A lot of teen and college movies focus on the loveable jerk. That cruelty and sadism is hilarious. I like comedy, and you can't have comedy without sadism. Still I prefer stupidity to cruelty.
I don't get what the fascination with the bad boy is. The wonders that deep down he is actually good. And I think National Lampoon's Ratko: The Dictator's Son takes it to a new low. The loveable jerk is the son of a totalitarian dictator where people are murdered, raped and tortured. And he has those characteristics in addition to just wild hedonism. Yet the beautiful activist vegetarian girl find his bad boyness oh so charming. And theres so much more to her than her trying to save the world. She looooves dancing. Meanwhile the staightlace "just friends" guy, is dedicated to doing good helping the world. But hes the jerk for not giving the loveable Hitler a chance. How dare he call him a totalitarian and fascist, when deep down the tyrant is sensitive and needs to be saved by a beautiful girl. The cynicism just oozes out of it and it speaks for our generation. The activist who wants to do good is the bad guy, the dictator who wants to paaartay is loveable. I feel I'm living in Orwell's 1984, good is bad, hate is love, cruelty is kindness.
I used to complain movies were to Disney, good guys always win in fiction. Now not only do the good guys lose, the bad guys are loveable. What depresses me is not so much the movie itself, but the assumptions made about the audience cynical Generation Y. That any talk of altruism and the wider world, do--gooderism is automatically suppose to register- oh this guys no good.
06 Nov 2009, 11:54 pm
