(no subject)
I've done stupid things to put off doing homework, but I do believe going to see Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector might be the rocking-horse winner.
Which, yeah, quite the film. Entertaining in the ridiculously stoopid manner I was expecting, granted I took a twenty minute break in the middle to chat with a coworker, so perhaps a straight ninety minutes of it would have been overwhelming. I don't, strictly, like to be ironic in regards to so current an item in the cultural discourse, but, c'mon, #1 on the IMDB Bottom 100, plus I have the whole employee free-pass thing going for me. Clearly I had no choice but to see it.
I can't really decide how to react to it. I can certainly see why people would hate it, in its unrestrained glorification of low culture. I would think that's gotta be close to a record for most defecation/flatulance jokes in a film. It is, however, at least straight-forward in its intentions, with absolutely no ironic distancing from redneckness in the product. Not the most complex plot, certainly, more-or-less your traditional Dirty Harry/Lone Wolf McQuade/Top Dog sorta "I work alone" cop film, just replacing Nixonion/post-Watergate justice-over-bureaucracy rhetoric with a consciously low brow immediacy-over-appearances equivalent (and cop with health inspector, natch). Both of which, I guess, work out to placing the interests of the 'us' over subversion to 'their' social norms and, dunno, fascism? I haven't really read anything on narrative fascism, outside of one side argument (presumably relating to John Milius) in A Cinema of Loneliness.
But, anyway, yeah, intentionally stupid and capable of it. Problem then comes in that the morals exhaulted in the film (average Southerners are awesome) are often offensive. Plentiful fag jokes, etc. I've come around, after loathing it, to dalliances with such language in my increasing ironic adoption of hypermasculinity (Deadbolt, Unknown Hinson, generally claiming to be a hardass), but then that's exclusively with an audience that knows I'm doing it facetiously. And while I guess the (Nebraska-born) man behind the character Larry the Cable Guy might well hold different morals, it seems the entire point of the film's lack of ironic distance is to reinforce/resonate with earnest beliefs in the audience. I'm certainly not one to hold the artist responsible for what could be taken from a work (again, uh, Unknown Hinson), but seems there's not really any other possible interpretation of Larry. Not to mention the wheel-chair jokes!
Uncomfortably Silent Majority-ish, but equally hilariously hypermasculine. HMMMM.
Moreover, I've still a six page paper to write. Research debate paper type thing, which wouldn't be all that bad, if not for that I foolishly signed up for "Gender portrayals in media do not negatively affect society" because I assumed no one else would. No one in my class, or the rest of academia, it would appear. Best I can get is a moderate sorta "not entirely bad, because some people do genuinely fall into them," which I guess will have to do. Regardless, I must, uh, Git-R-Done.
Which, yeah, quite the film. Entertaining in the ridiculously stoopid manner I was expecting, granted I took a twenty minute break in the middle to chat with a coworker, so perhaps a straight ninety minutes of it would have been overwhelming. I don't, strictly, like to be ironic in regards to so current an item in the cultural discourse, but, c'mon, #1 on the IMDB Bottom 100, plus I have the whole employee free-pass thing going for me. Clearly I had no choice but to see it.
I can't really decide how to react to it. I can certainly see why people would hate it, in its unrestrained glorification of low culture. I would think that's gotta be close to a record for most defecation/flatulance jokes in a film. It is, however, at least straight-forward in its intentions, with absolutely no ironic distancing from redneckness in the product. Not the most complex plot, certainly, more-or-less your traditional Dirty Harry/Lone Wolf McQuade/Top Dog sorta "I work alone" cop film, just replacing Nixonion/post-Watergate justice-over-bureaucracy rhetoric with a consciously low brow immediacy-over-appearances equivalent (and cop with health inspector, natch). Both of which, I guess, work out to placing the interests of the 'us' over subversion to 'their' social norms and, dunno, fascism? I haven't really read anything on narrative fascism, outside of one side argument (presumably relating to John Milius) in A Cinema of Loneliness.
But, anyway, yeah, intentionally stupid and capable of it. Problem then comes in that the morals exhaulted in the film (average Southerners are awesome) are often offensive. Plentiful fag jokes, etc. I've come around, after loathing it, to dalliances with such language in my increasing ironic adoption of hypermasculinity (Deadbolt, Unknown Hinson, generally claiming to be a hardass), but then that's exclusively with an audience that knows I'm doing it facetiously. And while I guess the (Nebraska-born) man behind the character Larry the Cable Guy might well hold different morals, it seems the entire point of the film's lack of ironic distance is to reinforce/resonate with earnest beliefs in the audience. I'm certainly not one to hold the artist responsible for what could be taken from a work (again, uh, Unknown Hinson), but seems there's not really any other possible interpretation of Larry. Not to mention the wheel-chair jokes!
Uncomfortably Silent Majority-ish, but equally hilariously hypermasculine. HMMMM.
Moreover, I've still a six page paper to write. Research debate paper type thing, which wouldn't be all that bad, if not for that I foolishly signed up for "Gender portrayals in media do not negatively affect society" because I assumed no one else would. No one in my class, or the rest of academia, it would appear. Best I can get is a moderate sorta "not entirely bad, because some people do genuinely fall into them," which I guess will have to do. Regardless, I must, uh, Git-R-Done.