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The revolution of Kevin Smith
Jul. 21st, 2006 04:44 pmIn days like these I need a Kevin Smith movie. Days where I want there to be three Seals instead of one.
I want one me to go job hunting, be energetic and mingle with strangers and half-strangers and convince them that I'm the shit.
Whether I want it or not, one me would sit around worrying about the war and bombings, reading up, emailing similar minded people and feeling restless, angsty and generally crappy.
And the third me would just read and write, read&write, write & read. Maybe have ice tea too, but mostly not.
If there were more people like Kevin Smith there would maybe be a tiny chance for a small revolution in the American society. I'm well aware that some movies of his are regarded as crap, and not even I like all of them, but I still wish there were more people like him. And I have to confess that I've always felt at home in his movies, whether I think they are good or not is neither here nor there. He is the only American movie maker who've managed to create movies I could see myself in. Probably as some unemployed irritating quasi-socialist chick waving signs and stuff at people. A dumbed-down cliche of myself, but with enough truth for the archetype to be moving and entertaining.
I can see traces of myself in many of his movie characters, from the slacker-loser comic trivia connoisseur, through the Star Wars geeks and the frustrated girlfriends of the slackers, to the girl who loves to give blow jobs and is not ashamed to say so.
I heard an interview with him the other day and realized in an instant why I like him. It's not the pop-culture babble and the crazy sub-plots, or the Tarantino-goes-white-trash dialog, it's that he is promoting something that is in many ways very un-american even though it does exist in America, only not in the public myth.
The journalist interviewing him kept harping on and on about the characters in Smith's movies being losers and slackers and low class without ambition...basically in possession of the biggest flaws you can have in this society, namely being poor, having a humble disposition and NO ambition of moving up in life.
It's this lack of ambition that is most blatant in the eyes of the norm, which was pretty obvious from how the reporter kept misinterpreting whatever Smith said. In the end Kevin Smith drew breath and said in his usual humble tone:
" You know...there really is nothing wrong with people who don't have any ambitions in money or prestige, who want other things from life. I've known and loved such people all my life and there was nothing lacking in their hearts or their heads, they have low key jobs and just want to support their family and have a life. After all...someone has to deliver the mail and flip the burgers."
Everyone is always on their way somewhere higher or better in the archetype of the American society, but I don't believe in that, I think there is a whole class, brand or category of people who are clever and analytical and deep, and yet just want to settle down and do a decent job and then spend their energy on other parts of life, the way you can't easily do if you have a career. The problem is of course that this society is at large designed in such a way that the grunt jobs are supposed to be transit positions where people stay at a low wage and then move upward in life, it makes for a deeply flawed society where there will be heaps of underpayed triple-job working people and an even bigger heap of underpayed academics in debt, because there aren't enough high ranking positions out there in general.
Globally this problem is related to the fact that in twenty to thirty years if not sooner it will be painfully clear that the enormously high living standards most people aspire to or already cultivate in wealthy countries today is not going to last, the bubble will break and we'll have to settle for less comfort and more hardship.
I'm embarrassed to say that I sometimes have nightmares about this, because there is something very intimidating about the rage accumulated from people used to comfort and suddenly deprived of it. If I keep going on this tangent I will even seriously doubt the sense in my dream of putting a child into the world.
No, I'd rather be forever trapped around the turn of the millennium in a Kevin Smith movie, babbling on about pop culture and Star Wars, the old Star Wars movies from my childhood, before it all turned embarrassing and I left the theater with echoes of the crappiest movie dialog burned into my eardrums, even soiling my happy memories of governor Tarkin and princess Leia swapping insults in the good old days.
So yeah, I need to watch Clerks II at some point, and oh, I forgot to say, I wounded my knee last week, managed to twist some muscles around it in a very unpleasant way while helping the geek out with some YMCA kids.
Loved helping out with the kids though, 7-8 year olds are ridiculously cute and funny, a pity that this kind of job pays like crap.
Case closed.
I want one me to go job hunting, be energetic and mingle with strangers and half-strangers and convince them that I'm the shit.
Whether I want it or not, one me would sit around worrying about the war and bombings, reading up, emailing similar minded people and feeling restless, angsty and generally crappy.
And the third me would just read and write, read&write, write & read. Maybe have ice tea too, but mostly not.
If there were more people like Kevin Smith there would maybe be a tiny chance for a small revolution in the American society. I'm well aware that some movies of his are regarded as crap, and not even I like all of them, but I still wish there were more people like him. And I have to confess that I've always felt at home in his movies, whether I think they are good or not is neither here nor there. He is the only American movie maker who've managed to create movies I could see myself in. Probably as some unemployed irritating quasi-socialist chick waving signs and stuff at people. A dumbed-down cliche of myself, but with enough truth for the archetype to be moving and entertaining.
I can see traces of myself in many of his movie characters, from the slacker-loser comic trivia connoisseur, through the Star Wars geeks and the frustrated girlfriends of the slackers, to the girl who loves to give blow jobs and is not ashamed to say so.
I heard an interview with him the other day and realized in an instant why I like him. It's not the pop-culture babble and the crazy sub-plots, or the Tarantino-goes-white-trash dialog, it's that he is promoting something that is in many ways very un-american even though it does exist in America, only not in the public myth.
The journalist interviewing him kept harping on and on about the characters in Smith's movies being losers and slackers and low class without ambition...basically in possession of the biggest flaws you can have in this society, namely being poor, having a humble disposition and NO ambition of moving up in life.
It's this lack of ambition that is most blatant in the eyes of the norm, which was pretty obvious from how the reporter kept misinterpreting whatever Smith said. In the end Kevin Smith drew breath and said in his usual humble tone:
" You know...there really is nothing wrong with people who don't have any ambitions in money or prestige, who want other things from life. I've known and loved such people all my life and there was nothing lacking in their hearts or their heads, they have low key jobs and just want to support their family and have a life. After all...someone has to deliver the mail and flip the burgers."
Everyone is always on their way somewhere higher or better in the archetype of the American society, but I don't believe in that, I think there is a whole class, brand or category of people who are clever and analytical and deep, and yet just want to settle down and do a decent job and then spend their energy on other parts of life, the way you can't easily do if you have a career. The problem is of course that this society is at large designed in such a way that the grunt jobs are supposed to be transit positions where people stay at a low wage and then move upward in life, it makes for a deeply flawed society where there will be heaps of underpayed triple-job working people and an even bigger heap of underpayed academics in debt, because there aren't enough high ranking positions out there in general.
Globally this problem is related to the fact that in twenty to thirty years if not sooner it will be painfully clear that the enormously high living standards most people aspire to or already cultivate in wealthy countries today is not going to last, the bubble will break and we'll have to settle for less comfort and more hardship.
I'm embarrassed to say that I sometimes have nightmares about this, because there is something very intimidating about the rage accumulated from people used to comfort and suddenly deprived of it. If I keep going on this tangent I will even seriously doubt the sense in my dream of putting a child into the world.
No, I'd rather be forever trapped around the turn of the millennium in a Kevin Smith movie, babbling on about pop culture and Star Wars, the old Star Wars movies from my childhood, before it all turned embarrassing and I left the theater with echoes of the crappiest movie dialog burned into my eardrums, even soiling my happy memories of governor Tarkin and princess Leia swapping insults in the good old days.
So yeah, I need to watch Clerks II at some point, and oh, I forgot to say, I wounded my knee last week, managed to twist some muscles around it in a very unpleasant way while helping the geek out with some YMCA kids.
Loved helping out with the kids though, 7-8 year olds are ridiculously cute and funny, a pity that this kind of job pays like crap.
Case closed.
