Both films are a reminder that these days creativity is about compiling previously imagined and executed texts, fulfilling the now ever-present postmodern expectation that any media text can be part of the creative toolbox. This can easily hinge on an over-the-top, relentless cut-and-paste storytelling style favored by the likes of Tarantino, but I was pleasantly surprised by these films' use of intertextuality and appropriation. Maybe we're just getting better at it and Tarantino was the unlucky guinea pig in the 90s, unable to shed his unfortunate style in the present day.
Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink), a comedy about time travel back to sometime in the 80s, relies on cultural references of the past to support its narrative but ventures into the realm of contemplating the time-space continuum through the casting of John Cusack, a man who (through no effort of his own) is a walking reference to 80s cool. He nearly single-handedly connotes an entire index of pop culture references: Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, the boombox, "I want my two dollars", fingerless gloves and kickboxing, pre-SNS romantic sentimentality among teenagers, and so much more. His aging gracefully only helps solidify these allusions.
Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn), a film based on a comic book series of the same name, celebrates its intertextuality differently. Riffing off the comic book genre, it playfully references Batman (Big Daddy's costume and demeanor), Spider-man (was Aaron Johnson cast in the role of Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass because his voice uncannily resembles that of Tobey Maguire's?), and most comically and perhaps unintentionally, Hamburglar, the fictional burger thief imagined by a long-gone McDonald's campaign. This is made possible by the film's biggest hero, Hit Girl, a potty mouthed eleven year-old who dons a cloak, mask, and purple wig while acrobatically assassinating her father's enemies.
Her costume, size, and sneakiness are a subtle reminder of this bygone era of McDonald's advertising history. Interestingly, Hamburglar himself seems to be a bastardization of the protagonist Arsole Fantüme from the French novel Arsole Fantüme, Gentleman Immoralist by Marcel Maurice and Pierre, originally published in 1901 and recently republished last year. Fantüme, like Hamburglar, wears a wide-brimmed hat, a mask, and cloak.
While none of these bear the mark of direct inspiration, their similarities are nonetheless part of an on-going creative process of constructing culture through building on the past, most likely without being conscious of it. The riffing and intermingling of styles and cultural references and the absence of a fixed center create somewhat of a feedback loop of meaning. Meanwhile, the context in which these two films were viewed -- from the private sphere of our '87 BMW and the atmosphere of the drive-in, a relic of film spectatorship -- contributes to this.
n.
Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink), a comedy about time travel back to sometime in the 80s, relies on cultural references of the past to support its narrative but ventures into the realm of contemplating the time-space continuum through the casting of John Cusack, a man who (through no effort of his own) is a walking reference to 80s cool. He nearly single-handedly connotes an entire index of pop culture references: Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, the boombox, "I want my two dollars", fingerless gloves and kickboxing, pre-SNS romantic sentimentality among teenagers, and so much more. His aging gracefully only helps solidify these allusions.
Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn), a film based on a comic book series of the same name, celebrates its intertextuality differently. Riffing off the comic book genre, it playfully references Batman (Big Daddy's costume and demeanor), Spider-man (was Aaron Johnson cast in the role of Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass because his voice uncannily resembles that of Tobey Maguire's?), and most comically and perhaps unintentionally, Hamburglar, the fictional burger thief imagined by a long-gone McDonald's campaign. This is made possible by the film's biggest hero, Hit Girl, a potty mouthed eleven year-old who dons a cloak, mask, and purple wig while acrobatically assassinating her father's enemies.
While none of these bear the mark of direct inspiration, their similarities are nonetheless part of an on-going creative process of constructing culture through building on the past, most likely without being conscious of it. The riffing and intermingling of styles and cultural references and the absence of a fixed center create somewhat of a feedback loop of meaning. Meanwhile, the context in which these two films were viewed -- from the private sphere of our '87 BMW and the atmosphere of the drive-in, a relic of film spectatorship -- contributes to this.
n.
