07 20 05

This week’s Entertainment Weekly has an article on Richard Linklater, who has made a remake of “the subversive baseball classic,” “The Bad News Bears.” Yes, the subversive classic. I like some of Linklater’s stuff – “School of Rock” is just a great fun movie – but I get tired of ideas like these:

“The director, 44, sees his younger self in the movie’s junior badasses, underdogs, and latchkey kids, and wanted to make the rare studio movie that celebrates losers.”

Sigh. “(That’s) a good thing to put out in the world. Maybe it’s about me having a 12-year old daughter,” he says. “On some level, I‘m gonna help certain kinds of kids grow up. I’m gonna let them know it’s okay to be a rebel.”

Yes, everything in the culture today argues against being a rebel, doesn’t it? For heaven’s sake, rebellion is the assumed default position, even if it’s used to make a certain soda brand assume market dominance. Of course there’s an unforgiving sort of conformity undergirding all the “rebellious” messages, but the idea is still quite plain: the cool & the hip define themselves by opposition to whatever the status quo is. (Unless the status quo is the iPod. In which case, conform!) Ever since Brando, all you have to do is say “he’s a rebel” and people nod approvingly. Ah, the rebel. We need those! But a rebel against what? Yes, I know: whaddya got, the stupidest answer in the history of movies. Well, we have rule of law, food inspection, penicillin, and building codes. Okay, if that’s all you got, I’m rebellin’ against that.

What if the kids rebel against rebellion? Or loserhood?

Elsewhere, there’s a note on the trial of Lil’ Kim, who stands accused of putting the apostrophe in the wrong place. She claimed the Rappe’rs D-Fenz, which says that rappers are freed from all grammatical and spelling norms – they’re rebles, baby. Actually, she was found guilty of lying to a grand jury. “Undeterred, the self-described ‘God-fearing good person’ leaked a new detractor-bashing single to radio on July 7, titled ‘Shut up Bitch.’”

Ah, the fresh and elevating nature of popular culture. I was reading buzzmachine today, and Jeff – who’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong – was on the whole prudery thing, which is the one issue with which I can’t agree with him. He was discussing Bernard Goldberg’s appearance on that holiest of holy forums for insight and information, the Daily Show:

But I like Jon Stewart's response to his pompous prudery best:

Goldberg: Once upon a time, not too many years ago, a drunk in a bar wouldn’t use the f-word. Now-he may be your pal-but Chevy Chase goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at a gala where people are wearing tuxedos-and-gowns and calls the president of the United States a dumb blank.

Stewart: Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson f**ked slaves.

Perspective, people.

Yes. Well, that certainly makes the point, no? He doesn’t use the whole word, almost as if it’s not fit for polite conversation. But by all means, everyone else is a prude. I don’t know why people think that there’s some limit out there we’ll reach and say “okay, that much and no more,” and that limit will consist of laws that say you can only say “f*ck” six times in one prime-time broadcast show. Of course it just gets worse and worse until you find yourself in a nursing home watching the TV, and an ad comes on for “Now That’s What I Call Music #403,823,” including the smash hit “Go F*ck a Dead Man in the *ss, Bitch” and when you ask the orderly to turn it down he laughs and calls you a prude. Hey, that’s just how people talk, man.

It's real life, after all, and we wouldn't want to be inauthentic. There ae few greater sins. But, well, I don't talk that way in public. Well, who are you to be better than everyone else? Who are you to say that word is bad? Lighten up, pops. And so on. There's no winning that argument with anyone who has that anti-Puritan reaction to self-control - the fear that someone, somewhere, is repressing something.

And Stewart’s response is sanctimonious sophistry. Jefferson had an affair with a slave in the 18th century, therefore there should be no standards of public discourse in the 21st. Got it. And as for “perspective,” I would agree that a washed-up comedian graceless utterances would be less important if a current president held another human being in bondage and raped them in the stable, but not even moveon.org alleges that. At least lately. Been a while since I checked.

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