My last post was about Avatar haters and the pleasures of their hate, but here’s a wonderful clip playing another type of anti-fandom, namely fraudulent anti-fandom:
Everyone has an opinion on Avatar, or so a browse through my Google Reader, Facebook feed, and trips to public spaces seem to suggest. Moreover, opinions seem remarkably unified within two central camps – either it’s a great ride and a cinematic breakthrough, or it’s all hype and a piece of crap. But these positions develop before people watch. I’d pose that pretty much everyone is getting what they think they’re going to get out of Avatar: either you expect a wonderful visual feast and you get it, or you expect to find a stupid story (“Dances with Wolves on another planet”) with visuals that are either ho-hum or excessive, and you get that.
This latter camp fascinates me, as do their counterparts with most critically and/or popularly loved films or television shows. We know they won’t like the film. They know they won’t like the film. Yet they insist on watching it. Why? What are they paying for? After the fold …
A recent post at television writer Ken Levine’s blog previewed the next few months’ films. Of Four Christmases, he had this wonderfully caustic comment:
Every Xmas Hollywood trots out at least five ghastly formula high concept hijinks holiday movies. This is four of them.
It made me think about how much I love really funny, really scathing reviews. I have some things to say about the rather peculiar pleasure of enjoying destructive criticism, but first, I went searching for some more examples.
Let’s start with Roger Ebert’s Your Movie Sucks, a collection of his more critical reviews. The book’s title comes from his review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. After starting by noting that the film is “aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience,” Ebert notes that its star Rob Schneider got really pissy with critic Patrick Goldstein following his review of the film. Schneider bought full-page ads in Variety and Hollywood Reporter to fight back (imagine if our students bought ads in the Chronicle when we gave them bad grades), saying Goldstein had never won an award, and therefore was somehow unable to criticize the horrible film (editorial note: it really is “aggressively bad”). Ebert responds:
Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks. But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Sideways, and Finding Neverland. As chance would have it, I have won a Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
Some other highlights from Ebert’s book after the fold:
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