“Will the Real 80s Action Movie Please Blow Up” — 80s Avarice & Film False Positives

 The allure of mystery is inescapable in the upcoming quadruple lineup for the 80s ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA II: THE QUICKENING. We do not actually know what the movies in question will be. I tried to find any info about the first extravaganza, but even after a righteous session of Google-fu, I was able to find the posting regarding the actual premier event, but no information about what movies ended up being shown that first year. So we can’t even narrow down our possibilities with any information about round one. Only the Trylon knows where the bodies are buried on this one.

So how do we predict the uselessly predicted? Obviously someone knows the true answer, but without the pure uncut mania known as Conjecture, I don’t really have the gas for a full essay, so unsupported theorizing it is!

What do we know? Nothing but a title: 80s ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA II: THE QUICKENING. First and foremost—Highlander 2: The Quickening is a 90s movie, so that gerund verb is a red herring (unless it’s a reverse herring and they’re showing the first Highlander, which is possible). So what’s an 80s Action Movie? That is a very particular taste of an action movie, there are clearly action movies that came out in the 80s that aren’t 80s Action Movies. They contain a certain “I don’t know what” (I’m not typing that in French; there is no French spoken in 80s action movies, unless it’s by bad guys, or ineffectual “allies.”)

By way of first comparison: Terminator is Action. Commando is 80s Action. There are quips (that’s plural, not just the one–even though Terminator has one of the most famous, it is not inundated with quips as a proper 80s Action would be). An 80s Action movie could involve an annihilation of a vaguely jungle state and/or nation if they threatened your daughter (does Predator count, if the daughter in question is “American Pride”? Possibly, it’s a border case).

Does Gremlins count? No, Gremlins is a Christmas movie.

Does that disqualify Die Hard? No, Christmas doesn’t disqualify Die Hard. Die Hard is an 80s masterpiece, which means by default it can’t be an 80s Action Movie. 80s Action Movies are many things, but groundbreaking quality is not one of them. If they were, I’d be personally offended.

Ghostbusters 1 & 2. No, those are 80s Comedies. That would count Caddyshack just because things blow up at the end. These rubrics must be rigidly defended, the ghost of Ronald Reagan is counting on us.

The Trylon’s preview trailer showed Jackie Chan movies (another false flag—the asterisk specified that none of the trailered films will be showing). Is the 80s Action movie a particularly American genre? I would submit that it is. You can show foreign 80s Action movies and they will count, but only if they are dubbed poorly. Two fronts in this argument: 1) the cultural insult toward non-American nations helps with the points (remember Commando) and 2) There must emphatically be no subtitles—reading skill would be verboten in something like an 80s Action Movie, obviously.

No reading, no subtlety, no growth, no new lessons—only a resolution and renewed appreciation and gratitude to whatever bucolic suburban and/or American Hegemonic perfection the movie started with that was interrupted for 84 action-packed minutes of the 90-minute film. Rambo II & Rambo III count, Rambo I does not (he doesn’t even intentionally murder anyone in the first one, come on). I admit I’m blatantly making the rules up as I go, but they at least have to make sense while I’m doing it. That’s what I’m paying me for. This would all also exclude something like The Thing—besides just my made-up rule about excluding Masterpieces, it also has A Point To Say about the inherent paranoia baked into Toxic Masculinity, as well as suggesting that zealous and eager violencia leads only to mutually assured destruction for all players. That is Action, that is Sci-Fi, that may be Creature Feature better than it’s ever been done or will be done, and it was made in the 80s. It is E.T. With Real Stakes For Grown Ups, and therefore better, but it is not an 80s Action Movie.

Where does that leave us to guess what the Trylon has up its sleeve? Rocky 3 & 4? More 80s Sports than 80s Action. Dirty Harry 4 & 5? Maybe. Not impossible, but also low on the list of big hits—I had to search for release dates for the whole collection. Lethal Weapon 1 & 2? Possibly, but not weird and unique enough for me to bet the house on. This is, after all, the Trylon we’re talking about–they have certain standards of impressivity to meet. And I always bet on The Trylon.

So where does that leave us? What clues have been staring us in the face? What other signs and wonders could there be to point us in the right direction?

Approaching from the other direction, backwards from the rear end: What is an Extravaganza? What does that term elicit? Engage in your emotional synesthesia, what does Extravaganza feel like? What doth it suggest?

To quote my friend Mike, who I asked (because the idea of writing an essay about a bunch of movies you don’t know ahead of time is something you Phone A Friend on): “Extravaganza suggests to me that everyone’s included. It just has so much, in terms of the ride.” And this is what it feels like when someone drops a skeleton key into my lap, because Mike was absolutely right. It’s got everything! Says the tagline! Guns, dames, fights, action, bad guys! It doesn’t have to be over the top the whole run time (then you have no frame of reference for The Top), but it at least needs to be overer-topperer than its cinematic peers. And while we were forced to previously disqualify John Carpenter because he had the gall of writing Characters with Working Brains in The Thing, we have no such compunction against something like, say, a seven-minute fist fight over a pair of sunglasses in They Live. And while there might be a Message in They Live (“trust no one in charge of anything”), it’s at least a socially allowed message for the 80s as a whole, and leads to no character development which is the real version of themes that we’re avoiding in this great net of incredible cinema. The main character was not wrong, will never be wrong, has nothing to learn, only the supporting characters have anything to learn, because they need to catch up to the lead character because he sets the tone.

And They Live is even just the Silver Medal for this whole argument. The master cake goes to Mike’s pick, Big Trouble in Little China (also by John Carpenter) for, as Mike said, “It just has so much, in terms of the ride. It just goes back to him being him—no character development. I like cartoons for the same reason, no growing up.” I think this Trylon 80s ACTION EXTRAVAGANZA II: THE QUICKENING would be best well served with one, either, or both of these Carpenter cornucopias.

And that’s one of the special secret sauces of privilege cooked into the 80s Action Movie: when you can make, and take in, any media with zero lessons, growth, challenges, morals, or finger wagging. Mind you, things were terrible in the 80s—a lot of things are terrible now—but to buy the right to be able to ignore those things for 90 straight minutes is a level of decadence that kings in the Middle Ages could not have imagined, only The 80s Action movie mastered this level of debauchery.

And that does bring us to a bit of a final question: Why do we have these movies? Why celebrate them? Why memorialize them? Why festivize them? Do they only belong to the shame vault of history, like those racist-ass Warner Brothers cartoons? Maybe. Maybe a little bit. One can’t help but notice that literally every single film I mentioned had a white male cisgendered lead character. That’s not something to ignore. But one of the things I always have to believe, a principle I stick to, is that media—and humanity—is always better served by sharing things rather than locking them away. So what do we do with this genre? I think this is a very important question: Do we fix things by getting rid of Weird Fantasy Violence to Set the World Right genre action movies? Or do we spread the love and appreciation and say the Machete and Mariachi movies deserve their place at the table of Wish Fulfillment Stupidity? Watch 70s Blaxploitation movies with the unstoppable justice-driven private eye who punches cops and seduces the mayor’s wife. They are cut from the same branch. Do we withdraw the movies where the white man learns his Stupid Confidence, or do we give everyone the chance for celluloid adrenaline straight to the brain and the 90-minute belief that someone who looks like them will Fix Everything? At least one fan of the first Wonder Woman movie thinks so, and so do I. Because when it comes to Cinematic Extravaganzas of Stupidity, Everyone should always be included.

How Many Dinner Plates Is an Octopus Allowed to Take at an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet? - GHOST DOG: Way of the Samurai

 A Moral Interrogation of Cultural Appropriation & Judgements Thereof

One of the greatest and most delicious irrefutable gifts of the internet has been the ever utterly overwhelming and bottomless wash of media that is our every waking hour. Beneath every rock there are hidden worms—snacks that will sustain our artistic intellect. Algorithmic suggestions have led to no less than a dozen new favorite bands for me to blindside my friends with and reign supreme in my taste when I bring them things they haven’t heard of yet which blows their ears off just as much as they did to me, but I’m better than them because it happened to me first. You’re welcome, Eric.

But what about the other bits and pieces before those? What of the works and such that can be declared derivative, pablum, mediocrity? What of the trash we use to climb that mountain of aesthetic greatness? Do I owe The Last Samurai a thank you card for eventually having led me to Seven Samurai, Lone Wolf & Cub, Zatoichi, and Ghost Dog? I mean, yeah, obviously, but I’ve got 1300 words left to try to convince you that I’m right.

First, a note my heart tells me is worth a diversion: I’m aware the last thing the world needs is another several paragraphs from a white dude about what does or doesn’t count as cultural appropriation, but this is the topic at hand that’s gripped my muse for this month’s installment of “Free Movie Opinions from a Philosophy Major That’s Worth $Free,” and all I can say is that I hope you’ll bear with me until the end. Writing is fun, almost as much fun as reading is, and you should get to the end, if for nothing else than for the mental Double Dare challenge of it all I just threw down for you. I’ll lay down the law right now and say, yes obviously Halloween costumes are offensive if you’re dressing up like any culture—costumes are either a joke or a horror by definition—there’s no respectful way to wear a caricature of another human being. The zero thousand dollar question of this essay, however, is: are there entire art forms that can only be appreciated, enjoyed, or created “the right way” by “the right people”? Again, I say no, but I feel like this Ghost Dog movie created by a white dude about a black character using Japanese literature so he can work for an Italian mob boss seems like a good place to start.

Let’s go ahead and safely assume that a 18th century writer of a Japanese warrior how-to booklet like the Hagakure could not have possibly predicted it would end up in the hands of black man in an urban jungle who raises pigeons on a roof (I’d never met the authorial man in question from 300 years ago, but I bet he wouldn’t have predicted movin’ pictures either, so that all goes without saying). Just to immediately flip the coin—do you think H.P. Lovecraft could have predicted (or would have wanted) his CTHULHU stories to inspire a Japanese metal band like Ningen Isu, or a black sci-fi television show like Lovecraft Country? I can guarantee you that he would not (pro tip: do not google search what Lovecraft named his cat). Does white man Jim Jarmusch get a green light to make a movie with a black protagonist just because he asked RZA of the Wu-Tang to do the soundtrack? Maybe. Or maybe it’s like the World’s Greatest Author Chuck Tingle said; “Once an artist puts their art into this timeline it begins to change and bloom and grow in unexpected ways. That is the wonderful thing about the trot of a writer or painter or director buckaroo.” Do you think the Shaw Brothers planned on making all those Kung Fu movies just so RZA could use the sound effects and factually incorrect English language dubs made for American movie theaters in order to make hip hop beats? Have I made my point sufficiently with this many insufferable self-referential looped-back-in examples? It is all just art making art from art, which is the only way to ever make art (It gets extra twisted when you think about things like how mafia gangsters never started kissing each other’s rings until The Godfather II did it first and then they stole that ice-cold move from the movie into real life, but that’s another Ouroboros metaphor for another essay).

To lead back again to The Last Samurai, I am aware it is not a Great Movie. Did it absolutely blow my hair back when I saw it in theaters when I was 19? Of course it did. I am many stupid things but a liar is not one of them. It did not make me a Tom Cruise fan, but it did make me a samurai fan. Did I do that right? Did my inhalation of Kurosawa movies in my twenties somehow karmically redeem Edward Zwick? That seems a bit impossible and preposterous to try and measure, but somewhere in our media judgment, there must be a place for the Remedial Introductory Text. Whether it be in books, movies, plays, music—every new generation needs to be communally shepherded after that first unavoidable and bland introduction, not shamed for falling for simplicity first. Everyone is a child first. Simplicity is just the introduction. The aperitif. “Did you like that? Pretty great, wasn’t it? Well you’ll love this.” You can’t just start a kid on Sword of Doom and then call him a poseur because the ending made him cry. It’s nightmare fuel. There’d be no appreciation, and they’d sour to the beauty.

There’s a wonderful scene in this film, when Ghost Dog is comparing literature with a little girl (who keeps her books in a lunchbox because books and art are literal sustenance DEAL WITH IT) because Jim Jarmusch knows and shows—not only by the pure act of making this cultural smorgasbord of a movie itself, but also textually rubbing your face in it in the actual film—that every human being is best served by letting them help themselves and gorge at the utter glut of all creativity ever made before they were born, and then letting them do literally whatever they want with it afterwards. At the end of the movie, Ghost Dog has given his copy of the Hagakure to this little girl, and you’re left with the question: is he sharing the violence in that book, or is he sharing the knowledge? Can you learn one without the other? Does Ghost Dog even get a say in how that plays out once he hands the book over? World’s Greatest Author Chuck Tingle knows the answer is no.

A work of art, placed in the world as a comfort to its creator, eventually (if it is blessed and lucky) strikes a chord with an audience that then looks to it for their comfort. And they can only express that love with more love. And the direction it flies and different shapes it births and births and births upon many births is just as unimaginable to the artist even one step removed from them as soon as they turn their back for even a second. Is Jim Jarmusch a fake try-hard because he likes black culture? Am I a racist hack because I write haikus before I fall asleep at night? Or did Jim Jarmusch and Ghost Dog soften me up for French New Wave Crime movies when I found those a couple years later? Is my life unimaginably more awesome because of Samurai Movies & The Spaghetti Westerns that Loved and Robbed Them? Are other people starving themselves because they think certain things “aren’t made for them”? The only thing you’re placing your art (or art appreciation) up against is emotional authenticity, either yours from day to day and work to work, or up against someone else’s work that they made. And more often than not, whenever you do that, you usually just end up looking each other in the face.

Ultimately, I believe that the final judgment of the work isn’t up to the work or even the work’s creator, it’s decided by us when we decide to take it into the future with us, in whatever shape or clothing we’ve decided to adorn it with for the case of the Chronological Bends to which we’re subjecting these beloved works that mean so much to us. Mutation is the sincerest form of flattery. We take them with us, and that’s the final priority and act of love and authenticity, just for me to shamelessly crib from Jarmusch himself:

Rule #5: Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

MADD MANN: Art & Aesthetic Appreciation in the Apocalypse of Avarice - DUEL

I’ve been writing haikus, lately. There’s something so completely stupid and perfect about every single one of them. They are utterly impossible to do incorrectly, as long as you can count to 17. It is an unmissable endeavor. It is a great gift granted to every human being that has ever lived, even the ones that couldn’t read. You don’t actually need to know how to read and write in order to write and read in your head. There is no greater equalizer.

I’ve been joyfully wrenching about a half-dozen of these stupid little dumplings out of my guts every night before I go to bed. Sometimes I get so excited with the whole endeavor that it’s hard to quit in order to actually fall asleep. It’s 1:30am Phil, jesus tiberius christ!

What would DUEL be in haiku form you ask? Only the first and most primal story we’ve ever told since we started telling stories: “I left my house and, something huge tried to kill me, thank god I survived” (17 syllables, child’s play, incredible). So why has this movie gripped my brain so hard that I felt like I had to write about it for you and me?

As an originally made-for-TV movie that went gangbusters and won full distribution (fun game: see if you can pick where commercials were “edited-for” in the film), it’s an interesting case study for the past, and it’s also a metaphorical clump of dirty tea leaves for us to read our future.

What’s first worth mentioning is that I had no knowledge of it until I knew about it. There is something so incredibly important about accidentally finding art where you did not expect it (think of what curated algorithm suggestions have stolen from us, but that’s another conversation for a longer essay). And DUEL, in fact, reminds me that the brain will never let itself be starved for art; it finds it where it has to find it.

Every human physical body needs to intake art. It also needs to create, to output, art. Everyone has a threshold minimum for both requirements. Nobody has a zero scale for either. If opportunity is not given, it will be taken. We are not only social creatures, we are creativity creatures.

Exhibit A for my defense, we have George Miller, Mad Max director and overall apocalyptic Cassandra who demanded that the cars in Fury Road be works of incredible personal expression, scrapped and welded by some of the most nefarious cinema villains ever created—“Just because it’s the wasteland doesn’t mean people can’t make beautiful things.” (1). I would personally add the emphatic that people also can’t stop making beautiful things. It borders on genetically imprinted compulsion.

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. Ever. Anywhere. There is always a smooth way to do whatever you are doing, and each craft has a master who has found the smoothest way to do whatever it is they are doing, no matter how pointless you might think it is. If you never knew These Hallowed Secrets at your job, you just weren’t paying attention (or your coworkers never liked you and didn’t tell you the tricks). We literally cannot help ourselves, we physically cannot stop doing and making cool shit. Even when we’re being forced to make money. Even when we’re being forced to make money for someone else. Call it efficiency distraction. A game to fight boredom. Homo Ludens—Human at Play. At every available opportunity. Your body needs to perceive art, to feed on it. If it is not provided, it will be hodgepodged.

You also need to know that art doesn’t become “not art” when it has commercials. Steven Spielberg didn’t “start making art” when he moved from TV to movie theaters. The locale makes no difference. Even commercials are art. We will not be stopped. Art doesn’t doesn’t become art when it makes money. It doesn’t become not-art when it loses money. It doesn’t matter if it costs money to make or to attend. Whatever art might be, I know the answer doesn’t lie in the price tag on either end of the process. I may not know art, but I know what doesn’t make it not art. I can’t define art, but I know it when I see it.

DUEL reminds me that art will sneak up on you. It will even exist and thrive beyond your perception, around dark corners that you can’t even see exist in order to see around them. Just because you have not noticed the art is art-ing does not mean it has not Art-ed, you adorable little main character of the universe, you. In fact, you’d be literally robbing yourself of personal development by trying to gatekeep what “counts as art.” Your loss.

We are surrounded, by paradise on all sides, you just have to look (17 beats, #blessings).

Very soon, we might have to (re)learn how to enjoy and make art without money, but we will never run out of time to kill and time to fill. Shakespeare in the Park performances, fountain architecture, street musicians, flash-mobs, stand-up comedy, shower singing, movie essays on free websites. Made for TV movies, from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today. Even public look-alike contests drive my heart to incredible heights; “Hey we have similar facial features and costumes, it’s a good enough excuse to meet strangers.” Art. Period. Any human interaction or activity can be blessed with the patina of cool. Your brain will snap and Make A Big Deal Out Of It, if it wants to. Mine sure did, just for a movie about a dude in a car getting chased by another dude in a truck.

We turn every tool into a toy. And as already irrefutably established, play is art. You’d only need to see the incredible amount of art made by human beings who own smartphones (I was never on tiktok, but those people will still thrive, they will still exist). Are we to believe that they are quite literally unlike any other type of human being who has come before them, or are we just looking at a particular phenotype that has always been with us and is finally enjoying their place in the sun?

Art is everywhere. If it’s not, it’ll be placed everywhere, by some wonderful brain-starved maniac. And this art will be economically feasible to attend, or they will crumble and dissolve and die. And every affordable art form that we watch suddenly and horrifically get monetized right before our eyes, that will just make a different flat-broke art form spring up somewhere else.  And certain flat-broke audience versions will never die. And pirating art is always morally correct.* And supporting your weird independent local movie theater is always morally correct. And I’m not going to go so far as to say, “going in chaos-blind-ignorant to a movie (or any art experience) is always morally correct,” but I will say that it is one of the seven greatest activities you can do for your human soul and your mental intellect.

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* Stealing is the goal of stealing an original, to the goal of personal hoarding, to society’s exclusion, of the item in question. Pirating is stealing a copy, ergo, not a crime. Only a crime in the false scarcity dystopia. This also, by de facto, makes library attendance a radical act.

References

1 Behind the Scenes – Cars : Mad Max : Fury Road