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Bridgewater Review

Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 3

Apr-1992 Comedy and Perversity: Some American Films of the 1980s Michael Boyd Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Boyd, Michael (1992). Comedy and Perversity: Some American Films of the 1980s. Bridgewater Review, 9(1), 2A-5A. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol9/iss1/3

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. A ~ut fiftee~ years'ago I register while the clerk's back is started keepinglists of all turned. Later, after checking into I saw. Although I a motel with money from the probably go to theater less now office Christmas fund (most than ever, one or twice a month, subsequent expenditures are with VCRs and cable I may be handled by plastic), Charlie gets handcuffed by Michael Boyd • Department ofEnglish watching more movies than ever before. to the bed for a session of mildly kinky sex. It's pretty depressing, but usually I can find comedies that deal satirically with various The ride could end here - Lulu is going to maybe ten movies a year that I would want features of the "me ." The humor in visit her mother in Pennsylvania and to watch again. As I look over my list of these films is often dark, and our reactions suggests that Charlie catch a bus home ­ one hundred films from 1980-1989, two are often complex, uncertain: should we be but it's only Friday and Charlie is free until things become apparent: laughing at this or not? These are comedies Monday morning. I. There is a higher percentage of by virtue of their tone and their happy Lulu has provided Charlie with his American films on the list than in the endings, but these endings partake of a kind fantasy of transgression ("Boy, I'm going to previous two , roughly fifty percent. of perverse undercutting that renders them have to write this down," he gleefully says I don't think this is because I've gotten too problematic. Perverse in the sense of being to himself in the shower), and now it's his lazy to read subtitles. [Fassbinder died, and "willfully determined or disposed to go tum to act out her dream of domesticity. Bunuel and Truffaut, of course. But British counter to what is expected or desired: Lulu's real name, it turns out, is Audrey, films have become more interesting.] contrary." These films give us new ways to and for her mother and her classmates at a Mainly I think the shift is caused by more look at ourselves and our times. high school reunion, Charlie pretends to be American filmmakers doing the kind of Several comic heroes in American films her husband. Everything is kept light. quirky little movies that came from Europe of the past decade taste the joys of trans­ Charlie survives what he can only imagine in the and - thematically gression, of a walk on the wild side. as the worst catastrophe when Audrey irreverent, formally audacious works by Leaving the comforts and complacencies of produces his lost wallet. Her fantasy of a independent directors who had more or less home, they go forth to encounter the reality normal life seems to have a fair chance of complete control over what they put on of experience, which is slowly or swiftly becoming true as the two discover a real film. I recently read an article that claimed transformed into their own worst nightmare. attachment. that the 1970s were the heyday of the Yuppies are especially vulnerable. In Enter Ray (Ray Liotta), Audrey's high American art film. The writer goes on to Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986), a school sweetheart, just out of prison after a claim that a film like Bob Rafelson's Five young stockbroker named Charlie (Jeff five-year stretch for armed robbery. A Easy Pieces couldn't be made today. This Daniels) meets Lulu (Melanie Griffith) jealous and impish psychopath, Ray shows is all clearly nonsense. If Barton Fink and when he attempts to leave a diner in both Charlie and Audrey that they are not got made last year Manhattan without paying for his lunch. who they say they are: Charlie's not a and were fairly well distributed, things can't Lulu spots him as a closet rebel, offers him happily married man on a lark but is be all that . This kind of thinking a ride back to his office but, with his unhappily divorced, living an empty life in belongs to a nostalgia for the I960s and the reluctant cooperation, abducts him instead. an all but empty house. It is Audrey who is 1970s that is very much a part of the subject Lulu is a kook, "a wild thing," as the music married - to Ray. "You look like a TV matter for some comic films in the 1980s. on the soundtrack announces. When they couple," shreiks Ray, and the movie shifts 2. A large number of films on my list are stop at a liquor store, she cleans out the into high gear, taking along its elements of

12A Review screwball comedy but mixing them with a "Why me? What have I done?" He does concerns of the decade - the dangers of real holdup, complete with gun and Ray's well to address his question to the camera, sexuality, especially on the singles scene ­ manic violence. because it is clear that the man behind the the line appeals to our sense ofjustice even Charlie and Audrey manage to escape camera is the Jehovah responsible for his as it undercuts that appeal with its self-pity. from Ray and return to Charlie's home, but afflictions. As if to underline this point, Paul may be just a nice guy looking for a Ray follows them in a stolen station wagon, Scorsese himself appears in one scene in the good time, but his narcissism, reflected by a tired symbol of middleclass respectability. film, again from on high, directing spot­ his repeated trips to various bathrooms to As if to impress upon Charlie that he should lights on the dancers in a punk nightclub ­ stare at himself in the mirror, prevents our never leave home, Ray handcuffs him now a scene in which Paul barely escapes sympathetic identification. to the kitchen sink. Charlie breaks free and receiving a Mohawk haircut. (He had Marrieds in the 1980s aren't immune to inadvertently kills Ray with his own knife. gained admittance to the club with some the dangers of deviation. Lost in America It's as if we are suddenly thrown into difficulty only after listening to the features a couple of dinks (dual-income-no­ another movie, but then there is a switch bouncer/doorman quote from Kafka's kids: remember?) who give up their jobs back at the end, when Audrey returns to the parable "Before the Law." Paul might have and their "lifestyles" and hit the diner where it all began, dressed in "re­ expected this immersion in a Kafkaesque open road in a Winnebago. David Howard spectable" clothes and comes to fetch world because he had learned earlier that (, who also wrote and Charlie in a station wagon, wood-panelled "different rules apply when it gets late. It's directed) quits his $100,OOO-a-year job in no less. like, after hours.) advertising in a fit of pique after he fails to A cautionary tale about the dangers of Most of the film is taken up with Paul get an anticipated promotion and is told he leaving the straight and narrow? It would simply trying to get home. His frustration will be transferred to New York. His wife, seem so, and yet certainly nothing about peaks when he finally Linda (Julie Hagerty), somewhat bored by Charlie's life is made to seem very desir­ finds someone _ who will the direction their lives seemed to be taking, able. When asked by a colleague what give him sub- 7\1111 way fare follows his lead, and after liquidating their makes someone like Ray tick, Charlie tries only to dis- cover that considerable assets, they go forth to to sum up his experience with a formula: this stranger's girlfriend encounter America, to "touch Indians," as "Better a live dog than a dead lion." We has just com- mitted David tells their friends. As they leave the can't help but think that Charlie really suicide. It's pretty clear city in their newly acquired mobile home wants it both ways. that the girlfriend is Marcy, and Paul's - "Born to be Wild" on the soundtrack ­ David affirms his kinship with a passing Martin Scorsese's After Hours and Albert rudeness to her is at least indirectly the cause of her death. The coincidences keep bearded motorcyclist with a thumbs up Brooks' Lost in America, both from 1985, piling up, producing some pretty strange sign. The biker responds with his middle get my vote as the flat out funniest films of locutions: As Paul says, if the two women finger. the decade, and both direct their comic sound similar, " that's because they're the energies toward punishing their yuppie Heading east, their first stop is Las Vegas, same person and they're both dead!" This heroes for attempting to escape everyday where they plan to renew their marriage death, as the one in Something Wild, comes life. In After Hours a word processor, Paul vows to commemorate the beginnings of a as a shock because we have been respond­ (Griffm Dunne), meets Marcy (Rosanna new life. Linda, however, slips out of their ing to the comedy. The shock is softened, Arquette) in a late-night Manhattan diner, room in the middle of the night, discovers however, by the surreal events that are and she gives him her phone number. she is a compulsive gambler, and loses their increasingly divorced from reality. Thinking he might like to pursue the entire saving, their "nestegg," playing acquaintance, he gives her a call. She Much of the humor here stems from roulette. invites him over to Soho. His last $20 bill Paul's unshakable incredulity. He calls the David tries to sell the casino owner the flies out the window on the taxi ride down, police to report that his life is being idea that he should return their money as beginning a relentless procession of threatened by a mob of local tenants who part of a promotional campaign. If he disasters that will end some eight hours have decided that he is the burglar who has doesn't seem to realize how hopeless this is, later when he falls from a moving van in been pillaging the neighborhood and he perhaps it is because in the world of front of his office building just in time to go cannot believe it when they hang up on advertising, anything is possible, and he is to work.. him. He keeps expecting the rules of the unwilling to acknowledge that he has left daytime world to remain operative: "I just The punishments that Paul receives are this world behind. wanted to leave my apartment and meet a too methodically administered to lack Brooks never really attempts to distance nice girl, and now I've got itT' design. At one point we see him from on himself from the characters. David is the A covert reference to one of the dominant high as he falls on his knees and asks, same mixture of chutzpah and anxiety that I Spring 1992 3A Brooks himself projects off-screen. He involve. The final sequence is perhaps the letting the camera run, it imposes upon its never relaxes, buy he can look with some most abstract road movie ever filmed, a material a very strict rhythm: Each scene amusement at the predicaments he creates three-minute trip across America, via the within the three titled parts of thefilm ends for himself. And there is none of the interstates, set to the music of "New York, with the marked punctuation of a cut to spooky mixture of comedy and terror that is New York," as sung by Frank Sinatra, black. Film comedy always depends upon found in Scorsese and Demme. No one will whose political shift from the Kennedys in the establishment of a comic rhythm, die in this movie, and the poke in the nose the 60s to in the is whether it is the meticulously planned David receives from a crazed truckdriver perhaps emblematic of a national confusion sightcgags of the silent era or the perfectly serves only to bring him to his senses and to of values. timed line of dialogue in the Hollywood save his marriage, which was in danger of What seems most distinctive about these screwball comedies of the and . disintegrating when it looked as if he was three movies is the wide range of ideologi­ Jarmusch discovers another source of comic going to force Linda to pay for her trans­ cal responses that they permit and perhaps rhythm by holding a shot just slightly gression at the gaming tables for the rest of encourage. Culturally hip, Demme, longer than he should. We are perhaps her life. Scorsese, and Brooks each ridicule twenty minutes into the film before we see The couple's luck is not all bad. At one middleclass complacency even while they how this works. point a highway patrolman doesn't give provide culturally square, politically Willie (John Lurie) is a Hungarian­ them a speeding ticket after Linda tells him conservative "messages" with happy American living in the most depressing that David's favorite movie is . endings that, despite a deeply felt cynicism, apartment in and devoting "Really! It's mine, too!" Never mind that seem to present wholesale sell-out as the what little energy he has to severing all his the officer's motorcycle is provided by the only sensible course of action. ethnic ties. He has no visible means of state, or that David's cross-country escape The last two comedies I wish to discuss support, but that is hardly a problem, since was to have been funded by the advertising are Jim Jarmusch's his needs are so few - a frozen dinner, a industry, both men are not entirely wrong in (1984) and David Lynch's Blue Velvet black-and-white TV set, maybe a movie or saying they've modeled their lives after (1986). They are, it seems to me, simply a poker game with his only friend Eddie. those of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. the best American movies of the 1980s: in Enter Eva (Eszter Balint), a cousin from As David points out to Linda, even those part because they analyze nostalgia without Budapest who needs a place to stay for a two 1960s iconoclasts had their nestegg, in being drenched in it; in part because each few days until she can go to Cleveland to the form of a large cache of drugs, stashed creates its own idiom, so that when we live with her Aunt Lotte. Willie isn't very in their gas tanks. leave the movie theater, we see things as if nice to Eva, but she finally wins him over, The couple make it to a trailer park in they were framed by Lynch's camera or somewhat, by demonstrating her abilities as northern Arizona, where they begin the day Jarmusch's rhythms. Each, in its own way, a shoplifter. Part One ends with Eva looking for jobs. At the unemployment responds to contemporary reality by leaving for Cleveland and Willie and Eddie office, David discovers he is a bit reflecting the middle by way of the mar­ having a beer together in Willie's apart­ overqualified for the available jobs in the gins. Each, in its own way, encourages ment. Both men move slightly forward in area. He accepts a position, however, as a repeated viewings by virtue of its richness, their chairs as if they are about to speak. crossing guard at an elementary school. even as it resists an easy first reading by Nothing happens - cut to black. Trust me: Linda finds work at a fast-food restaurant. virtue of the intellectual and emotional It is hilarious. The film is filled with little After one day of work they decide to stop demands it makes upon the viewer. moments like this, when the dramatic utterance is lost as the opportunity for this nonsense and go to New York, where Stranger than Paradise is low-budget, speech passes. I want to say, however, that David will try to get his old job back, black-and-white, "avant-garde," but fun. It regardless of the humiliation this might has the look of some of the Andy Warhol films of the 1960s, but instead of simply the film is about talk, a sort of My Dinner this fIlm than the others, although it is While most film critics were quick to praise with Andre (1981) with characters who available on video), but say that magic does the film's originality and the power of its have nothing to say. enter into the mundane and that the cool, dream-like images, several, like Roger As in the other films I've described, there unflappable Willie finally does discover Ebert, had strong moral objections to the is an attempt to leave the sterility of that life contains surprises. combination of elements of pain and everyday life. We discover that both Willie To simplify, if Stranger than Paradise degradation with what often seemed a and Eddie have been thinking about Eva for shows us a world drained of color, Blue sophomoric sense of humor. For Ebert, months, not by what they say but by their Velvet presents the garish colors of a what Lynch does to his leading lady sudden decision to pay her a visit in carnival world. Both films are (Isabella Rosselini) is more sadistic than Cleveland. In the most touching scene in expresssionistic in that they make us see what his maniacal villain, Frank Booth the movie, the guys surprise Eva at her job things not as they are or as they are pre­ (Dennis Hopper), does to her. As Ebert in a fast-food restaurant, and Eddie is sented by film "realism." In Lynch's film puts it, "What's worse, to inflict pain upon inordinately pleased that she remembers there is a kind of hyper-realistic attention to someone or to stand back and find the him. Even Willie loses a bit of his cool minute detail even while its melodramatic whole thing funny?" when he shows some jealousy over Eva's mode is excessive and gives a cartoon-like But Lynch doesn't find the whole thing new boyfriend. What these tourists quality to its presentation of funny. It isn't funny when Jeffrey, after his discover in their travels, however, is that both innocence and experi­ first encounter with the dark side, asks why nothing ever changes. There's nothing to ence: The there is so much evil in the world. Nor is it see, nothing to do. "You know, it's funny," good funny when Sandy replies by describing her says Eddie, "you come to some place new, - people of dream of the return of the robins in the and everything looks the same," and 7\"" Lumberton spring, with the birds dispelling the Jarmusch's camera confirms the truth of belong in a -7\1111 darkness and bringing with them a world of this observation. Most of the time in mawkish sweetness and light. But this scene pre­ Cleveland is spent playing cards and family sit-com, and the pares for the film's parody of a happy watching . When the three bad people are straight ending, in which the forces of evil are characters finally decide to venture outside from hell. destroyed, fathers recover from strokes, the house for some sightseeing, they go to Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) comes home mothers are reunited with sons, and life is a look at Lake Erie. But it is the middle of a from college to help with the family weekend cook-out, complete with robins. snowstorm, and all they see is an all­ business after his father has a stroke. But the robin shown close-up has a bug in engulfmg whiteness. Never has nihilism Walking across an empty lot one day on the its beak. On seeing this, Jeffrey's bird-like presented such a comic face, except perhaps way to visit his father in the hospital, he aunt says with disgust, "Oh, I could never in Samuel Beckett, but the Irish author kept discovers a human ear. Although Jeffrey eat a bug," even as she shoves another bite on talking even after demonstrating there dutifully reports his discovery to the local of food into her mouth. The humor of the was nothing to say. Jarmusch shows us authorities, he and a police detective's scene is inextricably bound up with the what it is really like to come to the end of daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), conduct their horror of the discovery that even robins are words. own investigation. Jeffrey, however, soon predators. Like the characters in 's leaves his partner behind as the film If the 1980s come to be seen (to borrow a films - Drugstore Cowboy, (1989) and My becomes the story of his initiation into the phrase from an Auden poem that summa­ Own Private Idaho (1991) - Willie and darker areas of human experience, and he is rizes the 1930s) as "a low, dishonest Eddie express the problem of how to spend forced to acknowledge his own complicity decade," a large portion of its dishonesty time, how to live outside the mainstream of in the evil that surrounds him. probably derives from its hypocritical American life. Some essential aspect of Even though Lynch frequently interrupts attempt to maintain a rigid separation of the their acculturation just didn't take. They this story with a joke, it would be a mistake light and the dark, of "us" and "them," to seem to want to enjoy the pleasures of to conclude, "Oh, it's just a comedy." Even call the placid surface "reality" and to tourism but finally just don't know how. more than the other films mentioned here, demonize the darkness, to tell us we can Florida at the end of the film, is represented Blue Velvet attempts to shock us with its visit the wild side without having to live by a pair of sunglasses and a dreary motel violence. In this case the violence stems there. Some comic filmmakers of the room. The austerity of style here reflects a from a graphic visual and verbal depiction decade expose this hypocrisy by extracting real emptiness. I won't give away the of deviant sexuality, mainly sado-masochis­ a price for the laughter they invoke.~ ending (I suspect fewer people have seen tic in nature but not restricted to that.

Spring 1992 SA I