We Used to be a Contender

In spite of the promise that comes with the inauguration of our nation’s first African-American President this coming Tuesday, I can’t shake the feeling that we are all experiencing the twilight of American empire and the death rattle of that manufactured fallacy known as the American dream. I say this not in any way to demean the accomplishments of President-Elect Obama, but instead to keep folks wise to the reality of the American condition amidst the pomp and jubilation of Tuesday night. I’ve always believed that art, that reflection of life, is always a better barometer of a time and a place than any historical work or piece of journalism. With that being said, two of the year’s best films, The Wrestler and Gran Torino, offer a sobering picture of our nation as a washed-up nobody, frantically grasping for the pedestal on which it once stood and now merely gazing up at in freefall.

The struggles of the Big Three U.S. automakers are common knowledge to anyone who has turned on CNN or picked up a copy of The New York Times over the past two months. It was a decline decades in the making, the result of a lethargy, stasis, ignorance and the idea that people would buy American even if the product made the Edsel look like a Mercedes. Now, what better symbol of this relic of an industry is there than Clint Eastwood, at 78 years young, sitting on a rocking chair with a decimated 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon lying next to him and a glob of Red Man seeping through his cheek?

Eastwood’s portrayal of the curmudgeonly old bigot and ex-Ford assembly line worker Walt Kowalski is beautiful for it’s encapsulation of a greatest generation long gone and now unwanted. He practically growls his way through the entire film, not lamenting, but plain pissed off that his country has gone down the shitter. His once middle-class Detroit neighborhood is now a glorified slum, its all-white population scared off to Grosse Point and replaced by a polyglot hodgepodge of immigrants. While the film is ultimately about the transcendence of the human condition over racism and the quelling of one’s inner demons through good works, it is not lost on the audience that Walt Kowalski is a 21st century Custer. He and the generation he represents are dwindling and aging, succumbing to the rule of a soft-paunched baby boomer class that eschews their hard-nosed work ethic for a crass materialism that contradicts the counter-culture that first disgusted the Walt’s of the world. Walt Kowalski’s end is a noble one, but it is all for naught, as his children would never have followed his example.

Randy, “The Ram,” Robinson could’ve been one of Walt Kowalski’s kids, but by the time we see him in The Wrestler he looks even more beat-up than the man thirty years his senior. Randy, expertly played by Mickey Rourke, has been through the meat-grinder that is the world of professional wrestling and comes out looking like he had been run through a leather-tanning factory. Rourke’s superb acting is aided by the fact that his face, decimated from years of boxing, plastic surgery and drug use, looks like pockmarked piece of burnt meat. Randy was once a star who filled up 100,000 seat arenas, a man on par with Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant, but now that his fame has passed him by he’s forced to wrestle at community centers and American Legion buildings while keeping a part time job at a supermarket.

Some falls are harder than the one from the top rope.

Rourke represents the decadence and excess of the eighties, which history might mark as the tipping point for our nation, when we let our bread and circuses drive us towards oblivion. Rourke’s portrayal of “The Ram” presents a tragically myopic figure who can live only in the present and knows nothing of foresight. His fame gone and his bridges with family and friends scorched, he is left to sleep in the back of his van surrounded by posters exhibiting his former glory. But, in spite of all of his character flaws, you can’t help but love the guy for all his charisma and resiliency. Despite his heart attack and the pleas of an over-the-hill stripper (Marissa Tomei) to come back to the real world, he can’t because wrestling is all he knows and he’ll do it even if he dies mid-suplex.

Both of these men are dinosaurs. They were built to live in a world that no longer exists and they would rather get shot in the heart than change who they are. They represent America, a land that is so used to being a superpower that the idea of just being another world power is unthinkable. We won’t adapt to the new paradigm of the 21st century, but will stubbornly linger in the 20th, reminiscing about The Battle of the Bulge and Apollo 11. There’s a telling scene in The Wrestler where Randy invites a neighborhood kid into his trailer to play a Nintendo wrestling game that has Randy “The Ram” as a character in all of his 8-bit glory. While they’re playing the kid is pissing and moaning about how boring these old games are and about how cool the new Call of Duty IV game is for the XBOX 360. “The Ram” can’t understand why the kid would want to play anything other than this Nintendo wrestling game and the kid can’t understand how Randy can play this ancient video game. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which one is America and which is the rest of the world.

She Don’t Lie, Cocaine

“It seems probable, in the light of reports which I shall refer to later, that coca, if used protractedly but in moderation, is not detrimental to the body.” – Sigmund Freud on the effects of Cocaine in his 1884 paper, Uber Coca.

“I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work everyday, no problem at all.” – Lily Allen

Brit-Pop ne’er-do-well Lily Allen has taken a great deal of flack from the British Press for her devil-may-care attitude towards drug use in a rather candid interview with Word magazine. Among the many un-PC gems proffered by Ms. Allen were her contention that, “The only story is that drugs are bad and they will kill you – you will become a prostitute, a rapist or a dealer. But that’s not true” Allen also voiced her discontentment with the fact that record labels no longer provide their artists with complimentary snow at the Kraft service table, lamenting that, “Twenty years ago, I’d have been booked in at the Ritz with five grams of cocaine on my table.“

In response to these comments David Raynes, a member of the UK National Drug Prevention Alliance, chastised Allen, saying, “When someone like Lily Allen makes these remarks she is only harming young people who will at some point in their lives have to make a decision about taking drugs.” All of the public uproar surrounding her comments has led Allen to make a statement clarifying that she doesn’t condone drug use of any kind, a gesture that is most likely as hollow as a rolled up twenty pound note.

However, it seems to me that everyone who is all in a tizzy about Allen’s comments has missed the boat entirely. At no point in her interview, or at least in the portions of it that have thus far been leaked, does she condone snorting coke like a proper junkie. She simply doesn’t channel the spirit of Nancy Reagan and plead with the youth of Britain to “Just say no.” On “Alfie” from her debut record Alright, Still she belittles the stoner culture of slack singing, “Ooooo Alfie get up it’s a brand new day/ I just can’t sit back and watch you waste your life away/ You need to get a job because the bills need to get paid.” Allen’s point, in the song and in the interview, is that drug use isn’t a black and white matter, but like most things, must be viewed in grayscale. If you can use cocaine or weed with restraint like one would with a glass of Bordeaux with dinner, she seems to be saying, then more power to you.

Hey, Lily could be a lot worse off.

Now, if this line of reasoning still strikes you as being, well, unreasonable, then let me go to that old standby: juxtaposition. Lily Allen is not a strung-out crackhead desperately in need of in-patient rehab and a bath. That would be Amy Winehouse. Lily Allen hasn’t gotten knocked up twice and exhibited such abhorrent parenting skills as to lose primary custody to a white trash back-up dancer. That would be Britney Spears. Lily Allen hasn’t allegedly subsisted on a diet comprised solely of red peppers, cocaine, and milk. That was David Bowie during his Thin White Duke phase. Pop Music and copious drug use go together like Rob Blagojevich and bribery. To pick a fight with a musician for not calling cocaine the devil’s powder is just self-serving ego stroking by those who claim to be of sound moral character. When Lily Allen treating coke like it’s Sweet ‘N Low and begins popping Valium like they’re Pez, then you can get indignant and I’ll listen.

A Hollywood Wedding that should be Annulled

Bride Wars is the type of movie that makes me mourn the death of contemporary American film as we know it. Granted, I have yet to see Bride Wars, but I have seen the trailer for it, and surely that is enough. The idea of two lifelong bosom buddies having their dream weddings double booked on the same day is just hackneyed enough for me to pine for another Saw film. Now, you may be thinking that this is the opinion of someone whose perspective is skewed a set of external genitalia, but I am in actuality a romantic comedy junkie. I own When Harry Met Sally, always watch Sleepless in Seattle when it makes its fortnightly appearance on TBS, and even went so far as to buy tickets to The Prince & Me (a terribly mediocre film in its own right) with my mother in tow. I am unabashed in my un-hetero love for chick flicks. However, Bride Wars looks so unoriginal that I feel the need to warn the general public. So, for the wellbeing of my fellow moviegoers, let me tell you what’s going to happen during the droning ninety-some-odd minutes of Bride Wars and spare you $8.25 during these tough economic times.

The film will open with panoramic views of New York City and Madison Avenue in all of its boutique-laden glory. This will inevitably be followed by some sort of sappy dialogue between Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway in which they outline their perfect wedding (an outlandish gala at The Plaza Hotel) and mention how they each think their respective beau is going to be “the one.” They will then to proceed to rag on one of their lesser friend’s nuptial gathering and then, in a truly original portent of doom, they will both catch the bouquet.

All of this will be followed by their two terribly two-dimensional significant others proposing to them at the same time. What are the odds? Then enter Candice Bergen stage left, who will proceed to phone in her performance as their wedding planner (and who could blame her?), playing a benevolent version of the Miss America runner-up she portrayed in Miss Congeniality. The director will then subject the audience to a shopping spree montage wherein Hudson and Hathaway try on wedding dresses, pick out flower arrangements and buy lots of new clothes for no apparent reason.

At the very least they're standing in front of a poster for a good movie.

Once the two women discover that only one of them can have their wedding at The Plaza in June, there will be the required section of the film devoted to backstabbing shenanigans. The trailer already shows Hathaway being locked in a tanning booth until her pigment is that of Mojave Desert dirt, while Hudson has her hair dyed blue and finds that her wedding dress has been bedazzled. The women will then take out their frustration on their fiancées, who, in turn, will talk to each other in bro-speak. I would venture to guess a ratio of one “dude” or “man” for every line of dialogue uttered.

Bride Wars will reach its climax when Kate Hudson has her wedding at The Plaza and Anne Hathaway crashes it by tackling her as she walks down the aisle. There will be a prolonged catfight in which hair is pulled, dresses are ripped, the pastor looks revolted and the women barrel into something large and ornate, most likely the wedding cake. Then, whilst covered in wedding cake, the two women will realize the absurdity of the situation, laugh manically for a minute or so, and then have a joint wedding. Candace Bergen will provide some nauseatingly cliché epilogue and the film will end, probably with a shot of Hathaway and Hudson giggling.

Now that I’ve given you the Cliff Notes version of this wretched film, I implore you not to go see when it comes out January 9th. People who make movies like this should not be rewarded with big box office numbers, but should be banned from Hollywood and forced to do dinner theater in rural Wisconsin. The only reason drek like this gets the green light is because studios think that women will line up like mindless drones to see any film that involves A-list actresses and a white veil. If you’re jonesing for a wedding movie in the worst way, then just stay at home and watch Four Weddings and a Funeral again. Just trust me.