![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yet another lazy day at Casa Guera. Roomie has tootled off to pick up some spaghetti for lunch and dinner, and then we're in. While he's gone, I'm listening to Youtube and vacillating between dread and hope that my dentist appointment gets canceled by COVID-19 lockdown. Hope because dentist and the accompanying bill, ugh, and dread because my molar is obviously getting tetchier, and if it's nixed, I might be in for a terrible time of it.
I watched Amsterdamned last night because with a title like that, how could I not? It was a slasher flick that swears it was made in 1988, but whose fashion and hairstyles scream 1982 and Miami Vice cosplay night. Originally shot in Dutch, whoever dubbed it into English translated the dialogue into what they thought hip Americans sounded like, only they were using a slang dictionary that was fifteen years out of date and chock full of idioms used by Southerners named Cletus and Jim Bob. It was jarring but bizarrely charming, and even as I hooted and howled at the hero doing his best hardened homicide detective in a city with fewer than five homicides a year, I found myself rooting for him, and for the actor who so gamely waded into the cheese.
The high-speed chase in a VW Rabbit made me cry laughing, especially when his backup was two cops on horseback.
Cheeseball as it was, it made me nostalgic for the overall optimism of the era, when most of us thought things were on the way up and the movie bad guys lost and if somebody dropped a clanger of a pick-up line, your first thought was to roll your eyes, not to declare them a toxic, sexist asshole who should be shunned by society for their harmful -ist views. It was nice to be able to enjoy the schlock without scrutinizing every frame for a hint of -ism or thought unacceptable to the arbiters of current cultural standards.
The '80s were hardly a utopia, and I wouldn't want to go back, but God, I wish constant aimless, lashing fury hadn't become fandom's drug of choice.
I watched Amsterdamned last night because with a title like that, how could I not? It was a slasher flick that swears it was made in 1988, but whose fashion and hairstyles scream 1982 and Miami Vice cosplay night. Originally shot in Dutch, whoever dubbed it into English translated the dialogue into what they thought hip Americans sounded like, only they were using a slang dictionary that was fifteen years out of date and chock full of idioms used by Southerners named Cletus and Jim Bob. It was jarring but bizarrely charming, and even as I hooted and howled at the hero doing his best hardened homicide detective in a city with fewer than five homicides a year, I found myself rooting for him, and for the actor who so gamely waded into the cheese.
The high-speed chase in a VW Rabbit made me cry laughing, especially when his backup was two cops on horseback.
Cheeseball as it was, it made me nostalgic for the overall optimism of the era, when most of us thought things were on the way up and the movie bad guys lost and if somebody dropped a clanger of a pick-up line, your first thought was to roll your eyes, not to declare them a toxic, sexist asshole who should be shunned by society for their harmful -ist views. It was nice to be able to enjoy the schlock without scrutinizing every frame for a hint of -ism or thought unacceptable to the arbiters of current cultural standards.
The '80s were hardly a utopia, and I wouldn't want to go back, but God, I wish constant aimless, lashing fury hadn't become fandom's drug of choice.
Tags: