Movie Sequels III - Attack of the Fools

Let's talk about;

1) A few of the worst, most offensive sequels/spinoffs ever made, and;
2) A few of the most stupid sequel names ever.

1) Just off the top of my head;

a) Ewoks: The Caravan of Courage and Ewoks: Battle for Endor.
Cashing in big time on the success of the Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas agreed to go ahead with these two TV movies, spin-offs from the Return of the Jedi , focusing on the most unpopular element of the film, the fucking Ewoks. There is nothing that really connects these movies to the Star Wars universe, but the really hard-core fans remain convinced that they belong somewhere in the canon. Fools! George Lucas feeds off you from his lair like a pshycic pudgy vampire.

Plus, CARAVAN OF COURAGE!!!!

b) Highlander 2: The Quickening
It should have been called "The Sickening", since its utter vileness is beyond comprehension. Totally ignoring the first movie, the only thing that kept the director (whose name I curse) from having the Immortals fighting with dandilions, and having a good cuddle with one another was an animal tranquilizer. The movie has been re-edited a couple of times to try and make it look a little better, but to no avail. You can reshape a piece of poo as many times as you like, it will always remain a piece of poo. Just differently shaped.

c) Supergirl (or Supergirl: Das Mädchen von den Sternen, as it was called in Germany. In itself, one of the funniest titles of all time)

Quite possibly the worst movie ever made (I'll probably tie it with Krull). One friend of mine unbelievably owns the directors cut of this travesty, running additionally 30 mintues longer. AS IF WE NEEDED IT! I borrowed it from him, and me and another friend decided to watch it and try and laugh at it.

It's not possible. It isn't so bad it becomes good. It isn't even bad. All such words do not apply. It simply is. And what it is, is pure writhing-in-agony torture, so foul, so vile, so unbelievably crappy that it bends the very fabric of the time-space continuum. 2 hours turn into eons. Every minute is an age. Every 10-15 hours you look up, and you find that a couple of seconds have passed of the movie. You start to despair. You feel the breath being quashed from your chest, and your will to live being sapped from your bones. Death stops being a future event, and starts becoming a very real possibility in the near future. You start to wonder if it's better to hang yourself or swallow your own tongue. You wonder if repeatedly punching your liver will cause it to disrupt and deliver sweet oblivion. You also wander what's for dinner, strangely enough.

Faye Dunaway gives perhaps the worst performance seen this side of Ed Wood, and the great Peter O'Toole just stands there, wondering how he got there and what would be the best way of murdering his agent. Helen Slater as Super-Mädchen is so bland, so horrible, so SWEET, that pouring a vat of honey all over yourself near a hive of african killer bees would be vastly preferable to using your eyeballs on her in this "film". No words can express my vast, empire-spanning HATRED of this titular pomposity, but that didn't stop me from trying.


2) And now for some really bad fucking sequel names.

a) Rambo III
"But that's just a regular sequel name isn't it?" somebody might ask. Ahh, but that means they haven't studied the names of the first two movies.

First Blood the first movie was called.

Rambo: First Blood Part II the second movie was called.

Don't you see the quandary the producers put themselves in? Logically, the third movie should have been called;

RAMBO II: FIRST BLOOD PART III

Which would have been the funniest sequel title of all time.


b) Howling II - Stirba: Werewolf Bitch
What the hell do I need to say about this title? That it tells me that the producers were too busy fornicating with farm animals to actually bother looking at the title before releasing this rancid turd. That in no capacity whatsoever, should the word "Stirba" EVER grace any title. That I hate the fact how few good werewolf movies are made. Fuck, now I'm all depressed.

c) Beastmaster II - Through the Portal of Time
Just the cheesiest title of all time. Just pure fucking foul smelling, gouda imitating, stomach churning, nose wrinkling and bowel loosening cheese. Making the poor Beastmaster go to LA is one of the worst ideas in movie history. Who the hell wants to see a barbarian strolling around LA, looking for a zoo so he can actually master some beasts? Horrible title. Horrible movie.

d) Neverending Story II
Just think about it.

Paradise lost

Our childhoods keep getting longer.

I see this in myself and those I know around me. I see the comparison in those still living.

My great-grandmother had 14 children. It was not uncommon to have that many children in her generation. The workload was immense, and there was no actual childhood. You were born, you worked, you had children, you died (except she hasn't passed away yet, bless her soul).

My grandparents started working and taking care of themselves when they were barely more than children. They started a home and had children before they were twenty years old. They worked 2-3 jobs, had 3-5 kids.

My parents started working when they were about 18 years old, worked 2-3 jobs, started having children when they were just over 20 years old, and life was pretty hard. There was never any real money, and there were no luxuries.

I compare these three generations before mine, and I see that life got progressively easier, but it was still pretty hard. You began your "life" early, and you had to work very hard to make it work.

I also compare it to my own generation. It has become socially acceptable to not move out of your parents house until you're pushing thirty (or even beyond in some cases, god forbid). It has become much more of a norm not to start having children until you're nearing 30, with I guess 26-27 being the mean. You generally stop with 2 children, with ever greater numbers of people opting to not having any children at all.

Although many people still work hard and long hours, it's not comparable to earlier generations, with a lot of people getting by with one job, a 8-9 hour workday, and weekends off. We live in ever greater luxury, with free time on our hands, spare money, trips abroad, nicer cars, even hobbies, a concept my grandparents find hard to understand. We are also allowed to act like children for much longer. We are forgiven the "follies of youth" for quite a bit longer than ever before.

I also see people taking this for granted. We have arrived in the age of expectation, where people not only want all these things, they expect them.

Ungrateful children. That's what we are.

Riff on a theme

My theory is that most people are the way they are and behave the way they do because of;

1) Built in character traits
2) Learned behavior
3) Experience/environment
4) A single defining moment

Now, I am not a trained psychiatrist, and realize that my theory is therefore virtually worthless in actuality. I have no empirical evidence to back this up, nor have I adequately read up on the subject, but it fits with my experience and feeling and I will therefore stick to it until I learn otherwise.

1) I believe that we are born with certain traits, very hard if not impossible to eradicate, that our whole personality is based on. It's funny how very small children exhibit mostly the same basic traits as they will as adults, not having had enough time to either "learn" this behavior nor be affected by the environment.

2) However, we of course pick up certain things from our role models, such as parents or guardians. This can be either;
a) We see their behavior and emulate it, being in a formative state as children, or;
b) We see their behavior and do completely the opposite. I, for one, decided to never start smoking witnessing the constant smoking of my parents. I never have and I never did. It's weird how powerful that urge has always been for me, the urge not to smoke despite considerable peer pressure. Learned behavior on my part, albeit in reverse.

3) Of course both experience and the environment play a part in our personality.
Although I believe that we essentially become the people we will always be at a very early age, time, experience and the environment certainly have an effect, if nothing more than smoothing out the edges. We (most of us anyway) slowly learn what works and doesn't work with other people, plus our surroundings and influential things like school and friends can slowly have an effect on our outlook. Plus, with a concentrated effort, I still (perhaps naively) believe that people are able to affect change on themselves. It just takes a whole lot of hard thrice damned work.

4) And then there is this. A single defining moment that either changes the way we see a certain thing or accentuates what is already there. Pretty rare I should think (again, having nothing to back this up) but I know of such cases. One being myself.

When I was about 10 years old, I was in school during a societal studies class. The textbook (for some odd reason I can't really fathom now) showed a little story in pictures.

The story was about two little kids, a boy and a girl of about 10-12 it appeared, which were poised to go visit their grandfather. The grandfather (obviously living alone) was seen glowing with anticipation, baking a cake for the grandchildren, pouring milk into glasses and happily awaiting their arrival. At the same time, the grandchildren were on their way but stopped to participate in a soccer game. The grandfather keeps waiting, his smile slowly turning into a sad frown, the afternoon passes, it slowly becomes dark, and the kids just keep playing and never arrive. The story ends with the grandfather sitting all alone at the table, all set with milk and goodies, so sad, waiting for his grandchildren that never arrived.

I remember vividly this absolutely breaking my heart. I mean, I sobbed and felt literally that I was choking, I felt so bad and such empathy for the grandfather. I've seldom felt such intense emotion in my entire life. I thought about it constantly for weeks afterwards.

I'm always on time. I never break appointments I make unless in dire need and then always let people know about it in as much advance as I can. I don't say I'm going to be somewhere unless I absolutely intend to be there. I have a lot of faults, but disrespect for other people's time isn't one of them.

I believe that that moment defined that quality for me. I don't know if I had it in me to begin with, but if I did, it became ever so much stronger at that point.

"As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment"
-John Steinbeck

Angst

And now, for a truly chilling experience, I give you the most overblown, questionably written and self-pitying entry I was able to write.

I call this piece "EXISTENTIAL ANGST". I hope you don't enjoy it.

"Nobody understands me. I am all alone in a harsh, unforgiving landscape, filled with nothing but the speculations about the nature of both men and evil. Why am I the one who is burdened by the somber glow of morality, questioning the very nature of my short life, tragic and filled with regrets.

I look at the very fabric of my existence, even while the seconds tick away, ever hastening towards the hour of my demise. Shouldering this knowledge is more than I can bear! My life, my love, my understanding. All disappear within the comforting embrace of sleep. Oh, how I loathe the hour of awakening!

From whence came we? How come all other men, sheep all but a few, don't recognize my torture? Why do they not know the pain I bear? My dearest one. Although I don't know you, I know your soul. I know that we are destined one day to become as one. I know that you laugh now at me, but I also know that deep down in your poetic soul you know me for what I really am.

Somebody who should grow up a little and stop feeling sorry for himself.

All those in favor say "aye"

Came across one of the most offensive and disgusting jokes I've ever heard. It's also hilarious.



"A little girl sits by a cliff crying her little eyes out.

A priest comes walking up to her and asks "what's the problem little girl?"

She answers, "I was out here playing, and mommy and daddy were sitting in the car. All of a sudden, the car lurched forward and went over the cliff. Now, they're lying down there, all dead, and I'm all alone here and don't know what to do"

The priest smiles, starts unbuttoning his cassock, and replies, "this just isn't your day, is it?""

In the interest of science

I am a man of superlatives. I enjoy using the word "genius" and "awesome" and "totally craptacular" or some variation thereof. I get heart-poundingly excited about something every day. I get excited by the prospect of seeing a particular film that has been getting excellent reviews (in the case of Lord of the Rings, I couldn't sleep the night before each of them..and screw you for making fun of me), a great tome of a book that I just need to read now (latest being The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It's this year's answer to The Da Vinci Code, but without actually sucking), or a terrific piece of music that just moves me (Sufjan Stevens' Illinois comes to mind)

I've seen a great many people lose their passion for things very quickly. They become so jaded that everything starts to get boring and nothing excites any more. They find no joy in new music, preferring to listen to their old favorite records again and again (how many have parents who never listen to anything but The Beatles?), haven't seen a good movie "in years", start contenting themselves with just coming home from work and planting themselves in front of the TV, and die a little more, every day.

I'm so terrified of this that I might be over-compensating. Perhaps in my mission never to let every-day prosaicness get me down and suck the joy from the marrow of life (wow, nice cliche Thrice..*claps self on back*) I celebrate too much. Certainly that accusation has been hurled at me. Maybe I do find nuggets of genius in things that really aren't that great in actuality. Maybe so.

Anybody have parents and/or grandparents who never admit to looking forward to anything? I do. People who deny looking forward to a vacation, to a trip abroad, to christmas, to any damn thing. It's like it's a sign of weakness to enjoy life.

Well, not in this book. In this book, it's a sign of strength. This here guy looks forward to all those things and lots more. He enjoys art, movies, literature and music. He enjoys spending time with his friends and family. He enjoys good food (more than he should). He looks forward to a million little things every day.

He enjoys this life, because he suspects that it's all we'll ever get.

And thrice damn it. He's going to love every damn minute of it.

A season of change

Autumn is here.

It's sort of my favorite time of the year. The leaves fall from the trees, my foster-father prepares for his yearly bout of depression (lasting until spring), kids start school and teenagers start smoking. It's all a nature walk.

Summer takes a graceful bow and promises as swift a return as possible, although as far north as here, that takes a pretty long time. Father Winter begins preparing for his smiling on-slaught, only later to be defeated by the beguiling charms of spring.

Most of all, I run out of cliches describing the seasons.

Despite all the bromides, it really is this feeling of being in-between that appeals to me. It's not summer anymore, that much is clear. It's cold, but not yet frost. You can still spot some green in the grass and on the trees, but it's fading. You can still remember the hot days of summer (the few that actually were), but you can also feel how cold it's going to become.

It's both a time of remembering the good days of summer, and also a time of anticipation for winter. After all, christmas isn't all that far away, and winter has its charms as well.

I always get a little nostalgic this time of year. Must be my sensitive suffering romantic soul of a bad poet.

I think it's time for a hot cup of cocoa.

A Tale of Two Cities

T'was a dark and somber night in the city. Some people were doing the metropolitan glide with their usual zest, while most were nursing their tired brains by the comforting light of the cathode ray emanating from the boob-tube.

Neither group was aware of the fact that among them, one man both hateful and thrice damned, was plotting his evil schemes while his lesser half, his insignificant other, was doing the laundry or some such nugatory and paltry act , oblivious to the epic machinations going on in the other room.

ThriceDamned: "Hahahaha. Finally I have devised a way to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! This is foolproof. They won't know what hit them!
Mrs. Damned: "Could you come out here for a second please?
ThriceDamned: "What? No. I'm busy. Leave me alone cretin.
Mrs. Damned: "COME OUT HERE A SECOND"
ThriceDamned: "ok"

(trots out with a sullen and petulant expression)

ThriceDamned: "What is so thrice damned important vermin, that you interrupt my plans to take over the world"
Mrs. Damned: "You can take over the world later honey. Right now, I need you to run to the store for me.
ThriceDamned: "Run to the store? What do you take me for you petty excuse for a female. A common errand boy? I run no errands, excepting those that benefit my plans.
Mrs. Damned: "If you do, I'll cook something good for you tomorrow night. Perhaps that mexican dish you like so much.
ThriceDamned: "Oh, oh, the one with the hot salsa?"
Mrs. Damned: "Yes, the very one"
ThriceDamned: "Why didn't you say so, you synonym for poultry. What do you need?
Mrs. Damned: "Here is a list"

(hands ThriceDamned a list)

Mrs. Damned: "And here is some money"

(hands ThriceDamned some money)

Mrs. Damned: "And hurry up dear. It's getting late"

As ThriceDamned walks out to the car and starts his lonely drive to the store, he can't help but wonder where things all went wrong. Exactly at what point he became domesticated and subjugated to the will of a tiny woman. But then he sighes and thinks about that mexican dish. It was gonna be a long wait until tomorrow night.

Full of sound and fury..signifying nothing?

Anybody else ever get the feeling that their whole life is a play or a movie?

I do.

It's hard to explain, but I often feel very detached from things that are happening, and it's more like I'm watching myself doing things, than actually performing them myself. By that I don't mean the day-to-day stuff, like taking a shower, eating or going to the toilet. No, I mean the "important" stuff; the melodrama of life if you will.

If consoling a friend who's feeling bad, I often find myself detached from the whole thing thinking; "yeah, that sounds good. Sincere. Good show old man!".

Or if in a meeting with people-in-suits, giving a presentation or whatever, I think to myself, "Jesus, they actually look as if I'm saying something coherent, although I'm clearly faking myself through this".

It's not that I don't care, because I really do. I take things seriously, but at the same time there is always a little voice in the back of my head that just keeps me a little detached and smirking at the whole thing.

You know what I mean?

I think it might be in some way related to the fact that despite being 27 years old, I've never once felt like an adult. I always feel like I'm still a kid, faking his way through adulthood. Or maybe I'm just painfully aware of all the roles we get designated in life (breadwinner, parent, friend, lover), each with a set of expectations and patterns of behavior that must be fulfilled more or less adequately. As The Bard said; "All the world's a stage and the men and women on it merely players.", and who are we to argue with The Bard?

At any rate, I really hope I'm not the only person who gets the feeling that they are "acting" their way through life. If they are, I hope that they can delude themselves better than I can.

"I love acting. It is so much more real than life."
~Oscar Wilde

In memoriam

Last night, I saw a pretty cool film called "Code 46". Directed by Michael Winterbottom, it stars Tim Robbins as an industrial crime investigator and Samantha Morton as a girl he falls in love with.

Read no further if you want to see the movie spoiler-free.

Nominally, it's a sci-fi movie, but like all good sci-fi movies, it's really about the human condition.

You see, the title of the film, "Code 46" refers to a genetic violation in the futuristic universe the movie establishes. People are cloned and born in vitro, and if they share the same DNA, they are not allowed to reproduce. The Tim Robbins character and the Samantha Morton character, we learn, share approximately 50% of the same DNA and are therefore not allowed to stay together or have children.

Well, to cut the story short, after having broken this law, and after having tried to get away, they are caught and their memory of having met is erased.

This got me thinking.

Are we nothing more than the sum of our experiences? To put it another way, if I loved someone very deeply, and then my memory of that person would be erased, would the feeling disappear as well, or would it persist with no one to direct it towards. Sort of like a "phantom limb", as it is often called when you lose an arm or a leg, but continue to feel sensations in the place where the missing appendage used to be.

Are all our thoughts, feelings and opinions shaped by the invironment, our choices and actions, or are some of them independent from external factors.

I started to think about it as a snowball rolling down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger, collecting more matter unto itself the further downhill it rolls, but there had to be a snowball to begin with to start the collecting.

Maybe that's an apt metaphor for ourselves. The further along into life we are, the more experiences and layers we accumulate, constantly being shaped and molded by what we do and experience. However, we had to have a core to accumulate onto to begin with.

I choose to believe that if you remove the cause of why I love, I would still be able to love. I have to believe that.

Sharing the niiiight together...ah-yeah...all riiight

So I'm driving along right? Listening to the radio, as one occasionally does. This old standard starts playing, "Sharing the night together" by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show.

I must have heard this song a million times in my life, but it was only at that moment that I realized for the first time, just how fucking creepy that song really is.

"You're looking kinda lonely girl
Would you like someone new to talk to
Ah-yeh, alright
I'm feeling kinda lonely too
If you don't mind can I sit down here beside you
Ah-yeah, alright
If I seem to come on too strong
I hope that you will understand
I say these things 'cause I'd like to know
If you're as lonely as I am and if you mind

Sharing the night together
Oh-yeah, sharing the night together
Oh-yeah, sharing the night

STALKER MUCH??

This pervert walks up to strange women he has never seen in his life, sits beside them, and asks them if they would like to go home and copulate with him.

And this song is considered ROMANTIC? My notions of romance and proper behavior are obviously out of date.

The kindness of strangers

I was in an airport terminal at night, and it was almost completely empty.

I had been in a conference in London, and was trying to get home. The check-in girl was telling me that there were no seats available, and besides, the budget airlines had all given up and joined the regular airlines. That these were the last couple of days you get a ticket for such a low price.

It had been raining outside, and I was extremely wet and musty smelling. I was also quite desperate, since I had almost no money left and had no way of paying for a full priced ticket.

Suddenly, the girl started and told me to wait. She came out of her booth and walked up to me. She was a tiny little person, barely reaching my chest at full height. She grabbed something that was hanging around my neck and unfastened it. It was a small tag; apparently a cute little practice that the airline had implemented in the years prior, upon which travellers could share memories with each other about their countries, and hang them on each other's necks.

A little "hello, I was in your country last year" if you will.

There were standard fields on the tag that had been filled out, plus there was room for free-form writing. The standard fields told that the person who hung the tag on me had been to my country a couple of years before and had loved the visit, along with the date and several more odd bits of information.

The free form portion of the tag told that the person writing had met me in a bar during the visit, and that I had helped them finding lodgings and had taken the time to write down obscure places of interest to visit, and been a generally nice person.

When the girl read this aloud to me, I was suddenly filled with a very strong emotion, feeling almost like crying. On an impulse, I grabbed the girl and gave her a firce hug.

The girl smiled at me and walked back into her booth. She went back to the computer, typed something, looked suddenly up at me and said; "I have found you a seat. You'll leave in half an hour".
______________________

This was the content of the dream I had last night. Now, I haven't been to London in years. Besides, I'm generally not such a nice person, nor am I the type to spontaneously hug anyone, let alone a strange girl working in an airport. Moreover, in the interest of full disclosure, I have edited out the weird parts of the dream. In actuality, it wasn't at all that coherent. There was lots of "dream logic" involved, where really weird things happen that seem to make sense.

However, the dream affected me. It made me realize just how little is often required to make a connection between people, and how just a little kindness towards one another can go such a long way.

It also made me realize just how much I hate airports. Sheesh.

It was the best of times..and the worst of times

So, I'm reading this fairly crappy sci-fi novel, "The Garden of Rama", the third book in the Rama cycle, supposedly written by Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee. The fact of the matter is that Gentry Lee wrote the thing after receiving a story outline from Arthur C. Clarke. The first book in the series, "Rendevouz with Rama" is a bone-fide masterpiece, but the series turns to crap after that.

Why do I keep reading it? you ask.

Not as if I have something better to do with my time...so mind your own damn business!

Anyways, in the novel, which takes place in the 23rd century, approximately 2000 humans have been transplanted to a gigantic spaceship called Rama and have started their own colony there. Now, in spite of having everything they need, and a fresh start from all the problems that plague humanity, they totally fuck it up. They start bickering among themselves, completely lose control, allow some bad dudes to prey on them by catering to their vices (alcohol, gambling, prostitution) and generally act the way humans always do. Of course, the authors soften the blow by having a few people courageously fighting against the trend.

Comparing this to the current crisis in New Orleans, I see a startling similarity.

Some official (I forget who) said in relation to the looting, raping and general going-on in New Orleans post-catastrophe that "circumstances like these bring out the best in most people and the worst in a few".

I happen to disagree with him. I believe it to be the other way around (hey, I guess I'm a "glass half-empty" kinda guy..sue me). I belive that when push comes to shove, circumstances will bring out the worst in most of us, and the best in but a few. I truly believe that most people obey the law not because they believe in the intent of it, or the intrinsic morality, but because they fear getting caught and being punished.

I believe that most people are opportunists, and that if they have the chance of enriching themselves or bettering their situation and getting away with it, they will do so, regardless of how it affects others, and regardless of the moral implications involved.

I also believe that a number of people would never do so. I believe that only a small handful of people are able to rise above the animal instinct usually hidden by the thin veneer of civilization and plenty and show true integrity in the face of adversity. Who will always do the right thing, regardless of how it affects them personally.

And this belief of mine, that there are among us true people, "real" people, not just animals in disguise, is the only thing that keeps me from losing what little faith I have in humanity completely.

And God help me, I don't know which group I belong to. The former most likely.

Who knows? Maybe I'll have a chance of finding out one day.

Killing time (and other things)

I've been listening obsessively for the past couple of weeks to guy named Sufjan Stevens. This guy is a 30 something indie singer/songwriter from Michigan who decided to embark on this preposterously huge project; to make an album about each of the 50 states in the grand old US of A.

He's finished two of them, being Michigan and now lately Illinois. Both are luminously great. However, I was not going to discuss their musical merits this time (although I probably will at some point). On "Illinoise", his latest, about the state of Illinois, there is a terrific song called "John Wayne Gacy Jr.", about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Inspired by this song, I went on a research spree about serial killers.

During my research, I was sort of dumbfounded to know just how many of them are the sons of prostitutes. At just a quick glance I get:

Charles Manson
Martin James Kipp
Henry Lee Lucas
Pedro Lopes
Jack Unterweger
David Berkowitz (Son of Sam)

and that without even trying.

Now, I can understand the logic behind killing prostitutes if you are a serial killer. They are easy to pick up on the street, they are less likely to be missed or reported to the police, etc. But what is that snaps in your head if you're the son of one?

"Momma slep wit a bunch 'o people when I was a chile fo' money, now I is crazeah, and gots to go kill me a bunch 'o folks"

And why for God's sake are they (nearly) always white?

Is this a sign of white inferiority complex?

Presumably, with african americans being generally poorer and statistically more of them turn to prostitution, there should be loads of black sons of prostitutes. Why the hell don't they turn to serial killing? They opt instead to turn their energies towards something a lot more constructive, like selling drugs and pimping out teenagers (I kid, I kid!). Maybe they are more comfortable with their mothers' occupation, or maybe it's a sign of cultural difference in acceptance. Maybe the white psyche is more fragile and/or needs less incentive to turn sociopathic. I don't claim to have the answer, but the question excites me.

Excites me enough to make me go wanna go find another victim, even though the cellar is nearly full. I can always buy another freezer.

Long Live The New Flesh

Watching David Cronenberg's overlooked masterpiece, "Videodrome" (in the excellent Criterion Collection edition) last night, I was struck by how prescient the whole thing is, considering that it was made back in 1982.

In the movie, sleazy TV exec, Max Wren (played by James Woods) comes across this pirated copy of a TV show called "Videodrome" consisting of nothing but murder, torture and rape. His research assistant tells him breathlessly after investigating it that it is "all real!". After that, it reeeeally gets funky, but that's not the point.

The point is the horrible affliction to public television called "reality TV", something that was unheard of back then and has now become a terrible reality. Now, these shows are of course no more "real" than my grandmother's teeth, but the premise of these shows keep getting more extreme in the hopes of attracting increasingly jaded viewers.

Note that I said "more extreme", not "better". That's the difference between scripted television and these so-called reality shows. Scripted television has to rely on a hooky premise and added quality to keep people glued to their sets (in theory anyway), but it seems that all reality shows have to do is come up with something more.

What bugs me about these shows is that they always appeal to the basest parts of human behavior. Survivor is about people trying to fuck each other over for money, The Bachelor is about women fucking each other over to get the rich guy (and they never even stop to think about how close they to being prostitutes), Temptation Island is just mostly about people fucking and cheating on their spouses, Cheaters is about people finding out that their spouses have been exhibiting infidelity, and then there was that crazy show (can't remember the name) about guys fighting to get the girl, but what they didn't know was that she USED TO BE A MAN!

Anybody seeing a pattern emerge?

And the networks are laughing all the way to the bank. These shows cost next to nothing to produce, there are literally millons of people willing to make complete asses of themselves just to get their 15 mintues of fame, and people spend their valuable spare time watching creativly bankrupt and content devoid crap.

Maybe I'm turning into an old fuddy-duddy, and far be it for me to judge what other people should be spending their time on, but I can't help but wonder how the hell we came to this.

Personally, I blame it on Michael Jackson. Why?...well, he's just creepy.