Snark Film Criticism
Jail Bait (1954)—file this in your secret-flix “Angora File”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s60XOG0LRUk
It’s a youtube beefcake flick with Steve Reeves—doing a strip show routine for Lyle Talbot in Ed Woods’ Jail Bait. It’s an intensely smarmy, skanky cheap Grade B ‘50s detective melodrama—right up my fag noir retro-snark crummy Ed Woods puke genre alley.
For a more upbeat gay campy version, please see this little youtube tidbit “Jail Bait: Fashion Show” sung to the tune of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” by Marilyn Monroe (1959).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR4stAHB1H4&feature=related
Camp is okay—but snark is better. I prefer to ferret out the more subversive subtexts in movies like Jail Bait—such as the early surrealists did with The Shanghai Gesture (1941):
“In its anguished abandon poetic thought comes up against the object, the external and internal becomes confused, the screen separating them, furiously lacerated, goes by the board. Everything encourages the belief that the objectification of desire has taken place.” —Paul Hammond, The Surrealist Group: Data Toward the Irrational Enlargement of a Film: The Shanghai Gesture, The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writing on the Cinema (1991)
By a simple strategy of poetic thought—the movie, freed of its bourgeois characteristics, begins to assume the multiple reflection of the perceptible Snarky world, is set, not in its disorientated linear narrative, but in the jaded decaying decadent male ruins of reality. Snark filmography suffers—if it is a Bijou balcony, from the haughty indifference of plush red-velvet curtains, rising or falling before a screen, gripping the seaweed bouquet abandoned by the cormorant, and will perhaps eventually show up again at The Egyptian Theater no longer just a dream.
Never has the “I call a snark a snark” mentality been invested with so much derisory impudence for us as today. Snark surrealism seizes on actors like Steve Reeves, drawing enrichment from secret aspects of these films.
The Surrealists asked questions like: “What is Poppy’s perversion?”
Surrealist answers were given: “Clasping an octopus between stocking and thigh. Stretched free-length on a gaming table, she detaches pearl after pearl from her necklace. She has no sexual perversions, simply an intense sensuality. Sodomy is a self-confessed, mildly masochistic by nature. Purposeless masturbation.”
These poetic snarky surrealist can be applied to other films such as Jail Bait (1954). The Snarkette critic must begin with his or her own sullen murky moody shocked personal impression first. Then the shock produced by the encounter of the movie-as-object and the moviegoer-as-subject— begins to reveal and snarkify its hidden hustler beauties.
The first part of this process, the subjective snarky surrealist form of criticism, holds considerable interest—not so much as criticism but as a means of personal Snarkosphere intelligence. It’s like the practice to transcribing dreams on waking up. Surrealist youtube clips and filmic snarkery texts are important for improving comprehensive cineaste IQ. For example, last night I got somewhat bored so I put the skanky little suggestive Jail Bait strip scene into slow-mo reverse—so it looks like Reeves is stripping rather than just lurching into the scene putting his shirt on.
Excruciatingly the slower the slow-mo—the more sexy the strip scene gets. I’ve always thought the snaky subtext in this snarky little scene simply reeked with transgressive queer cinematic possibilities—but it wasn’t until I ran it backwards in slow-mo silently with Lyle Talbot’s leering puffy face and pursed obsequious quivering lips that realized how faggy this exquisite Ed Woods tableaux vivant jewel actually was. There in the middle of Jail Bait—the Pearl of Beefcake Desire.
Further snarky Fifties / Sixties film research.
Steve Reeves Tribute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3BhAuLcUs&feature=related
Kimbar of the Jungle Series
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkjWkl9joLQ&feature=related
Jail Bait (1954)—file this in your secret-flix “Angora File”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s60XOG0LRUk
It’s a youtube beefcake flick with Steve Reeves—doing a strip show routine for Lyle Talbot in Ed Woods’ Jail Bait. It’s an intensely smarmy, skanky cheap Grade B ‘50s detective melodrama—right up my fag noir retro-snark crummy Ed Woods puke genre alley.
For a more upbeat gay campy version, please see this little youtube tidbit “Jail Bait: Fashion Show” sung to the tune of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” by Marilyn Monroe (1959).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR4stAHB1H4&feature=related
Camp is okay—but snark is better. I prefer to ferret out the more subversive subtexts in movies like Jail Bait—such as the early surrealists did with The Shanghai Gesture (1941):
“In its anguished abandon poetic thought comes up against the object, the external and internal becomes confused, the screen separating them, furiously lacerated, goes by the board. Everything encourages the belief that the objectification of desire has taken place.” —Paul Hammond, The Surrealist Group: Data Toward the Irrational Enlargement of a Film: The Shanghai Gesture, The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writing on the Cinema (1991)
By a simple strategy of poetic thought—the movie, freed of its bourgeois characteristics, begins to assume the multiple reflection of the perceptible Snarky world, is set, not in its disorientated linear narrative, but in the jaded decaying decadent male ruins of reality. Snark filmography suffers—if it is a Bijou balcony, from the haughty indifference of plush red-velvet curtains, rising or falling before a screen, gripping the seaweed bouquet abandoned by the cormorant, and will perhaps eventually show up again at The Egyptian Theater no longer just a dream.
Never has the “I call a snark a snark” mentality been invested with so much derisory impudence for us as today. Snark surrealism seizes on actors like Steve Reeves, drawing enrichment from secret aspects of these films.
The Surrealists asked questions like: “What is Poppy’s perversion?”
Surrealist answers were given: “Clasping an octopus between stocking and thigh. Stretched free-length on a gaming table, she detaches pearl after pearl from her necklace. She has no sexual perversions, simply an intense sensuality. Sodomy is a self-confessed, mildly masochistic by nature. Purposeless masturbation.”
These poetic snarky surrealist can be applied to other films such as Jail Bait (1954). The Snarkette critic must begin with his or her own sullen murky moody shocked personal impression first. Then the shock produced by the encounter of the movie-as-object and the moviegoer-as-subject— begins to reveal and snarkify its hidden hustler beauties.
The first part of this process, the subjective snarky surrealist form of criticism, holds considerable interest—not so much as criticism but as a means of personal Snarkosphere intelligence. It’s like the practice to transcribing dreams on waking up. Surrealist youtube clips and filmic snarkery texts are important for improving comprehensive cineaste IQ. For example, last night I got somewhat bored so I put the skanky little suggestive Jail Bait strip scene into slow-mo reverse—so it looks like Reeves is stripping rather than just lurching into the scene putting his shirt on.
Excruciatingly the slower the slow-mo—the more sexy the strip scene gets. I’ve always thought the snaky subtext in this snarky little scene simply reeked with transgressive queer cinematic possibilities—but it wasn’t until I ran it backwards in slow-mo silently with Lyle Talbot’s leering puffy face and pursed obsequious quivering lips that realized how faggy this exquisite Ed Woods tableaux vivant jewel actually was. There in the middle of Jail Bait—the Pearl of Beefcake Desire.
Further snarky Fifties / Sixties film research.
Steve Reeves Tribute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3BhAuLcUs&feature=related
Kimbar of the Jungle Series
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkjWkl9joLQ&feature=related
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