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Andy Dehnart, Wesley Morris, and Alex Pappademas

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from: Wesley Morris

Putting Shaq in a Compact Instead of a Limo

Posted Thursday, April 26, 2001, at 1:01 PM ET

Andy, where have you been? If you're a 9-year-old, the marketing place is your first voting booth. It's much sexier than those stalls. And all those tricky consumer options. At that age, I'd rather be voting for SoulDecision to stay on TRL than for state comptroller. I do find it strange that a 9-year-old was perplexed by how to characterize her generation. A puzzle like that sounds an awful lot like the verbal equivalent of how JonBenet Ramsey was all dolled up. Icky, but I'm intrigued.

Ickier is that headline in today's New York Times "Art and Leisure" piece about that illegal Gone With the Wind parody. After the story goes out of its way to make clear that its subject, Alice Randall, hated the novel and movie's "birthin' babies" line, some smart-ass on the copy desk used it in the hed. The term got on her nerves, the piece says. Well the Times gets on mine sometimes. It's such absurd, sardonic characterization of the piece that I'm laughing as I type this. But way to kick Ms. Randall in the balls. They should hand her some of that "race series" Pulitzer dough. Such a bitch-slap. Worse is that it's just another hassle for David Kirkpatrick. I don't know this guy. But I'm starting to feel for him--sorta. First that nightmare with Dave Eggers, which was about as crafty, creepy, and nail-biting as any airport thriller; then what seemed be a temporary demotion in "Business" picking up the journalist lint; now a bum headline. Maybe it's karma. Maybe I should abandon the whole thing before I get hexed, too.

On to Michiko Kakutani's dry assessment of the return of the '80s. The collage at the top of the piece way oversold it. I'm not sure which came first, the text or the art. It read like she was trying to keep up with all the images, like they were falling from the rafters and she was running around trying to catch them with her keyboard. It reads like a series of idea drive-bys and semi-pithy mentions, the kind of which she excoriates authors for deploying in her five-star book reviews. Newspaper cultural coverage bugs when it tries to jam a magazine piece in a daily format. It's the difference, for me, between putting Shaq in a compact and putting him in a limo. In the process, her point pulled a muscle. I guess her '80s are different from mine. All the signs are open all night to interpretation, but she failed to persuade me that Millionaire, Survivor, and The Sopranos signify the '80s' return--plus where's this new brat pack she mentions? Again, I'll get out before a hex befalls me.

Anyway, don't tell Wesley Snipes, but Roger Moore thinks it's time for a black Bond, and he nominates Cuba Gooding to sip the martinis. I think he's crazy--about Gooding, not a black 007--but check it out. Can we be frivolous on our last day? Please?

I have to deal with the not-apocalyptically-bad-just-regular-old-(if-not-fascinatingly)-OK Town and Country. Later.

Wesley

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Wesley Morris

Putting Shaq in a Compact Instead of a Limo

Posted Thursday, April 26, 2001, at 1:01 PM ET
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Andy Dehnart publishes Reality Blurred, works as a Web producer and free-lance writer, and is pursuing a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing. Wesley Morris is a film critic at the San Francisco Chronicle. Alex Pappademas is an editor at Blender, a new music magazine.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: President Bush on drilling, MTV and the youth market: same situation? Talk to WillV here. Thread your way through all the posts saying yes they do have the ads in Chicago (we know now, OK?) and find some posted lists: Zeitguy's Rools of Cool, Paul Caniff's answers to questions, and Gypsy's theory on disco. Jared White suggests Eggertian rather than Eggersesque. Check out the checkmarks for discussions on criticism and music. For more good stuff on film reviews read in full the fascinating posts from Steve Sailer and Aluminum Man (below). Done all that? Congratulations, you are now a complete popular culture Instant Expert. (Or a Breakfast Table Fray expert--same thing.)]


At the risk of sounding churlish--or rather, gleefully trying to sound churlish--the comment of your "Breakfast Table" writer about the Bush administration--"Essentially, they're politically motivated cowards" [Monday's entry]--demonstrates an acute lack of insight into, well, one of the great features of civilization. Politically motivated bravery is usually a suspect virtue--it led Napoleon into Russia, Hoover into a principled stand against "hand-outs," and Tom DeLay into being Tom DeLay. The real problem is that the Bushies face no bullying from the other side of the aisle: nobody who is willing to demagogue them, dog them, and dice them into the neutered conservatism which was Jr.'s daddy's trademark. In the weird mores of Washington, the dogger/dicer really doesn't have to have a national constituency--just a nasty taste for institutional infighting. If only Wellstone had Gingrich's taste for lowmindedness.

--Roger

(To reply, click here.)


 Having recently become the film critic for United Press International, I've been thinking a lot about these issues. The biggest problem with movie reviews in general is that reviewers are so homogenous--almost always male, white, upper middle class, with a grad degree in humanities or liberal arts, urban, high IQ, intellectual but not hugely logical or well-informed about things beyond the cultural realm like business or science or sociology, and extremely opinionated--that the tastes of huge demographic groups get ignored. I fall in most of those categories, too, but coming at a rather late age to this trade, I just don't as often experience anymore the testosterone surge that makes me want to shove my opinion down the throats of people who aren't like me.

For example, women. Over the years I've noticed that women generally don't like the same movies I like. That used to offend me greatly. I figured I could cure women of their bad taste in movies by exposing them to the really good stuff (i.e., what I liked) and explaining to them--over and over again--why it's better than the crap they liked. Slowly, though, I grew to respect women and their tastes more. I also learned that lots of other people aren't as smart as me and that making them watch what I liked to watch wasn't going to make them enjoy it more. Now, I take steps to help put myself in other peoples' shoes...

--Steve Sailer

(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)


 Most Tom Green fans (and I'm not one of them) will have already decided to see Freddy Got Fingered a long time ago, and nothing that reviews have said (or will say) makes any difference. The same is true of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy or the last installments of the increasingly awful Star Wars series. In fact, contrary to what the Breakfast Tablers are suggesting, I think most people have their minds made up about whether or not to see any given movie long before reviews hits the stands.

What informed, thoughtful, articulate critics can do is make us see, hear and understand things in movies that we otherwise might miss. They can challenge us by forcing us to examine elements that we might otherwise pass over, and make us look at a movie from a perspective perhaps unlike our own.

--Aluminum Man

(To reply, click here.)

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