Capturing our Culture Through Movie Blurbs

I was sifting through movies on DISH today and saw one called “8 Heads in a Duffel Bag.”  That sounded a little odd, so I clicked on it to read the blurb, which said something about a jet passenger accidentally taking the wrong bag at the airport – a bag that turns out to have 8 severed heads in it from a mob killing.  That weird plot got me to thinking about how my friend Kevin in British Columbia said one of his favorite hobbies was reading movie blurbs, and that reminded me that I was really quite bored at the moment, and that got me to thinking that movie blurbs are kind of like mini-summaries of the state of our culture, and that reminded me that I’ve been awfully slack in posting things on this blog lately.

Using my highly integrative mind, this made me think: Voila!  I can actually entertain myself, comment on our culture, and write my blog, all at the same time!  All I have to do to accomplish this 3-for-1 is to sit for an hour and write down my thoughts as I read movie blurbs.  So here we are!  I present to you: A little experiment using movie blurbs to define our culture (and entertain myself) at your expense.

4:37 PM: I decide to start with PG-13 movies for the very altruistic reason that most of the movies I like fall into that category.  So I sift through the PG-13 movie blurbs on DISH and what I find is…disheartening.  Goodness, other than a movie about a jewel thief leaving a robot to his son, almost all of these movies involve revenge, killing, or evil spirits.  There is even one about revenge killings by evil spirits.  I kid you not.  Lots of references to destruction, abduction, a vast array of nasty words ending in “uction.”  And let me tell you, as the author of that last sentence, I can say with certainty that that just don’t sound right. 

4:41 PM. I begin to officially fear for our culture.

4:43 PM. These blurbs have no creativity at all.  I begin to think that my friend Kevin’s hobby isn’t as fun as he claimed.  I also remember, coincidentally, that Kevin liked making stained glass candle-holders.  Maybe he wasn’t the best barometer of fun, is all I’m saying.

4:45 PM. I’m trying to find a diamond in the rough here, and this is the most entertaining of the PG-13 lot so far:

Spoken Word: A poet falls prey to the lure of criminal life after he returns home to care for his dying father.

There’s some entertainment value in poets turning to crime…and it isn’t the usual movie trajectory for dying fathers to create a criminal life, but still…I’m reaching here.  That’s really not that interesting.

4:47 PM. Something interesting just happened for the PG-13 crowd.  Whew – I thought this blog post was going to be totally boring.  So, see if you can fill in the missing “thing” at the end of this movie blurb:

Four teenage friends keep in touch during their summer apart by passing along a cherished…

If you said “tradition of kindness” or “letters from each other,” then you are wrong.  The correct answer is: “…pair of blue jeans.”  Yep, this is apparently some seriously cherished pair of blue jeans. 

Now, you may be wondering about the title of this movie.  So am I.  The given title on Dish is “Sisterhood of the travelling p…”   I mean that.  It says “p…”  Now I’m seriously wondering: Why can’t Dish make it so that I can see the whole title?  I mean, how freakin’ hard would that be?  I click on it in every possible way – no dice.  I start cursing at the remote control…this also, to my surprise, does not help.  What is going on? Is this an intentional effort to frustrate us?  Or are they trying to turn us all into Europeans…where life has more questions than answers?  Or perhaps the movie title really does have an ellipsis in it?

No – I must assume that the word is supposed to be PANTS.  Culture intelligence scale: Trending downwards. 

4:50 pm.  I give up on PG-13 and move on to PG movies.The PG movies fare a little better.  Right off the bat, we’re talking about teenage surfers riding mythical surf breaks with goofy names (Chasing Mavericks), and biology teachers doing karate to save a music program (I mean, that’s like three totally different occupations in one sentence – not bad; from Here Comes the Boom).  Some nice cultural commentaries (The Wish List – “a woman lists the traits of her perfect man, then falls for a guy who meets none of the criteria”), and one use of the always-funny phrase “crotchety fellow” (Dennis the Menace). Of course, you also have the usual and boring boilerplate romance fare (“a man mistakenly e-mails the wrong woman with a message of affection” – seriously, that’s all you got to make me want to watch this movie?), an entire movie apparently about someone dreading his twin sister’s visit at Thanksgiving (Jack and Jill), and then there’s this (from Continental Divide):

A pudgy, chain-smoking Chicago columnist has a love affair with an ornithologist studying bald eagles in the Rockies.

So ok, yeah, it’s a pretty good bet that I don’t want to watch a love story about an…ornithologist.

4:54 PM. I’m noticing a disturbing trend: A lot of these PG and PG-13 movies have direct references to breaking the Ten Commandments…adultery, murder, lying, and now, in Raw Edge, we add coveting to the list:

Assorted men and an outsider covet the wife of a Oregon land baron.

Equally as disturbing is the poor grammar…“a Oregon”?  I’m pretty darn sure the correct grammar here should be “a tree-hugging Oregonian.”

(I didn’t just type that, right?  I mean, it just appeared in my head…right?)

American Culture: 0.

American Culture’s vague and poorly-defined opponent: 3.

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Hercules in New York: Banished Hercules catches an escaped bear, cruises Broadway and wrestles professionally.

Darby O’Gill and the Little People: An Irish caretaker lands in the underground realm of a leprechaun king and his wee bouncing subjects.

The Thirteenth Year:  As a boy approaches adolescence he grows scales and fins, communicates with fish and breathes underwater.

I think each week of your life should involve mythical Greek figures cruising Broadway and catching bears for undisclosed reasons, “wee bouncing subjects,” and boys with scales and fins.

5:07 PM. I’m finally beginning to think of a point to this piece which, as I’m sure you noticed, doesn’t seem particularly relevant to anything, much less useful to an apologetics website.  The point might be: I’m reminded of a quote by G. K. Chesterton that says sin, in the end, leads to sameness and dullness, while goodness leads to variety and creativity.  Sin eventually turns into a pursuit of pleasure that is meaningless and looks the same regardless of category; goodness has as many varieties as there are people.  Sin is black; goodness isn’t merely white – it is all the colors of the rainbow (which they tell me white is made up of; I hope that’s true, because it would make this metaphor work better).

Well, in some loose way, this has reminded me of that.  The worse the rating here, on average the more the movies seemed to basically be alike – sex, murder, violence – they all sound the same. It is only when you take those out of the equation that you get things that are truly creative…truly different…truly alive. 

5:17 PM. Several problems with this interpretation emerge as I continue my little experiment.  First, I think I just got lucky off the bat, because I gotta admit that most of these G movies sound REALLY boring.  A lot of them are like this:

Oogieloves: Balloon Adventure.  The oogieloves set out the find five magical balloons that will make their good friend’s surprise birthday party extra-special.

I mean, first – and I assume I speak for all of humanity here – I don’t want my kid watching anything called the “oogieloves.”  Second, if I’m on an adventure where I am set to find cool magical objects, I hope that I aim a little higher than making a friend’s birthday party just a little bit extra-special. I’d hope for something more like save the universe from evil.

5:20 PM. And sometimes, these G blurbs are documentaries about…fish.  I kid you not.  I mean, people really watch documentaries about fish?  (And there it is, Jim…a fish…and look!  I think it’s…yes, I believe it is…YES!  It’s definitely swimming! I cannot believe my eyes, Jim.)

5:22 PM. And a lot of them are real movies that seem like they’d be animal documentaries, like this one:

The Black Stallion: Shipwrecked with a wild Arabian horse, a 1940s boy bonds with the animal on a tiny desert island.

Of course, many of these are fine movies, but the descriptions hardly inspire.  Yes, The Black Stallion SOUNDS boring, but I’ve seen the movie and I can tell you…well, ok, actually, it is as boring as it sounds.

5:25 PM. Also, a lot of these G movies involve breaking the Ten Commandments, too.  I mean, check this out, from a 1935 movie with Gene Autry:

The Sagebrush Troubador: A singing lawman and his sidekick hunt a killer and find a blonde.

I mean, really, I don’t want my daughter growing up thinking it is ok for a lawman to sing.  That kind of thing just ain’t natural.

There is seriously even one G movie involving an evil spirit seeking some kind of revenge.  A G movie?  What are we teaching our kids these days.

5:28 PM.  I weary of G movies and decide to take one small foray into the R movies.  The first movie has “sexy” in it.  I quit.

Culture: 0.

Vaguely-defined Cultural Opponents: 4.

5:31 PM. All in all, what have we learned from this?  I would say that I have learned never to base a blog post off of a movie blurb that you didn’t write down word-for-word, because later on, when you go to write it down, you may not be able to find it. (I’m beginning to doubt whether “8 Heads in a Duffel Bag” is, in fact, a real movie.) And that’s the end of my experiment!