My lovely wife and I went to see the Hancock last night. I have to take her to all the Will Smith summer blockbusters, as she's made it clear to me that she loves the Fresh Prince more than me. Taking her to see the movies is my way of showing that I'm cool with that.
Anyway, Hancock was a fine film. You should go see it. Seriously, I'll wait.
Back? Okay, there was one thing that bothered me about the film [insert clip from the movie Clue of Martin Mull saying, "One thing!?" Classic.] Jason Bateman's character, as you know, just having watched the film, is a bleeding heart liberal and so is his smoking hot wife, whom he managed to score despite having a young kid and no visible source of income, but that's not what bothers me, as I, too, have a smoking hot wife whom I landed while working at Taco Time. So what bothered me is the Woodstock poster they have on their bedroom wall. I know this is hard for people over the age of fifty to understand, but those of us in our mid-thirties who have hearts that bleed for the suffering in the world, do not look to the 1960s for inspiration. Well, maybe a little, but we do not hang framed Woodstock posters in our bedrooms. There would have been hundreds of other ways for set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg to emphasize the fundamental nature of these characters without resorting to Woodstock. Woodstock was the defining event of the previous generation.
Alright, let's get our Independence Day freak on!
Friday, July 4, 2008
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2 comments:
amen. you will recall the saying 'Revolutionary Nostalgia is Counter-Revolutionary.' unfortunately, some such nostalgia is also, so far as i can tell, inevitable.
It is somehow still too soon to make fun of the punks' failures in producing revolution. maybe the director was merely illustrating the tendency of bourgeois liberalism to be by and large participatory in the capitalist system as opposed to actually revolutionary. then yer propped-up by the aesthetic revolutions of the past. what poster do we hang? "an inconvenient truth?" or maybe they surmised that the characters would be too off-putting unless the audience could be reassured that most revolutionary movements that actually alter culture in this nation-state are reduced to aesthetics, marketed and neutered, despite the efforts or forgotten effects of any members of said movements. media reductions of social movements are too often the last words. I don't think there is anything wrong with a bit of anachronistic solidarity, but definitely woodstock is the last thing to be nostalgic over! how about a SLA poster, or some nice Emory Douglas prints... or we ride on, pretending that henry rollins is somehow more advanced than flower children just because he happened later. lifestyles of the liberal and emasculated!
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