kontextmaschine:

So I told you my reading of Ghostbusters as an ‘80s backlash “take back the city” fantasy. Just now making tea Also Me pitched another concept: Gremlins (1984) as reactionary fable about neighborhood integration.

Start from the beginning. Gizmo’s nature is vaguely foreign, his origin vaguely urban, but more than that is the generation gap - the wise old man doesn’t care how much money he forgoes, that thing is not to be released from its cage. His son, though…

And why not, it’s cute, it’s vulnerable, it’s harmless, it’s loveable. And unless you completely deny it access to basic resources, more show up. Ones less friendly, less humble. And they demand things they shouldn’t, and if you give in – and even if you mean to hold the line they’re tricky, they’ll disguise it as reasonable requests – even just once, they’ll turn into violent hoodlums.

They’ll attack people in public, make the streets unsafe, kill little old ladies. Violence in the schools, housewives attacked in their own homes. Buildings vandalized, houses collapsing, attacks on the cops. Public recreational facilities overrun with the little monsters. They leave the theater alone but they sitthere, in their pimp jackets and caps, smoking joints, and they won’t shut up while the movie’s playing.

And how’re the Gremlins ultimately defeated? Through the solidarity of the Rust Belt white working class in the face of recession, continuing family structures by forming heterosexual mated pairs; combined with the aid of one of “the good ones” against its erstwhile brethren (the 80s were also the interracial buddy cop era).

The 1990 sequel was not about the fear that this danger would spill out from the cities but rather that it would inhibit yuppie-driven urban revitalization, though those pompous fucks kinda have it coming tho

This has been another installment of Reactionary Readings of Beloved ‘80s Movies

kontextmaschine:

You know what my favorite piece of reactionary media is?

Ghostbusters.

Hear me out, I’ve mentioned this before, but forever ago. It’s a movie about a bunch of guys who, in the go-go ’80s, give up on academia to found a startup based on cutting edge technology. They settle in gritty New York City, specifically rehabilitating decaying public safety infrastructure, and their job description is literally “drive around town with the siren on, rehabilitating once-glorious locations by imprisoning vandalous spooks”.

They clean the city up, create jobs for the black and white ethnic working class, but face resistance from pointy-headed bureaucrats. (The dickless EPA guy manages to represent both “overregulation” and “safety-threatening prisoner releases” with admirable efficiency.) Ultimately though, the meddlers have to relent in the face of their success at making the city safe for innocents, as represented by yuppie singles in their 30s.

(Ghostbusters II is about the guys making the city a safe place for those yuppies to raise kids by cleansing cultural institutions of evil influence using the power of American patriotism, while the judiciary and mayor come to accept that whatever the law or political elites might say, busting is both necessary and popular.)

Meanwhile, it’s fucking Ghostbusters.

Starting to read the first (training) half of the 1987 Full Metal Jacket as a critique of the co-option of revolutionary energy into Generation X

The point of Joker is he’s the post-60s mentality so we identify with him and that means he’s a challenge to the system, man. But the thing about the Virgin Mary sequence is the system doesn’t really care if he’ll stand up for pre- or post-60s as long as he stands up, and will openly reject others to induct him, if that’s the way the wind’s blowing

Meanwhile the actual threat to the system is Pyle not for having a worked-out ideology but just not fitting to the needs of the state and the arc up to the blanket party is about Joker coming to identify against him and not against Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

And at the end of it all he does his mission and comes back but his men are ironically identifying with mass-market culture like the Mickey Mouse Show, that’ll show ‘em

realizing the 70s/80s fear/fantasy of the original Red Dawn wasn’t that the Soviet Union would invade, it was that if they did, the liberals wouldn’t even try to stop them

this is a halfassed #reactionary readings of beloved 80s movies, but The Karate Kid was totally an incorporation of California Asian immigrants into the American fold in service of reasserting the masculine vitality of white kids pushed to the suburban edges and menaced by confident bully gangs

So I told you my reading of Ghostbusters as an ‘80s backlash “take back the city” fantasy. Just now making tea Also Me pitched another concept: Gremlins (1984) as reactionary fable about neighborhood integration.

Start from the beginning. Gizmo’s nature is vaguely foreign, his origin vaguely urban, but more than that is the generation gap - the wise old man doesn’t care how much money he forgoes, that thing is not to be released from its cage. His son, though…

And why not, it’s cute, it’s vulnerable, it’s harmless, it’s loveable. And unless you completely deny it access to basic resources, more show up. Ones less friendly, less humble. And they demand things they shouldn’t, and if you give in – and even if you mean to hold the line they’re tricky, they’ll disguise it as reasonable requests – even just once, they’ll turn into violent hoodlums.

They’ll attack people in public, make the streets unsafe, kill little old ladies. Violence in the schools, housewives attacked in their own homes. Buildings vandalized, houses collapsing, attacks on the cops. Public recreational facilities overrun with the little monsters. They leave the theater alone but they sitthere, in their pimp jackets and caps, smoking joints, and they won’t shut up while the movie’s playing.

And how’re the Gremlins ultimately defeated? Through the solidarity of the Rust Belt white working class in the face of recession, continuing family structures by forming heterosexual mated pairs; combined with the aid of one of “the good ones” against its erstwhile brethren (the 80s were also the interracial buddy cop era).

The 1990 sequel was not about the fear that this danger would spill out from the cities but rather that it would inhibit yuppie-driven urban revitalization, though those pompous fucks kinda have it coming tho

This has been another installment of Reactionary Readings of Beloved ‘80s Movies

You know what my favorite piece of reactionary media is?

Ghostbusters.

Hear me out, I’ve mentioned this before, but forever ago. It’s a movie about a bunch of guys who, in the go-go ’80s, give up on academia to found a startup based on cutting edge technology. They settle in gritty New York City, specifically rehabilitating decaying public safety infrastructure, and their job description is literally “drive around town with the siren on, rehabilitating once-glorious locations by imprisoning vandalous spooks”.

They clean the city up, create jobs for the black and white ethnic working class, but face resistance from pointy-headed bureaucrats. (The dickless EPA guy manages to represent both “overregulation” and “safety-threatening prisoner releases” with admirable efficiency.) Ultimately though, the meddlers have to relent in the face of their success at making the city safe for innocents, as represented by yuppie singles in their 30s.

(Ghostbusters II is about the guys making the city a safe place for those yuppies to raise kids by cleansing cultural institutions of evil influence using the power of American patriotism, while the judiciary and mayor come to accept that whatever the law or political elites might say, busting is both necessary and popular.)

Meanwhile, it’s fucking Ghostbusters.