our bumbling performance and disruptive behavior, Dana informed us that the Church invited us back for another performance.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Suburban Love, Pt. 1
Autumn night falls on the city of the mundane
Faceless wives run weeping to their quarters
as nameless husbands drag them from the path
When dawn breaks, they rise in an immaculate reveille
University Road shines with its evergreens
Casting shadows on otherwise spotless vans
What a picturesque guise for the reincarnated conquerors
What a way to incarcerate your hostility
In our favorite corporate coffee house
Aged artifact ghosts of girls I'd know only by name
And of the slightly more youthful variety,
Mannequins with their own expiration date
At their sides, stocky second husbands
Clad in thin wire frames and wallets protruding
A far cry from the former elite,
Who won this Shakespearean love triangle decades ago
They are the fabric of this world,
Inheritors of family values.
The framework for our assigned ambitions,
Models for our coveting eyes and wounded envy
In these tragic figures, there's a reflection of me
Or at least who I'd grown to want to be
Who could imagine, the tense perversions
Brewing in the spirits of the nondescript?
Faceless wives run weeping to their quarters
as nameless husbands drag them from the path
When dawn breaks, they rise in an immaculate reveille
University Road shines with its evergreens
Casting shadows on otherwise spotless vans
What a picturesque guise for the reincarnated conquerors
What a way to incarcerate your hostility
In our favorite corporate coffee house
Aged artifact ghosts of girls I'd know only by name
And of the slightly more youthful variety,
Mannequins with their own expiration date
At their sides, stocky second husbands
Clad in thin wire frames and wallets protruding
A far cry from the former elite,
Who won this Shakespearean love triangle decades ago
They are the fabric of this world,
Inheritors of family values.
The framework for our assigned ambitions,
Models for our coveting eyes and wounded envy
In these tragic figures, there's a reflection of me
Or at least who I'd grown to want to be
Who could imagine, the tense perversions
Brewing in the spirits of the nondescript?
Saturday, September 3, 2016
A General Observation of Politics in America
I've always been relatively low-key when it comes to politics. I have convictions as strong as anyone else, but I usually opt to present them only in the most appropriate of situations. Political discussions are inherently divisive in America, and disagreements on emotional issues often sour relationships. The most controversial topics seem so fundamental and moral to people on either side of the equation, thus it's hard for someone not to interpret disagreement as ignorance or inhumanity. Without an established sense of mutual trust and respect, it's always been a losing game to me.
While we have plenty of gray area, our culture is mostly categorized by two major belief systems. If anything, that oversimplification is part of the problem. Almost anyone with internet access has seen exchanges between individuals in which the words "liberal" and "conservative" are tossed back and forth like schoolyard taunts. Amazingly, the information era has allowed this plague to reach middle-school age children. When I was in seventh grade, we called each other all sorts of names but I don't ever remember kids taunting each other for their stance on abortion. Now it's not unusual to see a video featuring Hillary Clinton peppered with inscrutable, profane insults I used to see playing online shooter games. Sometimes in lieu of profanity, people might simply say "she's a liberal feminist" as if it were a phrase of oppression.
Sadly, these exchanges aren't limited to preteens in the YouTube comments section. I've seen the very same taunting and name calling from political pundits on news segments. It's even become the main feature of presidential campaigns, which was never more apparent than in 2016. It's shocking to think that speeches and debates are supposed to be platforms to communicate important ideas, yet they've been reduced to such anti-intellectual soap operas in which very few actual ideas are being communicated. And though it's something of a signature for major conservative figures, both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this trend. It's just a function of today's entertainment-fueled political process.
It's admirable to be outspoken about your beliefs. It's usually a sign of passion and character. Furthermore, ideas must be communicated bluntly for any real discussions to follow. However, strong expression in any category seldom produces the reactions expected of listeners. I've observed very few instances of someone completely changing the opinion of another by aggressively approaching a topic. It makes sense, in a way. You're more likely to hear someone if they are speaking rather than shouting. There must be a psychological dynamic at play, one which blocks incoming messages if they're being communicated in an incendiary manner.
It boils down to whether the message is being communicated in a positive or negative manner. More specifically, I think a message being communicated in an outspoken manner tends to verge more on the negative. The speaker sees an injustice and attempts to point it out by focusing on what is wrong, usually by pointing out a flaw or ignorance in the audience. Whether or not it's a correct observation, most people generally won't respond to a challenge of character by admitting that they've been wrong. I think it's more likely to produce feelings of opposition, in a sort of defense.
The second approach, which I've found to be more effective is more low key in nature. I liken it to the "answer only when asked" proverb. Some might say it's not as venerable or honest as being outspoken, but I think it's a much more effective way to communicate ideas. I've been constantly chastised by more outspoken friends for not doing my part to highlight the "wrong" opinions I observe in my friends and family every day. As a socially liberal person, one might be shocked to see how many connections I have who are more conservative, or downright prejudice. One might ask why I haven't yet axed these connections if they hold immoral or ignorant viewpoints.
Well, truthfully very few people ask me that because it's a stupid question. I posed it myself for the sake of rhetoric. We all have "bad apples" in our social batches, no matter who we are or what we believe in. I haven't broken those connections, because it's hypocritical to profess myself a supporter of change and tolerance when I'm engaging in the opposite. If we aren't trying to change the minds of the "ignorant", whose minds do we have left to change? Of course while I relish variety and a healthy difference of opinion, I would like to see more unity out there in the world, one way or another. The question is, how do we find that unity?
I look at my friends with the strongest opposing opinions to mine and realize that we obviously didn't bond over our beliefs. In most cases, they tend to be people with whom I had a friendly, casual connection through avenues like high school or having mutual friends. When our opinions eventually arose, they didn't divide us, for we'd already established a firm sense of mutual respect and understanding. If anything, we'd made progress and learned from each other. With every one of those connections, I learn not to demonize or generalize social conservatives. In turn, they have the chance to truly see a minority as a person and not a demographic. That in itself is more progress than I could have ever made by starting off our friendship with a debate on political correctness.
Watching our current sociopolitical climate become ever more divisive, this is something I think about every day. Considering how our differences are even leading to violent confrontations, it makes me wonder if perhaps all of this tension will come to a radical conclusion. It's been well over a century since our last civil war, though the civil rights movement of the 1960's certainly made more than a few people wonder whether or not we were headed toward the same path. Are we due for another war, a progressive revolution or both? Of course I'd prefer the narrative where everyone just mellows out out and bonds over the most inane activities. Until then, I'll enjoy the soap opera Twitter war that is the 2016 presidential elections.
While we have plenty of gray area, our culture is mostly categorized by two major belief systems. If anything, that oversimplification is part of the problem. Almost anyone with internet access has seen exchanges between individuals in which the words "liberal" and "conservative" are tossed back and forth like schoolyard taunts. Amazingly, the information era has allowed this plague to reach middle-school age children. When I was in seventh grade, we called each other all sorts of names but I don't ever remember kids taunting each other for their stance on abortion. Now it's not unusual to see a video featuring Hillary Clinton peppered with inscrutable, profane insults I used to see playing online shooter games. Sometimes in lieu of profanity, people might simply say "she's a liberal feminist" as if it were a phrase of oppression.
Sadly, these exchanges aren't limited to preteens in the YouTube comments section. I've seen the very same taunting and name calling from political pundits on news segments. It's even become the main feature of presidential campaigns, which was never more apparent than in 2016. It's shocking to think that speeches and debates are supposed to be platforms to communicate important ideas, yet they've been reduced to such anti-intellectual soap operas in which very few actual ideas are being communicated. And though it's something of a signature for major conservative figures, both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this trend. It's just a function of today's entertainment-fueled political process.
It's admirable to be outspoken about your beliefs. It's usually a sign of passion and character. Furthermore, ideas must be communicated bluntly for any real discussions to follow. However, strong expression in any category seldom produces the reactions expected of listeners. I've observed very few instances of someone completely changing the opinion of another by aggressively approaching a topic. It makes sense, in a way. You're more likely to hear someone if they are speaking rather than shouting. There must be a psychological dynamic at play, one which blocks incoming messages if they're being communicated in an incendiary manner.
It boils down to whether the message is being communicated in a positive or negative manner. More specifically, I think a message being communicated in an outspoken manner tends to verge more on the negative. The speaker sees an injustice and attempts to point it out by focusing on what is wrong, usually by pointing out a flaw or ignorance in the audience. Whether or not it's a correct observation, most people generally won't respond to a challenge of character by admitting that they've been wrong. I think it's more likely to produce feelings of opposition, in a sort of defense.
The second approach, which I've found to be more effective is more low key in nature. I liken it to the "answer only when asked" proverb. Some might say it's not as venerable or honest as being outspoken, but I think it's a much more effective way to communicate ideas. I've been constantly chastised by more outspoken friends for not doing my part to highlight the "wrong" opinions I observe in my friends and family every day. As a socially liberal person, one might be shocked to see how many connections I have who are more conservative, or downright prejudice. One might ask why I haven't yet axed these connections if they hold immoral or ignorant viewpoints.
Well, truthfully very few people ask me that because it's a stupid question. I posed it myself for the sake of rhetoric. We all have "bad apples" in our social batches, no matter who we are or what we believe in. I haven't broken those connections, because it's hypocritical to profess myself a supporter of change and tolerance when I'm engaging in the opposite. If we aren't trying to change the minds of the "ignorant", whose minds do we have left to change? Of course while I relish variety and a healthy difference of opinion, I would like to see more unity out there in the world, one way or another. The question is, how do we find that unity?
I look at my friends with the strongest opposing opinions to mine and realize that we obviously didn't bond over our beliefs. In most cases, they tend to be people with whom I had a friendly, casual connection through avenues like high school or having mutual friends. When our opinions eventually arose, they didn't divide us, for we'd already established a firm sense of mutual respect and understanding. If anything, we'd made progress and learned from each other. With every one of those connections, I learn not to demonize or generalize social conservatives. In turn, they have the chance to truly see a minority as a person and not a demographic. That in itself is more progress than I could have ever made by starting off our friendship with a debate on political correctness.
Watching our current sociopolitical climate become ever more divisive, this is something I think about every day. Considering how our differences are even leading to violent confrontations, it makes me wonder if perhaps all of this tension will come to a radical conclusion. It's been well over a century since our last civil war, though the civil rights movement of the 1960's certainly made more than a few people wonder whether or not we were headed toward the same path. Are we due for another war, a progressive revolution or both? Of course I'd prefer the narrative where everyone just mellows out out and bonds over the most inane activities. Until then, I'll enjoy the soap opera Twitter war that is the 2016 presidential elections.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Why I Gave Up The Walking Dead (SPOILERS)
At this point, it's safe to say the zombie mania boom that surfaced in the midst of the 2000's has somewhat petered out. 2004's Shaun of the Dead and the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead inspired subgenre godfather George Romero to provide a long-awaited sequel to his Dawn almost thirty years after its release. From then on, we were treated to an endless spate of films, books and video games featuring the living dead. It finally came to a head when Brad Pitt was cast in the PG:13-rated World War Z and someone decided that fusing teen romance melodrama with zombies in Warm Bodies was a good idea.
The Walking Dead first aired toward the end of this craze in 2010, yet it's still going strong. It has the advantage of being based on beloved comic series still in production, and one of its greatest appeals is its cliffhanger-heavy soap opera approach to a zombie apocalypse. At the dawn of its seventh season, viewers are no longer intrigued by the concept of how society would function after it's plagued by zombies or how killing zombies with melee weapons is more efficient than using guns. No, people are still watching The Walking Dead because they want to see who's going to survive, who's going to hook up and which beloved comic book characters will finally make their debut.
The show is completely self-aware of this addicted following and takes advantage of it. By the second season, the show runners decided to devote the first half of the season to the disappearance of a young girl. That wasn't so bad, as it allowed for much story and character development while the cast convened with another set of survivors on a farm. The clash and eventual bonding of these two groups was important and fun to watch, so when the girl finally turned up, there was a satisfying resolution.
By the third season, a new trend developed. The plot was centered on the group taking over a prison, and a growing tension with developed community called Woodbury. This tension was not built in a roller coaster fashion. Instead, there would be back to back episodes with very little plot development interspersed with a lone episode (usually a premier or finale) in which too much happens within the hour time slot. New characters would be introduced and given more development than the primary cast only to be killed soon after. Worst of all, the long-awaited showdown which had been brewing for almost a year didn't even happen by the third season's conclusion. The writers found it more profitable to postpone the bloodbath viewers had been craving until halfway through the next season.
This trend of postponing the action for inconsequential, barely related drama cooled somewhat over the next season and a half. The show was still teasing viewers with the hint of a favorite character's possible demise, but it felt justified since the group was split in several different factions, so it wasn't terribly annoying when the focus would shift to a new character just after a cliffhanger episode. There were plenty of different subplots to develop within season 4 and 5, so this made the action all the more interesting and rewarding when it would happen. It seemed the show had finally found a balance.
This changed in Season 6, when the survivors established itself at the Alexandra Safe Zone, a haven in which they still remain in the comic series. At this point, the show's next logical move to follow the comic story would be to introduce its primary antagonist, Negan. However, since the show was dominating the ratings at this point, the creators decided they needed to create a season's worth of drama before bringing Negan into the fold. This is problematic, since there's very little that can happen when the group finally settles into their destined home base. Walkers can attack and people can come and go. That's about it.
At this point, a culture had finally surfaced on the internet surrounding the show. People would be scouring for spoilers on Facebook or requesting that their friends refrain from spoiling the plot. This sort of buzz was the bread and butter of the show at this point, and so the writers decided instead of writing an engaging plot, they would write episodes specifically centered around teasing a character's death. This culminated in the show's worst offense, in my opinion. The creators decided to produce a farfetched episode in which series favorite Glenn is clearly implied to have died, or so it appeared. The episode was intentionally directed to make his relatively ambiguous, and his survival was ridiculously explained after three or four weeks of keeping the viewers waiting for a resolution.
When I finally learned that Glenn had survived, I didn't even care by that point. The writers had just wasted the viewers' time with their teasing, following it with three episodes worth of story that seemed completely inconsequential in comparison. No one cared what was happening on the show with Glenn's life hanging on the line, and it was a bad move to follow the cliffhanger with episodes of such slow pacing with no substantial plot development. This is when I realized the writers weren't even trying to come up with a decent, engaging story line anymore. They knew we were invested in the characters and started to write episodes specifically for the purpose of screwing with the audience rather than telling an interesting story.
Ironically, this focus on stimulating viewers' reaction provoked an adverse one from me. Who wants to watch a show that isn't even trying to be good anymore? It had finally reached a point where it was pandering to its following, which ultimately where the line is drawn between good art and assembly-line entertainment. It's where innovation ends and monotony ensues. The show that had once intrigued me with the idea of such varied people working together after the world ends had finally turned into a game of "guess who dies next"?
The Walking Dead first aired toward the end of this craze in 2010, yet it's still going strong. It has the advantage of being based on beloved comic series still in production, and one of its greatest appeals is its cliffhanger-heavy soap opera approach to a zombie apocalypse. At the dawn of its seventh season, viewers are no longer intrigued by the concept of how society would function after it's plagued by zombies or how killing zombies with melee weapons is more efficient than using guns. No, people are still watching The Walking Dead because they want to see who's going to survive, who's going to hook up and which beloved comic book characters will finally make their debut.
The show is completely self-aware of this addicted following and takes advantage of it. By the second season, the show runners decided to devote the first half of the season to the disappearance of a young girl. That wasn't so bad, as it allowed for much story and character development while the cast convened with another set of survivors on a farm. The clash and eventual bonding of these two groups was important and fun to watch, so when the girl finally turned up, there was a satisfying resolution.
By the third season, a new trend developed. The plot was centered on the group taking over a prison, and a growing tension with developed community called Woodbury. This tension was not built in a roller coaster fashion. Instead, there would be back to back episodes with very little plot development interspersed with a lone episode (usually a premier or finale) in which too much happens within the hour time slot. New characters would be introduced and given more development than the primary cast only to be killed soon after. Worst of all, the long-awaited showdown which had been brewing for almost a year didn't even happen by the third season's conclusion. The writers found it more profitable to postpone the bloodbath viewers had been craving until halfway through the next season.
This trend of postponing the action for inconsequential, barely related drama cooled somewhat over the next season and a half. The show was still teasing viewers with the hint of a favorite character's possible demise, but it felt justified since the group was split in several different factions, so it wasn't terribly annoying when the focus would shift to a new character just after a cliffhanger episode. There were plenty of different subplots to develop within season 4 and 5, so this made the action all the more interesting and rewarding when it would happen. It seemed the show had finally found a balance.
This changed in Season 6, when the survivors established itself at the Alexandra Safe Zone, a haven in which they still remain in the comic series. At this point, the show's next logical move to follow the comic story would be to introduce its primary antagonist, Negan. However, since the show was dominating the ratings at this point, the creators decided they needed to create a season's worth of drama before bringing Negan into the fold. This is problematic, since there's very little that can happen when the group finally settles into their destined home base. Walkers can attack and people can come and go. That's about it.
At this point, a culture had finally surfaced on the internet surrounding the show. People would be scouring for spoilers on Facebook or requesting that their friends refrain from spoiling the plot. This sort of buzz was the bread and butter of the show at this point, and so the writers decided instead of writing an engaging plot, they would write episodes specifically centered around teasing a character's death. This culminated in the show's worst offense, in my opinion. The creators decided to produce a farfetched episode in which series favorite Glenn is clearly implied to have died, or so it appeared. The episode was intentionally directed to make his relatively ambiguous, and his survival was ridiculously explained after three or four weeks of keeping the viewers waiting for a resolution.
When I finally learned that Glenn had survived, I didn't even care by that point. The writers had just wasted the viewers' time with their teasing, following it with three episodes worth of story that seemed completely inconsequential in comparison. No one cared what was happening on the show with Glenn's life hanging on the line, and it was a bad move to follow the cliffhanger with episodes of such slow pacing with no substantial plot development. This is when I realized the writers weren't even trying to come up with a decent, engaging story line anymore. They knew we were invested in the characters and started to write episodes specifically for the purpose of screwing with the audience rather than telling an interesting story.
Ironically, this focus on stimulating viewers' reaction provoked an adverse one from me. Who wants to watch a show that isn't even trying to be good anymore? It had finally reached a point where it was pandering to its following, which ultimately where the line is drawn between good art and assembly-line entertainment. It's where innovation ends and monotony ensues. The show that had once intrigued me with the idea of such varied people working together after the world ends had finally turned into a game of "guess who dies next"?
Friday, August 26, 2016
Do You Know About Tyler Durden? Remembering Fight Club (Obvious SPOILERS)
Given the first two rules of Fight Club, I was reluctant to write this review at all. However, after trying to tackle a few deeper topics, I've decided to write a simple movie review.
Too bad Fight Club is anything but a simple movie. When it made its debut at the dawn of the millennium, I remember hearing a flurry of controversial buzz about it. Roger Ebert dubbed it "macho porn" in his first review and it seemed to generate a following mainly among my male friends impressed with its more overt moments of violence. I had no problem with violence in cinema as twelve year old, but even as a young critic, I had a problem with films that pandered to demographics for the sake of pandering. Fight Club was unfortunately marketed as macho porn for mindless action fans, so I skipped over it for many years.
I didn't have the chance to experience the movie until a junior college English composition class. The focus of the class was reflections of art and literature in society. When our professor took out two days of our schedule to watch Fight Club, I was wondering if we were going to study the film from an ironic perspective, or perhaps study the effects of violence in cinema. When the credits rolled to the Pixies classic "Where is My Mind", I was left with a bad taste. The movie just didn't sit well with me. I couldn't get over the film's overall nasty tone and its puzzling, juvenile off-color jokes interspersed with a few gross beatings. I disliked Brad Pitt's smug Tyler Durden so much, I was actually upset he got away with half the things he did in the film, even if he was a figment of someone imagination. A week later, I still couldn't get the film out of my head. It was like a car wreck; appalling yet I was compelled enough to buy the DVD. A few months and ten views after the class ended, Fight Club somehow raked its way into the top five films I'd seen that year.
My experience with the film isn't an uncommon one. Even its biggest fans like myself will tell you it demands repeat viewings to truly absorb not only its energy and ragged aesthetics, but its deeper messages. Both Edward Norton and director David Fincher have compared it to the counter-culture classic The Graduate. Like that 1967 satirical classic, Fight Club is indeed a coming of age film with social and cultural themes embedded in its dense story.
There is no single answer to the question of what the film is "about". Consumerism? Male aggression? The insecurities of turning thirty? Finding definition and self worth in the "me" generation? The rise to prominence and corruption of an underground cult? The complexities of true love? How about all of the above? Any time I've seen someone attempt to summarize the film's plot in one sentence, they completely overlook another extremely important element of the film. It's not about one or even two of these things, it's about all of them.
Similarly, it's difficult to categorize this movie. For a film called Fight Club with an underground boxing ring as its centerpiece, the fighting itself isn't viewed as a competition or even a persuasive plot device. It's more a symbol of the characters freeing themselves from the confines of a comfortable lifestyle, a form of non-conformist bonding therapy. In a way, fighting is the ultimate anti-social activity and these characters employ it as the ultimate middle finger to the established capitalist society which strips them of their identity. The film begins with a lament on how the narrator has become a helplessly addictive slave to consumer culture and ends with him watching credit card companies crumble to the ground while holding his outcast girlfriend's hand.
With the terrorist activities and completely non-romantic overtones that suggest a love triangle, the film almost reads like American History X meets Pretty in Pink. But while it is far from that, it's also been referred to as a "misunderstood romantic comedy" by the filmmaker. Understandably, the marketing team would have scratched their heads if Fincher pitched his bloody movie as such. But in addition to all of the silly phallic jokes and dark slapstick humor, there is indeed something of a screwball love story at the center of Fight Club. Like the film however, it's a puzzle trying to identify the players. Is the Narrator in love with Marla, or is he jealous of how she domineers Tyler (himself)? Maybe that's why he beats the prettier Jared Leto for becoming Tyler's new "favorite".
I read the book almost ten years after first becoming engrossed with the movie and while the film was surprisingly dedicated in replicating many of the book's lines, I would place it in the "movie did it better" category. For all of the endlessly quotable lines and rich plot twists, there's just something inexplicably rich about experiencing the story onscreen. The ending plot twist is one of the film's most-discussed elements, yet it's not exactly its defining payoff the way one might see in an M. Night Shyamalan film. In fact, the first two acts of Fight Club only become more interesting to watch once you know how it ends.
Ebert was wrong to first label the film as "macho porn". I would argue that it's quite the opposite. The story is not about alpha males flexing their dominance over all others. It's more about insecure men feeling betrayed by their upbringing, which has stripped them of any self-reassurance. From this perspective, it was a complete stroke of genius to cast Pitt as Tyler Durden. Pitt's Durden is supposed to be the embodiment of male perfection, as wise as he is completely confident and strong. He is the fictitious creation of the Narrator's ambitions for perfection, and appropriately the Narrator's last trial on the road to personal enlightenment is to kill Tyler, effectively letting go of that drive for "perfection". One of my favorite lines from the film follows the Narrator pointing out a Calvin Klein underwear ad, to which Tyler responds "Self improvement is masturbation...now self-destruction?"
As I've grown older and seen it many more times, these deeper themes have only become more relevant and I grow more impressed with how they are presented in such an entertaining manner. For all the bloodshed and relentless beatings, this really is something of an upbeat film in the end. It's the classic story of a lost soul finding redemption and meaning in this crazy world, in an appropriately crazy manner. It's like a twisted, violent version of my favorite film It's a Wonderful Life, another story of a young man at the dawn of his thirties struggling with self-definition in a world perversely obsessed with glamor.
5/5: an all time Top Ten favorite for this viewer.
Too bad Fight Club is anything but a simple movie. When it made its debut at the dawn of the millennium, I remember hearing a flurry of controversial buzz about it. Roger Ebert dubbed it "macho porn" in his first review and it seemed to generate a following mainly among my male friends impressed with its more overt moments of violence. I had no problem with violence in cinema as twelve year old, but even as a young critic, I had a problem with films that pandered to demographics for the sake of pandering. Fight Club was unfortunately marketed as macho porn for mindless action fans, so I skipped over it for many years.
I didn't have the chance to experience the movie until a junior college English composition class. The focus of the class was reflections of art and literature in society. When our professor took out two days of our schedule to watch Fight Club, I was wondering if we were going to study the film from an ironic perspective, or perhaps study the effects of violence in cinema. When the credits rolled to the Pixies classic "Where is My Mind", I was left with a bad taste. The movie just didn't sit well with me. I couldn't get over the film's overall nasty tone and its puzzling, juvenile off-color jokes interspersed with a few gross beatings. I disliked Brad Pitt's smug Tyler Durden so much, I was actually upset he got away with half the things he did in the film, even if he was a figment of someone imagination. A week later, I still couldn't get the film out of my head. It was like a car wreck; appalling yet I was compelled enough to buy the DVD. A few months and ten views after the class ended, Fight Club somehow raked its way into the top five films I'd seen that year.
My experience with the film isn't an uncommon one. Even its biggest fans like myself will tell you it demands repeat viewings to truly absorb not only its energy and ragged aesthetics, but its deeper messages. Both Edward Norton and director David Fincher have compared it to the counter-culture classic The Graduate. Like that 1967 satirical classic, Fight Club is indeed a coming of age film with social and cultural themes embedded in its dense story.
There is no single answer to the question of what the film is "about". Consumerism? Male aggression? The insecurities of turning thirty? Finding definition and self worth in the "me" generation? The rise to prominence and corruption of an underground cult? The complexities of true love? How about all of the above? Any time I've seen someone attempt to summarize the film's plot in one sentence, they completely overlook another extremely important element of the film. It's not about one or even two of these things, it's about all of them.
Similarly, it's difficult to categorize this movie. For a film called Fight Club with an underground boxing ring as its centerpiece, the fighting itself isn't viewed as a competition or even a persuasive plot device. It's more a symbol of the characters freeing themselves from the confines of a comfortable lifestyle, a form of non-conformist bonding therapy. In a way, fighting is the ultimate anti-social activity and these characters employ it as the ultimate middle finger to the established capitalist society which strips them of their identity. The film begins with a lament on how the narrator has become a helplessly addictive slave to consumer culture and ends with him watching credit card companies crumble to the ground while holding his outcast girlfriend's hand.
With the terrorist activities and completely non-romantic overtones that suggest a love triangle, the film almost reads like American History X meets Pretty in Pink. But while it is far from that, it's also been referred to as a "misunderstood romantic comedy" by the filmmaker. Understandably, the marketing team would have scratched their heads if Fincher pitched his bloody movie as such. But in addition to all of the silly phallic jokes and dark slapstick humor, there is indeed something of a screwball love story at the center of Fight Club. Like the film however, it's a puzzle trying to identify the players. Is the Narrator in love with Marla, or is he jealous of how she domineers Tyler (himself)? Maybe that's why he beats the prettier Jared Leto for becoming Tyler's new "favorite".
I read the book almost ten years after first becoming engrossed with the movie and while the film was surprisingly dedicated in replicating many of the book's lines, I would place it in the "movie did it better" category. For all of the endlessly quotable lines and rich plot twists, there's just something inexplicably rich about experiencing the story onscreen. The ending plot twist is one of the film's most-discussed elements, yet it's not exactly its defining payoff the way one might see in an M. Night Shyamalan film. In fact, the first two acts of Fight Club only become more interesting to watch once you know how it ends.
Ebert was wrong to first label the film as "macho porn". I would argue that it's quite the opposite. The story is not about alpha males flexing their dominance over all others. It's more about insecure men feeling betrayed by their upbringing, which has stripped them of any self-reassurance. From this perspective, it was a complete stroke of genius to cast Pitt as Tyler Durden. Pitt's Durden is supposed to be the embodiment of male perfection, as wise as he is completely confident and strong. He is the fictitious creation of the Narrator's ambitions for perfection, and appropriately the Narrator's last trial on the road to personal enlightenment is to kill Tyler, effectively letting go of that drive for "perfection". One of my favorite lines from the film follows the Narrator pointing out a Calvin Klein underwear ad, to which Tyler responds "Self improvement is masturbation...now self-destruction?"
As I've grown older and seen it many more times, these deeper themes have only become more relevant and I grow more impressed with how they are presented in such an entertaining manner. For all the bloodshed and relentless beatings, this really is something of an upbeat film in the end. It's the classic story of a lost soul finding redemption and meaning in this crazy world, in an appropriately crazy manner. It's like a twisted, violent version of my favorite film It's a Wonderful Life, another story of a young man at the dawn of his thirties struggling with self-definition in a world perversely obsessed with glamor.
5/5: an all time Top Ten favorite for this viewer.
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