A full blast of contemporary American culture

Michael writes:

Don't be the guy who . . . Thinks Wes Anderson films are "too precious" and overrated.

Be the guy who . . . Owns at least one comedy with Owen Wilson on DVD. It will come in handy someday, I promise.

On the first count, I think I'm in pretty safe territory. I'm quite fond of Anderson's entire filmography, though I do find The Life Aquatic to be significantly less focused, funny and sharp than the rest. But here's my question: Can we count the Wes Anderson movies as "Owen Wilson comedies?" I mean, I thought Wedding Crashers was reasonably funny once, but it's not something I'd want to watch again, let alone buy. I like to think I keep my DVD collection stocked with only the best and the brightest (except that copy of Death Wish 2 my brother gave me). Dodgeball was pleasently absurd, but again, it's one of those movies that's funny once, or maybe once every few years. But while I certainly consider The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore to be "funny" movies, they're not comedies in the traditional sense, or at least not what I expect the average filmgoer (whomever this hypothetical $9.50 seat-occupying apathetic median audience member might be) would conjure up upon hearing the word.

And speaking of average movie goers and fussed-over media collections, one of the posters over at the delightfully elitist movie crit blog Reverse Shot (think of it as Ain’t It Cool for young Film Snobs, with obscure art film references and polysyllabic, academic ramblings replacing comic book allusions and ellipses) takes deadly aim at mass cinema, perfectly capturing what it feels like to stick your head out into the sunny air of fluff film after long periods spent in the stuffy caves of obscurantism:

My life is based around surrounding myself, inasmuch as I can, with things that I love or at least am pleasantly frustrated by; I limit my TV to professional sports and an occasional "Gilmore Girls," prune my CD rack regularly, and try to keep my movie-watching, outside of a sense of semi-professional obligation, honed toward my own conception of truth, grace, beauty, etc. So getting a full blast of what really constitutes contemporary American popular culture in the face can be a stunner—I often lose sight of the vast seas of shit that my little dinghy of individual obsessions is adrift in, and when it crashes through my porthole, as last night, it’s pretty debilitating. By the time I staggered onto the sidewalk I was prime recruitment fodder for Al Qaeda, a sworn enemy of the Western world that fostered such sickness.

This is a blistering, note-perfect take on how obsessive/critical impulses, much as they might drive people to seek out massive quantities of their chosen art fetish, can also insulate one from the real world viewing habits of the masses. Even irregular critics like myself see far more films than most of the folks in the multiplex on any given night, and we tend to immerse ourselves in film culture: the gossip sites, magazines, and the endless discussion amongst fellow cinephiles (and vehement blathering at patient non-cinephile friends). And the films we see tend not to be the formulaic filler that packs the multiplexes during the off seasons. There’s no way, for example, that I’ll waste time seeing Eight Below or The Pink Panther—number 2 and 3 at the box office this weekend, respectively—unless they're assigned to me. I could be at home catching up on my Hitchcock or Kurosawa, reading whatever book I’m currently working on, or any number of other far more productive activities. Like microwaving Hot Pockets. Or unfolding and refolding my socks.

And yet the obsessives and the elitists, the ones with comprehensive knowledge of David Lynch and not a clue about Desperate Housewives, are, as a general rule, the ones who get to be the critics. I’m not complaining, of course; there’s nothing wrong with the well-versed being given the opportunity to comment authoritatively on a subject, but it also falls to those of us blessed with the opportunity to comment on our favorite mediums—even occasionally—to remember that there’s an audience on the other end of the printing press (or server), and it’s likely that most of them did not spend last weekend catching up on their Antonioni.