PR rules everything around me. This is a sad but true reality, at
least in the music world, and part of me wonders how long this has been going
on. There is a current local "DIY" soap opera unveiling on thee ole
FB that's far more entertaining than anything I've seen lately. Part of the
very public brawl involves a certain canny band's ability to play the PR game
and bend the public's will to their favor at the potential cost of another
band’s reputation. They know just how to get their name in all of the right
places, how to tease their albums' release song by song, how to book and ride
another bigger band's dick and leech their fans along the way, and how to flash
their easily inherited political beliefs in the public eye so that they always
come out on top when someone calls them out on their bullshit. The shit-storm
they have summoned has kicked up some intense one-sided dialogue, an echo
chamber for a very angry group of men who shoot ignorantly from the hip. Sadly,
the conversation has led to very serious and unsavory issues that the
aforementioned PR maestros are now shrinking away from in light of said
allegations' likely fabrication. One band's inability or unwillingness to play
along, it seems, has put a very large target on their back and allegations are
hard to shake. None of this has anything to do with the movies so I'll try and
segue.
Basically, being involved in such a zealous and stern
"DIY" community has me wondering about the so-called validity of it
all, at least on a universal level. I love the idea of artists staying strong
and true in the midst of this rigged system of pay-to-be-played arm twisting.
Of course all open displays of idealistic integrity make one susceptible to a
harsher standard. But is this idea limited to music? Do we make exceptions for
bands that are actually good? Are we supposed to hold film to the same
standard? I'm no absolutist so I say do whatever the fuck you feel, all while
having a surplus of hatred towards the notion that syndicates are so crooked,
lame, and lazy that they only accept things set before them by an
overpaid/mouth-breathing/barnacle publicist who could truly give a tinker's
damn about the art form they peddle. Seriously, fuck these chumps and Trojan
horse they rode in on. This is the same media Ouroboros that gave a certain
very powerful man his current position as his brain rots along with what little
ability his dumb ass had to reason with.
With all of this being said, I have to admire some who know how to
play the game well. Take the new version of Stephen King's IT as an example. It
was destined to succeed via its namesake alone, but its marketing campaign all
but guaranteed its current reign. All the heavies involved knew just how to
bring this story to a modern audience and it had a lot to do with riding the
hysteria of Stranger Things and its nostalgia fetish. The movie itself
chronicles a group of young tormented dorks as they face a relentless fusillade
of outside maltreatment. The world, according to King, is predatory by nature
and small kids take the brunt by default. The prey here face an extreme and
embellished form of harassment from their bigger peers, Munchausen by proxy
from a sweaty, blotchy, and all around grotesque matriarch, neglect from
grieving parents, being surrounded by death, molestation, etc. To quote Lillian
Gish from Night of the Hunter, “this world is so hard on little things.”
To top off the misfortunes, we have Pennywise (a very uneven and
often infuriating performance), a clown that eats kids, especially the
ill-fated ones with a sufficient stockpile of fear and loneliness. It’s a
worn-out kernel of wisdom that fear is a form of power, one that the horror
genre has tossed around to varying degrees of success. Pennywise might as well
be Freddy with all the puns and wisecracks in ample supply. In all honesty, It
isn’t especially scary though Andy Muschietti has a way of making an audience
distrust even the safest environments by making every scene a means to a
jump-scare. It gets old. Also, I’m not particularly scared of clowns so the
mere sight of Pennywise didn’t conjure up some wicked childhood trauma.
I personally found the heart of IT to be the crushing weight of
loss as seen and felt by Bill in the aftermath of the death of his little
brother, Georgie. Everything else, with certain flourishes of the
Beverly/father situation being the exception, felt like a thematic caricature,
the most overblown renditions of childhood trauma imaginable. I guess I don’t mind it when characters lack dimension
but it’s hard to have skin in the game when the enveloping world is so overblown
and Muschietti and crew don’t have enough faith in camp to stay afloat. And
look at the treatment of the bully, himself a victim of some irrefutably severe
abuse. For a much better examination of abuse, also from King, check out Gerald’s
Game, a similarly assured populist product that eventually commits and morphs
into a movie about mistreatment itself.
Steven
Spielberg may have been the king of PR, with so many of his greatest successes
being sold as potential failures. Bruce’s mechanical blip set what could
have/would have been just another B-movie with bad effects into the realm of
Hitchcock and Hawks. Close Encounters supposedly was one of those “all-in/betting
the farm” blockbusters for Columbia. The same goes for the black and white
Schindler’s List and the CGI Jurassic Park, both released successfully in 1993.
He clearly curates his legacy, and why the fuck not? Like most anyone else, I’ve
crawled through the apostate chapter of my Spielberg transfiguration. I grew up
a fan, unknowingly because I didn’t know what a director was. I remember
working at Barnes and Noble with a now prominent/respected (justifiably) member
of the NYC film critic circle. He would continuously sing the praises of tried
and true cinephile golden calves whilst using our main man Steven as the
mainstream antithesis. I didn’t have the poise to resist so I fell in. Now here
we are, both returning to the altar to worship the king of populist art. And make
no mistake, it’s art. The new doc is nothing new and certainly a hagiography of
the most shameless order, but basking in this master’s freakishly pristine
compositions is worth the worn-out familiarity.
