It's possible to have too much MST3K.
Apr. 29th, 2011 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThat may seem like a strange thing to say, given that...but what's this? What light dawns on the distant horizon? Oh say, can you see how the huddled masses turn unbelievingly toward it, their faces reflecting a sudden and unlooked-for rebirth of hope? Can it truly be? Is our long national nightmare finally over, has that great day in the morning finally come, is the Nyrond at long last talking about something else???
Well, yes. I won't be abandoning the economic democracy theme (after all, quite apart from my own passionate concern, I'm on a mission from Talis), but I never intended to become a bore on the subject. It will crop up, along with the usual "don't let's be beastly to the Christians" and "why doesn't science make sense" recurring themes, and many (but probably not many many) more, but there are other things in the world I still want to talk about, and this is one of them.
As I was saying, this may seem like a strange thing to say, given that I haven't seen an episode of Monosodium Tritorgopotassiate for at least ten years. The memory, however, remains vivid, and it's possible to reactivate it quite easily in all its queasiness by reading too much at one go of a certain type of book. You know the ones. Usually compiled from magazine columns. Written by people who read Harry and Michael Medved's quite amusing Golden Turkey books, saw the part where they said they weren't going to do any more, and thought "hey! Market niche!" A friend of ours had one with the word "Schmovie" in the title. Enough said.
This one is actually written by MST3K's Mike Nelson, and is called "Movie Megacheese." I must have bought it around the time I was still watching the occasional episode and finding it funny. Now MST3K as a programme was quite clever, because in between the merciless ridiculing of cheap old movies for being old and cheap the creators interspersed some comic play-acting of their own. It was fairly stupid, but it leavened the snark. Leaven is very important, and most of the people who write snark books about movies forget that. Nelson is no exception.
And so after a while you find yourself paging through, looking for some indication that the man ever, in his entire life, actually and honestly liked something. You start to think "poor boy, all that time stuck on the Satellite of Love with those stupid robots must have scarred and twisted his brain and rendered him incapable of simple human enjoyment. Maybe I should send a donation of some sort." And then you remember that it was, after all, just a show, and there isn't any excuse. He's doing it quite deliberately.
This book is fuelled by hate. Mike Nelson devoutly hates, among many other things, science fiction, an inoffensive genre which did him no harm and indeed helped to make him the very minor celebrity he has become. Or if he doesn't, he gives an incredibly convincing performance. It's also peppered throughout with the sort of brand-name humour and pop-culture references which irrevocably dated and localised, say, Bored Of The Rings, and which make as much sense to me as "St'u my rock-ribbering rib-rockery to heart the hearts two."* It is, of course, absolutely necessary to anchor yourself in your own home town and the very moment of the present in order to mock effectively that which comes from Somewhere Else and Another Time, but it does mean that your book will be readable for about three years and then start to become increasingly something of Another Time itself. And, of course, that anyone who didn't live within three streets of you will find it hard to follow.
It's also hard to ignore the fact that what he is gibing at are the same things all the time. He uses the word "doughy" a lot, which I presume he intends to mean "overweight." All special effects are "unconvincing," a claim which overlooks the point that special effects used to be unconvincing all the time, and you were expected to give them a hand with your imagination, piece out their imperfections with your thoughts, and so on. The same names crop up over and over again, with the same insults attached, as if he can't remember he's already said that. In this book we see a catalogue of obsessions, and while I'm the last person to object to the odd obsession, after ten or twenty pages they start to bore.
All in all, then, a book to dip into, not to read. If we still had a bookshelf in the bathroom, as we had in the old flat, it would go there ideally. There are funny lines. Not many, but a few. There were more in MST3K itself, which is why I occasionally have the feeling I'd like to watch an episode every now and then. But not right now, thanks.
*Gods know what story this line came from (Alfred Bester's "Hobson's Choice"), but it was some writer's idea of how people would talk in the future. I think he was perhaps overly optimistic, but it still helped to inspire the horror of linguistic degeneration that is also a recurring theme of this journal.
Well, yes. I won't be abandoning the economic democracy theme (after all, quite apart from my own passionate concern, I'm on a mission from Talis), but I never intended to become a bore on the subject. It will crop up, along with the usual "don't let's be beastly to the Christians" and "why doesn't science make sense" recurring themes, and many (but probably not many many) more, but there are other things in the world I still want to talk about, and this is one of them.
As I was saying, this may seem like a strange thing to say, given that I haven't seen an episode of Monosodium Tritorgopotassiate for at least ten years. The memory, however, remains vivid, and it's possible to reactivate it quite easily in all its queasiness by reading too much at one go of a certain type of book. You know the ones. Usually compiled from magazine columns. Written by people who read Harry and Michael Medved's quite amusing Golden Turkey books, saw the part where they said they weren't going to do any more, and thought "hey! Market niche!" A friend of ours had one with the word "Schmovie" in the title. Enough said.
This one is actually written by MST3K's Mike Nelson, and is called "Movie Megacheese." I must have bought it around the time I was still watching the occasional episode and finding it funny. Now MST3K as a programme was quite clever, because in between the merciless ridiculing of cheap old movies for being old and cheap the creators interspersed some comic play-acting of their own. It was fairly stupid, but it leavened the snark. Leaven is very important, and most of the people who write snark books about movies forget that. Nelson is no exception.
And so after a while you find yourself paging through, looking for some indication that the man ever, in his entire life, actually and honestly liked something. You start to think "poor boy, all that time stuck on the Satellite of Love with those stupid robots must have scarred and twisted his brain and rendered him incapable of simple human enjoyment. Maybe I should send a donation of some sort." And then you remember that it was, after all, just a show, and there isn't any excuse. He's doing it quite deliberately.
This book is fuelled by hate. Mike Nelson devoutly hates, among many other things, science fiction, an inoffensive genre which did him no harm and indeed helped to make him the very minor celebrity he has become. Or if he doesn't, he gives an incredibly convincing performance. It's also peppered throughout with the sort of brand-name humour and pop-culture references which irrevocably dated and localised, say, Bored Of The Rings, and which make as much sense to me as "St'u my rock-ribbering rib-rockery to heart the hearts two."* It is, of course, absolutely necessary to anchor yourself in your own home town and the very moment of the present in order to mock effectively that which comes from Somewhere Else and Another Time, but it does mean that your book will be readable for about three years and then start to become increasingly something of Another Time itself. And, of course, that anyone who didn't live within three streets of you will find it hard to follow.
It's also hard to ignore the fact that what he is gibing at are the same things all the time. He uses the word "doughy" a lot, which I presume he intends to mean "overweight." All special effects are "unconvincing," a claim which overlooks the point that special effects used to be unconvincing all the time, and you were expected to give them a hand with your imagination, piece out their imperfections with your thoughts, and so on. The same names crop up over and over again, with the same insults attached, as if he can't remember he's already said that. In this book we see a catalogue of obsessions, and while I'm the last person to object to the odd obsession, after ten or twenty pages they start to bore.
All in all, then, a book to dip into, not to read. If we still had a bookshelf in the bathroom, as we had in the old flat, it would go there ideally. There are funny lines. Not many, but a few. There were more in MST3K itself, which is why I occasionally have the feeling I'd like to watch an episode every now and then. But not right now, thanks.
*Gods know what story this line came from (Alfred Bester's "Hobson's Choice"), but it was some writer's idea of how people would talk in the future. I think he was perhaps overly optimistic, but it still helped to inspire the horror of linguistic degeneration that is also a recurring theme of this journal.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 03:05 pm (UTC)One thing we did which I enjoyed was applaud each stock character as he/she appeared. There was always Dr, Labcoat, his daughter/ward/student Suzie Sweater, her heartthrob Bob Do-good and Someone Evil. Suzie and Bob would always be married or at least engaged by the end of the show.