Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Spitting Ions In The Ether

from here

I just had the misfortune of viewing the entirety of the 1985 film St. Elmo's Fire (umm, thanks Netflix InstantView :-/), and I now want 100 minutes of my life back.

At one point I could probably have relied on knowing that a sizable portion of any under 40s I spoke to would have seen St. Elmo's Fire already and therefore I would need to explain nothing, but I guess it's a good thing for you all that we're far enough removed from 1985 now that its mediocre b-movies can sleep silently in peace.

It's not really worth an explanation, but the short of it is that St. Elmo's Fire is a movie that almost astonished me in its terribleness. I expected it to be a bit hokey and solipsistec like many what-should-the-white-folk-do?! 80s films, but the petty, self-interested depravity of every single one of the characters made me wanna vomit all over my TV.

The thing that felt strange about St. Elmo's is the deprarious degree to which the film seemed to be lacking in self-awareness. Were this film to have been made in the past ten years, it would have been a dark comedy where everyone's in on the joke and they'd all laugh mirthlessly as each new "tragedy" befell another member of Team I; or perhaps a straight-up Todd Solondz film culminating in a scene where Emilio Estevez, in climactic stalker wing-spreading is either arrested or killed in a car crash and Rob Lowe finally seduces lowly "Wendy" into boning him and he gives her AIDS.

Instead we have a picture that is utterly unable to imagine the realistic viewpoint in which all of these people are actually just fucked. In watching, I could hardly contain myself--with each passing frame, I found it harder and harder to control myself from shouting at the assholes in front of me and their bullshit perceptions of a life they haven't begun to live. And don't even get me started on the poor women in this film, some of whom represented the few arguably not terrible humans, all of whom allowed themselves to be treated like garbage by the self-centered twats they were surrounded by. Grow some balls! Stand up! Dear god.

But most significantly, this film served as a reminder to me that, culturally speaking, the 80s were not in fact the beginning of the Forward-Looking Future Generation, but instead a quaint last gasp ode to the limited-thinking/dreaming dogmatism of the 50s; and, dare I say it, a period where Americans were worse even: people of the 50s at least bought into McCarthyism because it was new and they didn't know much else, but in the 80s we looked back despite knowing the dark side because we thought we might rather choose death over an uncertain future so desperately feared.

The long and the short: do us all a favor and keep on living righteously. Let yourself get bent out of shape when you witness awfulness, and be prepared to catch a sunbeam if it crosses your path.

LISTEN:

Brian Eno - "St. Elmo's Fire" from Another Green World

Uilab (Stereolab and Ui) - "St. Elmo's Fire" from Fires

Labels: deprarious, FAIL, fucktactics, la cine, mp3

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/04/2009 01:44:00 AM 0 comments

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