Hopefully the Trump era isn't long and we head into a better epoch soon, but cinema is a process and not a result or "product".
In 2017, movies were finally reduced to flooding, disposable, expensive junk. Popcorn movies have as much fluff and flavor and nutritional value as popcorn. That ain't much, which is why you have to eat so much to feel satisfied.
Trump's America is the worst I've experienced. Reminds me of the dark, bleak days of George Bush Sr & Jr mixed with the willfully ignorant, gaudy, desensitized numbness of Reagan and Ford era content. Republicans have steadily declined into deeper lies, conspiracy, crime, genocide and evil (the lack of God). But hopefully this is America bottoming out.
If Trump is to be president for 2018, expect Hollywood to keep losing money and investing in bigger, dumber movies (think The Farting Butt film in "Idiocracy") while indies continue to dry up. I expect Netflix will probably hit a snag before their big push for cinema. Stranger Things is already tired and Kevin Spacey was Netflix's biggest star. Troma and Full Moon might get a minor boost in bank loans but highly doubtful. I think this tiny economy recovery is going to serve only the rich and most indie producers are too small and disorganized to compete. Maybe Lloyd Kaufman and Charles Band will finally team-up... or Roger Corman can buy their catalogs.
But, I think grass roots REAL underground cinema by independent directors might have a shot. When America's elite become outwardly fascist, conservative and criminal, its the American people who get pissed off, informed, active and creative. Art needs inspiration. Survival, liberty, justice. These are things that inspired the best films of all time. And you don't need a budget or new technology to make real art. All you need is a camera, a subject and an eye.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
seismic reactions in political thought will change movies
I hope 2017 was the death year for reboots and unoriginal scripts. Hollywood knows that audiences want original experiences and to relive classic history, but instead of "hip" unoriginal recreations of the past, they are forced to make historically relevant new narratives.
The Last Jedi was another glitzy paint-by-number remake of a classic sequel. Enough already. It made a billion dollars? Well, people have to go to the movies and Hollywood lets one fucking movie own the month of December, its going to do well. Especially since Disney funds theaters to only show their content, killed net neutrality and probably bankrupted Fox. Neoliberal capitalist pigs. At least they got rid of Fox which was sinking in mud anyway.
Logan sucked and appeased the sleeping masses, but thankfully its the finale of the franchise (knock on wood).
Leatherface was a massive, massive disappointment. A waste of hungry young global talent and a total jerk off of a classic folklore by greasy, greedy producers of schlock. At least they lost the rights to make more.
Power Rangers, Jumanji, Baywatch, Spiderman, Kong, IT, Puppet Master, Jeepers Creepers, Thor, Blade Runner. Old shit that didn't need new chapters. Cash-grabs, not inspired scripts that demand to be shot.
Hollywood is tone deaf at appealing to young people but thankfully they've engineered a generation who appease whatever Hollywood says. You feared the communists taking over the state? The capitalist takeover of the working class is much, much worse. And its deep state neoliberals who caused this. With their rejection of Marxism and exploitation of the free market, posing as leftists when they only serve the conservative 1%.
Liberals are running scared and bleeding money and doubling down on brainwashing as much as possible. With Trump in office, they are afraid of who will get exposed and they know the working class is turning against them. So they will show their true racist, sexist, conservative colors to keep them happy. And Trump's hordes of idiots will remain in the vocal minority but will spread more division, chaos, ignorance and hate as long as their spoiled mama's boy senpai is in office.
This is the moment where Libertarians have a moment to take control. To trust Anarcho-Capitalists would be a return to the collapsing 1980s (which is what has just happened). Plus they are are basically the racist, sexist, religious, gun crazy wing of Centrism.
Its up to the Far Left Marxists to rise again as an organized bunch beyond class, ability, tax bracket, minority group, whatever. They have to repair the economy by repairing the government. All Trump will do is defund and slash jobs, without any clue who is actually valuable (actually with crooked leanings to protect crooked pirates that serve him and his cronies). Anyone out for the better good must side with the better good.
This is the time for independent enterprise. Individuals coming together to achieve a global dream of freedom, independence and protection by state from big business. We must use small business to take back our communities. Don't give money to politicians or corporations. Put that money into your own future by investing in the poor, not the rich. Demand democratic socialist leaders and not self-serving liberals or conservatives.
The Last Jedi was another glitzy paint-by-number remake of a classic sequel. Enough already. It made a billion dollars? Well, people have to go to the movies and Hollywood lets one fucking movie own the month of December, its going to do well. Especially since Disney funds theaters to only show their content, killed net neutrality and probably bankrupted Fox. Neoliberal capitalist pigs. At least they got rid of Fox which was sinking in mud anyway.
Logan sucked and appeased the sleeping masses, but thankfully its the finale of the franchise (knock on wood).
Leatherface was a massive, massive disappointment. A waste of hungry young global talent and a total jerk off of a classic folklore by greasy, greedy producers of schlock. At least they lost the rights to make more.
Power Rangers, Jumanji, Baywatch, Spiderman, Kong, IT, Puppet Master, Jeepers Creepers, Thor, Blade Runner. Old shit that didn't need new chapters. Cash-grabs, not inspired scripts that demand to be shot.
Hollywood is tone deaf at appealing to young people but thankfully they've engineered a generation who appease whatever Hollywood says. You feared the communists taking over the state? The capitalist takeover of the working class is much, much worse. And its deep state neoliberals who caused this. With their rejection of Marxism and exploitation of the free market, posing as leftists when they only serve the conservative 1%.
Liberals are running scared and bleeding money and doubling down on brainwashing as much as possible. With Trump in office, they are afraid of who will get exposed and they know the working class is turning against them. So they will show their true racist, sexist, conservative colors to keep them happy. And Trump's hordes of idiots will remain in the vocal minority but will spread more division, chaos, ignorance and hate as long as their spoiled mama's boy senpai is in office.
This is the moment where Libertarians have a moment to take control. To trust Anarcho-Capitalists would be a return to the collapsing 1980s (which is what has just happened). Plus they are are basically the racist, sexist, religious, gun crazy wing of Centrism.
Its up to the Far Left Marxists to rise again as an organized bunch beyond class, ability, tax bracket, minority group, whatever. They have to repair the economy by repairing the government. All Trump will do is defund and slash jobs, without any clue who is actually valuable (actually with crooked leanings to protect crooked pirates that serve him and his cronies). Anyone out for the better good must side with the better good.
This is the time for independent enterprise. Individuals coming together to achieve a global dream of freedom, independence and protection by state from big business. We must use small business to take back our communities. Don't give money to politicians or corporations. Put that money into your own future by investing in the poor, not the rich. Demand democratic socialist leaders and not self-serving liberals or conservatives.
Faceless 1988
I started this year (and this blog) with a review of Jess Franco's Faceless. Now lets come full circle and re-review it. If 2017 taught me anything its that Franco was ahead of his time.
Faceless is still his masterpiece for me. Its extremely well-made but the script gives him the most substance to explore his established vocabulary. In the DVD commentary, he reveals that it was written by producer Rene Chateau for his aesthetic exactly. Chateau was a pure Franco fan so this obviously is the film for Franco fans. Franco is forced to stick to his better judgment and not lose sight of his audience with excessive sex or minimal plot. Its the commercial version of Franco's usual Dr. Orloff plot, but its so much stronger as Chateau organizes Franco's psychological obsessions and political leanings into something his haters can understand. Franco admitted that he didn't work with conscious meanings while shooting. But he read and contributed to Faceless and agreed that it is his story. He understood all of the symbolism, helped build its language and cosigned it as true to his vision. In commentary he even shoots down the claim that this is not a true Franco film.
All of that is preface for exploring the deep messages that make this the purest example of Franco's worldview. The script deconstructs his style exactly so the master can apply his aesthetic to where it belongs.
The plot of Faceless is based not on Orloff or the eerily similar French horror film Eyes Without A Face, but on the obscure novel that inspired both. Body snatchers are abducting and killing women to provide the flesh for a plastic surgeon's scarred sister. This thin premise is the groundwork for a Freudian labyrinth of psycho-sexual fracturing of the psyche.
The ultimate metaphor of the film is the Faceless Woman as the ultimate victim of capitalism's "sex sells" culture. Without a face, she has no identity, no love, no validation and cannot enter the world. Finding a new face = filling non-existence. No capital, no communism creates a violent search, a consuming passion for blood driving her to evil exploitation and fantasy fulfillment. Capitalism is built on the pain of the public for the privately wealthy. This is all from Eyes Without A Face, but the script takes some liberties. Prostitutes and Johns are shown as equal victims of the elite's hierarchy. Franco sees sex and drugs as instruments of the same hypocrisy, both independent occupations. Cocaine is how the film's damsel is seduced by our villains. This is the horror of a system where the working class aren't allowed to thrive but are demonized for using the only means they have. The horror of no communism is community goes to Hell where its "dog eat dog" and the artificial surface rules and spirituality is lost, sex is corrupted and cosmetic surgery is an enterprise.
Finding her New Face becomes the obsession of her plastic surgeon brother, the Ego - a cold Germanic genius, amoral, perverse and bourgeois in taste - a perfect example of Franco's villains. He is assisted by his cold blonde female nurse who represents Franco's feminine side - dangerous, anti-aging, anti-reproduction, a Lolita. The Id is represented by their manservant who is innocent, manipulated, confused but full of savage violence and obedient loyalty. They drag beautiful working class girls to their Parisian clinic to be diced up for old women to become beautiful again... until they abduct a rich daughter of a powerful elite man (the ultimate crime).
From the beginning, the Ego is torn between Sister and his nurse, the Other Woman. He is happy with both until an older woman whose beauty he damaged (representing The Mother) destroys his sister's face and ruins the balance of female energy in his psyche. With his beloved sister's life destroyed and the reality of aging clear, he is driven mad trying to resurrect his childhood memory of her. But the Other Woman become jealous of this incestuous obsession. He is torn between two vampire females who drive him to seek blood and become a vampire himself. The female assistant symbolizes Lina Romay, the famous life partner of Jess. Her character is always that of a Frozen Image, a memory, a "dream girl" he cannot satisfy. Dream Girl turned Nightmare Girl. In a brief cameo, Lina appears as a photograph! One amazing sequence has the surgeon and nurse hunting a girl in a disco. The young woman rejects this aging man and his nurse uses false lesbian wiles to seduce the victim. Another great cinematic reflection of Franco and Lina's arrangement. Franco's women are often the slasher in his stories (Bloody Moon) Perhaps she was jealous of the grief Franco expressed for his original love and leading lady Soledad Miranda, who is represented by The Damsel the Ego keeps locked away.
The Damsel is in the mold of classic Franco girls. She is his version of The Virgin, but a coke-taking "daddy's girl" whore who sleeps with all races of men. Franco defends and praises her for this. The SuperEgo, a detective assigned by her Father, pursues her. He is flippant, bored, a hotshot Americanized tool of authority wunderkind destined to fall. This is the archetypal Franco male hero. Franco pokes fun at his younger self, the stifled commercial director who learned under Orson Welles but was barred from Hollywood success. At one point, Franco self-identifies with a stereotypically gay photographer of cokehead models, the best summary of his extremely castrated aesthetic fetishization of the female image in film. This gay Id combats the SuperEgo with a muscle man named "Doo Doo". Project what you will.
Franco belongs to that group of psychoanalytical directors including Hitchcock, Lynch, Maya Deren, DePalma, Fellini, Argento, Bunuel (call them the "Caligari Club") who use cinema as a dreamscape. They use so may of the same tropes like Blonde vs Brunette, Virgin or Whore, The Father-In-Law's Challenge, Familial sexual tension. Its about the sex NOT shown. Romantic Horror + Sexual Horror. The quest for hidden desire and the fear of exposed fetish. When the Ego's female slaves are discovered by a woman, the Id overreacts and tortures her. This mistake haunts him in the end and destroys him (finally stopped by spikes to the base of the brain by the SuperEgo).
Even with its luxurious surface and fantastic budget, the film is crude, abstract and obsessed with The Primal. I find the commercialism's contrast only raises the darkness and animal magnetism in Franco's style. Unable to use his own experimental jazz, Franco makes ironic use of pop songs to attack consumerism (notice in which scenes they play). Franco satirizes the style of other directors with a style purposely static. The uniqueness of scenes lies in the details and deviations, which he learned as a jazz musician. He is free from the storytelling and experimentation to have fun with each scene. He wants you to grade each individually on execution as he sprinkles weirdness in each scene but only extends himself when it counts. This film follows his hardcore porn days so it has a heavy softcore vibe that is soothing enough to be disarming. The gory scenes replace the "money shots".
In the end, this film is about the creation of a perfect Frankenstien woman: a beautiful stranger's face on one's defaced sister. The vampire Sister buys her new face - the final capitalist prize for jealousy, murder and illegal gain - becoming the ultimate kinky love object. Freud's nightmare. In maybe the greatest ending to a Franco film, the SuperEgo fails to save The Virginal "dream girl" because of her rich vacationing Father. The Father-in-Law's false hopes doom them. He kills his own daughter by raising her to be the cokeheaded sexual victim of capitalist vampires. Its slut-shaming, victim-blaming perhaps, but Franco still damns the "predators of the night" but puts the blame back on the corrupt authority father figure who lost control. It, like the work of David Lynch and Hitchcock, may be mistaken for rape apologizing, but these "meninist" Marxists were simply showing the intersectionality of sexual abuse and the abuse of power from the leaders of state and business. This is Franco's last smoldering attack on Generalismo Franco, the fascist dictator who defined the cynical worldview and radical politics of Spain and his own life path. In the end, maybe all of his work was psychologically about Replacing The Father. This was his struggle. He was left so damaged, so anti-mother, anti-reproduction, anti-children, anti-Nazi and thus anti-women he was naturally drawn to (blond women). He found solace in a sister fetish for darker, younger women. "Faceless" is a perverted biographical confession to this sexual damage.
Jess Franco is an artist who psychoanalyzes himself brutally with every personal film. With 100+ films made, he became more self-aware than almost anyone. He contextualized his beliefs and prejudices into his work effortlessly and could still make a deceptively commercial film. As bizarre, excessive, mad, drug-damaged or awkward as it might get, he owns his funny psyche because he knows it compares favorably to the collective man's.
Faceless is still his masterpiece for me. Its extremely well-made but the script gives him the most substance to explore his established vocabulary. In the DVD commentary, he reveals that it was written by producer Rene Chateau for his aesthetic exactly. Chateau was a pure Franco fan so this obviously is the film for Franco fans. Franco is forced to stick to his better judgment and not lose sight of his audience with excessive sex or minimal plot. Its the commercial version of Franco's usual Dr. Orloff plot, but its so much stronger as Chateau organizes Franco's psychological obsessions and political leanings into something his haters can understand. Franco admitted that he didn't work with conscious meanings while shooting. But he read and contributed to Faceless and agreed that it is his story. He understood all of the symbolism, helped build its language and cosigned it as true to his vision. In commentary he even shoots down the claim that this is not a true Franco film.
All of that is preface for exploring the deep messages that make this the purest example of Franco's worldview. The script deconstructs his style exactly so the master can apply his aesthetic to where it belongs.
The plot of Faceless is based not on Orloff or the eerily similar French horror film Eyes Without A Face, but on the obscure novel that inspired both. Body snatchers are abducting and killing women to provide the flesh for a plastic surgeon's scarred sister. This thin premise is the groundwork for a Freudian labyrinth of psycho-sexual fracturing of the psyche.
The ultimate metaphor of the film is the Faceless Woman as the ultimate victim of capitalism's "sex sells" culture. Without a face, she has no identity, no love, no validation and cannot enter the world. Finding a new face = filling non-existence. No capital, no communism creates a violent search, a consuming passion for blood driving her to evil exploitation and fantasy fulfillment. Capitalism is built on the pain of the public for the privately wealthy. This is all from Eyes Without A Face, but the script takes some liberties. Prostitutes and Johns are shown as equal victims of the elite's hierarchy. Franco sees sex and drugs as instruments of the same hypocrisy, both independent occupations. Cocaine is how the film's damsel is seduced by our villains. This is the horror of a system where the working class aren't allowed to thrive but are demonized for using the only means they have. The horror of no communism is community goes to Hell where its "dog eat dog" and the artificial surface rules and spirituality is lost, sex is corrupted and cosmetic surgery is an enterprise.
Finding her New Face becomes the obsession of her plastic surgeon brother, the Ego - a cold Germanic genius, amoral, perverse and bourgeois in taste - a perfect example of Franco's villains. He is assisted by his cold blonde female nurse who represents Franco's feminine side - dangerous, anti-aging, anti-reproduction, a Lolita. The Id is represented by their manservant who is innocent, manipulated, confused but full of savage violence and obedient loyalty. They drag beautiful working class girls to their Parisian clinic to be diced up for old women to become beautiful again... until they abduct a rich daughter of a powerful elite man (the ultimate crime).
From the beginning, the Ego is torn between Sister and his nurse, the Other Woman. He is happy with both until an older woman whose beauty he damaged (representing The Mother) destroys his sister's face and ruins the balance of female energy in his psyche. With his beloved sister's life destroyed and the reality of aging clear, he is driven mad trying to resurrect his childhood memory of her. But the Other Woman become jealous of this incestuous obsession. He is torn between two vampire females who drive him to seek blood and become a vampire himself. The female assistant symbolizes Lina Romay, the famous life partner of Jess. Her character is always that of a Frozen Image, a memory, a "dream girl" he cannot satisfy. Dream Girl turned Nightmare Girl. In a brief cameo, Lina appears as a photograph! One amazing sequence has the surgeon and nurse hunting a girl in a disco. The young woman rejects this aging man and his nurse uses false lesbian wiles to seduce the victim. Another great cinematic reflection of Franco and Lina's arrangement. Franco's women are often the slasher in his stories (Bloody Moon) Perhaps she was jealous of the grief Franco expressed for his original love and leading lady Soledad Miranda, who is represented by The Damsel the Ego keeps locked away.
The Damsel is in the mold of classic Franco girls. She is his version of The Virgin, but a coke-taking "daddy's girl" whore who sleeps with all races of men. Franco defends and praises her for this. The SuperEgo, a detective assigned by her Father, pursues her. He is flippant, bored, a hotshot Americanized tool of authority wunderkind destined to fall. This is the archetypal Franco male hero. Franco pokes fun at his younger self, the stifled commercial director who learned under Orson Welles but was barred from Hollywood success. At one point, Franco self-identifies with a stereotypically gay photographer of cokehead models, the best summary of his extremely castrated aesthetic fetishization of the female image in film. This gay Id combats the SuperEgo with a muscle man named "Doo Doo". Project what you will.
Franco belongs to that group of psychoanalytical directors including Hitchcock, Lynch, Maya Deren, DePalma, Fellini, Argento, Bunuel (call them the "Caligari Club") who use cinema as a dreamscape. They use so may of the same tropes like Blonde vs Brunette, Virgin or Whore, The Father-In-Law's Challenge, Familial sexual tension. Its about the sex NOT shown. Romantic Horror + Sexual Horror. The quest for hidden desire and the fear of exposed fetish. When the Ego's female slaves are discovered by a woman, the Id overreacts and tortures her. This mistake haunts him in the end and destroys him (finally stopped by spikes to the base of the brain by the SuperEgo).
Even with its luxurious surface and fantastic budget, the film is crude, abstract and obsessed with The Primal. I find the commercialism's contrast only raises the darkness and animal magnetism in Franco's style. Unable to use his own experimental jazz, Franco makes ironic use of pop songs to attack consumerism (notice in which scenes they play). Franco satirizes the style of other directors with a style purposely static. The uniqueness of scenes lies in the details and deviations, which he learned as a jazz musician. He is free from the storytelling and experimentation to have fun with each scene. He wants you to grade each individually on execution as he sprinkles weirdness in each scene but only extends himself when it counts. This film follows his hardcore porn days so it has a heavy softcore vibe that is soothing enough to be disarming. The gory scenes replace the "money shots".
In the end, this film is about the creation of a perfect Frankenstien woman: a beautiful stranger's face on one's defaced sister. The vampire Sister buys her new face - the final capitalist prize for jealousy, murder and illegal gain - becoming the ultimate kinky love object. Freud's nightmare. In maybe the greatest ending to a Franco film, the SuperEgo fails to save The Virginal "dream girl" because of her rich vacationing Father. The Father-in-Law's false hopes doom them. He kills his own daughter by raising her to be the cokeheaded sexual victim of capitalist vampires. Its slut-shaming, victim-blaming perhaps, but Franco still damns the "predators of the night" but puts the blame back on the corrupt authority father figure who lost control. It, like the work of David Lynch and Hitchcock, may be mistaken for rape apologizing, but these "meninist" Marxists were simply showing the intersectionality of sexual abuse and the abuse of power from the leaders of state and business. This is Franco's last smoldering attack on Generalismo Franco, the fascist dictator who defined the cynical worldview and radical politics of Spain and his own life path. In the end, maybe all of his work was psychologically about Replacing The Father. This was his struggle. He was left so damaged, so anti-mother, anti-reproduction, anti-children, anti-Nazi and thus anti-women he was naturally drawn to (blond women). He found solace in a sister fetish for darker, younger women. "Faceless" is a perverted biographical confession to this sexual damage.
Jess Franco is an artist who psychoanalyzes himself brutally with every personal film. With 100+ films made, he became more self-aware than almost anyone. He contextualized his beliefs and prejudices into his work effortlessly and could still make a deceptively commercial film. As bizarre, excessive, mad, drug-damaged or awkward as it might get, he owns his funny psyche because he knows it compares favorably to the collective man's.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974
2017 ends and we say goodbye to Tobe Hooper, one of the most gifted but under-recognized directors of the 20th century. I'm a huge fan of the man and professed for years there are deep levels to his work that were overlooked as kooky paranoid drugginess until our current political hellstorm. Now that he's dead it seems the world is waking up and cinema is catching up to his vision.
The clearest example of this is Get Out, the critic's and audience's favorite this year. The American horror fandom's white male minority were quick to label it "liberal propaganda" and "too funny to be horror". Little do this backwards simpletons understand Get Out is a postmodern remake of their holy Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because so many still don't realize TCM is a fierce, focused satire on rightwing politics in America.
While Get Out is a game-changing liberal-friendly attack on neoliberalism, TCM was the original. Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel were two jaded Texas radicals feeling the effects of the collective bad LSD trip that killed Flower Power and gave power to corrupt capitalist authoritarians. Henkel's script is a harsh Marxist criticism of hippies and their blissful ignorance and cooperation with conservatism, but Hooper directs it with a game self-deprecating empathy with these goofy hippie victims and a kind of morbid sympathy for the backwoods cannibal hillbillies who are tools of the bourgeoisie. This collaboration birthed the first Libertarian horror film; "Easy Rider" meets "Psycho".
I would say Hooper is the Leftist Libertarian, as his sequel TCM2 is a trashing of yuppies and warning of neoliberalism and Reagan republicans. Henkel is the more Right Libertarian, not trusting the CIA at all and casting a young libertarian Matthew McConaughey in his TCM4. Both films are radical politically, just as feminist as the first Massacre but really work best in tandem aesthetically.
Where Henkel is ultraviolent, nihilistic, political, symbolic, mystical, minimalist, primal, politically incorrect, transgressive, Jungian and naturalistic, Hooper counters with a style that is "staged", ironic, operatic, stoned, satirical, logical, optmistic, technical, cartooned, perverse, expressionist, Freudian and romantic. Seperate one from the other and you get their respective sequels.
But where do they agree? The negative direction of our country. They each shift the blame more on the other but find both at fault. Hooper finds the rednecks the more absurd & dangerous threat and I suspect Henkel finds them a byproduct of the hippies' isolating classism. The film is a comedy that laughs at both sides of this family rivalry and illustrates a reflection and relation between Sally and Leatherface. They live right next door, both lose a brother (Vietnam reference) and are both getting screwed by "The Man". Its the pointlessness of their violence and separation that is tragic. What probably hatched as a white male's dark fantasy of torturing his little sister on-screen developed into a transcendent confession of an impossible union between Beauty and Beast. The story expresses the personal pain of these two scruffy Texan boys never being able to bring the rich blond girl home to "meet the family". Leatherface and The Hitchhiker are the yin and yang of the creators, the Id and SuperEgo. The Old Man is a crazed, shame-filled mixture of both, the Ego.
This confused moral grayness creates the transgressive use of black & white throughout the film. The "White House" turns out to be a slaughterhouse of teenage hippies. The white damsel is saved by a chubby black protector (as Get Out would play off of). Repeatedly, there is great horror shown in daylight The Sun is shown as an evil force.
And there is more meaning to the production design. Sally comes to the White House later for sanctuary only to find it full of dead bodies in the attic - a rejection of The Church. Immediately after, she tries The Gas Station that has no gas left. This could be a reference to concentration camps or the Middle East.
So much of the Normal gets subverted: family dinner, the kitchen, patriarchy, white men, meat-eating, capitalism, the South, victimhood, the very idea of hippies as useful, the binary. This is hardcore cynical Marxist stuff. The writers are out for blood and pissed off at everyone. This informs the now famous formula of Scare-Laugh-Scare-Laugh that this film popularized. It can't be overstated how archetypal this script has become. Every year it looks more and more tame because fan works like Get Out & True Detective spread its influence. But its most famous for spawning the basic slasher formula. Isn't Halloween just an unofficial sequel where Leatherface breaks out into suburbia? (the unintentional effect the TCM had on mainstream audiences that made it a frightening hit with teens) No one would argue that its not a horror film, but its creators maintain TCM was a dark satire first.
Here we are going into 2018. Tobe Hooper has passed on, the Leatherface franchise seems massacred after the latest installment and the most popular film of the year is a postmodernist retelling of this film. Is the TCM now a classic film and its more of a history lesson than a relevant commentary? No way. Get Out's evil family make sexual objects out of black people for business. Very topical. But TCM's evil family make food out of the poor and less fortunate for business. That message is more encompassing and even more pressing as its no longer the stupid hippies we must fear in political power but the evil cannibal white trash themselves. This explains the popularity of Leatherface during the George W Bush era and I hope TCM becomes a beacon for resistance to fascist tyranny again. With each film, Leatherface's world opens up more, exposing his insulated world of lawless slavery, inbred mania and capitalist brutality to new generations. The story has never been completed and its culmination might bring needed positive closure to the real world. Its become an American film institution, more than a franchise, with power to attack the highest criminals in our society.
I hear the film rights are back on the market. Maybe now we have artists worthy enough of doing Mr. Hooper & Mr. Henkel proud.
The clearest example of this is Get Out, the critic's and audience's favorite this year. The American horror fandom's white male minority were quick to label it "liberal propaganda" and "too funny to be horror". Little do this backwards simpletons understand Get Out is a postmodern remake of their holy Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because so many still don't realize TCM is a fierce, focused satire on rightwing politics in America.
While Get Out is a game-changing liberal-friendly attack on neoliberalism, TCM was the original. Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel were two jaded Texas radicals feeling the effects of the collective bad LSD trip that killed Flower Power and gave power to corrupt capitalist authoritarians. Henkel's script is a harsh Marxist criticism of hippies and their blissful ignorance and cooperation with conservatism, but Hooper directs it with a game self-deprecating empathy with these goofy hippie victims and a kind of morbid sympathy for the backwoods cannibal hillbillies who are tools of the bourgeoisie. This collaboration birthed the first Libertarian horror film; "Easy Rider" meets "Psycho".
I would say Hooper is the Leftist Libertarian, as his sequel TCM2 is a trashing of yuppies and warning of neoliberalism and Reagan republicans. Henkel is the more Right Libertarian, not trusting the CIA at all and casting a young libertarian Matthew McConaughey in his TCM4. Both films are radical politically, just as feminist as the first Massacre but really work best in tandem aesthetically.
Where Henkel is ultraviolent, nihilistic, political, symbolic, mystical, minimalist, primal, politically incorrect, transgressive, Jungian and naturalistic, Hooper counters with a style that is "staged", ironic, operatic, stoned, satirical, logical, optmistic, technical, cartooned, perverse, expressionist, Freudian and romantic. Seperate one from the other and you get their respective sequels.
But where do they agree? The negative direction of our country. They each shift the blame more on the other but find both at fault. Hooper finds the rednecks the more absurd & dangerous threat and I suspect Henkel finds them a byproduct of the hippies' isolating classism. The film is a comedy that laughs at both sides of this family rivalry and illustrates a reflection and relation between Sally and Leatherface. They live right next door, both lose a brother (Vietnam reference) and are both getting screwed by "The Man". Its the pointlessness of their violence and separation that is tragic. What probably hatched as a white male's dark fantasy of torturing his little sister on-screen developed into a transcendent confession of an impossible union between Beauty and Beast. The story expresses the personal pain of these two scruffy Texan boys never being able to bring the rich blond girl home to "meet the family". Leatherface and The Hitchhiker are the yin and yang of the creators, the Id and SuperEgo. The Old Man is a crazed, shame-filled mixture of both, the Ego.
This confused moral grayness creates the transgressive use of black & white throughout the film. The "White House" turns out to be a slaughterhouse of teenage hippies. The white damsel is saved by a chubby black protector (as Get Out would play off of). Repeatedly, there is great horror shown in daylight The Sun is shown as an evil force.
And there is more meaning to the production design. Sally comes to the White House later for sanctuary only to find it full of dead bodies in the attic - a rejection of The Church. Immediately after, she tries The Gas Station that has no gas left. This could be a reference to concentration camps or the Middle East.
So much of the Normal gets subverted: family dinner, the kitchen, patriarchy, white men, meat-eating, capitalism, the South, victimhood, the very idea of hippies as useful, the binary. This is hardcore cynical Marxist stuff. The writers are out for blood and pissed off at everyone. This informs the now famous formula of Scare-Laugh-Scare-Laugh that this film popularized. It can't be overstated how archetypal this script has become. Every year it looks more and more tame because fan works like Get Out & True Detective spread its influence. But its most famous for spawning the basic slasher formula. Isn't Halloween just an unofficial sequel where Leatherface breaks out into suburbia? (the unintentional effect the TCM had on mainstream audiences that made it a frightening hit with teens) No one would argue that its not a horror film, but its creators maintain TCM was a dark satire first.
Here we are going into 2018. Tobe Hooper has passed on, the Leatherface franchise seems massacred after the latest installment and the most popular film of the year is a postmodernist retelling of this film. Is the TCM now a classic film and its more of a history lesson than a relevant commentary? No way. Get Out's evil family make sexual objects out of black people for business. Very topical. But TCM's evil family make food out of the poor and less fortunate for business. That message is more encompassing and even more pressing as its no longer the stupid hippies we must fear in political power but the evil cannibal white trash themselves. This explains the popularity of Leatherface during the George W Bush era and I hope TCM becomes a beacon for resistance to fascist tyranny again. With each film, Leatherface's world opens up more, exposing his insulated world of lawless slavery, inbred mania and capitalist brutality to new generations. The story has never been completed and its culmination might bring needed positive closure to the real world. Its become an American film institution, more than a franchise, with power to attack the highest criminals in our society.
I hear the film rights are back on the market. Maybe now we have artists worthy enough of doing Mr. Hooper & Mr. Henkel proud.
Ridley Scott: Kubrick's son
There might not be a stronger trilogy of films directed consecutively than Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, but I'm surprised how few pick up on their connective narrative which lay out Kubrick's pessimistic predictions of the human race - White man ruins the planet, lets his privileged 1% breakaway and leaves the 99% to die in a capitalist-owned government dystopia. The rules, morals and causes of this coming society are then examined in his remaining work (Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket & most importantly Eyes Wide Shut).
Now the first filmmaker to pick up on Kubrick's not-so-hidden conspiracy theorist plot was Ridley Scott. His first film The Duelists is a major play off of Barry Lyndon but Alien directly confirms Scott's acceptance of Kubrick's worldview. The antagonist of Alien - as Scott has reminded us with this year's Alien Covenant - is essentially HAL from 2001. And with Blade Runner, Scott remakes A Clockwork Orange within his own futurist expectations, bringing HAL down to Earth inside of Alex's droogs.
Now the first filmmaker to pick up on Kubrick's not-so-hidden conspiracy theorist plot was Ridley Scott. His first film The Duelists is a major play off of Barry Lyndon but Alien directly confirms Scott's acceptance of Kubrick's worldview. The antagonist of Alien - as Scott has reminded us with this year's Alien Covenant - is essentially HAL from 2001. And with Blade Runner, Scott remakes A Clockwork Orange within his own futurist expectations, bringing HAL down to Earth inside of Alex's droogs.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Cinema Manifesto
Hollywood use social media to tell us what we like. Back in the day, audiences used to TELL which movies to make with their video rentals, something you can actually use to determine popularity better than tickets sales or ratings aggregators.
But they screwed it up by monopolizing video stores with Blockbuster, basically their created propaganda store to put Mom n Pop independent shops out of business.
And if you believe Hollywood has some CIA ties, than this is government-funded bankruptcy of the public for the private wealth.
This is where the Libertarians are righter than most (and why I voted for Gary Johnson in 2011). But their leader Ayn Rand proposed a removal of all government socialism to counter government-run monopolies in the free market. Government monopolies aren't just wrong because they ethically block independent business from growing, they fail because you government can't run everything if its spread so far. Plus it leads to illegal propaganda and political sponsoring.
Hollywood is bigger than the government in dollars and influence, but its used to only profit capitalist parties, the NeoLiberals, the Christian Conservatives and all the white supremacist Luciferians in-between. There's also that Gay Boule thing and the Jews. Anyone promoting basic communism is silenced, excommunicated and shouted down. Hollywood and thus mainstream movies are both so anti-leftist and anything on the contrarian is a miracle.
So why shouldn't the government produce their own films that they can profit from. The politicians are robbing our government so much that now foreign dictators are getting chunks of our taxes and federal reserve! Spread socialism if you love movies!
resurrecting the original (First Generation)
I count 19 sequels released and many more films are remakes or based on TV shows or intellectual property. What is this? Its an obvious strategy for the film producers but why are so many critics and audiences receptive to these films that are rarely non-disposable?
I think they see the disappointing truth of Hollywood cynicism, deny it and reframe it as subversive "pop art" appreciation or some heroic aesthetic recontextualizing for Gen Z. That is always the message spread by the PR stooges who run social media "entertainment news". What would that really mean if it wasn't a lie?
I remember the first wave in the mid 90s: Brady Bunch: The Movie, Addams Family, Lost in Space, Beverly Hillbillies (thankfully Gilligan's Island's corpse was not molested). Besides the sequel to Addams Family, these are truly abysmal movies that only appear positive in contrast to what Hollywood has devolved into. But they are easy to make.
I think this return to aesthetic laziness is tied to our digital zombification, as ADHD ties to our acceptance of the disposable and shallow. The only people unamused by these movies are people with longer concentration and memories. The rest are comfortable watching 1000 hours of mediocre content so they reject the standard that 1000 hours of content should or could be good.
Push for "anti-franchise" films. Anti-nostalgia. Anti-remake, anti-sequel, anti-prequel. This is the new aesthetic of radical narrative commercial filmmaking.
I think they see the disappointing truth of Hollywood cynicism, deny it and reframe it as subversive "pop art" appreciation or some heroic aesthetic recontextualizing for Gen Z. That is always the message spread by the PR stooges who run social media "entertainment news". What would that really mean if it wasn't a lie?
I remember the first wave in the mid 90s: Brady Bunch: The Movie, Addams Family, Lost in Space, Beverly Hillbillies (thankfully Gilligan's Island's corpse was not molested). Besides the sequel to Addams Family, these are truly abysmal movies that only appear positive in contrast to what Hollywood has devolved into. But they are easy to make.
I think this return to aesthetic laziness is tied to our digital zombification, as ADHD ties to our acceptance of the disposable and shallow. The only people unamused by these movies are people with longer concentration and memories. The rest are comfortable watching 1000 hours of mediocre content so they reject the standard that 1000 hours of content should or could be good.
Push for "anti-franchise" films. Anti-nostalgia. Anti-remake, anti-sequel, anti-prequel. This is the new aesthetic of radical narrative commercial filmmaking.
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