I was going to dedicate this whole blog post to Odd Future, a precocious group of folk that what may well become my newfound obsession after two of them tore shit up on Fallon last night, but I realized that was the easy pitfall for a bored blogger to blog about today.
They're young, nuts, provocative, whathaveyou, Wu-Tang comparison, punk rock rap hybrid, do a whole lotta rape lyrics. Ponderings follow, opinion.
There; I just summed up what most people will write about them today, or have written about them already. I'm kind of late on this game, so eff it.
What I will say is that it's almost annoying at how precocious their leader, Tyler the Creator, is. It's not annoying, just almost. He's a pretty interesting producer, an alright rapper, and apparently alright at graphic art. But the fact that he seems like he could be a pretty neat visual filmmaker or music video director, as evidenced by the video in the first link on this post (Note: it's kind of gross, on both visceral and thematic levels, just as a warning), makes me feel quite inept. But like most of this blog, that's more about me, and less about this dude.
On that note, I'm not writing much about them because I just found out that Where the Wild Things Are is apparently playing on HBO now, meaning two things: 1) I'm gonna have to make sure my parents don't catch me getting misty-eyed over giant monsters traipsing about and 2) watching it got me sidetracked on my blog again today.
I've written about it before after I first watched it, so I don't wanna repeat myself, but I will say that for as divisive as the movie is, I think it's probably the most accurate and perfect coming-of-age story you could ever make. Spike Jonze made more sense out of monsters on an island being a realistic metaphor for what growing up means than John Hughes or John Hughes high school flick-imitators ever could*. Imagination, confusion, and sadness-without-knowing-why all balled up into one flick about finally being able to reflect on what one does and how it affects others and how the world actually works versus how you want it to work is really an amazing thing, even if you think it's a bad movie. And plenty of people do think it's bad.
I think they're wrong, but mainly because this transformation is what I spent so much of my life going through. It's not unusual that Spike Jonze makes a movie that caters (in my mind) specifically to me. I walked around with my imagination taking precedence over what the physical world provided me, and when people weren't in on my games, I got sad for no reason, and pissed people off for reasons unknown.
I'm rambling too much about a movie that deserves not to be rambled about, but experienced and quietly reflected upon, so I'm switching the emphasis of this to my point. People seemed to not like it because they figured it should be a childrens' movie that kind of ended up catering to, well, me, or adults in general.
So what would it be like if I had watched this movie as a kid? Back when I was feeling those things, would I still feel a kindred spirit in Max and Jonze's flick in general, or would I hate it?
It's a question I'll never be able to answer, and I don't know how to feel about that: glad I'll never know and love it the way I do, or sad that maybe I could've figured out a little bit quicker that people kind of get what was happening in my crazy mixed-up brain of mine as a kid.
Alright, sentimentality over. I'm off to go download some mixtapes of strange shocking rap by precocious kids.
*That is not a knock on either of those groups; I love those movies, but they don't exactly provide the best template for what growing up should be, says the bitter late bloomer.
No comments:
Post a Comment