Damn The Onion’s AV Club 2: Electric Boogaloo

I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with The Onion’s AV Club - generally I enjoy reading it, and certainly trust its reviews, but it occasionally things go bad. There’s just something about its writers that don’t seem to realize that they don’t have to take everything so damned seriously.

Earlier, I podcasted about the irritating way in which people will hide from the things that they enjoy by claiming that they really enjoy a certain whatever’s kitsch value. Among the response that I got was a sort of boggle from people who seemed to indicate that they weren’t sure about the claim that I was making.

The AV Club stepped up in my defense thankfully, with this review of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo which comes under the title of: I Watched This On Purpose. Right away you’ve got all the evidence you need that the review’s author, Tasha Robinson, is attempting to separate herself from a movie that she enjoyed. “Guys, I didn’t stumble across this. It was so bad that I Watched This On Purpose.” You can imagine the conversation.

The gist of the I Watched This On Purpose reviews is to act as if the author is willfully standing between the viewer and a bullet. (When you think about it, Tasha Robinson is the Mother Theresa of our time, helping the lepers that we want to ignore…) Right away, the movie is described as “cultural garbage” that is “trashy looking.” The author acknowledges hoping to discover in the film some sort of real reward, but is cautious. There’s this:

Much to our surprise, Breakin’ 2 turned out to be pure, laugh-a-minute cheeseball entertainment. Granted, it’s utterly terrible, with stiff, amateurish acting, enough vivid Day-Glo to blind an army of sunglasses-wearing Corey Harts, and the thinnest and hoariest of thin, hoary old plots.

In other words, “I really enjoyed this film, but acknowledging that would be a bad thing to do without qualifying my enjoyment, so I’ll add that it was an awful movie that was terrible for the following reasons.”

And there’s this conclusion:

At an absolute minimum, 85 percent. Breakin’ 2 is utterly hilarious. Many of the dance sequences are redundant and overlong, but even so, there’s always something ill-conceived and hysterical to look at, from fluffy ’80s hair to terrible fashions. (Apparently full-on school-band uniforms were really hot in the ’80s San Francisco breakdance scene.) The cheesy acting, monumentally trite storyline, and all-around camp level kept our whole musicals-watching party howling in disbelief. It’s a lousy movie to watch alone, or with any serious expectations in mind. But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high. It’s almost—almost—a pity there was never a Breakin’ 3: Electric Jubilee.

Reading those claims is important, because what you’re being asked to do is believe that this movie is totally worthless trash while simultaneously being asked to believe that it is completely enjoyable. Maybe I’m not as subtle as hipsters, but how is it possible that something be both complete trash and wonderfully enjoyable? Based upon her description, she got some friends together, they popped in Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and enjoyed themselves watching it. That sounds like the makings of a good movie, doesn’t it, one in which you and your friends can sit around and enjoy yourselves watching it?

But in hipster world, there are levels of enjoyment and this wasn’t enjoyed nearly as much as something serious by somebody serious. Let’s use, for this argument, the German Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose movies I’ve never seen but whom my friends Mitch the Killer and Married Mike rave about. Let’s suppose you had two parties, one of which watched Breakin 2 and the other of which watched something or other by Fassbinder. People who seriously believe this stuff would claim that even though they enjoyed both movies, the Fassbinder was enjoyed more because it was art. The Onion AV Club has a section of movie reviews about films that they can’t believe that their staffers have missed - as if they’re shocked that somebody could have made it to hipster adulthood without having seen Scorcese’s Raging Bull. The horror!

Go back and read Robinson’s conclusion, in which she writes:

But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high.

What is the “so bad it’s good” pantheon? I assume that’s different from the “so good” pantheon, even both both presumably represent movies watched and enjoyed by the possessor of said pantheon. Despite the claims made by hipsters and other snobs of varying colors - does, “I don’t enjoy reality TV, I just watch it for the camp value!” sound familiar? - I don’t think it is possible to rank order pleasure in this way, to suggest that some movies create “so bad it’s good” pleasure and other movies create “so good it’s good” pleasure. There’s simply no way to tell the difference. If something is “so bad it’s good” then it must then be good, right? When Tasha Robinson writes something like, she’s trying to signal that she understood that there’s a difference between Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and Raging Bull. Except there isn’t one.

People that try to differentiate between various songs, or books, or poems, or movies, or television shows, or pieces of art, or whatever, are doing so because they’re trying to stake their own claim about relative bests. But those bests are relative, and should never be forgotten. No movie is objectively better than any other movie. All movies are the same. Some produce pleasure, and some don’t. But they produce those differently for each person. For Tasha Robinson to claim that Breakin 2 produced one kind of pleasure and Fast Times at Ridgemont High produced something else is just plain lying. I wouldn’t even be against a claim that she enjoyed one more than the other, but to claim that the pleasure produced was somehow different?

Come on. One of the longest running arguments that I’ve ever had, and I’ll have it with anybody at anytime, is about the equality of all things produced by people. There’s no such thing as a good or bad movie, intrinsically. They’re all equal. I enjoy some more than others, but that doesn’t reflect upon the movie, but rather, upon what I do and do not enjoy. Anybody who claims any differently, particularly in regard to objective realities, is lying.