YouTube Obsession

Since returning from my vacation a couple weeks ago, a portion of my personal life has become quite insane. My life is good and everything will be ok, everything is just kinda fucked at the moment.

It’s times like these that I turn to my ultimate comfort media: Mystery Science Theater 3000.

“If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax”

And that’s it right there. That’s why I love this show. It’s entire premise and existence is to be a vehicle for jokes. There are no “very special episodes”, they are not watching old movies for any kind of preservation mission, this show is only about the jokes. Which is why it’s the perfect comfort food when I’m having a hard time.

My history with the show started after it moved to the Sci-Fi channel in 1996. Whenever I would visit my grandparents (they had cable) I would pray that I could catch an episode of MST3K. So it was a rare treat for me.

Also, being in the era before internet forced me to learn their often obscure references. Asking my parents questions like “Who is Lady Bird Johnson?” just so I could understand a 2 second quip over a movie made in 1965. This show literally rewrote my brain chemistry. You could draw a direct line from this show to my sense of humor today.

You may have noticed that yes, I came to the show after the original creator left and Mike Nelson had taken over as “host”. I prefer Mike Nelson, he is the “regular Joe” to me. Joel has his charm from the earlier seasons but Mike has an air of impishness that works with the premise. Despite there being no animosity irl between the two hosts, fans are usually divided by being more of a Joel or Mike fan. This imagined line feels so…Gen X, I really can’t explain it. Like if you think the music snobs in High Fidelity are cool then you probably hate Mike.

That being said, this show is my chicken soup for the soul. It is such a perfect idea and it is executed in such a way that everything is funny. Jokes are often call-backs to other jokes, jokes are inside other jokes, jokes are on top of jokes, it’s jokes all the way down.

This is one of those episodes where everything comes together. The perfect bad movie, the perfect jokes.

A lot of the episodes are free on YouTube, there’s no reason not to watch.

Watching

A conversation that often comes up around art is: Should I enjoy art made by terrible people? For me, the TLDR is an overwhelming: Yes. Art can have meaning separate from it’s creator. If you disagree with that statement you are most likely the most annoying person in the room at any given moment.

The more nuanced answer is a little more complicated. For me the most important question when I approach a piece made by a terrible person is whether or not the piece is good. And this where people get tore up because art is subjective!

I have no problem boycotting anything J.K. Rowling has made because I don’t like Harry Potter at all. But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to enjoy “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson despite his all but proven-in-a-court-of-law pedophilia. His music is good, I’m going to listen to it.

The thing people forget is that any medium (film, music, painting) is amoral. Only myself as a consumer assign it a moral value. It’s moral value is effected by many things but a large part is context around the creator. Back to Michael Jackson; I know he was a creep, I have take that in mind when listening to his music. Man in the Mirror isn’t changed by that context. J.K. Rowling is an open TERF so that context is in mind when reading Harry Potter and that can affect how I perceive the themes in the books. The themes get overpowered by how shitty Rowling is.

This is a spectrum and the feelings are fluid. I reserve the right to have a different opinion tomorrow. I am a 38yo man who was raised in the south in the 90’s/00’s. I have not always had the best opinions or even the most moral responses to art. For me to close my mind to new information and to the possibility of changing flies in the face of growth.

Noam Chomsky may have been besties with Epstein but Manufacturing Consent is a monumental essay. Dave Chappell has turned TERF but For What It’s Worth will never not be hilarious. Dina Ross may have turned her back on her gay fans but I’m Coming Out will always be a queer anthem. Mel Gibson might be an anti-sematic asshole but goddamn, Apocalypto is a great movie.

I was reading Letterboxd reviews for Apocalypto and a lot of people can not bring themselves to like the movie because it was co-written and directed by Mel Gibson. One review even went so far to say that Gibson made this movie entirely because he wanted to torture brown bodies on screen. This I feel is extreme.

Most negative opinions are upset that the representation of Mayan culture isn’t entirely historically accurate. I find this opinion fascinating. It ties back to the (honestly recent) argument that some have; that people should not write about groups they have no intimate knowledge of. Men can’t write women characters, straight people shouldn’t write queer characters etc ad infinitum. To that I have to ask if these people even like stories.

The song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is a song about an angry southern man who takes a rebel stand against the north not because of any strong beliefs about slavery but because the Yankees took everything from him.

This song was written by a Canadian man in the 1970s. It’s character study. A story. It is not a reflection of any beliefs held by Robbie Robertson.

I digress because it highlights how people now see every movie, book and song as a proclamation of political opinions. People hated Saltburn because its politics are jumbled but forgot to enjoy it as a story. As a character study.

That’s what Apocalypto is: A good story. It is so obvious to me that Gibson is so focused on metaphor and parable that historical accuracy is entirely inconsequential to the overall movie. So I see very little point in judging it from that angle.

It certainly has its failings as a movie. There’s weird slow motion bits that give the movie a laggy feeling. Some scenes go on far too long. As a result the movie is about 20mins too long. It even has unnecessary flashbacks to events that happened earlier in the movie² .

However, it has some monumental achievements as a movie. An entirely brown and indigenous cast speaking a dead language and acting their fucking asses off. The sets and the costuming, minimal (obvious) digital FX give this movie a visceral attack on the senses. It’s story is so simple that you can watch the file without subtitles and understand everything that is happening.

The story brings me back to the criticisms concerning how Mayan culture is depicted. I’m sorry but this movie isn’t about Mayan culture. This is fantasy. It’s like someone criticizing 2001: A Space Odyssey for not being an accurate representation of the early aughts. The fall of Mayan culture is a setting for a story, Gibson’s twisted parable of modern society.

So no, I don’t think it’s worth disregarding the great work of hundreds of people solely because of Gibson.

It is however entirely valid to throw out all of Woody Allen’s filmography because he’s a protected, unfunny, pedophile. Fuck that guy.
What? I contain multitudes.

Other Notables

** “On her Tuesday show, Owens quipped that, if Erika Kirk had been killed instead of Charlie—and if Charlie then acted as Erika Kirk is acting now in the wake of his assassination—he would be on trial for his wife’s murder.”

** “Bad Bunny’s attack on MAGA was much more cutting. He demonstrated genuine family values and an authentic culture, one that is not so fragile as to be defined in opposition to a “lesser” culture.”

** “Your rich leaders grow richer while you die in swamp GI” is so fucking hard.

1  Mike was lead writer for MST3K long before he was host.

2  A major pet peeve of mine.