Wedding DJs will cringe when it is requested
Normally I dream about media I miss when I wake up, but I have now had the novel and unwelcome experience of dreaming about a movie I have no interest in seeing ever again. As if I would currently feel comfortable at such a thing, I was trapped at a conference where another attendee was presenting a paper on the sexual subversion of an '80's horror-comedy with which I disagreed so violently, I thought maybe none of the organizers had actually seen the film. "Dude," I felt like telling him as he droned on about daring D/s undertones while screening clips from a movie I had loathed on first contact at a high school party and was finding no reasons whatsoever to reconsider as an adult, "I will buy that the image of the lead actress chainsawing a gang of malevolent gnomes crystallized a part of your adolescent sexuality when this film was originally released—and it is exactly the sort of pitch-black gonzo combination of practical effects and boobs that other under circumstances I would respect for its unabashed id-pulp—but there is nothing subversive about a plot which plays its hero's trauma for comedy and showcases its heroine's overwhelming prowess as a way of shaming him into manning up and facing the monsters all solo machismo without a girl to bail him out; it's common or garden, mean-spirited toxic masculinity and the '80's were full of it, as incidentally is this paper." It is impressive to me how much, on waking, I still hate this movie which doesn't even share that much DNA with actual '80's horror-comedies I have bounced off of, e.g. Gremlins (1984) and An American Werewolf in London (1981). I have all this animus stored up against some poor media scholar who doesn't even exist and is in any case guilty of nothing more than wanting the movie of his teenage heart to be more egalitarian than it really was. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch thinks it might be a delayed reaction to Pauline Kael, who did occasion some screaming on my part a couple of nights ago. I am now trying to determine whether it would be a terrible idea to track down a couple of real-world alternatives, just so I can get the genre resettled in my brain. I have finally been able to start watching movies again, but I am having immense difficulty thinking about them in any sustained or intelligent-feeling way. I remain sickeningly tired. And I want that hour and a half of my dream life back.
spatch thinks it might be a delayed reaction to Pauline Kael, who did occasion some screaming on my part a couple of nights ago. I am now trying to determine whether it would be a terrible idea to track down a couple of real-world alternatives, just so I can get the genre resettled in my brain. I have finally been able to start watching movies again, but I am having immense difficulty thinking about them in any sustained or intelligent-feeling way. I remain sickeningly tired. And I want that hour and a half of my dream life back.
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I am more used to them with terrible nightmares, but I feel just as bad about having this nonexistent movie in my head as I do about real ones that have wasted my time! Blech.
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Thank you. I am trying to view it as a reminder that my brain has not somehow just stopped, but I would have preferred a reminder I could enjoy!
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I am sorry about the schlock horror! But you did get it down well.
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Thank you. I enjoy the chaotic conversations of your household, murder turtle included.
I am sorry about the schlock horror! But you did get it down well.
*hugs*
I just want to do something with my waking brain that I enjoy.
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I keep trying to do something about it, but it keeps not working. It is probably time for another round of annoying my doctors.
*hugs*
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Thank you. I have no idea what kind of story it would be, but I will keep it in mind. Share the misery!
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Nine
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At least now I have "Return to Sender" stuck in my head.
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Thank you!
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Thank you! It made a change from my usual nightmares, but I still didn't appreciate it!
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That sounds much more pleasant, thank you. I'm glad you managed to finish it before the recall!
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I'm curious to hear what you screamed about Pauline Kael. I read her reviews devotedly once upon a time.
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I try to avoid truly dreadful films of any sort, but this one cheated!
I've seen very few horror films at all, actually, but one of them was _American Werewolf in London_, which I think I caught because John Sayles went to my college, and I felt loosely connected to him.
I am afraid John Landis was the director of An American Werewolf in London, so which of them went to your college, or both?
Have you written anywhere about why you dislike it?
For a meme, briefly, yes! It is conceivable that I might have bounced less had I gone into it with different expectations, but I have never felt enough like rewatching it to be sure. I really bounced.
And now I'm curious to hear what you screamed about Pauline Kael. I read her reviews devotedly once upon a time.
Historically I've read very little of her, except that once I disagreed with her about Jules Dassin's Phaedra (1962) to the point of generating a poem. Last week I dipped into Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968) and hit her review of Olivier's Othello (1965) and aside from the fact that her approving description of his performance put me off seeing it even more than the fundamental problem of the blackface which I have known about since high school, her claim that:
"Part of the pleasure of the performance is, of course, the sheer feat of Olivier's transforming himself into a Negro; yet it is not wasted effort, not mere exhibitionism or actor's vanity, for what Negro actor at this stage in the world's history could dare bring to the role the effrontery that Olivier does, and which Negro actor could give it this reading? I saw Paul Robeson and he was not black as Olivier is; Finlay can hate Olivier in a way Jose Ferrer did not dare—indeed did not have the provocation—to hate Robeson. Possibly Negro actors need to sharpen themselves on white roles before they can play a Negro. It is not enough to be: for great drama, it is the awareness that is everything."
read like an unwitting admission that she accepted Olivier's Othello over Robeson's because Olivier was playing a white idea of blackness whereas Robeson was playing a black man and as such was consequently less believable to her expectations, which then felt like a dictionary definition of the ways in which racism deforms not just representation but perception and she didn't seem to notice. There are real conversations to be had about what it means to be a marginalized actor taking on a part written so far from the outside, so deep in racist convention and performance tradition; in Shakespeare, cf. The Merchant of Venice. Kael didn't seem interested in the conversations, sweepingly dismissing the work of black actors in black roles as mere being rather than real acting, a culture-war snipe we're still stuck with every time it's decided that diverse casting is one of the cosmpolitan plots destroying the great artistic heritage of the West. So that was inauspicious, and so was an extended argument that it is not just politically disingenuous but artistically pointless to try to represent Native Americans in Westerns as anything other than the terrifying primitive unknown because violence committed by white actors just isn't as scary, and then I was actually enjoying her review of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) until she flanged off into the theory of glamour:
"It is a supreme asset for actors and actresses to be beautiful; it gives them greater range and greater possibilities for expressiveness. The handsomer they are, the more roles they can play; Olivier can be anything, but who would want to see Ralph Richardson, great as he is, play Antony?"
ME PERSONALLY YOU TRIPLE-GLAZED NIMROD THAT'S WHO and we were done.
I am aware that her criticism is famous and influential and
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Of course, you're right. I could have sworn John Sayles was involved in writing the screenplay, but I must be thinking of The Howling (which I haven't seen).
I read a lot of Kael, but I don't remember reading those passages on blackface! Yikes. Thank you for pointing them out. What I do remember is her big, distinctive writing voice, and her unpredictably interesting take on films. Often, the only things I would read in a given New Yorker were the cartoons and her reviews. I also remember that her review of Street Smart, which began, "Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?", made me aware of him as more than Easy Rider on The Electric Company.
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I haven't, either. I keep thinking about it and then not. My affinity for shape-change doesn't seem to translate automatically into werewolf stories, except in the sort of mutated, folkloric way they filter into serial killer narratives. And Angela Carter and Tanith Lee.
I also remember that her review of Street Smart, which began, "Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?", made me aware of him as more than Easy Rider on The Electric Company.
I mean, that's a legitimate question!
When I had access to The New Yorker, I read Anthony Lane similarly. I could disagree with him, find him too snarky, want to remind him that the definition of science fiction did not rest on whether he liked a film or not, but he was always interesting.