Tag: movies set in the 80s

Love Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry…For Your ‘Roid Rage: Love Lies Bleeding

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It would seem lesbianism is “in the air” of late. At least in mainstream pop culture—something that hasn’t happened much since the days of t.A.T.u. and Madonna kissing Britney and Christina at the VMAs. Oh yeah, and then there were a few blips in the movie world with offerings such as Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Disobedience, Blue Is the Warmest Color and The Handmaiden (though most of these likely weren’t seen outside of an “arthouse cinema” audience), plus some play on “TV” with Orange Is the New Black. But, by and large, it’s been a gay man’s world when it comes to the Midwest and the South—a.k.a. the benchmarks for pop culture fully saturating the mainstream—embracing “homo things” (namely, Drag Race…and, more recently, perhaps even Challengers). But lesbians are “chic” again if we’re to go by Love Lies Bleeding, Drive-Away Dolls and Billie Eilish announcing, “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” That’s certainly one way to announce a sexual preference.

With Rose Glass’ second feature (following Saint Maud) in particular, the pivot back to the “divine lesbian” in pop culture is complete. Of course, Kristen Stewart, who stars as “reclusive gym manager” Lou (short for Louise), has long been open about her own bisexuality (and, currently, she is engaged to a woman—Dylan Meyer). One might say the first and second half of her famous life has been bifurcated, in fact: in the first half, dating men and, in the second, dating women. Thus, she was fully prepared to inhabit a character like Lou, who sets her sights on Jackie (Katy O’Brian, who looks like a cross between Alia Shawkat and Ilana Glazer), an aspiring bodybuilder that shows up in her gym. A gym called “Crater” (which sounds very close to “cooter” if you think about it). Where, in true 80s fashion, “motivational” signs populate the room with sayings like, “No Pain No Gain,” “Pain Is Weakness Leaving The Body” and “Only Losers Quit.” It’s all very in keeping with the capitalist/baby boomer philosophy of life, despite the fact that baby boomers experienced their youth at the height of a time in America when things actually were easier (in terms of achieving “success”) because there were fewer regulations/red tape-related hurdles and far less surveillance.

Lou herself is the “beneficiary” of “good fortune” in that her psychotic father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, in his creepiest role to date), owns the gym, hence Lou’s position as its manager. Of course, a role in management is hardly all glitz and glamor, as we see when Lou unclogs a disgusting toilet (that tends to be perennially clogged) in the bathroom. Worse still, she has to do it while Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a woman who is clearly obsessed with her (and likely the only other lesbian in town), hovers over her and tries to get her to come out for a drink. Lou “politely” declines. From there, Glass gives us the “Miss Congeniality treatment” in terms of showing how Lou is a lonely single woman, returning home to her apartment to have a beer, make a microwave meal for one and feed her cat…all of which are things that we see Grace Hart (Sandra Bullock) do at the beginning of Miss Congeniality (to be sure, Grace was giving off major “dyke energy” for the 2000s). Except, in the depiction of Lou’s lonely existence, we get to see her masturbate on her couch, too.

As for Jackie’s life of loneliness, it’s slightly less noticeable because her primary focus is on basic survival. And yes, that includes fucking randos in exchange for things like job leads. Only the “rando” in question is actually Lou’s shithead, wife-beating brother-in-law, J.J. (Dave Franco, who probably shouldn’t embrace such parts considering who his brother is). Of course, Jackie doesn’t know that at the time, nor does she meet Lou until the following day after accepting a job as a waitress at a restaurant on a gun range (a sentence that you could only say in America)—unfortunately, also owned by Lou’s father. Her life of transiency has, needless to say, made her very resourceful and very impervious to fucked-up situations. Like sleeping on the street. Indeed, it is while she brushes her teeth after having slept outside for the night that she’s placed in the foreground of a looming billboard that reads, “Follow Your Dream.” Another satirical mise-en-scène from Glass, who clearly sees the irony of the U.S. being a place where people are told that “anyone” can succeed, even though the fine print to that false advertising makes it so that only certain kinds of people can. And people like Lou and Jackie (*cough cough* “freaks and weirdos” a.k.a. the non-herteronormative) aren’t generally among them.

And so, when these two women’s paths cross, it is as though each sees the same wound in the other. The same type of rejection, the same feeling of worthlessness. In fact, Jackie’s amazed when Lou doesn’t automatically mock her plan to go to Las Vegas and compete in a bodybuilding competition. So “supportive” is Lou of Jackie’s dream that she even gives her some steroids to try for the first time. Despite Jackie telling Lou she’s “all naturale, baby,” she can’t resist getting “poked” by Lou when offered (especially after being told that Lou will give her “the stuff” for free). The poking quickly leads to sucking and, soon enough, Jackie has found herself a place to stay in Lou’s abode (the term “U-Haul lesbian” definitely comes to mind) at the “Mi Casa Apartments” (which appears to only house one apartment, and it’s Lou’s). Not to mention a steady supplier of steroids, her newfound addiction. So really, Lou can’t blame Jackie when she starts to “hulk out” (in truth, O’Brian would have been a better casting choice for She-Hulk) and lose all self-regulating control of her emotions—for she was the one who technically “made” Jackie this way by introducing her to the substance.

It is after becoming hopped up on the steroids that Jackie bears witness to Lou’s pain over having to stand by helplessly in the hospital room where her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), lies unconscious thanks to another beating from J.J. And in this moment of “clarity,” the steroids kick in to tell her exactly what to do to make Lou’s pain disappear: kill that fucker. Ah, the things one must do for love.

Alas, things get pretty raw for Jackie during the comedown, after she realizes the full weight of what she’s done. And when Lou finds her sitting in the bathtub of J.J. and Beth’s house (after happening to see her car, which she lent to Jackie, parked outside of it), it’s obvious there’s some remorse on her part…even if Jackie insists, “I made it right” and both of them are fundamentally glad that the world has been cleansed of a man like J.J.

If the two weren’t bonded before by their love, ostracism and general contempt for the “normies,” they certainly are after disposing of J.J.’s body together. Lou even feels comfortable enough to take Jackie to her dad’s “secret spot.” The same place the film opens on, wielding the shot so that it amounts to what looks like a “gash” (sexual indeed), a crevice, a “long opening.” It’s the place, viewers find out, where Lou’s father kills and disposes of all the people who get in his way.

As the tension and “thriller-y” nature of Love Lies Bleeding intensifies (there are many instances when the film smacks of something out of the Nicolas Winding Refn canon) in the wake of J.J.’s murder, Lou and Jackie’s love is put to the test (a lyric, incidentally, that shows up in a major song from 1989 [the year Love Lies Bleeding takes place]: “Express Yourself”). In ways that most “ordinary” couples would never have to endure. So it is that Jackie ends up spouting some tortured pretty phrases (sorry, Taylor, you ain’t the only “tortured poet”), like, “Don’t ever fall in love, okay?” and “I wish I’d never met you!” Except that, without Lou, Jackie knows she’d be far more miserable. Such is the “curse” of being in love (or, as Britney Spears once phrased it, “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em”).

Glass’ decision to set the narrative in 1989 seems to stem not only from female bodybuilding and gym membership-based fitness in general becoming more of “a thing” at that time, but also to punctuate the utter seediness of the so-called American dream as it continued to decay in the Reagan era. A “dream” rendered even more incongruous and insidious in Love Lies Bleeding because, in the background of the narrative, there are reports not only of the crack epidemic, but also of the Berlin Wall’s dismantlement, with more and more East Germans being funneled into the West (and its pro-capitalist lifestyle) so that they can be “liberated.” And yet, two women who simply like eating pussy aren’t even really “free” to do that (not without much ridicule and judgment anyway) in the “Land of the Free.” Or, as Lena Katina of t.A.T.u. once said (despite ultimately revealing that she and bandmate Julia Volkova were not actually lesbians), “We wanted people to understand them and not judge them. That they are as free as anyone else.”

But no, not really…and not in Love Lies Bleeding. Instead, they have to be on the run like a lesbian Thelma and Louise. Granted, committing murder doesn’t quite help one’s cause in terms of feeling “unshackled.” It does, in this case though, prove just how much someone really loves you if they’re willing to look past your occasional murderous tendencies as spurred by ‘roid rage.

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Genna Rivieccio

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April 27, 2024
Lisa Frankenstein: Mary Shelley With a (Tanning Bed) Shock of Heathers

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For those seeking to dig up their long-buried romantic side, Lisa Frankenstein arrives at the perfect time: Valentine’s Day. And, although it was released during what was called the worst box office weekend for movies since Covid, one can only hope that the receipts will pick up (or at least stay the same) for screenwriter Diablo Cody’s latest signature offering in the coming weeks. Not to mention picking up for the sake of director Zelda Williams’ (yes, Robin Williams’ daughter) debut feature (having previously directed the short films, Shrimp and Kappa Kappa Die), who has just as much riding on the success of the film as Cody. Except that “success,” when applied to a movie like Lisa Frankenstein, can definitely not be measured in box office returns, so much as “finding its audience.”

When Cody hoped that would happen with 2009’s now-respected horror-comedy, Jennifer’s Body, it didn’t. And that was, in large part, due to some very poorly-executed marketing plans, ones that relied heavily on playing up Megan Fox’s “sexiness” rather than the actual story. While JB might have been maligned at the time (just as Lisa Frankenstein is now), Cody stated, “If people hadn’t rediscovered Jennifer’s Body, I would not have written Lisa Frankenstein. With that whole area, that genre, I kind of felt unwelcome in it, because I had flopped so hard on my last attempt.” Thank “God” those feelings went away, and Cody was able to bring us another campy “coming-of-rage” (as Lisa Frankenstein is called) tale that reworks Mary Shelley’s classic to the advantage of a teen girl in the “mad scientist” role.

Except, in true underlying discriminatory fashion, Lisa doesn’t create her monster through science (so much for a chem lab scene), but rather, by simple wishing…while tripped out on PCP-laced alcohol. From there, a Victorian-inspired dream sequence ensues (giving the likes of Yorgos Lanthimos and Michel Gondry a run for their money), featuring Lisa (Kathryn Newton) in a dress that reflects the 1800s period she’s flashing back to…minus the giant Pabst Blue Ribbon logo painted on the front of it. In fact, the hand-painted logo on that dress is what got costume designer Meagan McLaughlin the job. And it seemed to be the job of a lifetime in terms of getting to rework some of her favorite looks from the decade, which are overtly inspired by both Madonna and Winona Ryder (80s queens on opposite aesthetic spectrums, yet somehow two sides of the same coin, kind of like horror and comedy).

Considering that Cody was recently working on a script with Madonna for her since-shelved biopic, perhaps it’s fair to say that the pop star has remained on Cody’s brain—which undoubtedly shines through in this movie. McLaughlin (whose meticulous attention to detail on the wardrobe front cannot be underestimated) also admitted she was “obsessed with Madonna in 1984, and you don’t grow out of that obsession. [That’s why] there’s a hint of Madonna-esque Like a Virgin fashion in [the movie].” More than just a hint, mind you. Except Lisa appears mostly in black lace rather than white. As for the obvious Tim Burton flair of the film (including the house and neighborhood exteriors), it’s in large part because of how much Lisa reminds one of Ryder’s characters in Beetlejuice and Heathers, with McLaughlin adding, “Winona Ryder is a huge influence for me in that period, and we were absolutely inspired by her costumes in Beetlejuice and Heathers. I had taken a screenshot from Heathers of Winona in a gray top with a black skirt with suspenders, and that inspired one of Lisa’s looks…”

And if Lisa is Winona Ryder-inspired, then there’s no denying the Creature (Cole Sprouse) is heavily Johnny Depp-inspired. Particularly his Edward Scissorhands era (which also included Ryder). A mood board for the costumes looked not only to Buster Keaton, but, surely, also Depp in his early 90s movies. After all, 1989 was on the cusp of that decade, and it took until at least 1995 to fully shake an all-out 80s tinge that still lingered heavily in most people’s sartorial choices. And, talking of 1989, that was also the year Heathers was released in theaters and changed the landscape of teen movies forever. Particularly when it came to actually speaking candidly (and comically) on what it meant to be a teen girl. For the satirical purposes of Daniel Waters’ script, the murderous rage so many women at that age feel became literal as Veronica Sawyer (Ryder) becomes involved with a rebellious “James Dean type,” named, appropriately, J.D. (Christian Slater), who is willing to carry out the murders she otherwise wouldn’t. Hence, the indelible voiceover of Veronica saying, “Dear Diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Other absurdist lines delivered glibly include, “Great pâté, Mom, but I gotta motor if I wanna be ready for that funeral” and “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” (that one delivered by Heather Chandler, not Veronica). Lisa begins to deliver such outlandish lines in a similarly blasé manner. That’s all part of the genre. And so is the hormonally-driven lust of crushing hard over a boy.

For Lisa, the J.D. in her life turns out to be the Creature, who immediately becomes emotionally attached to his “maker,” defending her at all costs from anyone he sees affecting her negatively. At the top of that list is her new stepmother, the Nurse Ratched-esque Janet (Carla Gugino, relishing a villainous role as usual). Convinced she’s the source for all that is good and holy in Lisa and her father Dale’s (Joe Chrest) life, Janet has little patience for what she perceives as Lisa’s “acting out” ways. And it isn’t long before she makes it her mission to paint Lisa as “crazy” enough to be locked up, which would leave her with Dale and her own perfect cheerleader daughter, Taffy (Liza Soberano).

Surprisingly, though, Taffy is actually nice to Lisa, making it a point to treat her like a real sister, defending her from naysayers and taking her out to parties. Including the first “rager” of the year, where she encounters the “cerebral” (“He’s in a wheelchair?” Taffy asks in regard to that word) boy she’s been crushing on, Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry). And also, unfortunately, his girlfriend, Tamara (Joey Harris). The latter being the Goth Lite that Lisa will soon outdo with her own theatrical aesthetics (ones clearly inspired by the bands she loves: Bauhaus, The Cure, Joy Division, etc.—the only nod to “goth” [before it got rebranded as “emo”] missing from that era is The Smiths). It’s Tamara that fucks her over with the old reverse psychology trap of handing her a cup, quickly retracting it and saying something to the effect of, “Silly me, I should’ve known better to than to think you knew how to party.” Lisa then takes the cup from her, not wanting to come across like a prude in front of Michael. She might have been better off upholding her “virginal” image, though, because the PCP is about to take her on a wild ride.

To that end, without her hallucinogenic journey, she not only wouldn’t have seen what an asshole her lab partner, Doug (Bryce Romero), is as he puts his hand on her chest after pretending he just wants to “help” her, but she also wouldn’t have been able to “astral project,” so to speak, to the Creature’s gravesite and work the “magic” that will set him free, liberate him from the ground.

“I wish I was with you,” Lisa tells the bust atop his gravestone while imagining herself in the bachelors’ graveyard. When that wish actually comes true (because apparently it’s as simple as “ask and you shall receive,” paired with a lightning bolt jolt), she explains to the Creature that what she really meant by that was she wanted to be dead, too (how very Lana Del Rey declaring, “I wish I was dead already”). Down there in the ground with him because the living are such assholes. Her bluntness prompts him to start crying, leading Lisa to the realization that she must do everything in her power so that he doesn’t cry again because his tears smell fouler than the corpse itself. And even when he starts to look more and more like a viable character from Less Than Zero, his stench still doesn’t go away. Such is the drawback of “building a boyfriend” out of a dead body. Or, as the various taglines go, “If you can’t meet your perfect boyfriend…make him,” “Dig up someone special” and “She’s slaying. He’s decaying” (side note: Cody was gunning for a tagline that went, “You always dismember your first”). Harsher critics of Lisa Frankenstein will accuse the movie itself of decaying from the very first scene. Indeed, less open-minded reviews have touted such scathing assessments in their titles as, “Lisa Frankenstein Will Make You Miss Tim Burton. A Lot.” or “Lisa Frankenstein: There’s nothing animated about this corpse comedy.”

“Corpse comedy” being, in truth, a genre that really only Weekend at Bernie’s can lay claim to. “Zom-com” is, instead, the term that’s been bandied around to describe a film like this. And it also applies to 2013’s Warm Bodies, which riffs on Romeo and Juliet. In a sense, the Frankenstein story is a kind of Romeo and Juliet narrative…when the gender of the “Dr. Frankenstein” in the equation is swapped and the “monster” she’s created starts to fall in love with her. As for the “mechanism” used to keep bringing the Creature more and more to life (therefore, more and more “on her wavelength”—no crimped hair pun intended), Cody might have gotten some inspo from another 80s-loving movie: Hot Tub Time Machine. Sure, the tanning bed might not be a portal through the decades (like Back to the Future’s Delorean as well), but it’s an equally 80s-centric “luxury” that ends up being wielded for paranormal purposes.

With the boon of the tanning bed to bring a jolt of life to his new limbs, the only obstacle for the Creature in securing Lisa’s love is the aforementioned Michael Trent, who reels the anti-heroine in with his compliments of her poetry (macabre, of course). He’s the editor-in-chief of the high school lit mag, after all, so he must have taste (in fact, his self-aggrandizement over that taste will come into play in a big way later on, when Lisa has the revelation that only he can have taste in “cool” things, not his girlfriend of the moment). Second to that, the Creature is dealing with just one more noticeable, er, deficit: he’s missing a few key parts. Namely, a hand, an ear and what some women would arguably call the most important appendage of all. Though Lisa assures him that’s actually the thing that least makes a man, well, a man. Nonetheless, that doesn’t stop her from admitting she no longer wants to be like a virgin. She wants to fuck, and soon. Especially with her and the Creature’s body count piling higher by the day (they’re sort of like Dexter Morgan in that they justify their killings by deeming their victims as “bad people”).

Lisa knows it’s only a matter of time until the police come after her. Which feels like a full-circle moment considering her own mother was brutally killed by an ax murderer (a detail and flashback that seems like Cody’s nod to 80s slasher movies in general). Now she’s the one toting an ax around town, at one point trying to convince herself that she might be able to kill her own creation. But she could never—not just because he’s become both an extension of her and her best friend, but because they’ve obviously fallen in love somewhere along the distorted line between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

Starting with Lisa’s visits to Bachelor’s Grove cemetery, as a matter of fact. And while Victorians don’t actually seem to have a tradition of burying single men in their own special cemetery, there does happen to be a supposedly haunted graveyard called that in Illinois (that has nothing to do with a “bachelors only clientele,” mind you). Cody herself is from said state, specifically the Chicago suburb of Lemont. And, being that so many 80s movies are centered on suburban teen angst (thanks, in large part to Cody’s unwitting mentor, John Hughes, a fellow former suburban teen who spent his adolescence in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook), it’s evident Cody knows how to convey that in Lisa Frankenstein. And also, of course, Jennifer’s Body. In point of fact, Cody has said that she would like to think Lisa and Jennifer exist in the same cinematic universe (additionally mentioning her hope of rebooting the film as a TV series).

Sort of the way it seems, unspokenly, that all of John Hughes’ teen movies do. One of which, Weird Science, Cody cites as a particular influence on Lisa Frankenstein (though not Lisa Frank, who founded her company of the same name in 1979 and subsequently served as a school supplies-oriented mascot for a generation of girls). Indeed, the “revived” woman (actually created from a computer and a doll) in Weird Science was named Lisa. This being one of those quintessential 80s names for girls. And what’s even more quintessential about the 80s, as Cody reminds us, is that romantic devotion was revitalized to an almost Victorian extent (as manifested in the music of some of the aforementioned bands).

Accordingly, Lisa writes the Creature a “farewell” note that reads, “Death is temporary. I’ll love you forever.” To be sure, Lisa Frankenstein mirrors that level of wistfulness and romanticness (something Mary Shelley knew all about) for its entirety. The kind of romance we’ve, by now, been taught to mock or write off as being of the “Billy Bob and Angelina variety.” Intense to the point of vials of blood being involved. Or, in this case, limbs. Thus, the intensity of Lisa and the Creature’s bond is only further cemented when the latter cuts off a certain boy’s dick and has her sew it on his own Ken doll-esque area. Needless to say, it definitely helps that Lisa happens to be a skilled seamstress.

In the final moments of Lisa Frankenstein, the viewer is treated to the sight of a now-capable-of-speaking Creature reading aloud from a book of Percy Shelley’s poems (namely, “To Mary”) on a bench (in a manner that sort of mimics the bench-reading scene from Notting Hill). As he reads, a bandaged-up, undead Lisa rests “comfortably” on his lap. The Frankenstein roles have now reversed, in a fashion similar to what happens at the end of Frankenhooker (which, although released in 1990, very much smacks of the year it was actually filmed: 1989). Except that Lisa is no longer the one truly in control. Perhaps this is a subtle statement, on Cody’s part, about what happens when a woman falls in love: she ends up surrendering some (if not all) of her power. Unless the guy, like J.D. in Heathers, proves himself to be a complete twat and a girl has to take that power back, Veronica Sawyer-style.

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Genna Rivieccio

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February 13, 2024
Monetize (And Monetize And Monetize) Your Talent: Air Explores the Birth of a New American Dream: Passive Income

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If Air seeks to emphasize one thing, it’s that you should always leverage your talent to secure the utmost profit. That’s certainly what Michael Jordan did back in 1984 as a rookie who made an unthinkable negotiation with Nike. One that would, for the first time in history, allow an athlete like Jordan to earn a percentage of every pair of Air Jordans sold. After all, it was his name on the sneakers, his name spurring all the sales. So why shouldn’t he get his cut? This question is present throughout the narrative thread of Air, which revolves entirely around the lead-up to making this landmark deal. Marking Ben Affleck’s fifth directorial effort following Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo and Live By Night, Air is a much more blatant nod to the “American dream.” You know, the one that pertains solely to bowing down to capitalism a.k.a. “getting this money.” Ironically, it’s also distributed by Amazon, which Nike no longer sells their shoes through in a bid to “elevate consumer experiences through more direct, personal relationships.”

Sort of the way Jordan wanted to elevate the consumer experience of his adoring fans by giving them “a piece of himself” through a shoe. Fittingly enough, both Nike and Michael Jordan are quintessential American dream stories, with the latter being a shoestring operation (pun intended) co-founded in 1964 by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight (Affleck) and his coach, Bill Bowerman (though Alex Convery, the writer of Air, doesn’t bother to mention his name). It was Knight who sold the company’s (then known as Blue Ribbon Sports) first shoe offerings (made by Onitsuka Tiger, a brand that, for whatever reason, agreed to let Knight be the U.S.’ exclusive distributor) out of the back of his car at track meets most of the time. Steadily, Blue Ribbon Sports kept making a name for itself as a leader in distributing Japanese running shoes. But it was in 1971 that Bowerman fucked around with his own innovation by using his wife’s waffle iron to create a different kind of rubber sole for the benefit of runners. One that was lightweight, therefore conducive to increasing speed. This was also the year the company rebranded to Nike and was bequeathed with its signature swoosh logo by graphic designer Carolyn Davidson. With the “Moon Shoe” and the “Waffle Trainer” released in 1972 and 1974 respectively, Nike sales exploded into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

Jordan’s Cinderella story comes across as having slightly fewer hiccups in his rise to prominence, the main one being his slight by the varsity high school team when he was a sophomore at Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina. Written off as too short for varsity, Jordan waited patiently to grow four more inches and asserted himself as the star of Laney’s JV team. After getting his spot on varsity, it didn’t take long for a number of colleges to offer him a scholarship. He settled on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, quickly distinguishing himself on the basketball team there and having no trouble eventually catching the eye of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, rejoining his true love onscreen), Nike’s then basketball talent scout (at a time when such “lax” job roles were still in existence). Convinced of Jordan’s status as a once-in-a-generation talent, he begs and pleads with Knight to use the entire basketball budget to offer Jordan an endorsement deal.

Alas, although named after the Greek goddess who personifies victory, Nike was anything but victorious in being a basketball shoe contender with the likes of Converse and Adidas as 1984 commenced. After all, the company had been built on running shoes. That had always been their bread and butter. Nonetheless, Vaccaro still can’t figure out why basketball players are so averse to putting their faith in Nike. But, as Howard White (Chris Tucker), the VP of Nike’s Basketball Athlete Relations tells Sonny, “Nike is a damn jogging company. Black people don’t jog. You ain’t gonna catch no Black person running twenty-six miles for no damn reason. Man, the cops probably pull you over thinkin’ you done stole something.” Which isn’t far off considering the need for shirts like, “Don’t Shoot, It’s Just Cardio” (tragically inspired by the death of Ahmaud Arbery).

Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), the VP of Marketing for Basketball, is more naively optimistic during a meeting in which he says, “Mr. Orwell was right. 1984 has been a tough year. Our sales are down, our growth is down. But this company is about who we really are when we are down for the count.” That said, Strasser and Knight both insist they have a strict 250K budget to attract three players. Sonny tells Strasser he doesn’t want to sign three players, he wants to sign just one: Jordan. He paints Strasser the innovative-for-its-time picture, “We build a shoe line just around him. We tap into something deeper, into the player’s identity.” This being something that would become the subsequent norm with endorsement deals, not just from sports players, but every kind of celebrity.

To this end, it’s of no small significance that Air opens with Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” a song that derides famous ilk (namely, rock stars) who get money for doing no “real” work, like those who have to fritter their hours away in a minimum wage job at an appliance store (the site where Mark Knopfler overheard a man making derisive comments about the people he was seeing on MTV and then turned the rant into “Money For Nothing”). Jordan, too, might be seen that way by some, at least for making millions (billions?) for doing nothing other than allowing a shoe with his name and silhouette on it to be sold. And as “Money For Nothing” plays, Affleck gets us into the mindset of what the 80s were all about: consumer culture melding with pop culture. For it was in the 80s that the potential for endorsement deals, fueled by Reaganomics’ love of neoliberalism on steroids, were fully realized and taken advantage of.

Sonny, seeing something entirely American in Jordan, crystallizes his feelings about him to Phil by insisting that he is “the most competitive guy I’ve ever seen. He is a fucking killer.” And that means he’s going to kill for Nike, profit-wise. As Sonny chases down a meeting with Jordan, who has made his disdain for the company abundantly clear (especially as he “loves” Adidas), it’s through his mother, Deloris (Viola Davis, who, although Jordan had no involvement in the production of the film, was offered as a suggestion by him to play the part), that Sonny finds his “in” with Michael. Much to the consternation of Michael’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), who distinctly warns Sonny not to contact the family.

But Sonny has no interest in following rules, if that hadn’t already been made evident. And when he finally does land the pitch meeting with Jordan, he’s sure to tell him and his parents that Michael’s trajectory is “an American story, and that’s why Americans are gonna love it.” He then adds, as a coup de grâce in terms of flattery, “A shoe is just a shoe…until somebody steps into it [words Deloris will remind him of later when bargaining for Michael’s cut of the profits]. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.” And that, in the end, is how Jordan makes four hundred million dollars a year in passive income from a shoe.

Even if it was an initial struggle for Deloris to lock down that income. Indeed, when Sonny tells her that Nike will never go for her and Michael’s demand and that the business is simply unfair in that regard, Deloris replies, “I agree that the business is unfair. It’s unfair to my son, it’s unfair to people like you. But every once in a while, someone comes along that’s so extraordinary, that it forces those reluctant to part with some of [their] wealth [to do so]. Not out of charity, but out of greed, because they are so very special. And even more rare, that person demands to be treated according to their worth, because they understand what they are worth.”

With such an ardent speech about getting money, getting paid, it highlights that, more than just being a movie about how capitalism allows companies to exploit those making the most money for them, Air is about how capitalism indoctrinates the human brain so much as to make it believe that everything has to be about money. That the greatest art of all is not the art or skill itself, but how to get the most one possibly can for it. So it is that Bruce Springsteen’s always cringe-y hit, “Born in the U.S.A.,” plays while viewers are given epilogues to each person’s financially profitable fate. Funnily enough, Strasser had specifically mentioned to Vaccaro earlier in the film that one of the songs most beloved by Republicans (Reagan himself famously cited it for his presidential “cause”) is not about the hallowed notion of the American dream at all. In fact, as he tells Sonny, he was listening to it on his way to work most mornings (it had just come out during the year Air takes place), and he was all “fired up about American freedom…but this morning, I really focused on the words. And it is not about freedom. Like, not in any way. It’s about a guy who comes home from Vietnam, can’t find a job and I’m just belting it out enthusiastically.”

There’s something to that analogy in looking for the deeper, perhaps unwitting meaning to Air. It isn’t really about the beauty of the American dream, but how ugly and petty it makes everyone pursuing it for the sake of as many pieces of paper as possible.

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Genna Rivieccio

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June 13, 2023
Better to Have a Constant Sense of Dread Than Be Dead (Or Is It?): Noah Baumbach Revives White Noise at a Moment We Need to be Reminded of Our Inherent Doom

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A long-held fear is being dredged up in the artistic output of late. The one that Woody Allen made an entire career out of before everyone suddenly remembered his 1992 sexual abuse allegation. That fear, of course, is death. “The march toward nonexistence,” as Babette (Greta Gerwig) phrases it in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, White Noise. It’s a “march” we’re all told we must face, sooner or later. No matter how many advancements in medical care and plastic surgery, or how much money one has at their disposal to stave off Death for as long as possible.

For a while, it seemed as though our collective society had forgotten about death… at least as a muse for artistic inspiration. Or perhaps it had become too much of a cliché to keep bringing it up in art. Plus, the more recent obsession with the carnival of horrors known as modern politics is what’s been keeping most artists preoccupied with regard to what shows up in their work. Yet that general sense of anxiety always leads back to one core fear: it’s all going to end. Both for the individual and the world at large. To that point, Baumbach is here to remind us of what DeLillo (and every other writer) has been saying since time immemorial—by adapting the author’s most well-known (and possibly most beloved) work. And, although not similar in caliber or subject matter, another recently-adapted novel from Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is In Trouble, evokes the same sense of middle-age-related doom and gloom. As Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg in the limited series) puts it, “This is what our ancestors died for: the right for us to be middle-aged and bored and miserable.” And yet, despite this misery, not seeing death as something to be welcomed, so much as feared. With the ultimate fear always being the unknown—for that allows the human mind to build up fear to a much more intense, debilitating level.

In the decade when White Noise was released as a novel, the advent of American society’s own sense of “settling into middle-age” was at a peak: Reagan was president, the suburban “dream” was still a sought-after “ambition” and yuppie “culture” reigned supreme. By the same token, the postmodern “affliction” was crystallized by the arrival of MTV, with its “scandalizing” imagery that peddled—in the eyes of such pearl-clutchers as Nancy Reagan and Tipper Gore—sex, drugs and sin. Even though the latter was married to “liberal” Al Gore, she was known for being especially upset by Madonna (then in the height of her “Like A Virgin” vixen days), declaring, “Popular culture is morally bankrupt, flagrantly licentious and utterly materialistic—and Madonna is the worst of all.” Perhaps she took “Material Girl” too literally? A song, incidentally, that ironically mocks the Decade of Excess through a video that finds Madonna rebuffing her male suitors’ promises of diamonds and furs and other assorted trappings of wealth in favor of a simple bouquet of flowers. Appropriately, this song also came out the year White Noise did, a book hailed as the “cornerstone of postmodern literature” (sorry Less Than Zero). As such, it’s only natural that White Noise should exist within the timeframe of the 1980s, when the American population naively assumed the information-action ratio couldn’t ever possibly get worse. Little did they know… The Internet.

The eighties were also distinct in offering some of the first thoroughly modern instances of just how much technological “snafus” could wreak havoc on the average joe—and the environment (see: the Exxon Valdez oil spill). But more than that, there was an overall aura of contempt for authority spurred by decades of disappointment brought on by the perpetually lying U.S. government (a trend that persisted in the 80s with the Iran-Contra affair). Maybe that’s what stoked a brewing rage within the quiet and complacent. The American ilk that so love their car crashes because they just want to watch something burn, if not the world itself. This could be why Baumbach chooses to commence the film not with the scene of station wagons dropping their kids off at College-on-the-Hill, where Jack “J.A.K.” Gladney (Adam Driver) works as the chairman of the Department of Hitler Studies (this being a dig at the rise of “novelty academic intellectualism”), but rather, with a lecture from his colleague, Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle).

Echoing the machine-fetishizing themes J. G. Ballard presented in Crash (another novel that’s become increasingly prophetic/relevant of late), Siskind tells his students, “Don’t think of a car crash in a movie as a ‘violent act.’ No, these collisions are part of a long tradition of American optimism. A reaffirmation of traditional beliefs and values… Think of these crashes like you would Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. On these days, we don’t mourn the dead or rejoice in miracles. No, these are days of secular optimism. Of self-celebration. Each crash is meant to be better than the last.” As Siskind’s montage of ever-advancing and escalating car crashes is shown on a film reel to the class, Baumbach offers us a shot of a car exploding and its nuclear-esque mushroom cloud reflecting back in the glasses of a rapt student.

This hard-on for watching crashes—a.k.a. the suffering and death of others—is part of a unique form of schadenfreude that only materialized in American culture with the dawning of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, itself a type of “white noise” after a while. Indeed, the reiteration of the distinct types of “postmodern” white noise are mentioned often in DeLillo’s novel, replete with phrases like, “There is an expressway beyond the backyard now, well below us, and at night as we settle into our brass bed the sparse traffic washes past, a remote and steady murmur around our sleep, as of dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream.”

With all the noise and clamoring for attention brought on by media oversaturation and conspicuous consumerism, everything seems and sounds like “dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream.” And every “cataclysm”—rendered so meaningless from constant replays on TV—is reduced to mere “event.” Especially that of the environmental catastrophe variety. This being why, during the segment called “The Airborne Toxic Event,” Jack is quick to dismiss Babette and their children’s (most of whom are from Jack and Babette’s previous marriages) fears of what the “feathery plume”-turned-“black billowing cloud” might do to their well-being. To him, the thought of it actually affecting him and his family is so remote, he assures Babette, “These things [read: negative effects of chemicals wreaking environmental mayhem] happen to people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up, I mean sadly, in such a way that it’s the poor and uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.” “It is sad,” Babette replies in her obligatory white guilt manner. Jack adds, “Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods?”

Alas, even those formerly comforted by the theoretical cocoon of their white privilege, like the Gladneys, are slowly (oh so slowly) coming to grips with the reality that, since the continued use of 80s-era business and consumer practices, the environment has lately offered us nothing but the same energy we’ve been giving it for too long in return.

So it is that the fear of death in the postmodern 80s (complete with “incidents” such as the Chernobyl disaster) has been compounded in the present by being among the first generations to see truly apocalyptic climate change phenomena signaling the potential extinction of humans. A double layer of fearing death. And yet, in the face of humans knowing that pretty much everything they do and love is a threat to the very environment that allows them to live, they still engage in the same behavior. Ergo, the simultaneous fear of death combined with constantly engaging in “death wish” activities centered around the American passion for chemical substances in everything they consume is the great dichotomy of the twentieth century, and now, the twenty-first.

Talking of consumerism (as one finds practically unavoidable whether discussing White Noise or not), the unspoken additional main character in White Noise is product placement itself (with DeLillo originally wanting to title his novel Panasonic—obviously, the corporation was not inclined to oblige). This is appropriate not only because DeLillo was a former copywriter, but because products are the “great cultural achievement” of the modern era. A reflection of all the choices we’ve been able to forge for ourselves only to become paralyzed by too much choice all signifying the same end. Coke, Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, Velveeta, Grey Poupon, Tide—everywhere the eye wanders during a scene of the film, there’s sure to be a recognizable brand. This, too, is the mark of our postmodern panic. Our disaffected dystopia. The fact that the things that consume us (under the pretense of us consuming them) exist in liminal non-spaces only adds to the overarching feeling of constant dread. As though we’ve fully realized how to make life as purgatory-esque as possible before that final step into the abyss. Another polite word for “death.”

All lives must end and “all plots move deathward,” as Jack remarks to his class early on in the film, which is perhaps why the movie and the book meta-ly attempt to avoid full-tilt plot altogether. Hence, the “montage effect” of White Noise that became the norm with the dawning of the MTV generation. So fond of their “slick” edits and apropos-of-nothing jump cuts. Many likely wish that life itself could be experienced that way. That we could skip over the numerous (and primarily) mind-numbing parts just to feel slightly more alive. But without all that “filler” time (so much of which is occupied by waiting in lines—even online… just ask the Taylor Swift fans who tried to buy Eras Tour tickets), we would be edging closer and faster toward death. The “filler” portions of existence are what we’ve been conditioned to believe elongate the life experience—even if hours spent doing menial tasks like making money and then spending it on grocery shopping hardly equate to living.

The supermarket as a purgatorial landscape outside of time and space was also something many were forced to reconcile with during the lockdowns of 2020, when the grocery store was the only “legal” outing permitted. Further emphasizing that the supermarket is where “life”—this modern non-life we’ve all agreed to—is at its most manifest. It provides everything one needs to live within the confines of the totally ersatz. Which is why it’s only right for White Noise to end at the giant A&P we’ve come to know so well over the course of the film, with Jack stating of it all, “I feel sad for us and the queer part we play in our own disasters. But out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope. And this is where we wait…together.”

And with that, the consumers break out into a music video-worthy dance sequence to the tune of LCD Soundsystem’s “New Body Rhumba” (custom-made just for this movie). James Murphy, no stranger to lyrical depictions of existential dread, accordingly mirrors the increased sensation of anxiety and trepidation that arrives with middle-age by singing, “I need a new body, I need a new party/To represent my needs.” A younger body that might help evade the reaper for just a bit longer.

The “new body” of the future, of course, could lie within the idea of “uploading consciousness.” As Grimes said, “Baby, you’re not even alive/If you’re not backed up on a drive.” In the meantime, there are plenty of products (and pharmaceuticals) to console you, to make you think you might somehow be delaying the bottom line. Shopping, after all, is a supposed means to avoid death. “Buy or die,” as the American-backed “philosophy” goes. Just as it was in the 80s, so it is now. Which is why it’s still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

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Genna Rivieccio

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December 31, 2022