Cloverfield, or destruction as entertainment
Yesterday, in the middle of a frustrating afternoon spent sitting at my desk trying to finish a paper, I read the New York Times review of Cloverfield. The level of vitriol with which reviewer Manohla Dargis expressed her hatred for the movie was almost sufficient to lift me out of my mathematical slump for a few hours. Cloverfield, you see, is yet another monster movie in which the viewer gets to delight in wondrous special effects simulating the destruction of famous places in New York City. (This much was clear from the posters I saw in the subway when I was there a few weeks ago.) Now, I should be clear: I do think there is a time and place for that particular genre. Some years ago I was more than passingly entertained (on an airplane, of course, I didn't pay for it) by scenes of Godzilla fighting to the death with the US Air Force while destroying the Brooklyn Bridge.
Indeed, there are good examples within this and related genres: some that carry deeper meaning, others that are just plain fun. Dargis makes clear in passages such as the following, that she regards Cloverfield as neither:
Like "Cloverfield" itself, this new monster is nothing more than a blunt instrument designed to smash and grab without Freudian complexity or political critique, despite the tacky allusions to Sept. 11. The screams and the images of smoke billowing through the canyons of Lower Manhattan may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination. (The director, Matt Reeves, lives in Los Angeles, as does the writer, Drew Goddard, and the movie’s star producer, J. J. Abrams.) But the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence, and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your only complaint may be, What took it so long?
While that is indeed the kind of sentiment that can lift my spirits somewhat when work is getting me down, I found the reference to 9/11 interesting in its own right. I checked Wikipedia and found that Dargis does not only live in but also grew up in New York, as did I -- it strikes me as very much the sort of thing a New Yorker would say, especially a native. The assumption is that no one from New York, especially if they were actually there on 9/11, could ever be so insensitive as to make vulgar allusions to it in a monster movie... yet of course it's bound to happen if the filmmakers come from LA (a place that represents everything antithetical to our treasured New Yorkers' way of life).
I also have a tendency to think that way, and I wonder if it's fair. After all, the rest of America -- the rest of the world, in fact -- experienced the attacks almost as directly as most of us New Yorkers, which is to say on TV... are they now so much more able to take such images lightly than those for whom it was their home? (I see plenty of evidence that there is truth in this, actually... I'm often tempted to think that Bush would never have been reelected otherwise, but I'm probably being naive about that.)
And then I can't help but think of the original 1954 Godzilla, of which a restored version made the rounds of the international art cinemas a few years ago and made me realize that it was a much deeper film than I'd ever imagined. Gojira's fiery destruction of Tokyo is directly intended to echo the bombing of major Japanese cities in the war, especially the atomic bomb -- as such, it's a vehement antiwar statement, not to be taken lightly at all. Yet it's also entertaining... and I wonder what the Japanese audiences thought of this nine years after the traumatic events. One thing I'm fairly certain of (and it isn't comparable to the 9/11 question above but interesting nonetheless): American audiences, for decades afterwards, didn't give it a second thought.
Indeed, there are good examples within this and related genres: some that carry deeper meaning, others that are just plain fun. Dargis makes clear in passages such as the following, that she regards Cloverfield as neither:
Like "Cloverfield" itself, this new monster is nothing more than a blunt instrument designed to smash and grab without Freudian complexity or political critique, despite the tacky allusions to Sept. 11. The screams and the images of smoke billowing through the canyons of Lower Manhattan may make you think of the attack, and you may curse the filmmakers for their vulgarity, insensitivity or lack of imagination. (The director, Matt Reeves, lives in Los Angeles, as does the writer, Drew Goddard, and the movie’s star producer, J. J. Abrams.) But the film is too dumb to offend anything except your intelligence, and the monster does cut a satisfying swath through the cast, so your only complaint may be, What took it so long?
While that is indeed the kind of sentiment that can lift my spirits somewhat when work is getting me down, I found the reference to 9/11 interesting in its own right. I checked Wikipedia and found that Dargis does not only live in but also grew up in New York, as did I -- it strikes me as very much the sort of thing a New Yorker would say, especially a native. The assumption is that no one from New York, especially if they were actually there on 9/11, could ever be so insensitive as to make vulgar allusions to it in a monster movie... yet of course it's bound to happen if the filmmakers come from LA (a place that represents everything antithetical to our treasured New Yorkers' way of life).
I also have a tendency to think that way, and I wonder if it's fair. After all, the rest of America -- the rest of the world, in fact -- experienced the attacks almost as directly as most of us New Yorkers, which is to say on TV... are they now so much more able to take such images lightly than those for whom it was their home? (I see plenty of evidence that there is truth in this, actually... I'm often tempted to think that Bush would never have been reelected otherwise, but I'm probably being naive about that.)
And then I can't help but think of the original 1954 Godzilla, of which a restored version made the rounds of the international art cinemas a few years ago and made me realize that it was a much deeper film than I'd ever imagined. Gojira's fiery destruction of Tokyo is directly intended to echo the bombing of major Japanese cities in the war, especially the atomic bomb -- as such, it's a vehement antiwar statement, not to be taken lightly at all. Yet it's also entertaining... and I wonder what the Japanese audiences thought of this nine years after the traumatic events. One thing I'm fairly certain of (and it isn't comparable to the 9/11 question above but interesting nonetheless): American audiences, for decades afterwards, didn't give it a second thought.