Wedding DJs will cringe when it is requested

[sovay]

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. 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.

Comments

[a_reasonable_man]

I am afraid John Landis was the director of An American Werewolf in London, so which of them went to your college, or both?

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.

[sovay]

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 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.