Save a Life: Stop Shopping

The day after Thanksgiving, the leading cause of accidental death in the United States between 4am and 6am is Black Friday. The leading cause of preventable death in those hours is still probably heart attack, which makes it sound more preventable than adults trampling other human beings underneath their feet. But it is not.





John Barryman explains how companies have adapted to life-threatening shopping.

As a precaution to avoid the 2008 incident where someone died, a Wal-mart store in Upland, CA decided to remain open all night to avoid lines and door-rushing. Unfortunately for them, customers began tearing into the shrink-wrapped products that were meant to be open and distributed for sale at 5 AM.

When turned away by employees, they started fighting inside, forcing the Wal-Mart to call police to kick all the customers out and close to clean-up in time for the sale at 5 AM.

The people, naturally, were pissed off, and it seems at that moment, most of them turned into zombies, banging on the glass doors and even eating some brains (not really on that last one). Some got crafty and tried to sneak into the back entrance and the lawn and garden section. Through-out the entire night, there was chanting of "let me in, let me in" and cops had to remain until 6:15 AM.

This coming from one of the store managers trying to calm the crowd, "It was scary." Meaning that crowd could have teared him limb from limb.

The arms race continue to escalate. One woman, evidentially applying lessons learned from the war in Iraq, deployed her offensive capability preemptively. "Moments after a Walmart in Los Angeles opened its doors at 10 p.m., one woman reportedly used pepper spray on at least 20 customers – some of whom were children – to keep them away from the discounted electronics she planned to buy."1

I say to the rest-of-the-world, alien observers, and ancestor spirits, that this is just what happens. It is the unavoidable outcome of incomes so high people can't remember what it's like to think about their own survival, while still too low for every wish automatically manifest via Sphere magic. We are the victims here, victims of our own success. Our government is agile and effective, our roads lead everywhere, and our economy provides for our every need. We have good reason to camp outside of stores for hours; it's the only means we have to improve our lives! John adds, “Here in the U.S., no matter how many civil liberties are denied certain groups, no matter how unhappy people are with their government, what it really takes to get people riled up is 40% off of a DVD set.” I don't know what he's saying on the first two points, but yeah, DVDs!

Our corporate string pullers are to thank. They're so effective at making and marketing widgets they can co-opt entire holiday traditions like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and now Thanksgiving to create this consumer carnival. It is a marvel the way gratitude, love, and Christ have been grossly fashioned into shiny gadgets and greeting cards to create the awesome Frankensteinian cultural creation of Black Friday. Only in America.

I don't recall hearing about Black Friday much until the mid 2000s. It was then that watching obese people squeeze through small entrances, like their own blood cells through plaque-laden arteries, became a guilty pleasure. In those days I still watched evening newscasts, and Black Friday reporting was a seductive mixture of corporate shilling during the lead up and stoic restraint in the aftermath. At first it didn't make sense why news producers feel coverage of the nearby sales serves the public good, nor the on-air talent showed so much restraint while reporting. Watch the corners of the anchor's mouth as he tries not to yell “fuck” during the following report.



You may also have noted the empty look in his eyes as hatred for mankind disintegrates the emotional centers in his brain. It now makes sense now 5 years later, as I too have discovered the way widgets fulfill me. Black Friday is education.

These door stampedes reacquaint adults with lessons learned in school about not running and how to queue. We see the pregnant lady mixing up those childhood drills as priority one is getting her wig back on, later considering getting off her belly. That's stop drop and roll lay there, lady. That's a fire safety technique! Perhaps she was trying to remain under the door frame until the shaking stopped. I'd like to think she was just dumbfounded by the savings.

It doesn't always turn into a gunfight or stampede. Here's what it looks like when things don't go horribly wrong:




Oh who am I kidding. Still horribly wrong. I can only take this as a critique of an educational system which provides no instruction in asking philosophical questions. If I had my buddy record me while I cackled and grabbed box after box of vibrators, that's what it would mean; it seems like a pretty obvious testament to the vibrator-shaped hole in our souls/intellect. So is this satire, or am I going to be posting videos of the first dirty bomb going off in the parking lot of a Walmart next Black Friday?

Back Dat Azz Up to 1999

In 1999 I had identified as a fan and consumer of hip hop for almost two years. It was a lot of Bad Boy and No Limit, some of it bad, some of it good, and some great. In those days we had to buy plastic discs from stores, and so I own No Way Out, Harlem World, Life After Death, Ghetto D (which I used as research for a report on crack),



Unpredictable, Da Last Don, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told and Top Dogg.

I used Sky's the Limit for a poetry presentation in 7th grade. It was edgy at the time to introduce profanity in the classroom, especially as something as revered as poetry. It was also the most meaningful example of poetry in my own life so completely appropriate.



If pressed I can probably remember a handful of movies I watched and games I played in middle school, but it is hip hop I am constantly drawn back to, at least insofar as Bad Boy and No Limit are hip hop. According to This American Life feature on middle school, what we learn in those ages forms the foundation of who we are as adults. So while Marion Strok can still perform tap dances she learned as a middle schooler, I can recite the 10 Crack Commandments, a manual, a step-by-step booklet, for you to get to get your game on track, not your wig pushed back.

I begin to suspect that something was up with the 1999 release of "Back Dat Azz Up" by Juvenile. The lyrical content wasn't particularly dangerous or exciting, nor did it discuss any of the issues I knew concerned Black Americans like growing up in poverty, dead homies, or the flow of capital within crack production and distribution circles. The song is about asses. Asses are what the video should be about, not the song! Most offensive of all, the song employed a rhyme scheme--or more accurately did not--where each line ended with "yeah." It felt like the rap equivalent of reaching into ones coat and coming back with a middle finger.



Being a life-long hip hop fan is a lot like standing on a trap door: the knowledge that any given week a particularly egregious example of hip hop might hit, and undermine the fan's attraction to the whole genre. For me, Back Dat Azz Up was the first time. The song was such an earache I began to wonder, is it satire? Could this be a caricature of the music I loved?

It's already absurd for any middle class American white to listen to music of political and economic struggle, and so the tonal line is thin between hip hop music which mocks itself and its listener, or affirms its own worth. Allow me to explain this ambitious claim. In most art, the actual audience is usually the intended audience, and the thematic messages are likely to arrive safely. This safety gives the artist room to play with expectations, such as through satire. But when the actual audience is largely across a confusing cultural gap from the intended audience, as is the case with hip hop, playing with expectation becomes a volatile experiment (given that record executives know the majority of hip hop is purchased by young white suburbanites, intended audience probably deserves quote marks). The potential thematic takeaway by the audience may not be the intended one at all. To a degree all art has this same dynamic, and that's what makes it so fun and provoking. But this dynamic also impedes the communication between the sender and receiver, which is why the tonal line is so thin for hip hop.

What is the thematic takeaway of Back Dat Azz Up? The question itself is parody. The answer? Also parody. This is the problem of being a hip hop fan. The only space in which Back Dat Azz Up can be considered art is that Juvenile knew what he was doing. And so, the way a Christian believes in Christ, one must believe Juvenile knew what he was doing in the face of evidence he did not, or else redefine what hip hop is. I think that's what most people do.

In perceiving Back Dat Azz Up's failure I got a sense of how I might be the caricature, not the song; after all, I was listening to it. So in an ironic way, Back Dat Azz Up really redefines the genre. Its critique of the listener delivers the reminder that hip hop doesn't belong to or represent me. I might be a fan, but after Back Dat Azz Up I became a bit more conscientious of my role as a consumer and their roles as artists. What a sobering aural flip-off.

Drake's new album is good. In one of his songs he pays homage to how successful Juvenile's satire was. It feels less like "fuck you" and more like "ooh yeah." Both, somehow, are hip hop. Have a listen:

No Obama Why?!

Fuckin Obama. That guy is a dem. AND I HATE DEMS! He's a foreigner who doesn't have American values, he has liberal elite values. Fuckin Muslim even attended a radically left church for years. I'm going to put him on blast.



Man, wait until people find out where he went to scohol. Then they'll vote for Bachmann (William & Mary: Law), Cain (Purdue: Computer Science), Perry (Texas A&M: Animal Science), or Romney (Harvard: Law/MBA). Well, they'll vote for Perry anyway. That's a real degree.

They won't believe Obama gets a private jet and plays golf! Totally unsuitable for a President. And to top it off, when he's done being President, people will pay to hear what he says like he's something special or something. It's so angrifying! I'm going to email this image I made in the foe toe shop to all my patriots.

If you were under the impression that former presidents of the US were poor, you just got a told. Better put your shades on for the next graphic then, because you will be stunned to find out even lowly Congressmen qualify for the top 1% giftbasket of foie gras and virgins kidnapped from the bottom 40%.



US Supreme Court Justice salaries are higher than the congress people. In both cases, the salaries themselves aren't enough to push people above the 1% threshold ($380,354), but we can safely presume that to become a congress person or supreme court judge you spent several years in a lucrative job which allowed you to get all up in investments and that capital gains shit. So it's not that the top levels of government make people rich, but that to get there you basically need to be rich.

A lot of time the condition of being rich is caused by having a stellar education and/or the network from attending a stellar institution. Therefore if we want to end the domination of higher government by monied people, we would elect poor people from top schools because they have willfully refused the benefits that accord people who attend top schools. Someone who does that will be qualified to make the kinds of ineffable decisions which feed the Satire?blog monster.

So, in an ironic sort of way, the laughable failure of the Obama picture is not so; it's completely right. It says to the non-critical legion of Obama supporters (as opposed to the sometimes-critical, frequently-critical, and always critical legions of Obama supporters) that Obama looks to be on the other side of the wealth gap from the 99%. And from that we can conclude that...I dunno, it's impossible to try and narrow the gap except from the slacker side? Look...the point isn't that it makes sense, the point is that some enterprising individual, noting data on congressional, executive, and judicial wealth decided to hide his argument in a handwriting photo and send it to a partisan blog for its non-skeptical readers to lap up. And that asks--but not begs--the question, is it actually satire?

Being Das Racist: Harder Than We Think?

Here are three recent youtube videos showing the type of performance Das Racist is delivering on their Relax tour. If you love background rappers coming in on the last phrase of the line, each. and. every. line, then you love it. If you love people yelling into the device which amplifies their voice, then you love it. If you love weed so much you're smoking it during the performance, you love it. Don't be jealous reader, You can play from the comfort of your chair! In the following vidoes count the number of visible drinks on stage. Or, if you can count over a hundred, count the number of times lyrics become unintelligible messes from group delivery.







Doing some back-of-envelope calculations, it would seem they were drunk and high as shit. In an interlude between songs D. Brown complained about finishing Lukutis's drink, and in the middle of a song Victor (Kool AD) went backstage to procure another one. Also, Heems eyes looked like this the entire show:
.

Throughout the ages, many artists have performed better while under the influence. Does Das Racist perform better under the influence? While I'm not looking for them to do cartwheels through rings of fire or anything, if the performances you just saw were improved by depressants I'm aghast at the thought of them performing during the day not high or drunk.

The least auditorily offensive of those three embeds is the last. I wish I could have gone to a show there instead of the one I did last night at the Branx/Rotture. I also wish last night wasn't the first time I'd been suckered. I went to the same show in April and it sucked too. We've got a saying in Oregon, I'm sure you have it in Williamsberg, goes like "Fool me once, shame on...you. ...Fuck Das Racist at the Branx/Rotture." This is hardly a scientific sample so I'm unsure how to weight the blame between their effortless performances or the improper audio setup. It sounded like "blahalhalowwwwohfaahmfahf ahflomorr woahoahwoahw" for 4 hours.

The music started a half hour late both times, though that's only relevant because it meant I spent an extra half hour standing alone by myself against a wall. For everyone in the underage area it meant more time to pass around the gatorade bottle'o'wonder, and for everyone in the bar area more time to drink PBR ironically. There are three possible explanations for the delays: Das Racist either shows up late to the venue, needs more time to get plastered--like the audience, or they are just being fashionable. All three = dedication.

The most insulting part of the performance was the continual sounding of what I can only call the "dj horn," heard at 1:36 in the following clip. Unbelievably, repeatedly sounding it at 100x amplification at the end of every song was an improvement, because in April an eagle screech was used that hurt even worse. Without any justification, this sonic "fuck you" was used intermittently during the songs as well as at their start and end. This is what my experience felt like.





Perhaps I have shitty cell phone ears. I wish I could have enjoyed any part of the show except for D. Brown's a capella, which is unfortunately about ejaculating in a person's eye. Your mileage may vary. It appears to me that they are reluctant stars riding the hipster train around the country and enjoying the chance to party every night. If so, then why are their lyrics so thoughtful, and why is their first studio release so polished? Relax is catchy and smart, irreverent and insightful. How come their performances are so bad?

I think the joke's on me. "Give us all your money." Is it satire?

Redress = get dressed again what?!

One ongoing theme at Satire?blog is the difficulty distinguishing between stupidity and mockery. If someone fails sufficiently enough it can be impossible to tell if that person did so deliberately to make you laugh or make a point. Depending on the (1)source and your own (2)personal level of skepticism, you will make an informed guess as to the person's (3)intentions, and thusly decide (4)is it satire?

If I were to look at the democratic body of the US, I would see an astounding demonstration of confidence in lieu of actual expertise. Occupy Wall Street protesters provide a particularly wounding example: "It's unfair how investment banks can print money and use it for what they want." But a failure to understand how the government manages the national economy is not unique to park dwellers. These groups, literally demonstrating they can articulate neither the problem nor the solution, provide fertile grounds for asking are you fucking kidding me?

If I were responsible for solving the nation's problems and this was the feedback I got I might be inclined to react negatively. So it is understandable that on September 22nd the White House rolled out this petition mechanism on whitehouse.gov, no doubt as a means to more effectively discard with the risible sentiments of the hoi polloi. It allows you to petition the government for redress of grievances, which sounds a little-old fashioned.

It's also weird to think about. How is the government, the perpetual faceless bureaucracy, supposed to respond to millions of citizens? It's not God. Smaller, more local components of government lack the authority needed to address many grievances, and the institutions at the top certainly don't have time to address any which are not backed by a PAC. The idea of individuals talking to government is sweet, but indistinguishable from prayer.

Of course, that vague, dreamlike feeling you get from reading "petition the government for redress" is the fading memory of the first amendment. Oh high school civics! The way you made the structure and purpose of government so sensible. Much is lost by the time people become actual voters and start agitating for the 1% to pay their school loans or for the 47% to sink into the income gap with their bootstraps pulled up to their grimace.

Petitioning the government via the internet seems like a real solution which does not involve shitting in a park or posting photos of handwriting on the internet. Finally. But it's so plainly not a solution due to the much larger influence of campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, and grassroots movements funded by billionaires (the influence of physical protests belongs here in this parenthetical afterthought), that we have wonder if it is satire. Make a petition. Email your friends. Then go play in the kiddie pool.

A satire test I like to use for political issues is to ask if it could be featured as a joke on the Onion News Network. A system where 5,000 25,000 people need to electronically sign a petition to get a government essay in response? What good is a response? Is the response essay, written by the intern who "consulted relevant experts" going to a vote in the Congress? And if it did, would it get to go ahead of political bullshit that our legislators are currently involved with?

Many people are frustrated by what they view as a lack of responsive government and paradoxically, its intrinsic devotion to public relations. To those people this petition mechanism is a joke. So they use the joke to make a joke: We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition. Hey yo dawg I heard you like satire so we put some satire in your satire so you can shake a fist and laugh while you humorously criticize a system of fist shaking.

The public's relationship to governance is as fascinating as it is depressing. The public mistrusts the government because the public does not believe it governs in their interests, but the public at all times will criticize the government for being influenced by the public. Through these simple rules we get a rich myriad of interactions which fill our TV boxes and news sheets daily; OWS & Tea etc. It's like a goddamn Mandelbrot sequence:

Travis Porter Make it Rain

Art rule #23: Make your art black and white to add meaning.
Rap rule #17: Lines that don't end with bitch should end with yeah.

Please pause and note your reaction around 30 seconds. 1)ask yourself whether you expect the rest of the video to be an enjoyable experience or not and 2)predict whether you will think the music is good music, regardless of your enjoyment.

A video in-part named "Viral Music Video."


At 30 seconds did you get an ominous feeling of "unggh...?" Were you dreading the rest of the video the way you might dread having AIDS? As for your prediction about the song's merit, were you certain it would have none although still curious if it will contain the familiar rap tropes you have previously enjoyed on BET?

I am embarrassed I gave that a Youtube view. Anyone who holistically enjoys that video is suffering from intellectual dysfunction. Visually it is interesting, and as a white person I liked that it had imagery from a Brita water commercial. But...as a whole it is the worst thing I can imagine. It makes Watermelon look good.

Putting "Viral Music Video" in the title of your song--which isn't about viral music videos--is the kind of meta-consideration (or lack thereof) on which this blog thrives. Is it wishful thinking? Is it a joke? Is it a joke on the obviousness of the joke? Do we believe the creators are in on the joke? Is this supposed to be actual music/film/policy? Should we see it as critique or humor? Is it satire? Or just depression-inducing reality? More to the point, if it isn't satire, what would actual satire look like?

God Hates America

I was saving the title of this post for an entry on the Westboro Baptist Church, but then I realized it wouldn't be ironic enough for that purpose.

Today it serves as the scientific conclusion to an experiment recently conducted by Western "secular" governments with rain prayers.

In response to Texan rivers drying up from over-demand, Governor Rick Perry ordained a weekend of prayer in April. Understanding that God controls the rain and if we ask Him nicely enough He will strike the clouds with the Holy Rainbringer, we can only conclude that the 5 billion dollars lost due to the worst year-long drought in Texas history means He didn't get the message.

This month, the desert-dwelling nation of Israel, frustrated by the perpetual lack of rain in deserts they settle in, took matters into their own two hands. As per their annual schedule they pressed their hands together and said "God, how about some rain?" And immediately God said unto them, "Okay." Immediately here indicates cause-and-effect and satisfaction due to low standards. Usually Israelis pray for rain for weeks.


Did they do a better job of praying to God? Or does just God work in mysterious ways of satire?

In a show of appreciation for God's sense of humor, the US Congress recently voted to remind everyone that in the 1950's they voted a national motto into law; "In God We Trust." Since no laws actually changed, the vote can't be construed as anything other than a sort of passive aggressive note for God, and...satire?

Note: Only the government is allowed to pray rather than act. If individuals use the same approach they will go to prison.

You call that hard work? This is hard work.

The Tea party's response to the Occupy Wall Street protests has been a series of people like this. They call themselves the 53% and confuse even our benevolent overlords, the 1%:

I have spent far more hours than I should have these last few weeks puzzling over the postings on that website, trying to understand who these people are and why they would possibly care about my taxes.

This has been a curiosity for me as well. Why the hell do some people engage in this sort of "look at my handwriting!" brand of identity politics, particularly the ones whose would say "the system served me well enough." That seems like a bystander attitude which instead is modulated into shut up superiority. Stienbeck's quote hits on it, but it doesn't quite solve the mystery of the 53%. "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Belief in the American Dream accounts for some of this, but clearly there is a substantial external force operating. Is it the desire to to outdo the Chinese? Grassroots efforts funded by the Koch brothers?

At this point it is evident Australians are flooding the country at record numbers. Anyone posting something along the lines of "I work very hard so you should shut up and work harder," is actually a tax paying Australian. They have a level of pride in their grit that generally surpasses its utility. It's not well-meaning American dreaming, it's poisonous insects everywhere (PIE) mentality. What gave them away? They lack the commitment to democratic pluralism that would allow them to pass as regular ol' Americans. I'm on to you guys.

I can't say I dislike anyone who is willing to work harder for less. It makes the job easier for anyone with authority over them. It's also crucially important to have fighters in a country with a voluntary armed service; were they not so willing to suffer, they would drive up recruitment costs and we'd all pay more. Positively altruistic, those PIE eating Australians.

For the rest of the ...quoi?/self-parody punchlines of the 53% response read the rest of the article I quoted at the top.

Can We Enhance It?

Behold, the technology magic show!



Look on as the helpless writer heaps math and science words on top of a steamy scene excreted from the script-o-matic. "Maybe we can use the Pradeep Sen method in order to see into the windows." The script-o-matic, a dehumanizing machine which turns once-inspired writers into prisoners churning out the same pre-digested copy week-after-week, makes for great formula television. I imagine the typical writing conditions to be somewhere between a porn shoot and the cellar where naked people are kept in the dark and amputated limb by limb by cannibals in The Road. This is not hyperbole.

The flurry of animations and keyboard clattering helps the terminology babble to dazzle the viewers until they are too disoriented to think about the scene.* A slight tingly feeling around the temple is normal. That's confusion. Don't worry, there's always a dumb guy in the scene who doesn't get what's happening so the writer can slap you in the face with his diction. No viewer left behind. If you do, somehow, start to fall behind you can use the musical tempo cues to know when something exciting is happening and start breathing out of your mouth.

These shows fall into the genre of drama, sometimes the sub-genre crime drama, but I think more apt terms might be procedural porn, or forensics fantasy. Were it actually dramatic, the emotional needs of the multi-dimensional characters would be fascinating enough. Viewers would never need be laid down to watch the mobile spin in each episode's obligatory laboratory scene. Unfortunately in order for the plot driven "drama" to be easily digested the characters need to be flat, and that precludes having emotional needs. The absence of need leaves a gap which is, apparently, filled by characters staring at computer screens going "blah blah blah enhance blah." Procedural porn continues to fascinate viewers and annoy me, particularly the quirky lab worker who exists to please the leads with her offbeat fashion and uncanny skillz with the com poo tah. Wait...quirky and smart? I stand corrected. Some characters have two dimensions!

This jargon-spitting speed-typing is the low budget equivalent to Michael Bay's incoherent spatial assault in the Transformer films. Or if you prefer, it's the high budget version of youtube jump cutting. It's the opposite of art and degrading to anyone who hasn't mentally checked out. If you're a regular viewer of Numb3ers, CSI:Doesn't Matter, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or the show under some other title, I should break it down. You are watching a show where you are being fed formulaic shit, hit over the head, then powdered and put in a crib. You are the special victim. Somewhere a writer is having his passion buried under your stupidity. It is my hope he's able to configure each episode's permutations while wondering, is this Satire?


This is:


*like this sentence

Megan is Missing is a horror/movie

Megan is Missing is so amateur it hurts. Horror should hurt, but for different reasons.

I doubt I could write dialogue that felt more contrived. Scene-after-scene of forced merrymaking and “friendship” assaulted my sense of humanity. It was as if some Google algorithm gathered up blog and youtube comments and wrote a script to try and convey teenage life. Now, if Google did that it would be interesting. Good job Google! You're a pre-sentient algorithm and a keyword like “friendship” is indistinguishable from other data. A for effort. But IMDB confirms this film was created by an actual human being so it is not interesting, just bad. To get a taste of writer/director Michael Goi's writing ability, check out the summary on the back of the box:


The whole script is like this. They're friends because you're told they are!

Have you ever seen a movie where a 14 year old incredulously explains being face-raped by a camp counselor? I hadn't either, until about 20 minutes into this one. The point where she begins to describe, with a smile, turning blue, is when I began examining this movie from arms-length like a piece of art. Why is the scriptwriter putting these words in her mouth? Why is the scriptwriter explaining how much cum the molester deposited in her mouth? Most of all, what does this scene do for the movie? Ostensibly the graphic recollection is some sort of characterization; typically horror films attach you to characters in the first half and kill them off in the second. But after seeing the whole film I'm convinced the playful 10-year-old throat fucking scene is just there to be controversial.

Then I began to wonder what it meant about me that I was still watching, and how people might view me if they knew I was watching a film where a teenage character verbally reenacted forced sex with glee. Not because I thought the scene was realistic and I fear for the souls of the teenagers but because the role of sexual taboo in our society is so active I'm forecasting the potential impact this post will make on my future careers. “Says here on your resume you watched Megan is Missing, a terrible film.” A moral person would have turned the film off rather than consider it's effectiveness as a film, right? Writing this review was the scariest part of the film for me.



Then there was the equally sensationalized party scene. Parents be warned, if you give your 14-year-old ten dollars, she's going to spend it on the entrance fee to a “party” in a furniture-less abandoned house where they love Heineken and videotape everything. Boy do they love Heineken. But there is also cocaine, pills, and sex, so for ten dollars it's a bargain. Some of the savings is due to the lights being off, but the kids are well-practiced in relying on flashlights to take their hits, so relax. If you want a movie that deals honestly with sexualization and drug use in teens I recommend Thirteen. Because Thirteen is sincere it is potentially much more horrifying than this painful excuse for a film.



I enjoyed the Dateline-esque news show portion. Its flashy graphics and cloying host highlighted the way victims are exploited by shows like America's Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries, and even Doctor Phil, and more broadly the way the media sensationalizes. After its dramatic reenactment I was finally convinced that this film was a satire about well-meaning parental obsession with violent “predators,” akin to the 1st world fascination with 3rd world cannibalism in Cannibal Holocaust. But I have had to adjust my conviction after seen the film in its entirety, as satire seems outside the ability of the writer/director given the failure of the film in so many other areas.

Clearly the final scenes are Goi's attempts at horror, but it was unclear what he achieved. I concede I got a good jolt that made my hair stand up, but the rest was a pain to watch; more boring than anything, and I'm not referring just to the rape scene. The human imagination is the most powerful tool a filmmaker can harness to create fear, so darkness and keeping horrible things out of the frame are generally effective. But Goi managed to turn this sort of space-for-thinking into naptime with the extended cuts that dull rather than enhance emotional turmoil. If you want to see an excruciating rape scene that fully conveys the brutality of the act check out Irreversible. If you want someone to exploit rape for shock value--and fail--watch Megan is Missing.


At times unbearable to watch, Irreversible is a finely made film that explores dark qualities of human nature. The moments that turn your stomach do so because they treat their subjects seriously and honestly. When a rape is the cause of the plot and a means to explore vengeance and sexuality in otherwise normal people, it would be senseless to turn it into montage. The Irreversible rape scene is almost 10 brutal minutes long. After a few seconds viewers don't want be there anymore, but the filmmaker doesn't let them off the hook. Just as the rape victim can't close her eyes and make it go away, neither can the viewer. By unflinchingly refusing to cut away, Irreversible affirms the reality of rape within the scene, and in the context of the entire movie creates a parallel urge in the viewer to exhibit justice on the perpetrator.

Goi doesn't cut away either, but there's no hook to be on. Megan is Missing fails to humanize its characters in the first place, reducing the seriousness of rape to an off screen gag. If you haven't seen the movie you can get the same sense by imagining a single pane comic. In it, a husband and wife stand in the kitchen looking down at a broken vase. His speech bubble says “that makes me sad, honey.” “Honey” is the author's means of conveying life-long love and commitment (see: DVD back cover). Now Goi, having chosen an object for his tragedy, decides to shock the viewer by making the comic into a full-page spread, showing the vase tumbling senselessly to the floor and painstakingly shattering. Would this comic shock you? No, it's a vase. Thankfully vase-breaking isn't as important an act as rape, because if the comic was about rape you'd be staring frightfully into the unmasked id of a sociopath for whom rape is a really scary thing that scares parents, and therefore belongs in the Sunday paper. The only shocking part of the comic is when you wonder why a full-page comic doesn't find the time to examine why they are so concerned about a broken vase. Seems important, no?*

I wager this film will be effective only for dumb parents, so shocked at the lives their teenagers might be living they get tunnel vision and see past the glaring failures as a horror film. Everything has been done better. The parts where we're supposed to care for the characters is tortuous, and the parts where we're supposed to watch them suffer is not torturous. As a satire about the way the media conjures fear of predators in parents, I felt the film was much more successful. But is it satire?

Michael Goi:

The next Tommy Wiseau?


*For more on the connection between Goi, Wiseau, and the unexamined concern for a vase, check out An Important Film.