Domenic Sherony

CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media Studies through the Web

 

Tom Reinartz

 

Final Project

 

Pop Culture in: Full Circle

 

Seinfeld. The Shawshank Redemption. Grey’s Anatomy. Death to Smoochy. Three’s Company. Rounders. None of these movies seemingly have any correspondence to one another. Except the fact that they all have actors. And they’re all written in a contemporary fashion. And they all involve certain similar elements. And these elements might contribute to the overall culture of the time. And, at the same time, this culture would in turn re-fuel these productions with the elements they need to keep going, until such a point was reached where these elements began taking from one another and applying it to their own, in a seemingly unique and original fashion. Except that’s not entirely true. Pop culture, in this day and age, thrives off of its own ability to derive material and concepts from its past and its current subjects. As a result, material becomes less original outside the context, and more reliant upon the people of that culture to understand where the material comes from.

Reservoir Dogs, a film by Quentin Terantino, is widely acclaimed for its originality, its dialogue, and its cutting edge humor. These very aspects help to illustrate the issue at hand – pop culture existing only as a reference to itself. The following lines are from the very introduction of the movie (I apologize for the longevity of the quote,

and feel it necessary to warn that the upcoming selection contains several adult references

as well as adult language):

MR. PINK: "Like a Virgin" is all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The whole song is a metaphor for big dicks.

MR. BLUE: No it's not. It's about a girl who is very vulnerable and she's been fucked over a few times. Then she meets some guy who's really sensitive--

MR. PINK: --Whoa...whoa...time out Green bay. Tell that bullshit to the tourists.

JOE: (looking through his address book) Toby...who the fuck is Toby? Toby...Toby...think...think...think...

MR. PINK: It's not about a nice girl who meets a sensitive boy. Now granted that's what "True Blue" is about, no argument about that.

MR. ORANGE: Which one is "True Blue?"

NICE GUY EDDIE: You don't remember "True Blue?" That was a big ass hit for Madonna. Shit, I don't even follow this Tops In Pops shit, and I've at least heard of "True Blue."

MR. ORANGE: Look, asshole, I didn't say I ain't heard of it. All I asked was how does it go? Excuse me for not being the world's biggest Madonna fan.

MR. BROWN: I hate Madonna.

MR. BLUE: I like her early stuff. You know, "Lucky Star," "Borderline" – but once she got into her "Papa Don't Preach" phase, I don't know, I

tuned out.

MR. PINK: Hey, fuck all that, I'm making a point here. You're gonna make me lose my train of thought.

JOE: Oh fuck, Toby's that little china girl.

MR. WHITE: What's that?

JOE: I found this old address book in a jacket I ain't worn in a coon's age. Toby what? What the fuck was her last name?

MR. PINK: Where was I?

MR. ORANGE: You said "True Blue" was about a nice girl who finds a sensitive fella. But "Like a Virgin" was a metaphor for big dicks.

MR. PINK: Let me tell ya what "Like a Virgin”'s about. It's about some cooze who's a regular fuck machine. I mean all the time, morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.

MR. BLUE: How many dicks was that?

MR. WHITE: A lot.

MR. PINK: Then one day she meets a John Holmes motherfucker, and it's like, whoa baby. This mother fucker's like Charles Bronson in "The Great Escape." He's diggin’ tunnels. Now she's gettin this serious dick action, she's feelin something she ain't felt since forever. Pain.

JOE: Chew? Toby Chew? No.

MR. PINK: It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt. Her pussy should be

Bubble-Yum by now. But when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts like the first time. The pain is reminding a fuck machine what is was like to be a virgin. Hence, "Like a Virgin." (Terantino)

During this time, the camera is panning around the cast, giving us an image of each member of this motley crew as they share breakfast at a diner. The audience does not know what they’ve gathered for, nor do they actually know their names. All the audience has right now is men in black-and-white business suits discussing “Like a Virgin.”

            To truly understand that scene, however, a greater comprehension of pop culture is necessary. For starters, an observer has to know who Madonna is. One would have to know that she’s a musician of some sort, and that she’s been popular enough to at least release five singles: “Lucky Star”, “Borderline”, “Papa Don’t Preach”, “True Blue”, and “Like a Virgin”. Of those songs, knowledge of the lyrics of “Like a Virgin” is necessary. At the very least, he or she would need to know the refrain, “Like a virgin / Touched for the very first time…” (Madonna). For those keeping score at home, Mr. Pink said “dick” nine times in his recounting of the woman in “Like a Virgin”.

There’s more at hand beyond Madonna. An observer would have to know what “Tops in Pops” gets at (the artists at the top of the pop charts). He or she would need to know who John Holmes and that he sports a rather large penis This person would need to understand the significance actor Charles Bronson played in the 1963 World War 2 film, The Great Escape: He was Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski, a prisoner of war nicknamed “The Tunnel King.” The observer would need to be familiar with Bubble-Yum and its popularity as a bubble gum at the time. These surface scratching moments covered in a two minute piece of cinematography.

So a movie made a couple of references in two minutes to a few things that happened in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. So what? Who cares? What’s the big deal? It’s not like it’s hurting anyone, and it’s not like there aren’t other movies out there that can a person could see if he or she doesn’t like Reservoir Dogs.

That kind of mentality is, actually, what further drives this point. Movies, television, radio…pop culture as a whole is one big circle of derivation. As this circle of derivation continues further, it becomes less and less likely that both an abject visitor from outside the circle would recognize the reality of what was occurring, or would really remotely understand the nature of the intent within these scenes, shots, and dialogue. Furthermore, as people become more and more accustomed to these series of derivations and integrated into the society, they actually fail to recognize the routine that is being played, and often mistake facsimile for originality.

 Let’s take a look at another movie – Swingers, a movie about guys who party and pick up ladies. Vince Vaughn’s breakout role. Some time into the movie, the Swingers are found in a retro-hip coffee shop, talking about the merits of particular shots and scenes in movies. After discussing Goodfellas and the merits of Quentin Terantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Rob makes the remark, “…What’s the big deal? Everyone steals from everyone. That’s movies” (Favreau).

During that very scene, the camera is panning around the cast in a similar (I daresay exact) manner to the scene in Reservoir Dogs discussed earlier. Furthermore, the subsequent shots and scene unfold in another utterly similar shot to Reservoir Dogs as the

swingers walk, in classy party suits and sporting sunglasses, to their next party destination. Now, while this derivation may be fully intended, it also typically goes unrecognized, despite the fact that the characters were literally talking about the movie and those scenes seconds beforehand.

Perhaps the best embodiment of this total culture absorption is found in South Park. South Park, in short, is an animated television show featuring the antics of one town as a new event, action, or information changes the very way people live in each and every episode. The focal point was initially around four children, but has since expanded to include many more members ranging from parents and family to classmates and friends. The comedy of South Park takes the pop-culture circle to an extreme; each episode focuses on some aspect of current society and exploits this to the point of ridicule. Example: In a recent episode, one of the parents decided her child’s personality was too disrespectful and out of control. She consulted doctors, who told her the only way to get her child back to a normal level of respectful level of behavior would be to acquire the aid of reality television nannies. Nanny 911 was first called in, and within minutes she was panicking and running for her life. Britain’s Super Nanny arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, where the audience next saw her in a mental institution. Shortly thereafter, we learn that this boy has turned every “successful” Reality TV nanny into a psych-ward patient shortly after her arrival. Thinking she was out of hope, the mother turned to the last possible Reality TV source available – The Dog Whisperer’s Cesar Millan. Cesar comes to the home and trains the child in the exact way he would train a dog. And in the end, it is the only method that gets results.

Satirical messages aside, the viewer needs to understand one thing more than anything else to comprehend the occurrences in this episode: 1990’s-2000’s pop culture has a fixation with reality TV. Satirists Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the guys behind South Park) recognize this, find it to be completely ridiculous, and use everything within their power to make fun of that, even if it means comparing nannies and child attitude to rehabilitating dog behavior. What South Park manages to do each episode, though, is explain each reference and joke during the episode. In the previous example, each Nanny was prefaced with a brief explanation (using a mocking commercial-esque announcer) with what was going on. That Cesar Millan works with dogs is made blatantly clear to the audience. While this breaks the cycle of possible ignorance that a viewer may retain when watching the show, it still heavily relies on pop-culture to exist so that it has jokes and sources to derive material from. In short, from something that seemingly broke the circle of derivation that is pop-culture, the show is actually even more dependent upon that circle because the entire material for each episode (and thus the contract that continues their production) is based entirely upon the material that is produced in the culture around it. The irony is that at the same time, the show mocks every aspect of this culture to the point where it is seemingly ludicrous that people would act this way. In many ways, it’s as if Trey and Matt would love to see the society change, even though it would mean their show could no longer function.

In The Myth of Total Cinema, André Bazin wrote “Every new development added to the cinema must, paradoxically, take it nearer and nearer to its origins. In short, the cinema has not yet been invented!” This statement applies to pop culture in a similar fashion; every original idea added to the circle must bring the culture back to its roots. As the industry thrives and transforms television shows and actors into forms of product placement and media attention, that same industry will take those concepts, ideas, and actions and work them back in. That pop-culture will die someday is simply inaccurate; pop-culture will, if ever so mysteriously, continue to survive as long as there’s a culture around for it to continue from. An immortal creature has been created, a creature that thrives off of its own reproduction.

Source Citation

 

1. Reservoir Dogs. Dir. Quentin Terantino. Perf. Harvey Kitel, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen. Artisan, 1992
2. Swingers. Dir. Jon Favreau. Perf. Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Heather Graham, Ron Livingston, Patrick Van Horn.