300 is the new black
I haven't seen 300 yet. I'm going with a group of people tomorrow.
In the past couple year, perhaps two, I've noticed that reviewing films has become a wildly popular format for voicing one's political convictions in place of quality and aesthetic evaluation.
God knows it's more important to hate George W. Bush than murderous, clitorectomy-loving fanatics that want to blow you up. I mean clearly making poor decisions in good faith and being a bad leader is worse than wanting to kill everyone that's not like you. We can all agree on that.
But that doesn't make SLITHER the best horror movie ever.
I never wrote about this, but I was rather disturbed by SLITHER. It was perfectly cute, well-done, competent horror/comedy.
Oh, and it's hatred and contempt for anything Midwestern was beyond obvious. In short, everybody good had embraced "enlightened" concepts like vegetarianism or mouthing off to your dumb hick parents (really). The Indiana-born and raised sheriff (who's the hero) naturally has a distaste for hunting. 'Cause you know... sheriffs in small Midwestern towns are usually members of PETA.
But it's venomous bile towards the flyover states made it FAR more popular than it would have otherwise been received. There's no way to prove this but I'd bet the farm on it.
Similarly, SYRIANA, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH, and anything else that gets all heads knowingly nodding in agreement get a little extra helping in the praise department.
Which brings me to 300. I'm getting the feeling, based on a couple of the fairer-minded sounding reviews, that it's not going to be as good as I'd hoped. But that doesn't forgive the pile of reviews that seem to hate the movie for anything other than political reasons. Some reviewers come out and say so. That's not a useful review, but at least it's honest. Lots of others make cowardly sideways comments about righteous aggressiveness and using a sword as diplomacy.
If your primary goal in life is to make a statement about what the US should and shouldn't be doing in this world, run for fucking congress. Or work for Moveon.org or whatever the hell else gay crap you want to do. But don't muck up my goddamned rottentomatoes system with your whiny horseshit. Review the fucking movie. Is it good? Is it derivative? Does the acting suck? These are all fair and pertinent questions.
Like I said, I saw some negative reviews that stayed on topic. This moviemay be overwrought, have poor character development, and try to overcompensate with style what it lacks in depth. Whatever, that's all fair.
But if the movie shits on things my family likes to do back home and that just tickles your balls blue, fuck you. Tell me if the movie's any good. That's your job, asshole.
posted by Mikey Y at 11:29 AM
3 Comments:
Slither was actually a commercial failure. I'm sure the dumb hicks in the Midwest decided they didn't want to spend too much money on a film that's only designed to insult them.
And this idea of reviewing every single movie as a proxy for the war in Iraq is now so widespread as to make Rotten Tomoatoes practically worthless.
3:33 PM
Now hold on. What did you (Mikey and Joe) think of Slither? Or Talladega Nights? I liked both these movies--Talladega Nights significantly more than Slither--but there is certainly an element of condescension to midwesterners/southerners in both, especially Slither. Do you think this makes the movies worse? I do; I don't think it makes them worse just as a movie-going experience for me (who likes midwesterners, albeit not southerners), but stronger, that it makes them worse movies from an artistic perspective. This is because I disagree, morally with the moral logic of the movie. In the case of Slither, I can understand that it perhaps wants to overturn the ol' hedonists-must-die trope of horror-movies in order to replace it with the new red-staters (i.e., people who publicly condemn hedonism, even if they might practice it themselves to a significant degree) must-die trope. If that is indeed what the mind behind Slither thought (he didn't, most likely, because he's probably dumn about such things), then that's somewhat aesthetically clever. And that would be something in the movie's favor. But still, because it seems to hold that people who hold conservative values deserve death, I think it loses points, aesthetically.
Now apply this to The 300 or 24 or any other 'conservative' movie/TV show you want (and The 300 is at least 'conservative' in the sense that it's not relentlessly anti-war--though, Tolkien was anti-war in some important respects--he thought the conservative ideal was for people to be able to live their lives undisturbed in their homes, and not only does war interfere with that, but *martial values* interfere with that--and yet he was a conservative), and you get the Tomato critics making the same move I've just made above with Slither and Talladega Nights.
So what, then, is your position? Is it that the moral message of a movie has literally nothing to do with whether it's a good or bad movie, or that it's moral message does indeed affect its aesthetic value, or what?
2:38 PM
They idea of watching movies that would, or could be insulting to me personally, isn't too cool. I have made it a personal goal to avoid them. Who wants to be made fun of, and have to pay to do it? If I wanted that kind of abuse, I would go back to high school.
6:11 PM
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