Clerks III a powerful “the 90s are back!” moment
This is, by a wide margin, the most wretched “I have to stop learning things this way” moment I’ve had in all my years on Tumblr.
Who’s directing? Oh my god Kevin Smith is directing! How can that be?
Reminder the theatrical release of the original Clerks he owes his reputation to was, like so much other acclaimed American cinema of the 1990s, the Harvey Weinstein cut
Okay, I don’t really have a dog in this race, but watching how a certain species of fanboy has reacted to the Kevin Smith He-Man sequel pulling a bait and switch, plastering Prince Adam all over the promotional media, then blowing him up in the first episode and making Teela and Evil-Lyn the co-protagonists of the front half of season one has honestly been funny as hell.
Like, my bro, my dude, I understand the feeling of not getting what you paid for, but the part where the fact that the substitute lead is a girl bothers you more than the fact that you got baited in the first place? You’re not supposed to say that part out loud.
I mean, you’ve gotta know you’re ruining it for everybody else, right? That every valid criticism of the show – of which there are doubtless many – is going to get completely drowned out by a handful of greasy weirdos screaming at the top of their lungs about a feminist conspiracy to emasculate our beloved media icons, and that’s all everybody outside the fandom is going to hear about it, right?
(And frankly, the idea that Kevin Smith is part of this putative conspiracy is probably the funniest part. Like, have you seen the guy’s body of work?)
At the point you’re doing a female-led reboot of a show called He-Man, you either have to have something interesting to say about the whole female-led reboot phenomenon or else you’re it jumping the shark.
Also like “oh, it’s got Kevin Smith” like have you witnessed any of Kevin Smith’s creative decisions in the literally last quarter of a century?
awkward that all the genius we attributed to Kevin Smith turns out to have been Harvey Weinstein
Thinking about Entourage. First off, how did I not notice it was transparently a male Sex and the City?
Probably cause I was working with Hollywood suits at the time and I was distracted with how it was like an editorial cartoon for that world, like with Penny Arcade and vidya
(The famous actor who had a weed connection when the city was dry was Harrison Ford! The female agent who stole clients by seducing them was a real person!)
Also just post-Weinstein and broader cultural stuff, how much it was a celebration of the asshole boss (Enduring phone-throwing principals was widely valorized as the filtering first step of your career. I was filtered out.)
And how this fit with broader neoliberal themes of the time, like Ari was a huge asshole – the kinda guy who’d barge in and interrupt High Holy Day services in front of everyone to make a deal – in a way that advanced himself, but it was ultimately okay because his assholeness fed into and his glory came out of his legitimate economic function of getting his clients’ movies made and promoting their careers.
Like for decades everyone knew Harvey was the biggest asshole. And that he had the benefit of female celebrity attention. But because this passed through the economic function of production it was thought okay – he’s a jerk… in service of producing award-winning films, and women attend him… instrumentally, because he makes award-winning films. It’s from the sense his abuse was essentially sexual embezzlement that didn’t pass through legitimate ends that it can be so cleanly renounced now.