|
|
too craptacular to watch Monday, December 17 2012
Somehow a movie entitled Rock of Ages arrived at our house via Netflix (an envelope-based movie delivery system that will seem archaic in a few years, unless the passage of peak oil has reduced us to peeling tree bark with stone tools). Gretchen and I had just finished watching Jeopardy and she assured me that I would want to stick around for the movie she was loading into the DVD player (no, we don't yet own a BluRay player). So I started watching what might well be the most cheeseball piece of cinematography ever shot. Initially, the movie (which is based on a Broadway musical) seemed to take as its focus late-1980s Los Angeles hair metal, but it quickly devolved into a celebration of late-70s and early-80s arena rock, usually presented as mashups between two songs. For example Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero" was somehow mashedup with Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."
I don't have much ambivalence about the 1980s. For me it was an anomalous decade full of selfishness, bad politics, and terrible fashion. I think of it as a time unusually drenched in sweat, and not in a good way. But it wasn't anywhere near as cheeseball as Rock of Ages portrayed it. Was I really alive then? And if so, did I really want to kiss the girls of the 1980s? It's hard to believe I lost my virginity in that decade, but I did. Still, I didn't want to have my nose rubbed in it. Gretchen and I only made it through the first half hour before ejecting the disc. It was just too craptacular to watch.
For linking purposes this article's URL is: http://asecular.com/blog.php?121217 feedback previous | next |