Very Bad Things
Very Bad Thingsi is an exercise in deconstructing that "lots and lots of houses out of cheap, shitty materials such as strand-board and vinyl" way of life, at a time when such deconstruction wasn't really fashionable. Or, to be more careful with words, at a time when the recent fashion still retained all the carefree, "good humor" playfulness and none of the utterly desperate, enraged, hopeless fury seen today. You know, that time of your underwater death during which the kids holding you under still seem to be playing at it. That time before September 11 2001.
Cameron Diaz is the utterly broken if completely useless automaton with the ridiculous script, or to quote :
I am not to be common, Kyle, ok? I am a creature like no other. I know that. I am a creature like no other. And I will not -- I willnot be common.
[...]
I've waited 27 years, ok? 27 years I have focused and prepared to walk down that aisle, and I will not be derailed. I will not be embarrassed, and I will not be denied! So tomorrow, I am walking down that aisle, come hell or high fucking water!
What happens when you put a lot of pressure on women to behave according to an ideal which is the counterpart to a male role that no longer exists ?ii O hey, let's all agree women suck and such harpies they are! Because clearly the spring overextended for lack of a pinion is at fault for being... too springy! And what lacking pinions anyway!!1
In which spirit, theiii "men" are not only exactly representative of "men" as an ideal construct in the '90siv but incredibly amusing. They have all the force, decisiveness and general virility of your average fat nine year old. They have all the life experience and structural solidity of a rape victim, one hair tweak away from finding salvation in "personal development"/MLM/"positivity" and whatnot. They're just perfect to fill that new Project Manager position.
Oh, they also kill some people. It was sort-of an accident. Throughout.
———- 1998, by Peter Berg, with Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz. [↩]
- Here's a thought : Roxy, aka Hurrem Sultan, aka "my love of the slanted brow" was the first woman to marry a sultan in two centuries. Because she was also the first slave to be freed from the harem in the same interval. Because no, it does most emphatically not follow that the mother of your children has to be either your wife or free.
But then again, it's also not exactly easy keeping the shit together. Suleyman didn't manage, for all the lawgiving magnifico quality to him. [↩]
- Five! They need five of the derps to balance out one woman. [↩]
- Massively overrepresented Jews, nobody is black, office working pencildicks, that sorta thing. [↩]
