continuing on a theme ...

since the eminem video (link below) bridges the gap between politics and culture, i will use it as a segue to venture further into culture, if only to help myself calm down a bit. the news this morning had me nearly hyperventilating at my desk. (being at the plugged-and-diapered time o' the month, i suppose, doesn't help.)

please god, if you haven't abandoned us, see us safely through this election. give us the president we deserve and may we endeavor to deserve him, or at least hold off taking him for granted until february 05. please god, don't write america off as a lost cause. if you won't, i won't.

but i was going to talk about culture.

i got four books today from the nypl, bless their souls, including the latest from lemony snicket, bless HIS soul, and my aren't we religious today. well, you know what they say about foxholes, and boy are we as a country in a deep one. (CULTURE.) okay! lemony snicket. i can't say enough about this mournful, mordant writer of children's books and mag fields songs. he will see me through the next week, or at least the next underutilized evening.

this evening won't be underutilized though. crank up the khakis and get me a rifle: i'm going goose hunting for undecideds. yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw. (CULTURE!)

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE! that's what i wanted to talk about, since i finally kicked my own ass and ben's into a movie theater. but even the free popcorn that came with our nyu-discounted tickets couldn't make this disappointment go down easy. such potential, so much intelligence and anger and humor, so many puppets, and ultimately, what do you have? an action movie that mocks action movie conventions. that's at its most successful level.

politically, TAWP's message is muddled. since ours is the viewpoint of the arrogantly casual TAWP agents who shrug off their world-altering fuck ups, we the audience sympathize with them. with the opposition aiding the terrorists, there isn't much choice. besides, TAWP is well-intentioned, so who cares if the louvre is destroyed? (except for da vinci code fans everywhere, who gasped a collective "my god! the grail!") as ben pointed out, the louvre is just a symbol, as is everything in the movie, up to and including our puppet pro- and antagonists. unlike in the far more effective southpark movie, no character here has any real personality.

again, for a send-up of action movies, that's fine. but it makes for weak satire. even if you're aiming only for a perfect parody, why leave the requisite happy ending intact? why not go for something actually memorable and stranglove-ian? why finish up with a logically-unsound at best and offensive-and-misogynistic at worst finale diatribe on how the world is divided up into dicks, pussies, and assholes, with clear preference given to the dicks? i mean, ew.

there is a whiff of a critique to begin with of TAWP's god-given right -- actually, god isn't mentioned anywhere; patriotism is their religion, so it's more like flag-given -- to destroy the world for the sake of saving america. but by the time michael moore shows up, two fisting hot dogs, as a suicide bomber, it's clear the filmmakers have run out of nuanced or original things to say. half the celebrities they kill off seem seriously unnecessary. their rancor against sammy l. jackson, danny glover, & helen hunt is bewildering. the prominent leftiest i can understand, since they've put themselves up on a soapbox to be knocked down. but susan sarandon is not exactly sean penn.

the homophobia and the racism didn't bother me as much, for whatever reason. at this point, that's expected. but some originality and consistent, killer humor would have been nice to balance them out. the nail in the coffin is that the consistent, killer humor was lacking.

messrs. parker and stone should go back to making smart cartoons and leave political satire to john stuart leibowitz.