WILD THINGS: AN EROTIC LIFE

This has nothing to do with any of the "serious" work I should be doing (or, rather, feel like I should be doing--that serious work being the syllabus for my class that starts in just over a week [!!], the stuff on chillwave/hauntology I've been goofing off with all summer, and my thoughts on The Pale King [which I'll have to get into shape pretty fucking sharpish, as I've asked a friend to help set up a panel on it for a conference]), but for a Friday night, what the hell, I'll let my hair down.

I was browsing the website Crackle earlier this evening, trying to find a movie I felt like watching. Crackle's selection is limited (though they have some gems, like So I Married An Axe Murderer). What I came across at the end of their selection blew my mind, however. I saw the title Wild Things* and immediately laughed. Wild Things came out when I was not quite old enough to be able to sneak into a theatre to see it, and as it was never on TV (not that I ever saw, anyway), it had something of a continued mystique (that's not quite the word I want, but I can't think of any one word to sum it up: essentially, I knew there was something vaguely licentious about the film and, coinciding as it did with my pubescence, it held something of a fascination for me as a cultural object that I both knew and not just understood but felt was predicated solely on sex; at the same time, though, I also knew it was, inevitably, not going to be that sexy, but without having that illusion shattered, the possibilty that it might just be as sexy as my fevered little imagination conspired to make it was kind of tantalizing) for some time after it had generally faded from memory (until college, really, when I realized the kind of males [and it was only males, in my experience] who owned the movie and claimed to like it). I've still never seen Wild Things, and I have no real desire to ever see it, but I might have watched a few minutes before turning it off in embarrassment were it available for streaming. Fortunately (unfortunately?), Crackle had a bigger surprise in store for me: the movie my mouse hovered over was not Wild Things, but Wild Things 2. Yes, they made a sequel. I almost fell off my chair. Crackle was not quite done, though. Looking at the very next movie in its list, I discovered that Wild Things 2 has a sequel: Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (full disclosure: I looked up Wild Things on Wikipedia [I couldn't actually remember in which year it came out] and discovered there is a fourth Wild Things movie, Wild Things: Foursome [I guess at this point they figured why even have the pretense of being anything other than softcore porn]).

The fact that Wild Things has a sequel (let alone three of them!) is, for me, the most shocking movie-related moment I've experienced since watching Ralph Bakshi's American Pop (another movie I have a long, strange history with) and realizing it was trying to tell me that the history of American popular music reached its apex with Bob Seger's "Night Moves." For your pleasure, allow me to reproduce (with minimal commentary) the capsule summaries Crackle provides for Wild Things 2 and Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (sadly, the first movie in the series is not available--this seems to be a theme on the site with erotic thrillers: Basic Instinct 2 is present, but not Basic Instinct):

Wild Things 2, starring Susan Ward, Isaiah Washington, and Joe Michael Burke; directed by Jack Perez [Ed. note: and I'm sure that went on the form Christmas letter that year]
"Teenage girls Maya and Brittney [Ed. note: the two 't's add that extra bit of trashiness you want in the main character of your movie] go on a sex and killing spree to win millions."

Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough, starring Sarah Laine, Sandra McCoy, Linden Ashby, Ron Melendez, Claire Coffee, Michael Mantell, and Dina Myer; directed by Jay Lowi [Ed. note: I'm sure this is the first (only?) line on his resume]**
"Bad girls just want to have fun. Continued steamy antics and erotic Florida locals." [Ed. note: "erotic Florida locals" is a phrase that inspires untold amounts of dread and terror in me]

So there you have it: Wild Things, a movie I've not thought about in years (had anyone?) has two (hang on, three!) sequels. This little interlude added a welcome touch of surreality to what had been a mostly unremarkable day. I hope it can offer you the same.



*For those of you unfamiliar with this cinematic milestone, it is an "erotic thriller" that came out in 1998 and stars Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell (as I recall it, the primary draw in my eyes), Denise Richards, and Kevin Bacon (Wikipedia also mentions Bill Murray [!! or, rather, ?! I don't know if I want to see Bill Murray in anything "erotic]). From that same Wikipedia article: "The movie gained notoriety for featuring several sex scenes - in particular, one involving a man and two women simultaneously - that were more explicit than is typically seen in mainstream, big-budget Hollywood movies."

HARRY POTTER MANIA IN TORONTO

Last night was the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and the CBC reported that fans had been lining up outside the theatre since 5:30 AM. Interviews conducted with various fans of the series were played throughout the day yesterday, and a number of people called in to share their tales of fandom.

I'm not a fan of the series myself--I've never read any of the books, and I fell asleep watching one of the movies--but I do think it's an interesting cultural phenomenon. For example, I find it fascinating that fans dressing up as their favourite characters, or their own characters they've created (!!), is regarded as a normal expression of their love of the series, whereas fans of other series like Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings are stigmatized for the same activity. Ultimately, I wonder if this has something to do with the function that the Harry Potter narrative serves in the symbolic life of our society. Is there something more acceptable about overt (some might say excessive) Potter-love because of a certain desire the series caters to? When I think about Harry Potter I'm drawn back to Jameson's concept of the function of narrative and its larger social purpose:

ideology is not something which informs or invests symbolic production; rather the aesthetic act is itself ideological, and the production of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right, with the function of inventing imaginary or formal 'solutions' to unresolvable social contradictions. (PU 79)

What is the ideology being expressed by Harry Potter? What real contradiction is resolved in its narrative? Perhaps more importantly, what ideology is being expressed by the series' fans' appropriation of the narrative? What real contradiction are they using the narrative to resolve? To what extent are they rewriting the narrative to cover new contradictions?

I am also intrigued by the obsession with celebrity and the actors who play the main characters in the Harry Potter movies (see also the frenzy surrounding the recent royal visit to Canada). If the novels serve to resolve certain real social contradictions, the movies must do likewise (though not necessarily the same contradictions as the novels, I would imagine), as must the actors themselves. What contradiction(s) do the actors resolve for the fans, especially for the ones camping out in the pre-dawn hours to catch a glimpse of the actors at the premiere? What desires do they fulfill? The obsession certainly seems to have something of Freud's family romance in it:

Small events in the child's life may induce in him a mood of dissatisfaction and so provide him with an occasion to start criticizing his parents and to support this critical attitude with the recently acquired knowledge that other parents are in some respects to be preferred to them. . . . At about this time, then, the child's imagination is occupied with the task of ridding himself of his parents, of whom he now has a low opinion, and replacing by others, usually of superior social standing. In this connection he makes use of the chance concurrence of these aims with actual experiences, such as an acquaintanceship with the lord of the manor or some landowner in the country, or with some aristocrat in the city. Such fortuitous experiences arouse the child's envy, which then finds expression in a fantasy that replaces both parents by others who are grander. The technique used in developing such fantasies, which at this period are of course conscious, depends on the child's ingenuity and the material he has at his disposal. It is also a question of how much or how little effort has gone into making the fantasies seems probable. . . . For if one takes a close look at the commonest of these romances--the replacement of both parents or just the father by grander personages--one discovers that these new, distinguished parents are provided with features that derive from the child's actual memories of his real, more humble parents: the child does not really eliminate his father, but exalts him. Indeed, the whole effort to replace the real father by another who is more distinguished is merely an expression of the child's longing for the happy times gone by, when his father seemed to him the strongest and most distinguished of men, and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women. He turns away from the man he now knows as his father to the one he believed in as a child. The fantasy is actually only an expression of regret for the happy times that have vanished. ("Family Romances" 37, 38-39, 40; my emphasis)

Coupled with this, does Harry Potter serve as some kind of distorted mirror stage for its readers: the recognition of an ego separate from the reader's actual self in society, the acknowledgement (and encouragement) of an inner life in which the reader is heroic, special, unique, magical? Is the popularity of Harry Potter a response to life in late capitalism? A symptom related to the quarter-life crisis? An attempt to live in a society in which each person is encouraged to believe that he or she is special and unique, with talents that deserve recognition and praise, and consequently no one is special and unique? That is, can the reader of Harry Potter assert--via the fantasies that the text allows him/her to have--"no, I am special. The qualities that make me special are just hidden. If only I could go to a world more like Hogwarts rather than [x], then I could show everyone my hidden, inner self"?

In asking these questions I don't mean to suggest that Harry Potter is bad or that it's not literature. I couldn't honestly make any such judgement, given that I haven't read the series myself. If Harry Potter has made readers out of non-readers, as the most commonly offered claim for its greatness goes, then I say "great." I wonder, though, if the series has made readers or readers-of-Harry-Potter. That is, how many people who are enamoured of the series go on to read other books regularly? I know plenty of people who love Harry Potter who can't name another book they've read. I know dozens of people who were already quite avid readers who love Harry Potter. I personally don't know anyone who would say that they didn't read for pleasure before Harry Potter but do so now that they've finished the series. I think the truth, as is so often the case, is a little more convoluted than Potter devotees would like to admit. Also, I have no answers to these questions, but I would be interested to hear what others think about this. Perhaps everyone who talks about Harry Potter got over these questions years ago and I'm behind the times. Based on the interviews on CBC yesterday, though, I rather suspect I'm not.

A QUICK THOUGHT ON THE HANGOVER

I watched The Hangover the other night with a friend. She had mentioned seeing the sequel with her family over the weekend and I (somewhat shamefacedly) admitted never having seen (or even really heard of) the original. My one sentence review: it is a better Very Bad Things (though that is not much of an accomplishment), and it pales next to both Wedding Crashers and Superbad in the boys-behaving-badly category of movies.

The strangest thing about The Hangover (and what really sank it for me) was how dated it felt. The jokes in the film (gags about Ecstasy, date rape drugs, and “crazy” Mike Tyson were the worst offenders) seemed as if they could have featured in a move produced at any point during the past fifteen years. In some cases--like the two jokes cited above--I actually think that the movie would have been much funnier five or ten years ago. As I watched, I kept experiencing this strange sense of laughing not because a joke struck me as particularly funny, but because I recognized that at one point it had been both topical and funny, and therefore I had an obligation to laugh in recognition of that fact rather than out of any actual humour being generated.

The plot also felt dated, particularly in the way the characters went about reconstructing the previous evening. Cell phones were virtually non-existent in the film and social networking is entirely absent. While all the usual clues help the characters solve the mystery (hospital bracelets, ATM receipts, photo albums), I couldn't help thinking that in 2009 when the film came out, I would assume that cell phones and social networking services (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) would be a much more likely source of information re: one's debauched night in Las Vegas.* In that sense, little about the film struck me as contemporary. I did not see my moment reflected back at me by the film; what I saw were previous films about partying in Las Vegas set in my historical moment. Minus the few cell phone calls that are made in the course of the movie (and the digital camera at the end), The Hangover  could have come out not long after Swingers (another movie whose charms The Hangover fails to match).

Overall, I can't say that I disliked the film, but I will say that it left me extremely puzzled and nonplussed. I doubt I will see the sequel (I cannot understand the logic behind its existence other than “the first movie made money, so . . .” and I don't think that's enough to get me to a theatre).

*A better (read: more interesting) plot for this kind of movie: characters attempt to use Facebook/Twitter to research activities of night before, but run up against never-ending maze of links/etc. in attempt to access information OR service is unavailable/over capacity at key moments, paralyzing their reconstructive efforts (star of film: the Twitter whale).