MOVIES ABOUT FAMILY VALUES
Posted by Hello
Obscene phone call
Wearing white after labor day
SATIRE OR EXPLOITATION
Posted by Hello
Anyway I was out shopping for videos on Saturday & I bought the film Serial Mom . After watching it again I just wanted to share a few thoughts about it & some other similar films.
So Did you ever see John Waters' film Serial Mom in which Kathleen Turner plays the perfect mom like Beaver Clever's Mom except when someone upsets her she takes to making obscene phone calls & then begins killing people who hurt members of her family or who do not recycle or refuse to rewind their videos before returning them to the video store where her son works or guys who do not treat her boy crazy daughter in the way that she believes they should or the teacher who believes Kathleen Turner's son is in need of therapy & accuses of her poor parenting skills. Anyway you get the picture as the police close in on her she becomes a celebrity who has a growing fan base . The young people think of her as being cool & when she enters a punk rock grunge type club & sets a guy on fire on the stage the all girl punk band take part in burning the guy to death. It is a wickedly & delicious bit of black comedy which has similar targets for send-up like Natural Born Killers but this film is not as over the top or as brutal & vicious.
Serial Mom is like the film series The Stepfather which is also about a parent & family man who seeks perfection from others & his family & when reality settles in he feels forced to kill his new family because they are not perfect like the families on TV like Beaver's family or the family in Father Knows Best or My Three Sons or The Brady Bunch. And before he kills his new family he begins to create a new family in a nearby city to set himself up again by first murdering the father in the family he has targeted to be his family & then woos & seduces the mother of that family till he finally marries her & becomes the children's stepfather only to repeat the whole cycle again. It is also funny at times but is a much darker film than Serial Mom.
Another bizzarre little film similar to these is Parents in which a young boy discovers his parents are cannibals & what adds to the menacing mood of this film is that it takes place in the late 50's or early sixties when we assume a lot of suburbanites really did try to live their lives according to some unrealistic ideal of family life as portrayed on TV & in magazines. Anyway these are all interesting & bizzarre takes on love , romance & the quest for the ideal relationship & the ideal family situation.
Another strange take on family life & reality versus the fantasy world of the perfect TV family is the more light-hearted films The Brady Bunch & The Brady Bunch: A Very Brady Sequel. In these movies the Bradys are still as unrealistic as ever but are placed in the real world where people are not as innocent & caring as are the Bradys. In the Sequel a guy who claims to be Mrs Bradys deceased or missing former husband just shows up one day though he doesn't look anything like her dead husband Mrs Brady believes him. One of the great scenes in the movie is when the guy is fed his own magic-mushrooms & is stoned & tripping while having dinner with the Bradys.
For more on these films & especially other Cult Films see:
http://www.cultmovies.info/
www.deadrabbit.org
www.mathewlilland.com
www.theZreview.co.uk
And now I'd like to share a poem of mine which deals with the theme of art & the artist:
...ah fuck art
In a dream walking along a street
in some sad lonely city
a shadow passed over blocking out the sun
an imagined giant snail come to life
flying through the cracking China-Blue sky
revealing the sky-hooks hanging
from the Great Perpetual Cosmic machinery
& I remembered my artist friend
who gave up at twenty-five
before he really started
...ah fuck art he said
all created to entertain & distract the public
who demand the inane & the second rate
& the rest is just artsy-fartsy crap
she is a wicked devious demanding
sometimes deadly mistress
as he ripped up canvases & photos
& note-books of sketches & little poems
& one act plays for radio
tossing them into a flame-licked sooty fire-place
at least they’ll serve a purpose now
keeping out the cold winter air -
remembering his charcoal sketches oil paintings
& black & white photos of surrealistic images
of objects robbed of context
a rocking chair taking a trip
around the city on sidewalks & streets
on roof tops & fire-escapes
a face inside a hat of a man
held by the man himself
paintings of gigantic snails & slugs
flying over a city-scape of sky-scrapers
ripping into the virginal china-blue sky
& other paintings of buildings
clouds & angels hanging precariously
from sky-hooks over the heads of myopic pedestrians-
burdened by the soul of an artist & a poet
believing in love eternal
believing people were honest & forthright
working at odd-jobs as a house -painter
waiter bartender taxi driver night-watchman
clerk at a video-store or used book-store
stamping & stacking books at the city library
hanging out with the arty-bohemian crowd
trying so hard to fit in
watching foreign & arty films
reading fashionable books of the In-crowd
quoting the latest Gurus
pursuing women he would never get
just slumming just a phase
just playing a part he couldn’t understand
believing their promises of undying love
surprised as they moved on to settle down
marrying one of their own kind
too naive to realize
he didn't have the right credentials
becoming their Court Jester-
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