Issue #28/83, February 10 - 17, 2000  

By Krazy Kino Kevin McElwee

"If you really want to know why there is an abundance of food, electricity, heat, and medicine in America, and humanity in its military, it is because we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness more than the misleading morality of ‘generosity, mutual aid and solidarity.’ So much for the chronic suffering of the Russian people and the price of human life."

Pere_Bjornigod@maximagroup.ru

Each of the above statements was posted this Wednesday to the increasingly less interesting Moscow Expat List in a "debate" of sorts on such hot issues of the day as: (i) Whither the War in Chechnya, (ii) Are the Russian People as a Whole Equivalent to Nazis?, and (iii) Why Is the United States so Terrific and Russia so Horrific? Meanwhile, certain other "Listers" also managed to drag their grim Quixotic quests for Schweppes mixers and overpriced apartments into the fray. Ordinarily, it would be amusing enough to quote such halfwits simply in order to spend a few moments pondering what compels them to distribute such semi-formed pre-ejaculatory drips of supposed wit and wisdom to a hundred or so near-strangers.

Take the first author, Dirk Flesch. I’m instinctively suspicious of anyone using a hotmail address, if only because it indicates the individual in question has no qualms about letting Microsoft handle his anonymous e-mail needs. Furthermore, it could be that Mr. Flesch is actually a prankster or impostor attempting to egg people on with cliche-laden jingoism and insinuations of moral relativism. It is difficult (although not quite impossible) to imagine anyone detecting humanity in the U.S. (or any other) military. But the point is not whether Mr. Flesch is attempting to be sarcastic, or even whether he exists at all. The fact is that plenty of Americans really do believe (or at least think they do) in the aforesaid bromides, which they have gleaned primarily from non-news news programs and Saturday Night Live parodies of the country’s leading politicians.

As for the second self-appointed pundit and electronic standup artist--Man Child or the Thin Man, whatever you want to call him--there can be no doubt that he is under the impression he has cracked a joke of some kind. Quite possibly, he even believes it was funny. I imagine him chuckling to himself as he clicked on the send button, contentedly anticipating his virtual friends ROTFL at his keen social satire and prodigious verbal gifts. But Mr. Child has not actually made a joke here. What he has done is to equate KKK lynchings with relatively harmless masturbation. Is that funny? Well, it might have had a chance if he hadn’t used a flitty British slang term (as opposed to the much more forceful "jerk-offs") in referring to the allegedly self-abusing Klansmen. What’s wrong with these cowed Americans (even if Mr. Child is a Canadian half-breed) who feel the need to employ the Queen’s English for their slang and vulgarity purposes? Do they think they’re being clever? Impressing their British friends? Americans should no more be using the obnoxious closing "Cheers" to end their letters than Londoners should be going around pronouncing "shit" as if there were a silent "e" on the end.

But what about Man Child’s deft subversion of the lazy reader’s expectations, when he follows the commonplace "red necked" (without the hyphen, note) with the thoroughly unexpected "beer blooded." Come to think of it, why yes, many Americans can in fact be described as "beer blooded." What an apt witticism. Tomorrow, Mr. Child will probably further elaborate the wordplay, moving "beer" over with "necked," filling the unsuspecting Yankees’ blood with semen or something (i.e., "semen blooded"), and then obsessively inserting "scatological" before every unmodified noun (and even some of those already burdened with unnecessary adjectives of their own), all as dressing on a tract instructing some Moscow neophyte to schlep all the way out to Mytino in order to pick up the pair of AA batteries he needs.

Not that I’m parading these poor souls around just to crap all over their would-be humor--I do have a point here. However, before getting to it, I’ll have to cite one more Expat List gem from this Wednesday. This one’s from a recent Newsweek article entitled "The Superpower They Love to Hate" that some well-meaning netizen forwarded to the list apropos of the above-mentioned "Russo-Chechen Nazi War Crimes While Rich, Arrogant Americans Look Censoriously, But Ultimately Apathetically On" debate. Presumably, he was seeking to give the more disruptive discussants some food-for-thought in order perhaps to raise the debate to a higher level. Poor sap. Anyway, without further adieu:

"Here’s the message for the new century:

those who hate America hate themselves."

We’ll ignore the fact that this is pure bullshit intended as calming reassurance for Newsweek’s primary audience (American bedwetting types and their converted outlander imitators) that the unwashed and underfed rest of the world doesn’t--or shouldn’t at any rate--hate them. We’ll ignore the fact that Newsweek is probably the most widely purchased and barely read non-news news source in the United States (Time being its only real competition). We’ll even ignore the fact that much of the rest of the world really does hate America, and with damn good reason. After all, the scrawny commoners don’t start despising the playground bully any less just because he lets them play for a few moments with that new toy or weapon his parents bought him. They know well enough from experience that he’ll go right back to terrorizing and pounding the shit out of them tomorrow, once the novelty of the new acquisition has worn off. Why? Because he can.

Ignoring all of these considerations then, let’s think for a moment what it would mean if America for this "new century" of ours if America itself hated America. It sounds awfully absurd, but that’s the very message that Hollywood seems to be selling us these days. You don’t need me to run down the list of recent American Bummer flicks--unless you’ve been living in a media-free cave you’ve already seen at least a couple of them.

But of course, there can be only one, and it is now safe to say that The One--the undisputed critical and commercial favorite (it’s funny how often those two sides of the market end up coinciding, regardless of what major-market upper-middlebrow reviewers like to claim)--for this particular zeitgeist is AMERICAN BEAUTY.

As you’ve no doubt already heard, Kevin Spacey is absolutely brilliant and you have no choice but to adore his every raised eyebrow and sarcastic quip. The brilliant script literally overflows with unflinchingly dark satire, yet the film also displays sensitivity and, yes, even a heart. The cinematography is, inevitably, to be described as whichever two or three adjectives are currently in vogue among hack reviewers who don’t really know anything about the technical side of filmmaking (not that a reviewer should necessarily know such things, but if he doesn’t he shouldn’t pretend to). Debut director Sam Mendes, who comes from the world of theater, adds some refreshing dramatic elements to the mix. Nobody’s exactly sure what these elements might be, but that’s no reason to spoil the fun.

Barring a deferred Millennial Armageddon, just under two months from now American Beauty will be winning an impressive number of Academy Awards at yet another ceremony hosted by Billy Crystal (if the Oscars are supposed to be so damn prestigious, why can they never get anyone other than him or Whoopie Goldberg to host?). Then, shortly thereafter, the film will set out on its meandering, largely unsung journey (resting along the way at a handful of more or less undistinguished Euro-Ceremonies for the obligatory final curtain calls) to the domain of relative obscurity occupied by such other ho-hum multi-award winners as Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love. Like American Beauty, none of these films are the sort a sensible person would want to see a second time--and at least one of them is better not viewed at all.

The really curious thing about a movie like American Beauty is the way the hype machine mercilessly draws in viewers who really have no desire to see a film of this sort. For example, I saw the film a few months ago in the Philadelphia suburb where I grew up. It’s the kind of place where white people still freely utter "nigger" and "fag" in mixed company without fear of PC censure. And just like on South Park, my hometown has precisely one Jewish family (and even they tend to refer to themselves as Poles when pressed on the issue). Hell, it’s where that bitch from The Blair Witch Project is from, and just about everybody talks like her. That heavily nasal soft "a" just about gives me an aneurysm every time I’m home. All told, the area has about three multiplexes, and they’re always showing the exact same movies. Which is occasionally convenient, actually--if you miss the start of the movie you’re going to see, you can usually head a little further down the pike and catch it at the next theater. Very few of even the most mainstream "art house" features ever make it to our area, and to see a real independent film you have to go into the city. It’s only about ten miles away, but few people bother.

So this was the milieu in which I found myself watching this allegedly subversive examination of American suburban hell. It started off OK--even the four high school football studs in the row ahead of me laughed out loud at the early scene where Spacey is shown jerking it in the shower while his own flamboyant voiceover is talking about what a loser he is. A few more such easy laughs followed in quick succession, but before long the pretentiousness began to take its toll… the natives were getting restless. As the film reached its Salinger-derived secular Zen Buddhism-meets-made for TV Casablanca ending, utterances of "What the hell was that?" could be heard throughout the theater. My jock friends meanwhile were visibly angry, and one of them even seemed to be on the verge of a physical outburst of some kind. Clearly, they felt cheated. Here they were being good Americans, paying their $7.50 to see the latest blockbuster and it turns out to be some artsy thing that’s either over their heads or deliberately mocking them. How to explain to them that it wasn’t that they hadn’t gotten it; rather, there was nothing in particular to get.

Yes, I’ll admit that Spacey is pretty entertaining. But it’s in that Seinfeld kind of way that leaves you feeling strangely empty, with your mind stingily counting up every second you’ve just wasted on some utterly pointless diversion. It’s not exactly as if Spacey is exerting himself here. He works that repertoire of facial expressions and vocal intonations he long ago perfected, gets his $10 million-plus paycheck, and then he’s off to bang those whores (young male ones, if certain rumors are to be believed) and hoover that blow. Meanwhile, you’re out in the theater parking lot, your car won’t start, and then you realize you don’t really have anywhere to go anyway.

Nor is Spacey’s celebrated rebellion and journey of self-discovery in the film particularly impressive or inspiring, when you really think about it. First he quits his office job, which is a fine start. But then right away he gets a new one, at some fast-food burger chain; moreover, he enjoys it. Then he buys one of those ugly red American sports cars from the late ‘70s, a Camaro or Firebird or something. So in America, rebellion has come to mean low-level slavery for some McDonald’s wannabe and tooling around town in a Detroit gas-guzzler with some fucking Canadian band blasting from the stereo. He might just as well have gone out and gotten a mullet haircut and one of those top-of-the-line riding mowers. After all that, it’s no wonder he declines the opportunity to deflower the 17-year-old he has been lusting after the entire movie. Some viewers may be forgiven for feeling that maybe he gets what he deserves when his repressed homosexual, military freak, next-door neighbor first makes a pass at him and then busts a cap in his skull in retribution for having been spurned so humiliatingly. This late-developing gay plot twist doesn’t even begin to make any kind of sense, incidentally, but there’s no point getting into that now.

Keeping in mind Spacey’s sadly corporatized rebellion and pathetic end, I invite you now to consider that third Expat List excerpt above, the one that essentially asks who would win in a fight between Russia and the United States. For one thing, it sorts of depends on who’s making the rules, and America sure isn’t in the habit of getting into fights unless the rules are tipped in its favor. But let’s try to take a somewhat objective look at this, at least from the point of view of revolutionary politics. Early this century, Russia erupted in violent revolt, and by the time the dust finally cleared (more or less anyway) some seventy years later, it had managed to kill off tens of millions of its own citizens. The United States, on the other hand, devised a weapon of almost unthinkable power--and all it has to show for it are a couple of secondary Japanese cities leveled and unusually high cancer rates in certain parts of Nevada (which, I might add, is blamed for the early deaths of John Wayne, along with a number of other actors who were involved in The Conqueror). So who’s got the bigger dick now?

I need to say at least a few words about still another "American" movie, AMERICAN PIE (seems they’re all American movies these days, as if Hollywood is trying to rub it in that every other major film industry in the world has more or less gone to shit, degenerating into some pathetically quirky cinematic version of the whole single European currency fiasco). This one’s your basic teen sex comedy, with the requisite concessions to the gross-out tendencies of the times--you know, cum shots, pie-fucking, flute-cunt-ramming… that sort of thing. It has a fair number of decent gags, some of which are quite expertly timed, and as long as you don’t go expecting Fast Times at Ridgemont High you probably won’t be too disappointed.

Still, you might notice that kids seem to be getting grosser and beiger--basically, even more unpleasant than I remember them being back when I was one. And don’t think it went unnoticed that the Kevin character was the most nauseating one of the bunch. It’s always that way--Home Alone, St. Elmo’s Fire, the list goes on and on. The best example of just how gross kids are today is the gag where the 8-year-old is hiding in the closet at the Prom Night party. He bursts out on an unsuspecting couple, screaming "You’re gonna fuck, aren’t you? Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!" all the while bouncing maniacally on the bed. He’s by far the most sympathetic minor in the picture. It used to be you could relate somewhat to movie teens. Nowadays they’re all creepy automatons with nose-jobs and hideous taste in music.

Basically, the real reason to see American Pie is the scene where the Czech exchange student Nadia (played by Shannon Elizabeth, who’s actually from Houston) gets nearly totally naked. I guarantee that you will not see a more smoking babe in a film this year. Hell, I’d even consider going down on Vladimir Putin’s shriveled bureaucratic member for a chance to nail her.

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