Homemade Fireworks Gets Serious About Comedy
I’m going to break the first two rules. I’m going to talk about Fight Club.
I think Fight Club is a very funny movie, but Roger Ebert thinks it’s "…a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw, and beat one another up." So who’s right?
Well, we both are. Fight Club is violent in the literal sense, but the violence is so absurd in logic yet taken so seriously (and outlandishly far) by the characters that it becomes funny. Fight Club is a satirical commentary on the state of American consumerism and vanity. The very last thing Fight Club is about is a club for fighting. It’s not about men beating each other up, it’s about men wanting to be beaten up. Really really wanting to be beaten up. That’s comedy.
Look! Brad Pitt thinks it's funny!
If I remember correctly, Fight Club had a body count of 1 (one more than Children of the Corn). The reason it’s singled out instead of, say, the exploding heads and melting Marines of Starship Troopers (which is also a hilarious satire), is because the violence isn’t cartoony and faceless. It’s real, raw, and true. So true that it forces us to laugh at ourselves out of spite for living in, and maybe even personally adhering to, a culture where we place physical beauty on a pedestal and judge our success on how expensive our bed spreads and kitchenware are. Like it or not, Fight Club is making fun of us. Our laughter may be nervous as we realize that, but its laughter nonetheless.
American Psycho is Fight Club polarized. It’s equally violent and equally hilarious, except this time the spotlight is on a man so self-conscious that he breaks into a dousing sweat when he discovers that a colleague has a better font on his business card. As an actor I understand the preparations one has to go through while preparing for a role— makeup, wardrobe, and mental exercises are all used to assume the identity of a certain person from a certain background in a certain situation. American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman undergoes this same series of transformations every morning to prepare for everyday life. From the "exfoliating facial gel scrub, followed by the herbal mint facial mask, followed by an anti-aging eye balm, and then another protective moisturizer," to the rows of Armani suits hanging in his closet, Patrick becomes a caricature of a person every single day of his life. It’s the only way can cope with the world he’s immersed himself in. He even admits that he doesn’t have any real emotions, and that the real Patrick Bateman "simply is not there." He spends hours becoming the man he thinks the world wants him to be, when in fact the world couldn’t care less. That’s comedy.
Jared Leto thinks it's funny, too!
Patrick Bateman axes up a colleague, drops a chainsaw on a hooker, and shoots a cop or two, so, like Fight Club, American Psycho is violent in the literal sense. But, and I’m not ruining the movie here, all the violence, while depicted in full glory on screen, is really only taking place in Patrick’s head. It’s his only escape from the mundane superficiality that he has grown to depend on to survive—and it’s so over-the-top that you didn’t have to get your masters degree from the university of the fucking obvious to realize that. It’s in the violence’s over-the-topness that it becomes non-violent—absurd, even. American Psycho is telling me a joke, and I’m laughing because I get the punchline.
Not everyone always gets the punchline. I imagine in any other movie, a guy getting axed in the head would be pretty disturbing. Trust me, I fucking hated when the rich 15-year-olds behind me at Regal Cinema laughed through The Ring, but the difference between American Psycho and The Ring is the context in which the violence occurs. People who blast American Psycho for being violent must have stepped out of the theatre for a piss when Patrick delivered the line "As we arrive at [restaurant] I'm on the verge of tears as I'm certain we won't get a decent table. But we do; relief washes over me in an awesome wave," or when he went into a five-minute monologue about Huey Lewis and the News before the previously mentioned axing. Patrick Bateman is not a killer. He’s a bigger pussy than the biggest pussy you know—even bigger than Daniel LaRusso. He’s just so engulfed in a self-induced social stigma that he can’t escape from if he wanted to or not. The effects of that social stigma, while traumatizing to him, are hilarious to us. At least, to me.
If you take anything from this article, I want it to be this: that all comedy can easily be interpreted as non-comedy if the viewer chooses to take it too literally. Hell, according to the AFI’s top 100 comedies, Some Like It Hot is the funniest movie of all time, and that movie is about a couple of guys who dress up like women, which, if taken literally, is pretty fucked up in itself.
It’s very easy for Homemade Fireworks to fall victim to the same misjudegement of character as Fight Club and American Psycho, even though any of the previously mentioned obviously shouldn’t. Homemade Fireworks is NOT a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls…it’s a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls. When I read that article I don’t see a player looking to score chicks. I see a guy so lacking in game that he does what may be the dorkiest thing ever to prove that "game" isn’t really what’s important, and fuck if we don’t laugh at his (my) expense. I know I did. I shook my head in disbelief a couple of times while I was doing it. The Galaga article was my humorous commentary on the retardedness of "club guy" and their laughable desperate attempts to impress girls with their huge wallet, hair product, and black leather jacket. If you’re still not convinced, I should point out that that article appears directly above an article about the career merits of William fucking Zabka and directly under something that lists the Gameboy Advance as the third most important thing in my life.
If you’re offended by anything on this site, well, while you’re on the Web, stop by Merriam-Webster online and look up "satire." While you’re there, you may also want to look up "uptight."
I think Fight Club is a very funny movie, but Roger Ebert thinks it’s "…a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw, and beat one another up." So who’s right?
Well, we both are. Fight Club is violent in the literal sense, but the violence is so absurd in logic yet taken so seriously (and outlandishly far) by the characters that it becomes funny. Fight Club is a satirical commentary on the state of American consumerism and vanity. The very last thing Fight Club is about is a club for fighting. It’s not about men beating each other up, it’s about men wanting to be beaten up. Really really wanting to be beaten up. That’s comedy.
Look! Brad Pitt thinks it's funny!
If I remember correctly, Fight Club had a body count of 1 (one more than Children of the Corn). The reason it’s singled out instead of, say, the exploding heads and melting Marines of Starship Troopers (which is also a hilarious satire), is because the violence isn’t cartoony and faceless. It’s real, raw, and true. So true that it forces us to laugh at ourselves out of spite for living in, and maybe even personally adhering to, a culture where we place physical beauty on a pedestal and judge our success on how expensive our bed spreads and kitchenware are. Like it or not, Fight Club is making fun of us. Our laughter may be nervous as we realize that, but its laughter nonetheless.
American Psycho is Fight Club polarized. It’s equally violent and equally hilarious, except this time the spotlight is on a man so self-conscious that he breaks into a dousing sweat when he discovers that a colleague has a better font on his business card. As an actor I understand the preparations one has to go through while preparing for a role— makeup, wardrobe, and mental exercises are all used to assume the identity of a certain person from a certain background in a certain situation. American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman undergoes this same series of transformations every morning to prepare for everyday life. From the "exfoliating facial gel scrub, followed by the herbal mint facial mask, followed by an anti-aging eye balm, and then another protective moisturizer," to the rows of Armani suits hanging in his closet, Patrick becomes a caricature of a person every single day of his life. It’s the only way can cope with the world he’s immersed himself in. He even admits that he doesn’t have any real emotions, and that the real Patrick Bateman "simply is not there." He spends hours becoming the man he thinks the world wants him to be, when in fact the world couldn’t care less. That’s comedy.
Jared Leto thinks it's funny, too!
Patrick Bateman axes up a colleague, drops a chainsaw on a hooker, and shoots a cop or two, so, like Fight Club, American Psycho is violent in the literal sense. But, and I’m not ruining the movie here, all the violence, while depicted in full glory on screen, is really only taking place in Patrick’s head. It’s his only escape from the mundane superficiality that he has grown to depend on to survive—and it’s so over-the-top that you didn’t have to get your masters degree from the university of the fucking obvious to realize that. It’s in the violence’s over-the-topness that it becomes non-violent—absurd, even. American Psycho is telling me a joke, and I’m laughing because I get the punchline.
Not everyone always gets the punchline. I imagine in any other movie, a guy getting axed in the head would be pretty disturbing. Trust me, I fucking hated when the rich 15-year-olds behind me at Regal Cinema laughed through The Ring, but the difference between American Psycho and The Ring is the context in which the violence occurs. People who blast American Psycho for being violent must have stepped out of the theatre for a piss when Patrick delivered the line "As we arrive at [restaurant] I'm on the verge of tears as I'm certain we won't get a decent table. But we do; relief washes over me in an awesome wave," or when he went into a five-minute monologue about Huey Lewis and the News before the previously mentioned axing. Patrick Bateman is not a killer. He’s a bigger pussy than the biggest pussy you know—even bigger than Daniel LaRusso. He’s just so engulfed in a self-induced social stigma that he can’t escape from if he wanted to or not. The effects of that social stigma, while traumatizing to him, are hilarious to us. At least, to me.
If you take anything from this article, I want it to be this: that all comedy can easily be interpreted as non-comedy if the viewer chooses to take it too literally. Hell, according to the AFI’s top 100 comedies, Some Like It Hot is the funniest movie of all time, and that movie is about a couple of guys who dress up like women, which, if taken literally, is pretty fucked up in itself.
It’s very easy for Homemade Fireworks to fall victim to the same misjudegement of character as Fight Club and American Psycho, even though any of the previously mentioned obviously shouldn’t. Homemade Fireworks is NOT a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls…it’s a site about a guy who uses video games to pick up girls. When I read that article I don’t see a player looking to score chicks. I see a guy so lacking in game that he does what may be the dorkiest thing ever to prove that "game" isn’t really what’s important, and fuck if we don’t laugh at his (my) expense. I know I did. I shook my head in disbelief a couple of times while I was doing it. The Galaga article was my humorous commentary on the retardedness of "club guy" and their laughable desperate attempts to impress girls with their huge wallet, hair product, and black leather jacket. If you’re still not convinced, I should point out that that article appears directly above an article about the career merits of William fucking Zabka and directly under something that lists the Gameboy Advance as the third most important thing in my life.
If you’re offended by anything on this site, well, while you’re on the Web, stop by Merriam-Webster online and look up "satire." While you’re there, you may also want to look up "uptight."
posted by Mike at
Friday, January 07, 2005
5 Comments:
Not to keep bragging about how rad my city is, but...
Chuck Palinuk, who wrote Fight Club, is from Portland. I've seen him around a few times. He's pretty rad at his readings (which are often in bars with tons of PBR).
that is all.
oh, and I'm moving "out there" in like 3 weeks.
Did you get hate mail or something, by the way?
Yeah, I got this email which basically said I was an asshole for "taking advantage" of these girls for the sake of an article. It went on to say that using gimmicks like that was probably the only way I could ever meet girls because I was such a worthless peice of self-glorifying garbage. The next sentence suggested I go have sex with a variety of farm animals in positions so offensive that I finally had to send an e-mail back and be like, "Woah! Easy, mom!"
And thanks for the three-week notice. I have alerted the mayor, and he is taking the necessary precautions. I just hope it's not too late.
I get beat up for being too pretty at least twice a week.
D-
We put that in a movie and have Morgan Freeman say it and we've got ourselves a hit.
I'll share a Galaga cocktail table with you anytime.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home