TV Haiku (part 1)

MacGyver fights crime

with American-made floss;

Rugged everyman!

Who Won the Sexual Revolution? A Question Posed by St. Elmo's Fire

If the decade of the 80s is known for anything, it is its cornucopia of coming-of-age movies. Some live on still today, as hallmarks of the blossoming angst percolating in the rapscallions of youth, classics such as The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Teen Wolf, etc etc. But there are other failed coming-of-age attempts that haunt our collective already-come-of-age minds. One in particular, 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire, attempts to work with the formula other movies before and after its time implemented successfully. St. Elmo’s Fire cannot be so lucky.

The film is the typical genre of the coming-of-age, with struggling, white, middle-class Georgetown University students striding confidently(?) into the world, adjusting to their lives in the post-university haze and responsibilities of the choker hold that is adulthood. We’re introduced to our characters as they stride confidently away from some frat houses, walking seven astride and still wearing their caps and gowns. The most picturesque opening scene, all smiles and dream-like, it suggests a peaceful transition filled with fun, understanding, and good, clean fun.

And that is all promptly shattered by a naked man in a hospital. So nonchalantly he walks about, as if to say, yeah, I’m naked, who gives a fuck? This blasé stroll through the crowded halls of a hospital acts as the embodiment of everything that this movie despises. This movie, which Rotten Tomatoes lists with a 45% rating and for which Rob Lowe won Razzle’s Worst Supporting Actor of 1985, is in reality an abstinence teacher’s greatest wet dream. Andrew McCarthy, as Kevin Dolenz, aka our Tortured Artist, pretty much says it all. While being an emo kid about his tortured writer’s soul he asks, “Who really won the sexual revolution?”

And that’s what it comes down to. According to this movie, no one won the sexual revolution. In actuality, we’re all losers. This is why a naked man can stroll through the hospital, bumbling and lost, naked as the day he was born only with a bit more wrinkles and a bit more fat, and, sadly, a bit more hair in places where no one ever wants to see. He’s the embodiment of everyone’s sexuality, bumbling and lost, thrown haphazardly into a jumbled movie to elicit some kind of response. A call into the darkness, as if to ask Am I truly alone? The best part is that this naked man just keeps showing up. He shows up throughout the scene where Emilio Estevez is being Grade A creeptastic and working the cogs in his head about how best to stalk a pretty doctor he dated once his first year at Georgetown.

It’s our Tortured Artist that we pinpoint most. Sitting in his messy room, near his Mickey Mouse phone, tapping on his bongos, he bemoans his sorry state, lamenting how much “love sucks!”. And yet, this same tortured artist falls into the age-old love triangle, in which two guys lust after a girl who, frankly, has about as much personality and intrigue as a stump. But that’s an insult to trees everywhere. By far the worst part about this is, after realizing her boyfriend is cheating on her with leggy blondes the world over, Boring Love Interest has sex with our Tortured Artist!

In the single worst sex scene of all time. There are no words to illustrate the horror that is this sex scene. This sex scene, presumably lasting multiple rounds and through the night, approaches its climax (har har) on top of a coffin.

A coffin.

I shit you not, a coffin. They do the nasty on a coffin. If this doesn’t demonstrate some kind of metaphor for who won the sexual revolution, nothing will. Every moment of sexuality in this movie is disgusting, grotesque, and, frankly, a little insulting and disturbing. An abstinence teacher should sit back and stop talking about unwanted pregnancy. What budding teenagers need to learn to avoid is a sexual exploit like this. Or, a naked man in a hospital. Or, Emilio Estevez stalking a pretty girl. Or, stereotypical Saudi Arabian men watching MTV. Or, Billy Joel on a bright pink wall, badly painted, thus sucking out any libido any stupid soul may have managed to shore up.

But back to the coffin sex.

Their luscious lovemaking finds the nearest flat surface and goes from there, seemingly just as nonchalant about having sex on a holder of dead bodies as the naked man in the hospital was with walking around with a hairy ass. But the scene doesn’t stop there. No, after smearing the camera with enough Vaseline to make a 1970s porno jealous, they progress to the shower. As the horrible, horrible music reaches its crescendo, the shower breaks. There is so much awkward laughter, lippy movements of what I can only imagine is supposed to be endearing kissing, and a flustered “I broke your shower!”. So gross. Worst sex scene ever.

The most excruciating lasting sex scene of all time is the only thing that quite compares to sex in this movie. This is the focal point. This is the moment when we, as an audience, are supposed to sit up and triumph for Tortured Artist finally finding his meaning of life (a question that tortures any true Tortured Artist). His earlier cynicism of love and sexual revolutions are forgotten! He finally got laid! He broke the Bro Code to do it, but damn it, his breath was taken away somewhere between coffin splinters and slippery shower surfaces. Hot.

But is this is truly a moment of triumph or just a horror that must immediately be brain bleached from our mind? The world may never know.

So happy Independence Day, USA. At least that’s one revolution St. Elmo’s Fire can agree we won.

Mullet Mollification: Considering the value of the hairstyle in "MacGyver"

It is feathery. It is the kind of light brown that, in a certain light, looks almost gray. It has dispensed with the “business in the front” motto, and instead, rises unevenly to the prickly top, like the back of a hedgehog, or a rooster comb, pointing forward. It is, unfortunately, an accurate description of MacGyver’s mullet.

In back, its gentle, choppy layers are flipped out down either side of his neck. It’s long enough to be physically irritating to the viewer (imagine all that long hair stuck to your neck), and short enough to never fit in anywhere; it can’t quite be tucked into the collar of jackets, so it sits half in, half out. He once tried putting it into a very tiny ponytail, but only succeeded in creating a rattail. Yet it’s long enough to move comically with a soft breeze in a slow motion montage. The edges sometimes curl under his ears, creating the impression that he’s not so much wearing a hairstyle as a helmet with a feathered headdress attached to it.

The question I pose is this: what does a mullet bring to the character and the show that a normal haircut doesn’t? I pose this question fully aware that “MacGyver” premiered in 1985 and it may seem self-explanatory. But in Season 1 he doesn’t have a mullet, and while watching it I made a discovery: Richard Dean Anderson is HOT (yes, girls, he is. He’s tall, rugged, and handsome and he likes “The Simpsons”[i].) He’s so hot that when Season 2 comes around his by all means horrifying mullet has to work really, really hard to make him unattractive. Mullets started gaining momentum in America in the 70s, so why did Richard Dean Anderson or Lee David Zlotoff or anyone with control over this decision decide to bypass Season 1 and debut Season 2 MacGyver with the monstrosity described above?

My original, split-second theory was the mullet was added precisely to be in tension with the hotness of Richard Dean Anderson. Why exactly any show producer would intentionally work against the attractiveness of his lead actor, I do not know. “Working in tension with” is just a bullshit phrase I’ve learned to love as an English major. My conjoined theory was that the mullet was there to complicate the persisting and somewhat incredible wholesomeness of MacGyver and help make him a more (feathery and) rounded character. Sound stupid? Yeah, well, it is, but maybe not totally wrong.

After extensive Wikipedia research which led to a lot of Richard Dean Anderson fan-girling[ii] (fictional MacGyver has nothing on you, Jack O’Ne—I mean, Richard), I think the simple explanation for his mullet is this: mullets are traditionally ridiculed as “lowbrow” and unsophisticated[iii], and while MacGyver is not usually considered these things he is often considered an embodiment of EVERY PART OF AMERICAN LIFE EVER. It’s not just that he can do everything and build anything; he also represents everything. He is/has been/can be at any given time a physics and chemistry genius, a mountain climber, a professional environmentalist, a resource of the National Forest Foundation, a spy, a former member of a bomb squad, a Boy scout, an oil well firefighter, a member of the U.S. Air Force who explores other worlds and fights vicious alien enemies[iv], a bounty hunter, a private detective, a de facto CPS worker, a hopeless romantic, a champion pool player (because of physics), an amateur archeologist and the close confidant/Big Brother of nearly half the population of the world; he takes art classes, plays guitar and once performed facial reconstruction on a skull with play dough. This is in addition to all the shit he "MacGyvers” (bombs, lock picks, airplanes made from bamboo).

MacGyver’s attempt to be every part of American culture results in a personality that is so balanced and, well, perfect that it’s unbelievable (really, unfortunately not realistic). He spouts down-homey maxims that would make Sarah Palin proud if he, after speaking, drew the same conservative conclusions she did. He works to preserve national forests and endangered wildlife (one episode basically turned into a PSA about saving the Black Rhino), and he also helps his friends save their oil well (because entrepreneurs are this country’s backbone, and all hard-working folks deserve a chance at a dream). It would be interesting to see an episode where two issues like this conflict, but I don’t think that will happen.

What does this have to do with his mullet? I don’t know anymore. I’m afraid I’ve gotten a little lost.

Oh, yes. He is doing his best to represent every part of American culture in his person, so the lowbrow hairstyle has to be in there too. It is what keeps him from looking appropriate in a suit (suits are so un-MacGyver) and being labeled a square (he doesn’t drink, after all. Or swear. Or do anything reprehensible at all). His mullet pretty much sums up all the lowbrow, un-square, uncool stuff he still needs to represent while he’s out being so awesome.

But this could all be bullshit, and Anderson could just like mullets; some people do:

http://www.mulletjunky.com/

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[i] For more illumination on this, please watch Anderson’s other celebrated, exceptional show.*

[ii] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fangirling, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dean_Anderson

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullet_(haircut)

[iv] Oh, wait. Wrong show.

*Stargate SG-1

The Manos Project?

So, what is The Manos Project? Where did this come from? Where am I? Who am I? Why am I still talking? These questions are all very important in relation to The Manos Project; especially the last one.

Well, the idea behind The Manos Project was originally a vague pipe dream dreamt up by yours truly. Being the somewhat psychotic English major that I am, I fantasized about spending time seriously analyzing really mundane aspects of...pretty much anything. I already had a nearly insatiable desire to go to art museums and analyze the crap out of Modernist art. And while I could do this alone, I always preferred to lasso up a friend/acquaintance/person off the street or two to come with me so I could bully them into analyzing bullshit in art with me. "Tell me, what does this mean to you? I mean, really mean? What about that blue bit? And the cow? Is it mooving?" Etc. I decided that I shouldn't just focus on vocalizing my bullshit analyses of art pieces, but should focus on other forms of artistic expression: literature, film, and TV shows. I think I realised this when thinking about the Twilight series one day. I kind of had this inkling to read it (mostly so I could have an accurate argument against it), but I felt that if I did, I would need more. How would I survive the dramatic yet bland prose of Ms. Meyer? Why, I would need to subltely mock her terrible fiction by analyzing really trivial bits of the "saga". (Un)fortunately, I never got around to doing this. The idea was still in mind, however.

It was not until the spring of this year that I found a way for my dream to finally come into fruition. I was watching "Manos": The Hands of Fate (MST3K) with a particularly enlightened bunch of people when I realised this might be the perfect particularly enlightened bunch of people with whom to share my hidden dream. I divulged; it was a hit. And what better way for a bunch of twenty-somethings fresh out of college to spend their time than to start a blog (to ease the sting of unemployment)?

So there it was. The blog, of course, is named after the Plymouth Rock of our collaboration: the worst movie of all time, Manos. Our goal is to bring various arguments on why things are the way they are in terrible literature, film, and television to our (widespread, gigantic, global) audience. This being said, the thing being analyzed does not have to be terrible; or, perhaps more accurately, the thing does not have to be terrible in the eyes of the analyst. (For me, Star Trek TOS (and all of the movies); for Kelsi, MacGyver; etc.)

So, let "Why am I still talking?" be your guide to this blog. Why am I still talking? Why do I care? Why does anyone care? Hey, it doesn't matter! Write it anyway! Read it anyway! Analyze 'til you can't analyze no more. Use what the Good College gave ya.

One last thing: if you want to be a contributor, please contact me. Maybe we can work something out.

Go forth, mis Manos, and write!