POLITICS AIN’T SUCH A WONDERFUL LIFE

Going to the movies is a favorite pastime of millions of Americans, and has been for decades. During the Roaring Twenties Silent Movies peaked and quickly morphed into the “talkies”. Folks suffering the effects of the Depression welcomed the escape to the cinema. The flicks in the forties reflected the war and subsequent post war boom.

The fifties and sixties had their signature films as color became the norm. The seventies continued the trend of edgier films from the previous decade and took it to new heights—or depths.

During the past thirty years it seems the bulk of Hollywood output fits into one of five categories.

1. The blockbuster. If you don’t have geeky fans dressed like the film’s characters lined up around the block and willing to return time after time the first week the movie is out then you are an absolute failure as a movie producer. And it won’t matter how many explosions and car chases you included.

2. The raunchy comedy. 1978’s Animal House set the standard. There have been hundreds of attempts to match that standard. Few have truly succeeded. If this trend continues expect to see a ninety-three year old Robert DeNiro, having lost his Oscars like Reggie Bush lost his Heisman,  starring with the perennially fifteen year old Michael Cera in The Superbad Fockers.

3. The sequel. Harry Potter 7. Rocky 6. Sounds like a dull football game to me.

4. Slasher flicks. Hitchcock scared the hell out of us just anticipating the character was soon to die. Karloff and Chaney were more menacing than eviscerating. Today if no semi-naked sexually exploring teens have had their throats split in the first ten minutes, the audience will simply continue texting and yelling obscenities across the aisle.

5. Animation. Disney’s wonderful takes on the traditional fairy tales have been replaced by an army of computer nerds trying to impress each other with all the new groovy special effects they have created. That many of these films turn out to provide great, entertaining stories seems almost an accident.

Remakes are also popular. Everyone’s favorite Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life will return to the screen for the 2012 holiday season, but titled It’s Still A Wonderful Life, part deux It will be a combined animated/live action flick.

In it George has retired and is traveling with Mary on his dream trip when he’s suddenly called home. Zuzu, left in charge of the Bailey Building and Loan comes home to that “old drafty house” and finds her teenagers have trashed the place with a huge booze and drug party replete with filthy lyric-spouting rappers, male AND female strippers, and two mules performing numerous sexual perversions with Shrek. And it’s funny as hell.

But also some of the teens are missing. Their bodies, minus some parts, begin showing up around town. It turns out their killings are the work of Mr. Potter. He now has a souped up powered wheelchair, “The Super Hoveround” (product placement is big, too) and dons a hockey mask as he wields his sling blade. He’s jealous of the sexually active teens since his nuts were chewed off by the pit bull he used to keep by his side to intimidate loan applicants.

When Potter’s not slashing he begins destroying the houses Bailey financed in a series of ever diabolical ways. His coup de gras is the destruction of Martini’s abode. Potter uses some of his billions (2011 taxes paid $12.98) to hire an alien behemoth spaceship that creates a forcefield around Martini’s house to prevent escape, tortures him and his family with repeated playing of YMCA and then disintegrates house, humans and all to the strains of You Light Up My Life.

George arrives back in town, learns of the havoc raised, and contrary to his normally congenial nature he becomes so enraged he turns into The Hulk, with the powers of Superman. He chases Potter through Bedford Falls with catastrophic results for the town’s infrastructure until, when cornered at the edge of the town’s namesake falls, Potter revs up his wheelchair and flies out over the raging waters and seemingly plunges to his death, a la Thelma And Louise.

George then flies backwards around the equator six times at the speed of light to return the date to just before the killing spree started.

Now movies are fantasy, not real, and often not even possible in real life. Yet watching our politicians at work you begin to wonder? is that live or is it Cinemax? If today’s movies have a large share of sequels, watching our pols at work can be quite reminiscent of that phenomenon or even the Saturday morning serials kids loved in the forties.

Observing our elected representatives entering the Capitol is similar to watching the dumb folks  in the movie enter the deserted house. You know what is about to happen inside won’t be pretty and the people going in will do something incredibly stupid to worsen the situation.

Many office-holders appear to have viewed the same cinematic masterpiece over and over.

During the recent debt limit fight, whenever John Boehner went to the White House to meet with the President, he’d bring an ax to crack the door open, stick his head in and announce “Here’s Johnny!”

In the weeks after 9/11 as Bush contemplated what act of revenge to undertake, he had a screening of Animal House. Thus he took to heart the words of Otter:

No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!

and he invaded Afghanistan.

When John Kerry was beset in his 2004 campaign by the Swift Boaters and accusations of flip flopping, he did a Paul Crewe in The Longest Yard and quit on his team (the voters backing him). Unlike Crewe he did not put himself back in the game and rally his side to victory.

This applies to political pundits, too. When the idiots on Fox News are spouting off about the economy and taxes and class warfare they reject any evidence that the truth is quite different from their bald assertions. And the office campaigners have this blind spot also. Therefore one can yell at them “You can’t handle the truth!” A Few Good Men (and women) indeed. Far too few.

Politicians often fail to recognize and understand nuance, apparently adhering to this from that great movie hero John Wayne:

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‘Why the hell not?’

 Wayne must be the favorite cause a lot of pols live up—or down—to this.

Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.

But somehow seem to have ignored this one:

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Most pols must have been Seinfeld TV fans, too, all too frequently conforming to George Costanza’s

… just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.

 And many would qualify to say this (are you listening Rick and Michelle?)

I lie every second of the day. My whole life is a sham.

Doesn’t the sorry ass state of American politics cause you to long for a Kirk Douglas admirer who’s not afraid to stand and proudly declare

I am Spartacus!

Seinfeld vs Sopranos

Not having HBO, I never saw The Sopranos in all its bare-breasted, foul-mouthed, bloody violent glory. I have had the opportunity to view most episodes on A & E. But I have been unable to watch them in their precise order and and feel somewhat deprived. (most people probably consider me more than somewhat depraved.)

After seeing these episodes multiple times, I have been able to draw certain conclusions, which likely put me outside the mainstream of both the bulk of professional critics and the show’s many fans who were enthralled by the series.

I think the entire premise was actuallu a parody of Seinfeld. seriously.

In this case, Carmela was the stand-in for Jerry Seinfeld himself. She is the sanest of the Soprano core family, which isn’t to suggest any are truly sane. But the plots usually come back to her trying to maintain a facade of normality amidst the chaos around her. But many of the show’s highlights resulted from her stepping outside her normal bounds, such as when she committed adultery, and had the intense sexual flirtation with the priest. That is akin to Jerry stealing the marble rye.

A.J. is George Costanza. He’s stupid, fails at everything he attempts while failing to maintain any observable moral principles along the way, or even attempt or aspire to any action even remotely noble. He lives off others and will do so his entire life, destined to be a pernicious, simpering fool. If the story had continued, I could see him eventually killing his fiance without intent or guile and exhibiting no remorse whatsover.

Meadow is Elaine. She uses sex and sexuality to advance herself and a vague, undefined agenda. While she projects an air of competence or even achievement, her pettiness on many levels will inhibit true success in life. She can be completely self-indulgent and I would not be surprised to learn she totally botched a completely simple task such as returning a borrowed tennis racket.

That leaves Tony. Not nearly a physical euivalent of Kramer, he is his equal in promulgating big ideas and even convincing others to go along but is disturbingly unpredictable. Just like you always wondered how Kramer ever survived when he produced only cracked eggs from his ill-hatched schemes, Tony is an example of the dregs, not the cream, rising to the top. They both actually inhabit a parallel universe quite apart from the one where logic, common sense and critical thinking dwell. That they both manage to bed pretty attractive women from time-to time, is one of those inexplicable mysteries that will always remain unsolved in the cold case files.

Uncle Junior and Livia are just like George’s parents. They are petty, inconsiderate, loud, whining, vindictive and stupid. They care not about how their actions affect their progeny. Whatever good will they engender is immediately offset by actions that to term despicable is too kind to them. They are too unpleasant to even have in your home through the medium of television.

Carmela’s parents are similar to Jerry’s. They are generally tolerable, have unresolved conflicts with George’s folks (Junior and Livia), yet somehow live in a world nominally apart from the other characters without making any remarkable contributions to that world, either good or bad.

The other characters like Paulie or Christopher and anyone whose path is crossed by Tony and his cohorts is inevitably and eventually worse off for the encounter.

Dr. Melfi is a special case. Special in that she does not truly exist but is a personna created out of whole cloth by Kramer, er Tony, to satisfy his desire for respectability. Much like the pipe-smoking pseudo-doctors portrayed on occasion by Cosmo, she exists only in Tony’s warped mind . In their counselling sessions as she encourages Tony to voice his thoughts, the end product is irrational babble just as Kramer expounds incoherently in trying to impress a true professional with his nonexistent medical knowledge.

If you still aren’t convinced by my argument, please name me the two long-running TV series that were loved by fans and critics alike but whose final episodes were deemed to be maddeningly unsatisfying. Need I say more?