Basic Instinct

Basic Instinctⁱ has aged remarkably well considering it is twenty-seven years old. Can you believe that shit ? Basic Instinct is more than a quarter century old! I generally don't want to talk to girls as old as this film.

Obviously girls fucking, and especially girls mating isn't nearly as exotic, fascinating or a big deal nowadays. Now that we've fixed everyone's sex life for them, whether they wanted it fixed or not, whether they thought it was broken or not, now the pinnacles of 1992 seem... you know, ordinary urban skyline.ⁱⁱ Made of skyscrapers, of course, what the hell else would it be made of, hovels ? Like in the before times ?!

That aside, the story sticks together, Sharon Stone smiles well, Eszterhas writes well, pre-Tangerine production values work well and deliver well... There's a vague air of 1980sia indistinctly misting the corners, the over-cherche deliberate "ambiguity" towards the end grates in pre-robotics industrial product tones, but... well, what can you do ?

The corpse abundance betrays the settled circumstances of the 90s, too. Back then friendly fire was yet minimal, permitting the field to fiction. These days... who can even write about a piddly half-dozen bodybags ?! It'd be a forbidden middle -- either make it about the real events, three dozen plus randos mowed down by machine gun in an evening without thought or reason, or else go home. We can reasonably suspect no such thing as Basic Instinct will ever again be made in this language, for these reasons. Add to it the fact that it was excellent when it came out and it stayed acceptable in spite of what might as well be centuries passing over it and the bottom line comes out looking pretty good.

The independent attitudes betray the pre-female bureaucracy. Imagine that scene today where a high sexual market value female suspected of murder calmly retorts "what are you gonna do, arrest me for smoking ?" when asked not to smoke inside the police HQ. Do you think the fat uglies involved would let that slide ? Hm ? Good thing the pantsuited hilarity gave you your rights, then. Evidently you were living in squalor prior. Right ? What's this magical socialism you've built wherein it sucks being anything but an idle, dumb, fat, ugly woman nobody has any use for ?

Basic Instinct is just as toxic today as it was in 1992, but now it's toxic "for different reasons altogether" to "entirely a different set of people". Which is to say -- the lamers of 1992 morphed into the lamers of 2019 while the film stayed put. Once I put it like that it's suddenly very much worth seeing, huh ?

Enjoy.

1. 1992, by Paul Verhoeven (Joe Eszterhas), with Sharon Stone, George Dzundza, Michael Douglas. [↩]
2. Can you imagine what'll look like "ordinary urban skyline" once we're done fixing everyone's money for them, irrespective what they think of the matter ? [↩]