Hinton: Bad films can still be enjoyable

The April movie season is going to be extraordinary. ‘Fast and Furious’ comes out April 3, and… The April movie season is going to be extraordinary. ‘Fast and Furious’ comes out April 3, and ‘Crank 2: High Voltage’ is scheduled to be released on April 17, presumably to give viewers time to recover and clean up from Vin Diesel and Co., loosing the floodgates of testosterone on them two weeks earlier. Relationships will be tested ‘- ‘Why, you needy wench? Because I’m a man and you dragged me to ‘He’s Just Not That Into You.” Seats will become warm with giddy boy-dom, and wrists will weaken from excessive fist pumping.

In the middle of doing pushups to get ready, I started to hate everything written about both of these franchises. The critical community has found itself hung as to whether it should condemn Diesel and Statham’s silver-screen offerings or praise them for their ‘delightful post-modern sensibilities of pastiche and meta-film and whatnot.’ In general, reading about or discussing these movies has all the appeal of talking about how iPods affect culture or how downloading music realizes Marx’s ideal of commerce.

At first, one would suppose that the philosophical supporters of ‘Crank’ are the opposites of its detractors. In fact, however, they are of one accord. Both responses are ones of fear.

They demand these films be fit into safe categories: either thesis or cultural lowpoint. Over-thinking puts ‘Crank’ and ‘Furious’ behind the closed door of stale tract, while hatred just dismisses the films altogether so that they can no longer be considered at all. The endpoint is the same. Were such films allowed to simply exist, we risk accepting them as part of the norm. The horror.

The problem in both of these enterprises is that we have been taught that we cannot simply enjoy things. Suffering under the Aristotelian delusion that our impulses are either animal and instinctive or human and rational, we are frightened by products that appeal to our senses but not our intelligence. Wanting to be human and not a dirty animal, we are scared of things we like without having a well thought-out explanation.

It’s as if we all have a small Freud sitting on our shoulders whispering, ‘If you don’t know why, it might be because you want to bed your mother, you are scared of losing your penis and you are gay.’ If we do have an explanation for some inclination ‘- either, ‘I like it because it exemplifies the prevalent strains of contemporary thinking’ or, ‘I hate it because it is filth that corrupts the youth and lowers our standards’ ‘- then we are sure of our bearings. There is no chance our strings are being pulled by some little demon.

Modern thought has shaken off most of the remains of these outdated philosophies, but modern man is still scared of his animalistic urges.

Psych classes laugh at the idea of using Freudian psychoanalysis on a patient, and no one ever hears a classmate quoting Mill and condemning the low pleasures of his friends. Yet, we still have to defend our collector’s edition of ‘Tokyo Drift’ when prying eyes make unkind jokes.

Many would object that this is a good impulse, to reject our bestial drives. We must reject going down the mighty slippery slope and instead presenting a counterargument to our desires: ”Crank 2′ now? What’s next? Fornication in public? Eating with our feet? Running around covered in mud?’ Isn’t our sense of high taste just a delicate safeguard from devolution?

No. The logic that marries the appreciation of depictions of low acts to their emulation is flawed in its presumptions. It’s the same logic that argues that playing violent video games leads to children shooting their classmates and that argues that public displays of nudity encourage sex crimes.

None of these arguments have stood up to rigorous inspection. What’s worse, this elitism that drives individuals away from enjoying ‘Crank’ and Vin Diesel on their own terms breeds a bland and artificial culture where everything speaks only to reason.

But we are not reason alone. This April, proclaim your beast. Get ‘Fast and Furious’ and experience some ‘High Voltage.’ Don’t buy into the edict that you must either think of these films as works of art or abominable trash. Sometimes films must simply be allowed to appeal to our aesthetic and instinctive sensibilities rather than just our rational ones. As Andre Gide once wrote, ‘Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.’

E-mail Erik at ech15@pitt.edu.

‘