Daisy Harris's Blog, page 5

I love this. It’s like my dream when I was 17.

View more on Daisy Harris's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 01, 2015 11:50

Le sigh. Pretty boys being pretty. :)

View more on Daisy Harris's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 01, 2015 11:49

Back on Tumblr

Wow. It’s been too long. I need to get back into using Tumblr, don’t I? I do. And I shall start…NOW!

View more on Daisy Harris's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 01, 2015 11:45

Yesterday I watched a movie critics hated, and I liked it quite a bit. The movie was “Surfer, Dude” and I watched it because it’s a favorite of my good friend who grew up in California. Anyway—today I decided to look up reviews of the movie and figure out why reviewers found it so horrible. In doing so, I came to understand some fundamental problems with the way people look at movies. (And entertainment in general.)

First off, people are puritanical prudes. It sounds crazy to say in America where boobs are used to sell everything from beer to software, but any time there is nudity or drugs (aka pot smoking) in a movie, reviewers get as nervous and red in the face as a ten-year-old boy who just found his dad’s stash of Hustler.

Apparently, if there is pot smoking or boobs in a film, those things distract reviewers from the actual plot of the movie. They can’t see the plot because OH MY GOD TITTIES!!! TITTIES AND DRUGS!!!!! EEEEEEEEK! In the case of Surfer, Dude, the gratuitous boob shots were there to show the shallowness of reality television. Anyone who’s seen EdTV (or The Truman Show) should understand what the filmmakers were trying to do with the boobs-and-booze elements of the movie. These scenes were suppose to be ugly. They represented shallow, ugly consumerism. But apparently people are so wrapped up in shallow, ugly consumerism they don’t know when it’s rubbing all over their face.

Then there was the pot smoking, which meant Surfer, Dude “must have been a stoner movie.”

Personally, I didn’t think Surfer, Dude was a stoner movie so much as a Buddhist movie. In stoner movies, people get stoned and then *hijinks ensue.* In Surfer, Dude, people smoked pot and bonded, or thought deep thoughts, or smiled and were happy. There were no weed-related hijinks. Of course this confused the American public who assumes that if pot is smoked, there must be negative consequences.

The next problem with reviews (and really the bigger one) is that when taken together, they get to an “average” rating, which is meaningless. In the case of Surfer, Dude, people either loved it or they hated it. There really wasn’t anything in between. That’s true of a lot of books, too. I’m always amused because readers will tell me that Built 4 It was one of their favorite books. And I’m like, “You are the ONLY person who feels that way.”

Then there’s the issue that if a book or movie stars a very specific kind of person, said character can seem fake. I can’t tell you how many reviews claimed that no one lived or behaved like Matthew McConaughey’s character in Surfer, Dude. Even surfers claimed this! But the thing is, I know a lot of people like the Surfer Dude. Some are into surfing, others environmental conservation. Further, most people I know from Southern California do speak in a slow, low-pitched voice liberally peppered with utterances of “dude.” It’s their accent and their slang. It’s like a southerner saying, “y’all.” Somehow, due to Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the average American thinks that if someone speaks like a southern Californian, that they are stupid. Not so! I know plenty of graphic designers and web developers from SoCal. And they like totally rock, dude.

My worry, in this world where everyone’s a critic, is that movies that are AWESOME to some people are brushed aside in order to make movies that are mediocre to everyone. Look at The Maze Runner or any of the hangover movies. Your average Hollywood flick nowadays is a bombastic, over-the-top, CGI-enhanced morality tale which caters to our most pathetic and ill-placed fears.

While I admit that Jurassic World fits that bill and yet was a fantastic movie, most movies that exist only to re-affirm our shittiest values suck. There’s nothing new or thought-provoking or interesting in hashing out the same storyline again and again. Every movie can’t be the same. It’s nice when a movie caters to a specific audience, or a subset of all the people. Why? Because this world needs more than one lens of perception.

Honestly, Surfer, Dude suffers more than anything from a poor name. The comma has a purpose, but it’s probably not apparent to the casual observer. If you’ve been online in the past tex years, you know no one understands punctuation anymore. A movie title that relies on a comma is bound to go over everyone’s head.

Anyway, I don’t think Surfer, Dude was as good as Jurassic World. But it was great if you’re a left-coast-thinking hippie type who wants to watch an hour-and-a-half meditation about what’s really important in life. Really, the movie was not unlike the Big Lebowski, which got much better reviews. I think that’s because more hijinks happened in the Big Lebowski. To please All The People, you need physical comedy and to make fun of somebody. Surfer, Dude, made fun of capitalist culture. Hence, a lot of people were confused by it.

So that’s my meditation on reviews. They don’t tell the whole story. Oh, and watch Surfer, Dude. Matthew McConaughey is mostly naked through the whole thing, if you’re into that. Of course, that wasn’t really what the movie was about.

:)