The Great Train
Robbery.
All Quiet on the Western
Front.
Freaks.
Citizen Kane.
Pink Flamingos.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf.
Hell’s Angels ’69.
A Clockwork Orange.
Straw Dogs.
Monty Python’s The Meaning of
Life.
Saving Private Ryan
South Park: Bigger, Longer and
Uncut.
There
are films that dare to shock, and confront the prevailing attitudes. Films that
contribute to the advancement of the human condition, by laying bare its dark
soul.
SPBL&U
is one of those films. It is a musical social satire (thank you AOL for that
perspective) anti-war pro free speech film that conveys, using the crappiest
animation possible, some of the ugliest attitudes, prejudices and social
dysfunctions we have had the privilege of visiting upon this earth. It targets
the inanity of worry about words when the world is going to hell in a
handbasket. It is, in the vernacular, lewd, crude, and socially unacceptable.
At the end of a hundred years of filmmaking, someone is getting it all
together.
If
you are familiar with the following, skip to the
end.
The
Great Train Robbery (1903) was
the first film to really shake things up. At the turn of the century, it dared
to move the camera. It went outside, and roved all over the place. Of
course, it was nothing compared to the camerawork of Spielberg in Jaws (1975),
and thereafter with the use of the Stedi-cam, came a veritable rollercoaster of
angles and perspectives. They concluded the GTR by having an actor fire a
pistol directly into the camera. It is reported that people ran screaming from
the theater. Of course, today, we are much more sophisticated. (For years the
film was on display (yes, shown) at the Museum of Science and Industry in
Chicago.)
All Quiet On The Western Front
(1930) showed the horrors of war, as did
The Sound of Music (1965), in
its way. Quiet was shocking then, and audiences had trouble with it. Music was
a family musical though, and thus were Nazis sanitized for all.
With
Freaks in 1932, Tod Browning
showed us what living beings of our species looked like with gross deformity.
It was banned in many places around the world, still true today. I saw it in
1975 or so at the University of Illinois. It was still shocking after 40 years.
I still cannot watch it without feeling a little sick.
The truth behind that film is
that the Beautiful Acrobat is the freak - inside - because she cruelly toys
with and breaks the midget’s heart. In a gut-wrenching scene in the muddy
rain, the freaks descend upon her with knives do her in, and having cut most of
her to pieces, "accept her". She is left a deranged half person
rooting around in the sawdust, a "Bird Woman" on display, a freak
without a soul. The public could not stand to see the deformities. They did not
want to face imperfection of body, but mental disease they can tolerate,
apparently.
Citizen Kane (1941) is the movie
you refer to when you want everyone to know you are a well regarded film
critic. My use serves a less sinister purpose. It is a film derived chiefly
from the talent of Orson Wells. Not entirely a one-man show, it nevertheless
focused on his intense ability to create, and show things differently. An
incredible epic, focusing of the exploits of a small town boy in the snow, who
goes on to run one of the unhappiest conglomerates in history. I suppose if it
were a musical, they could have closed Hollywood, because I am sure in some
eyes a more perfect film could not have been made.
Nothing
shocking came out of the Fifties.
In
the Sixties, Who’s Afraid Of
Virginia Woolf (1966) was the first film to use the F-word. Over and over.
In a brutal relationship, two alcoholics tear each other’s fragile little
minds to ribbons, and all the King’s horses and all the King’s Men
were screwed. It racked up huge in Academy Award nominations, and the public
focus was entirely on their shocking use of words. Apparently, familial
violence and spousal abuse (in both directions) was tolerable. But say F****?
No way.
The Producers (1968) showed a
shocking truth - Nazis are still funny, especially when they are taken
seriously by their in-camp author. "Springtime for Hitler and Germany,
Winter for Poland and France" are lyrics that will live on in the canons
of great film songs. It is a film about people plotting to be so shocking they
can use it to defraud hundreds, of millions. That they cross from shock into
satire is lost on them until the audience doesn’t get it, and it is
determined that the play will run a thousand years!
Hell’s Angels ’69. (1969)
An exploitation film with a difference. Out of that rose a hero, Billy Jack, a
Kung-Fu fightin’ Indian with an attitude. Ex-Vietnam War, anti-flag
desecratin, poor-folk standin’ up for Billy Jack. Shocking? Yes, for
turning the anti-hero trend totally around. For giving audiences something old,
new again. A Hero. Someone that stands up for what is right, not what the
prevailing popular pacifist trend is. It also gave us unrelenting rape, sex,
drugs, and rioting. It gave us an out-of-control motorcycle gang, a freak
(Animal?) who screams while doing it, and a host of unsavory characters. It
mopped up.
A Clockwork Orange. (1971)Total
freedom begins with freedom of thought. The government sought to take that away
from dear little Alex with the Ludevico technique - mind conditioning that
unfortunately was linked to Alex’s cultural passion - Lovely Ludwig Von.
Kubrick, with the assisted genius of author Anthony Burgess, showed us how
wrong it is to take away a person’s mind, even if it is, especially if it
is, for the good of society. Perhaps Alex should have been killed for his
transgressions, but that is better than making him the whipping boy for all of
society’s ills. (Today, thought crime legislation under the guise of
"hate crime" legislation is worming it way into our lives, but that
is another soapbox. Solution - makes the laws tougher for crimes against
everybody.)
Straw Dogs (1971) was just plain
violent, but it showed a liberal pacifist who went about believing in
non-violence, and how a little rape party with his wife converted him to
"protector of the household". It did a little toward addressing the
inability of great thinkers of the day to believe there was any justification
for violence.
Pink Flamingos. (1972) An
incredible "exercise in bad taste", according to its press kit. I
called it The Bataan Death March of bad taste. No matter who you are, I believe
there is something so vile, so disgusting, so wrong about PF, that you will be
shocked or offended. It’s that simple. It stands, with its siblings by
John Waters, as one of the crudest attempts at free speech ever mounted. And it
deserves a place in history for showing us the difference between people posing
as filthy people, and the truly filthy people like Divine (at whose birthday
Party they are entertained by a singing asshole while cannibalizing a
deliveryman).
Fritz the Cat. (1972) Hugely
entertaining adult cartoon, then rated X, as Fritz goes searching for last of
60's counterculture, ends up a lost little kitty from the city, with Nazi
lizards, and lots of sex. Awwww, Fritz, Honey!
For
sheer musical wonderment, it is difficult to best
Monty Python’s The Meaning of
Life. (1983) It is a fusion of the parade of life with the rigors of
formalistic thinking. How to break free the mold and spread those baby-bird
wings? Rousing, delightful songs about Sacred Sperm, Universal Perspective for
Liver Donation, the Penis, and Christmas in Heaven Every Day. Nothing like
bare-breasted cheesecake in Elf drag for total bliss, eh? Boobs in Heaven.
Hmmm.
Saving Private Ryan (1998) takes us
back the anti war-front once more, and like Full Metal Jacket, crosses the
blood-brain barrier and inundates us with gruelingly authentic depictions of,
well, war. It is shocking because censorship, self and otherwise prevented
filmmakers and TV producers from showing the real thing during suppertime in
America. With sanitized nightly news, the true horrors of war cannot be even
accurately spoken of. Just generalities and statistics. You may know that
50,000 young men died in Vietnam, but can you say how any 10 of them went,
exactly? Knowing someone is killed is a lot different than knowing the details.
And the details are what change opinions. War, if it is to be fought, needs to
be total, all out, and won decisively as quickly as possible. Limited war is a
crime against people on both sides. (See original Star Trek - A Taste of
Armageddon - Episode 23, Feb 23, 1967)
Resume.
Which
leads me back to South Park: Bigger,
Longer and Uncut.
It is
a hilarious, freakishly funny, solidly anti-war, anti censorship musical romp
through a mountain town with snow on the ground and v-chips on the brain,
possible only after a century of progress in cinema.
Storyline:
Those two fantastically farty Canadians, Terence and Phillip, ignite a war when
their awful R-rated animated movie teaches little kids to say the worst words
in the worst ways. When Canada bombs some of our bomb-makers, war is
declared, and Terence (in red) and Phillip (in blue) are captured and slated
for execution.
The
childrens of South Park take it upon themselves to set the world right. With a
song in their hearts. Like "Uncle F***er".
Meanwhile,
the fat kid with the filthy mouth (Cartman) gets a chip installed in him that
shocks the "dickens" out of him every time he swears.
Trey
Parker must have the kind of genius that fueled Welles. He (with the support of
Matt Stone) wrote, directed and did the music and lyrics (with Marc Shaiman).
And he is just getting started, apparently.
SPBLU
is a fully choreographed musical, echoing sentiments of broad USO shows,
sleepy-town village choruses, and lonely hearts pouring out their unrequited
love and a little bile.
It’s
about the evils of censorship, rising to meet the enemy, sacrificing for the
good of all, and the absolute horrors of war.
It’s
about the evil of finding entertainment in the crass misery of others, the
conflict between evil and really evil, and one boy rising above the fray to say
what is right.
It is
about small boys in the snowy midwest.
It’s
about the struggle for life and the difficulty of finding something that makes
you happy without others finding fault in it.
It’s
about freaks dressed up in Mom and Pop clothing.
It’s
about how a destructive relationship screws the hell things up.
It is
about the really, really good, though abysmally poor Kenny, whose hellish
existence lends hope to the world.
It is
about the selfish obsessions of people hell-bent to provide what they think is
right, no matter what the consequences.
It is
freedom of expression, and freedom from war, freedom from evil of any kind,
that makes life worth living, and you can’t take away freedom of
expression without sending hell straight to all of us.
And
you can’t have freedom if you don’t fight for it.
South Park:
Bigger, Longer and Uncut is not about little kids saying dirty words, and
singing dirty songs - no matter what the establishment tells you.
That
is why this film goes on my best list, however long that may be. And if you are
not shocked by that, I am. |
|
