Chemical Pink

[budgie]

Yeesssss...

The best scene is one where Charles is masturbating with his collection of vegetable heads, playing out a sado-masochistic encounter between Mr. Avocado and Miss. Corn on his erect penis, with all the others arranged round so they can watch. He wears a condom so as not to mess the dolls' faces.

[MacGuffin]

Well, damn, I'm getting this book this week then.

[budgie]

Well, damn, I'm getting this book this week then.

[sphinx]

[budgie]

[Gold Trumpet]

OK, I give in what I said was of relation to the themes instead of the story itself. I still think though, that the story for Chemical Pink operates on a level with characters so extreme and doing things so completely out of the norm that it brings a very large jump in accepting to be able to feel its themes. A Clockwork Orange, I think, is much more basic. At its heart, it is the story of violent teenagers and one being captured and prisoned. In the context of the science fiction story, he is "cured" that allows to be free but without abilities to seduce or hate. In the context of the fairy tale, the people he hurt get their revenge on him. Chemical Pink represents a march larger jump in believability, even for a movie, than A Clockwork Orange that on my assumptions now, may be hard to really believe as something to take serious to get deeper meanings. Yes, they are assumptions but all anyone has now.

My main problem with the storyline is that they are ballooned to such levels of weirdness that it may feel almost absurd to believe that they represent some great truths, or whatever. It's like looking at a porno, or the mainstream porn these days, the action film. When thousands and thousands of bullets fly through the matrix and kids are getting these Christ interpretations of the main character wielding automatic machine guns, it feels like it is operating on the level of absurd and pretension. The characters of this story seem to be so weird that the better question can be whether we can get past all their quircks or oddities to even feel the meanings behind.

Also, we are all snobs here. Just some people like things other snobs may consider to be sub par quality wise for someone "knowing" of movies. If we weren't believing we had something to say of importance, we wouldn't be here.

~rougerum

[©brad]

well i know i have nothing to say of importance. ever. im just here for the sex. wait, which message board is this again...?

[budgie]

OK, I give in what I said was of relation to the themes instead of the story itself. I still think though, that the story for Chemical Pink operates on a level with characters so extreme and doing things so completely out of the norm that it brings a very large jump in accepting to be able to feel its themes. A Clockwork Orange, I think, is much more basic. At its heart, it is the story of violent teenagers and one being captured and prisoned. In the context of the science fiction story, he is "cured" that allows to be free but without abilities to seduce or hate. In the context of the fairy tale, the people he hurt get their revenge on him. Chemical Pink represents a march larger jump in believability, even for a movie, than A Clockwork Orange that on my assumptions now, may be hard to really believe as something to take serious to get deeper meanings. Yes, they are assumptions but all anyone has now.

My main problem with the storyline is that they are ballooned to such levels of weirdness that it may feel almost absurd to believe that they represent some great truths, or whatever. It's like looking at a porno, or the mainstream porn these days, the action film. When thousands and thousands of bullets fly through the matrix and kids are getting these Christ interpretations of the main character wielding automatic machine guns, it feels like it is operating on the level of absurd and pretension. The characters of this story seem to be so weird that the better question can be whether we can get past all their quircks or oddities to even feel the meanings behind.

Also, we are all snobs here. Just some people like things other snobs may consider to be sub par quality wise for someone "knowing" of movies. If we weren't believing we had something to say of importance, we wouldn't be here.

~rougerum

I guess you can identify with 'violent teenagers' better than either the perpetrators or victims of female oppression, then. I'm kinda pleased about that, I think...

On the storyline: this is where reading the novel would help, because the style is very minimalistic and makes everything appear quite everyday, whilst gradually revealing the perversions that are making it tick. Just because it references a world (of bodybuilding) that is unfamiliar to you that doesn't mean it can't be made to seem 'normal' (anyway, aren't you a wrestling fan?). You also seem to be denying that the world is a perverted place anyway - so do you also dismiss Lynch, Palahniuk and anything else that seems a bit 'pornographic'?

I'm not getting into 'some great truths'.

What's your definition of a snob?

[Gold Trumpet]

I'm glad your interpretation of the novel doesn't bring out big glorifications that finds what and who these people are as freaks most interesting. It should be minimalistic in that sense. It's not that I think being a bodybuilder was stranger than a pyschotic teenager, it was just that the synopsis suggested that instead of a man preying on women in general, he preyed on young female bodybuilders specifically and did specific things to them. Those facts seemed to go much more into the weird for the reason to be weird than just a man who preyed on women in an empowerment situation.

There is a thing with pornographic and being truthful to what one says of society. Yes, things are weird in society but under the rules of the porno, the weirdness exists just for love of its own self and not of explaining anything important that can deal with society. My reasoning when seeing that synopsis is that whoever wrote it, obviously wrote it with the shocking facts in mind instead of maybe what the story was really about. Maybe just stating the facts of who these people are to begin with in a short synpopsis will bring out that reaction anyways since it is all one has to deal with in making a judgement.

A snob is anyone who thinks they know more on a particular field than the average person and feel their opinion with that knowledge is a more enlightened one. Snob doesn't mean though that one is just an asshole to anyone who disagrees or whatever.

~rougerum

[budgie]

It's not that I think being a bodybuilder was stranger than a pyschotic teenager, it was just that the synopsis suggested that instead of a man preying on women in general, he preyed on young female bodybuilders specifically and did specific things to them. Those facts seemed to go much more into the weird for the reason to be weird than just a man who preyed on women in an empowerment situation.

But GT, your seeing the particularisation of the female character in the book as 'weird' and somehow less naturalistic than the representation of violent male youth is one of the points of gender relations that the book is dealing with. One of the problems for the representation of women is that we get seen over and over as 'women in general' or one of three stereotypes (mother, angel, whore), or, in most 'women empowerment' narratives, as substitute men. What Chemical Pink does is give the heroine individuality, a life - that you immediately typify as 'weird'. What it also then does is show how women becoming like men (in the end Aurora uses her physical strength to exact a physical revenge on Charles) is not a solution, and it also lays bare the only root of male dominance - bigger muscles. In that sense, the distortion of the female body/our expectations of what that body should be, the 'weirdness' or 'pornography', is not operating just for shock value, but is integral to the social meaning of the film/book.

It's not the aim of a synopsis to tell people this, though, is it?

A snob is anyone who thinks they know more on a particular field than the average person and feel their opinion with that knowledge is a more enlightened one. Snob doesn't mean though that one is just an asshole to anyone who disagrees or whatever.

I thought snobbery was more to do with assuming a superiority of taste than knowledge. I also don't see how your definition makes everyone here a snob. Perhaps you could give me a few examples?

[Newtron]

I don't know about snobbery, but this discussion is a pretty good definition of BOOOOOOOOORING.

[Gold Trumpet]

You're right, it is not the duty of the synopsis to make any mention of what could be redeeming of a story like this. And with Hollywood's nice history of exploitation of every single subject imaginable, reading this brought me to expect the case of it being weird for the sake of just being weird. There are directors who are off base in subject matter they deal with that are looked up to but have fascinations in subjects for less than any beneficial reasons. I will take your word for the story, since I cannot vouge, and hope that is sees humanity behond the superficiality of what these characters can hold in the long line of crap Movieland goofiness.

Snobbery does align itself with the people who do believe they are superior with no reasons to really think so, yes, but it also does allign itself with people who really do know what they are talking about. In his introduction to the Great Movies Series, Roger Ebert spoke about what he thinks when someone will tell him that a movie like "Ferris Beulluer's (fucked spelling there) Day Off" is there favorite movie. Ebert said he wonders if they knew pleasures of movies outside the 20 year mainstream range most people know. He then spoke of how the greatest moments in movies came outside of it and said he was in fact a film snob, but his identification is through that he knows more about something with a general public who feel no motivation to move outside of the boundaries. Reading subtitles is too hard. Movies that make you think are not enjoyable. Those movies are too weird. I think Ebert identifies his snobbery with a smile, being that he can find enjoyment in many movies that mainstream audiences will too. My identification of snobbery comes through the fact most of us believe we know more about movies, and are willing to learn more than the general public, and we believe they are caught in a small window of what makes a movie good. We don't believe they necessarily are all dumb people, but we believe they see movies as entertainment only. We look deeper, but still like these people. This may not be making any sense though. I just realized i wrote a lot for what a better writer could answer in 2 to 3 sentences.

Also, to get off topic, I want your opinion on something Budgie, that for the most part I know of, you didn't give. We argued about the validity and quality of the remake of Pyscho, but what do you think of news that Gus Van Sant is considering to do yet another remake, but with a Punk style to it instead?

~rougerum

[MacGuffin]

One of the problems for the representation of women is that we get seen over and over as 'women in general' or one of three stereotypes (mother, angel, whore), or, in most 'women empowerment' narratives, as substitute men.

Say a misogynist wanted to avoid movies or other books that give female characters "individuality". What films/characters do you feel don't fall into those stereotypical catagories you speak of?

[Xixax]

Go back the masturbating with fruit part. That was holding my attention.

[budgie]

Gold Trumpet ~

I am glad you seem to have retreated from declaring everyone here to be a snob, because by your definition I don't think everyone is. My own comment on Ebert is that he is limiting his outlook just as much as he might consider 'the general public' to be doing because he treats people who do not share his way of enjoying cinema firstly as a mass and secondly as somehow undereducated and therefore incapable of appreciating 'art'. You don't have to do much research into actual audience practice, as well as popular critical practice like Ebert's, to realise that it isn't so simple. Ultimately cinema is about pleasure: Ebert is simply reinforcing the bourgeois privileging of intellectual/educated pleasure over other, perhaps more visceral experiences. In the meantime he safeguards his own elevated position by talking about the unwashed masses and blaming them for their self-image as people unable to understand subtitles and art films when he is perpetuating the division that keeps them too afraid to cross into his territory. If he allowed that his view of 'the general public' is an uninformed one (because he's scared of losing his distinction/status, so he doesn't get close to the thing he needs to be distinct from) then he would lose his own self-importance. God forbid! What would we do without him to give us guidance in these important matters? The fact that he might be boasting his 'snobbery' with a knowing smile only makes him more self- and class-serving, as you have to ask: who is he winking at? It isn't the mass of people he declares are too lazy (maybe they just don't give a shit, Ebert?) to read his reviews, is it? Qualifying this by saying things like 'we don't think they're dumb' doesn't do anything but patronise. But it's all about taking the easy way out I suppose. Like it's easier to stereotype any group of people that presents a threat: Arabs, for instance. Once we actually start getting to know people it all gets more messy, and that is really where the danger for people trying to maintain borders is.


As for Van Sant and Psycho... you know I think this is fine. I hope he makes a whole run of them because personally I'm interested in spectatorship. If the punk thing is about looking at how style and the culture depicted can change the meaning of a narrative, then great. I think it's good that he's choosing a subculture, not going for making, I dunno, a Jamaican Psycho, or a Chinese Psycho, because it's familiar but with a shift.


MacGuffin ~

Hmmm... tricky. But thinking about female characters who I think somehow move beyond: as I've already mentioned lots, Vanessa Lutz in Freeway, White Girl in Freeway II and Justine in The Good Girl come most readily to mind. And Enid I s'pose.