Watch this this. I tried to embed it, but I’m a moron.
You know what this response is? Perfect. Motherfucking perfect. Odd that it takes the Daily Show to better explain my feelings on this issue than any political leader. It would have been tactless, but I almost wish it had been Barack Obama, instead of John Oliver, saying these things. Especially if he’d said, “There have always been motherfuckers. There will always be motherfuckers. But the important thing is not letting these people control our motherfucking lives.”
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.
And thus it ended, the greatest show in television history. With tonight’s final episode of The Wire, the response to the ending might be muted. Marlo walks? McNulty walks? Michael walks? Freamon walks? Levy walks? Daniels walks? Everybody walks?
When Homicide: Life on the Streets ended, it did so as it began - with officers entering a dark space with flashlights. The Wire, in its own way, was circuitous too. We began with Avon, with Omar, with Bubbles, with Jimmy. And in the end? We’re given Avon (Marlo), Omar (Michael), Bubbles (Dookie), and Jimmy (Leander). When the show began, hacks ran the police department, and as it ended, a hack - Prez’s uncle (ed. note: Valcheck is Prez’s father-in-law, not uncle - thanks Tom) - takes the reins. People who have no business in police work, like Rawls, are instead promoted up the ladder. Good men face tough decisions and ultimately, their only salvation is in themselves: Bubbles walks away from heroin and Daniels walks away from policing.
There are quibbles with the end. Gary, the corrupt lawyer? Marlo going back on a corner despite pocketing $10 million? Kima being forgiven so easily? Beadie taking Jimmy back so easily? And, perhaps, Templeton’s Pulitzer was over the top too. But ultimately, those are tiny complaints on a show that ran 60 episodes, which featured well over 100 characters, and managed to logically finish precisely where it began.
And of course, there were the truly transcendent moments:
-Cheese getting taken down out by Slim Charles, immediately after announcing that “There ain’t no back in the day…there ain’t no nostalgia to this shit here.” Fat Face Rick taking the rap by leaving his cigar at the scene? And the small dealer announcing that Slim Charles had cost the group money, instead of celebrating the end of Cheese’s idiotic posturing. He never knew when to shut his mouth. The scenario in this episode and in Cheese’s interaction with Brother Mouzone in Season 2 was exactly the same - he never knew when to shut up.
-Alma getting sent to the boondocks because she did what was right? See: Jimmy and the boat. We get the same message, over and over and over - the right thing doesn’t matter. Pleasing (or displeasing) the bureaucracy does.
-And finally, Kavanaugh’s and Jay Landsman’s goodbyes to Jimmy and (belatedly) Lester. In the end, these people recognized the talent and they recognized the recklessness, and all past anger was forgotten in the name of the drinks, the jokes, and the Pogues “Body of an American.” Even in this we learn that the bureaucracy can ignore whatever it pleases, whenever it pleases.
The fifth season may be criticized by the same people who think that the second season was largely unnecessary. (I myself used to think that, before seeing the final three seasons. They made the second season necessary.) They may object that we didn’t see the shocking action of seasons one and three, or the searing social commentary of season four. They’d all be mistaken. This one rates as well as any of the others precisely because it went out of its way to hammer home the point: bureaucracy corrupts. Doesn’t matter who. Doesn’t matter where. Doesn’t matter how. It is going to corrupt its participants, and there is nothing to be done about it.
-Good lord. Tomorrow’s a big day, isn’t it? Or is it? I can’t tell. We do know that important primaries are happening in Texas and Ohio, and that as things stand, Obama and Clinton may split these two. They may also split Vermont and Rhode Island. Here’s crossing fingers for Obama, but I’m losing my confidence. I’d like to see Obama surge through, but rampant talk of Republicans crossing party lines to support Hillary, whom they know they can easily defeat, has me nervous, as does Clinton’s Rasputinian ability to apparently dodge bullets. Why won’t her campaign fold?
-Meanwhile, we’re down to a single episode left for The Wire. This week’s? Absolutely unbelievable: it was arguably the greatest single episode of the show, which is ridiculous high praise. Consider…
1. Michael realizing he was being set up, and shooting Snoop at point blank range. He has ice water running in his veins and intelligence to an incredible degree. Also, did Snoop’s speech to him before getting done sound familiar? It should - it was every speech everybody ever gave McNulty. “You’re not enough like us and we cannot tolerate that difference.”
2. Bubbles’ (Reginald’s) speech at Narcotics Anonymous was heart-breaking and uplifting, simultaneously. We know he’s been through hell. No less than Jay Landsman said so when deciding to put Bubbles back out on the street after Sherrod’s accidental overdose. We’ve watched him experience every bit of indignity possible, and we’ve seen him come out on the other side. The message was clear: only you can do this. Don’t rely on anybody else. Bubbles triumphed, ultimately, when he realized that there was nobody for him to reach out to and he still decided not to get high.
3. Meanwhile, Dukie’s descent in Bubbles world is concerning, if not entirely unexpected. Clearly he was comfortable with the Araber Junkman. Michael warned him, but Dukie knew that it was a life he could survive.
4. Kima crying while admitting to Daniels what McNulty had been up to? Geez. If Jimmy had let her in on things earlier, would she have stayed quiet?
5. And Landsman ripping Jimmy while praising “the Buuuuunk.” Priceless.
6. The bust was perfect. Everybody going down was perfect. And the fact that Jimmy’s arrogance has ultimately led to that takedown getting completely fucked up? Essential.
7. There is Marlo’s howl in jail, that his name is his name. That’s ultimately all he cares about. Money? Strength? Authority? Nothing drives him more than his name being recognized on the streets as the man. How does anything combat that mentality?
8. The veteran? The newspaper foul-up? The Walter Reed? “How are you doing Marino?” The veteran asks. The man hobbling by on two prosthesis? “Outstanding!”
9. Finally, the appearance of the drunk cop from season one, Augie? It’s little things like that the make the show worth watching, and worth missing. “Beats working,” he says, about his job on evidence storage.
One episode left. Does Jimmy go down? Is Rhonda Pearlman the inside source? Does Michael shoot Marlo? Six days left, and they cannot pass quickly enough.
There are plenty of recaps of last night’s episode of The Wire available today. Here’s one, if you’re interested. However, I received at least one text message last night asking if that was how Omar had to go out. Like the sender, I think we all wanted a scenario in which Omar gets four or five guys before finally meeting his maker, but in end, as close as he got was Avon’s Savino, which doesn’t even count. Marlo, Chris, and Snoop are all left standing, and Omar himself gets misidentified at the lab.
I was going to be an English major when I first went to college, but I bailed on that after one semester. It wasn’t for me. However, there’s enough of that left in me to think that last night’s episode was a cautionary tale to all of us who lionized Omar beyond reason. In the end, it seemed to be saying, this mythic hero of the streets who perfected the “rip and run,” who embarrassed Avon’s attorney in the Bird trial, who survived prison and a ridiculous jump from a five story building, who stole an entire shipment of Baltimore’s heroin, and who inspired enough fear on the streets so that packages were given to him without so much as a fight, was in fact just a man. In the end, his shattered ankle slowed him down. In the end, his fury at Butchie’s death clouded his judgement. In the end, he was alone and weak and vulnerable. That a kid - Kenard? - was the shooter probably the perfect way for him to go.
Then, when his body is incorrectly identified at the morgue, the point is made clear: we might remember this man and all of his doings, but the bureaucracy certainly doesn’t, and neither will anybody else. Heroes die. Good characters die. And everybody moves on.
The entire episode was homage to that idea. Beadie’s well-deserved lecturing of Jimmy about who will and won’t remember him when he dies was the same idea packaged differently. Ultimately, all of this drama doesn’t matter.
You could make an argument that the show is actually a vehicle for that message: that ultimately, none of this suffering matters, because nothing changes it. My favorite scene in The Wire occurred in Season 3. Prez goes out for Chinese food with McNulty. He opens his fortune cookie immediately and McNulty looks at him aghast. “You do that first?” Prez says, “It doesn’t matter. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.” That’s the show. It’s a narrative we tolerate when bad endings come to bad characters - Stringer’s death, inevitable as it was, felt good. Unfortunately, it’s a narrative we have to tolerate when bad endings come to good characters.
The message is clear: none of this matters. Wallace’s intelligence didn’t stop bullets. Frank Sobotka’s corruption couldn’t save his union. And Omar’s exploits couldn’t stop a child from shooting him.
Remaking somebody else’s work is a difficult thing to do. Sometimes, it is a stunning success, as in Jeff Buckley’s remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleleujah.” A proven piece of work was improved when reimagined by another creative force. The same goes for Cat Power’s interpretation of Oasis’s Wonderwall, and her remake of the Rolling Stones “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is similarly satisfying. But occasionally, an attempt to remake somebody else’s work goes horribly, horribly awry.
I am currently, as I write this, enduring the nightmare that is Rob Zombie’s inexplicable remake of Halloween, one of the truly great horror movies. I am 37 minutes into this, and at literally every turn, Zombie has made the wrong decision. So far, I’ve witnessed - oh Jesus, Mom just shot herself because she was horrified about birthing Michael Myers, which isn’t what happened in the first movie. Oh, the first movie. How I wish I was watching the first movie.
1. In the first movie, we had no inclination of what drove Michael Myers to commit his evil deeds - making him all the more frightening. Zombie went a different route. He showed us everything that ever happened in Mike Myers life, so we know enough to think that Myers might actually…be justified in his endless killing? His family is awful. He kills them all. His guards in the mental hospital? Awful rapists, so he kills them both. The bully at the very beginning? He kills him. It’s a festival of dead people who are created to look as if they deserved it.
I’ve heard a rumor that the snarling Predator only attacked those, at least in the first two movies, who weren’t innocent. The reason it leaves the woman living in the train is because she’s pregnant. Zombie seems to try to set up the same thing with Myers, except he kills everybody. Unfortunately, we’re torn as viewers because we don’t know whether to loathe this fearsome killing machine - he killed Danny Trejo, a guard at the mental facility who loved him - but he also killed the rapists. What are we to do in this sort of moral quandary?
Answer: not care.
2. In the first movie, Myers kills his family as a young, young child, making the crime all the more inexplicable. Because when we first see him, we don’t know anything about him, we aren’t given reasons to disbelieve his later actions. In this movie, he’s allegedly ten, meaning that when we see him full-grown, we know to disbelieve the fact that he’s six-foot-nine, 280 pounds of muscle. He was tiny as a ten-year-old. There was no chance he grows into an enormous monster while living on hospital food.
3. Really Rob Zombie? A goddamned hour until we meet the more adult Laurie Strode? The first Halloween movie drops us into the action within ten minutes, if that. We don’t know anything more than a kid killer has apparently returned to his hometown. This movie? It takes us almost an hour to learn Myers’s backstory. What a total waste of time.
4. Everybody in my house is angry right now. Nobody is happy with this movie. We still have an hour to go.
5. Rob Zombie loves young women. To the point that it goes beyond disturbing. His female characters are naked, suggestive, aggressive, and generally act inexplicably. So the teenage girls see somebody they think is a pervert. Is the first instinct really to ask if he wants, “Some of the young stuff?”
6. Why are their placards in this movie? Am I really expected to say to my friends, “The movie really reminded me of Fassbinder’s work during it’s Trick Or Treat chapter?” Because, really, I’m never going to say that.
7. On the great list of horror movie kills, Bob getting lifted up into the air and stuck into the wall with a kitchen knife, as phsyics defying as it might be, is one of the all time greats. If it doesn’t happen in this movie, I’m turning it off….and….it doesn’t happen in the kitchen, but at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.
8. According to Bobbi, Rob Zombie loves the shot of a woman, laying on her side, from her feet, so that you can see her ass and, if you manipulate the dvd through use of its pause function, maybe see the slightest hint of a vagina. Grow up Rob Zombie. We have the internet. If we’re that desperate, we’ll find it.
9. Really? Michael kills the adoptive parents? Are you serious? Lame.
10. “And besides, the gravestone weighs half a ton…” Oh my god. Light my friggin hair on fire. What, Myers is hauling around a thousand pound gravestone? Stop giving me reasons to hate this nightmare.
11. Only 40 more minutes…I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
12. My God! It’s amazing how women have to get naked in horror movies to have sex, but men do not. How is it even possible to have sex through a pair of boxer-briefs? It isn’t that I want to see anybody’s junk, but if you want to make a gritty horror movie, then make it, and include the realistic nudity. Zombie couldn’t seem to decide what, exactly, he was making. Other than an unabated shitstorm.
13. “Loud Noises! People Screaming! I Don’t Know What We’re Yelling About!” Brick Tamland’s conversation with his coworkers in Anchorman is a pretty good way to describe this movie as we approach its ending. Its merciful ending.
14. Laurie Strode, running from Michael Myers, afraid, nervous, leads him right back to the younger children. What a cheap way to create tension. Rob Zombie = douchebag.
15. Yep. Michael Myers was hauling around a headstone that allegedly weighs a thousand pounds. Sigh.
16. In the original Halloween, Myers is obsessed with killing his family. In this movie, Michael Myers inexplicably seems to love his younger sister. Excuse me while I throw up all over this computer.
17. Everybody in my living room is terribly angry right now.
18. Loomis, with a .357 and no shooting experience, hits Michael three consecutive times and hardly recoils. It’s the little things Rob Zombie, you jerkoff.
19. “Is that the boogeyman?” “As a matter of fact, I do believe it was.” Michael reaches into the car, grabs Laurie Strode, and starts dragging her around…”Michael, it was my fault, I failed you.” Loomis is being a total loser right now…and now Michael has him, and squeezing his face to the point of crushing his skull…
“Rob Zombie, you are a master of the art,” says Evan, angrily.
Loomis is dead?!?! God, now we can’t have Halloweens 4, 5, and 6, which are hilariously bad. You haven’t lived until you learn that Michael Myers is the embodiment of Samhain, and that evil druids control his movement, and that blah, blah, blah, nobody cares. Back to this shmshmortion.
Michael clobber! Michael break! Michael crush! Michael heap strong, like bull! Michael make smashy! Oh, here’s Michael staring at Laurie while Loomis lays dead at his feet…no wait, he’s alive and grabbing Michael…and now he’s dead again. Michael crush!
Also, was it really necessary to suck for two hours? Couldn’t this movie have achieved similar levels of suckitude in less time?
“This is just tedious,” says Evan, as Michael continues to smash.
Bobbi is moaning. This movie has defeated her.
Laurie’s a bloody mess. And she has Loomis’s gun. And Michael tackles her off the balcony, instead of being shot off in the first one. Laurie’s completely broken now. And she’s got the gun at Michael’s head…and it is out of ammunition. Seriously Rob Zombie? You’re not even trying. Michael grabs her, the gun suddenly has a bullet, and she shoots her older brother in the face. Cue the classic Halloween music, and for me, bed.
So, in the world where Bill O’Reilly lives, people are allowed to say anything without fear of repercussion. For example, suppose there was a boy whose name was S. Hornbeck. No no, that’s too obvious. Suppose there was a boy whose name was Shawn H. Suppose he was kidnapped four years ago, when he was eleven. Suppose his captor kept him locked away from the world for four years. Suppose his captor tormented him occaisonally by making sure that the boy didn’t sleep. Suppose he finally gets back to his family, and his family believes that the boy, while in captivity, was sexually abused.
If you’re Bill O’Reilly, you see this situation as the perfect opportunity to suggest that the reason the boy stayed in captivity so long was that he was enjoying being kidnapped, tormented, and quite possibly sexually abused. Think I’m kidding:
Fuck Bill O’Reilly. Fuck him. What else is there that can possibly said to a person who actually believes that it is somehow acceptable to accuse a child of enjoying his kidnapping, of enjoying his torment, of his enjoying his potential sexual abuse? Fuck Bill O’Reilly.
The Wire is the greatest show in the history of television. Everybody says so: the media, the fans, the critics, everybody. I’ve seen the show’s seasons on multiple occaisons, and on every viewing, of any particular episode, there is more. More to learn. More to understand. More to know.
Tonight while watching the third season, Omar, the show’s beloved stick-up-artist, planned an assault on his main opposition’s headquarters. An assault, against a dozen heavily armed men. At no point does the viewer think that Omar’s action is akin to Paul Kersey’s in Death Wish 3. The mission itself might be impossible, but Omar is written well enough that we don’t think that it’s impossible. Later, when Omar’s assault never materializes, we believe in that tactical move as well.
Throughout the show, underdogs face overdogs. Police officers against the system. Up-and-coming drug dealers against established crews. Politicians against machines. Lawyers against the Justice System. Everybody against everybody more powerful. The show is compelling because of this, because underdogs make us want to watch.
On the flip side, there is the abuse of the underdogs by the overdogs. Of citizens by police. Of subordinates by bosses. Of the community by the empowered. And that’s what makes the show real.
Somehow, the writers have found a way to keep us glued to the television with the traditional underdog stories while forcing us to understand that all too often, the empowered abuse the powerless with no repercussions.
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