Archive | April, 2011

Nostalgia porn

28 Apr

I only made it through 20 minutes of Adam Green’s “screwball tradgedy [sic]” The Wrong Ferrari. I like Adam Green’s music and I like the idea of Macaulay Culkin dressed up as Luigi, but that wasn’t enough to sustain my interest. You know when you say something is “hipster bullshit,” and then someone else says, “What does that even mean?” This movie. This movie is what that means. I can’t offer a full review because I didn’t watch the whole film—not even close—so I’ll comment on what I’ve seen so far and wait until I can muster the energy to watch the rest.

From the get-go, The Wrong Ferrari is nostalgia porn. It takes a bunch of familiar images from our childhood and assembles them haphazardly. And while I guess there’s supposed to be method to the madness, the end result is Adam Green holding you by the shoulders and shaking you. “Do you remember Nintendo cartridges? Do you remember the AOL dial-up sound? Do you remember Teddy Ruxpin?” On some level, of course, it works. I see Macaulay Culkin as Luigi and I want to watch Home Alone and play Super Mario Bros. (Or the Home Alone game on Gameboy, because I NEVER BEAT IT.) I see Garfield bedsheets, and I remember how I used to have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ones.

But that’s cheap. It’s easy. Meanwhile, the dialogue is absurd and sexualized enough to get your attention. I’ll admit to laughing at, “That’s like the night your penis turned into the devil,” but I can’t say why. And everyone says “faggot” incessantly, which seems kind of edgy until you remember that it’s still one of the slurs you can get away with. Especially if you’re Adam Green, because his sexuality is fluid or whatever. My beef here isn’t with Green in particular, because I think this speaks to a larger issue in (forgive me) hipster culture. Just remember—wearing skinny jeans and kissing boys every once in a while might get you called a faggot, but it doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy heterosexual privilege.

Anyway, I want to watch The Wrong Ferrari again in 40 years. (I’m definitely going to forget, so do me a solid and remind me, yeah?) I say this in part because I watched 1970’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls again last night. It’s one of my favorites, but I think maybe I love it for all the wrong reasons—it’s so ’70s, it’s so Russ Meyer. I appreciate it as a product of its time, and I don’t even mind that it tries too hard to be hip. As is the case with The Wrong Ferrari, I’m not even sure what’s intended ironically and what’s sincere. (And is the sincerity ironic? Is the irony sincere?) So, yeah, all the shit that annoys me about Green’s movie might be totally charming in 2051—assuming we make it that far as a species, which is obviously kind of iffy.

You can watch The Wrong Ferrari in its entirety on the website. Do it. Tell me what I’m missing. Explain why I just don’t get it.

Obligatory welcome

27 Apr

I know what you’re thinking. Louis, you already have a Twitter account (two, actually), a Facebook page, and a Tumblr—why did it take you so long to start another blog?

I actually hoped that Tumblr would be the right venue for me to work on my longer form writing, but it turns out the site was conspiring to upset me. How else to explain the constant downtime, the omnipresent glitches, and the fact that all my best writing got buried under pictures of cats. I realized that while Tumblr is a fun way to connect with friends, it’s not really the ideal blogging service. So I decided now was as good a time as any to return to my WordPress roots, and to snag this domain name before all the other Louis Peitzmans beat me to it.

The other problem with Tumblr is that it follows Twitter’s model of approval-seeking. On Twitter, you get stars and retweets; on Tumblr, you get hearts and reblogs. Either way, I never felt like I was writing for myself so much as writing for attention. Which is kind of the point of writing, but it definitely clouds one’s judgment. I want to be able to express my feminist rage and subversive gay agenda without feeling like I’m out to impress people. I stand by everything I wrote on Tumblr, but I freely admit I refreshed that shit constantly to make sure someone dug it.

I wish I could tell you what I intend to do here. I’ll let you know once I figure that out. For the time being, you can expect rants and rambles, pieces that are longer than 140-characters, and very few straight reviews. I get paid to do that elsewhere, and now I have this horrible problem where I expect money for critiquing things.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to send them my way. Bonus points if they’re positive.