The Boondock Saints: Sublime Satire

The Boondock Saints: Sublime Satire

When The Boondock Saints came on tv yesterday, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Roommate J insisted on watching it; it was totally hot shit to everyone in her high school when it came out. I pointed out that, of course it was hot shit, they were high school students.

The first time I saw The Boondock Saints (in high school, surprise), I was appalled at what I believed was a deeper reading of the film, a reading that saw the moral of the film being “if you believe someone is ‘evil’ you have the god-given right to kill them”, an ethic that seems to have driven every genocide, crusade, pogrom, and general bit of ideologically-driven nastiness in the history of the human species. It’s a superhero movie, except all the messy fascism issues that superhero stories entail (1) are written off because the superheroes’ actions are ordained by God himself. And instead of defeating their victims they brutally murder them. It’s like somebody watched Taxi Driver and missed the point entirely.

So I was understandably a bit cringy seeing it come on again. Amidst much griping (and being told to “blog it”) I sat through the movie. First reaction: wow, Willem Defoe is awesome. The second: The reading I took of the film in high school wasn’t deep enough. This time around I saw The Boondock Saints for something more than a moral abomination: a sublime piece of satire that pulls no punches, and makes its point even more extremely than even Taxi Driver. (2)

The film begins with our heroes & friends torturing some Russian gangsters for trying to close down the Irish pub they drink at. When the gangsters attempt to return the favor, they are killed. A pair of thugs killing another pair of thugs somehow becomes celebrated by the masses in the newspaper as an honorable act, the work of saints. The first pair (the heroes) get it into their heads after a religious experience that they have the right to decide who should be killed and who should live. They kill the bosses of the Russian thugs and run into one of their drinking-buddies in the process, a low-level thug who decides to join them after a little persuasion.

And I do mean "a little". It was the persuasion scene and what immediately followed that convinced me of the true satirical nature of the film. The thug raises the objection that every sane member of the audience has at this point, namely “uh, you’re randomly killing people you think are ‘evil’? Isn’t that a little messed up?” Our heroes spout about 30 seconds of garble about how innocent people come home to their wives and children while bad men get away with being bad (3) and the thug is utterly, totally persuaded of the righteousness of their cause. This scene is immediately followed by a montage, in the SAME DAMN ROOM, of the three of them getting drunk, eating pizza, and playing with their knives and firearm. Truly, these are the people I would trust with the right to determine who lives and who dies. The montage ends with a gun accidentally going off killing a roommates’ cat, but hey, that’s okay, because the roommates are drug-addicted prostitutes, and drug-addicted prostitutes aren’t people.

Like I said, it’s very difficult not to read this as epically hilarious satire. The movie continues with our heroes killing Bad Men and getting away with it. Willem Defoe is continually astounded at their awesomeness, and the only person who comes close to taking them out is revealed to be their long-lost father, who promptly joins them. At some point along the way they’re captured and their thug friend is killed. We’re supposed to feel sad about this.

The final scene features the Big Bad Guy in the courtroom, oh that ineffectual justice system, letting Big Bad Men do whatever they want with its due process and legal rights. Our heroes, teaming up with daddy and Willem Defoe (he's so inspired by their divine vigilantism he’s decided to join them), storm into the courtroom with guns drawn, admonish the jurors and court attendees not to kill, walk up to the Big Bad Guy, say their little prayer (4), and blow his goddamn head off.

They are celebrated as heroes (5), and once again nicknamed saints by the media. Really? Heroes? This is so far from the actual reception these terrorists would get in real life it must be an exaggeration for the point of satirical commentary. And oh, this movie takes itself so deathly seriously. Like any good fascist flick, ie The Triumph of Will or 300, the more seriously it took itself the funnier it got. Further enlivening the satirical humor is the fact that critical roles of the film are played by, among others, a well-known male porn star and a Scottish comedian. QED.


(1) Issues deftly dealt with in Watchmen (the graphic novel, skip the movie) and the Dark Knight.

(2) Actually, it’s not, the director/writer is a nasty, abusive, alcoholic with an extremely simplistic worldview, (as told in this documentary Overnight) but a movie can be a hell of a lot more than its auteur intended. For example, Inglorious Basterds has a hell of a lot more to it than Tarantino intended, he just wanted to make a rah-rah revenge film where he could beat up some Nazis.

(3) Not an oversimplification

(4) Before every murder they say a dramatic prayer about how they are the shepards of the Lord protected by His grace, neatly paralleling the prayers the apostles uttered before going on all those badass killing sprees in the New Testament.

(5) If the satirical Taxi Driver parallel wasn’t obvious already, the ending should make it pretty blatant

Finally, Superbad and Adventureland

Something I bring up so commonly it's now become a running gag is the fact that I don't like Superbad. I enjoy the Apatow films, I enjoy Michael Cera, but I really was not terribly fond of Superbad. My roommate J has heard my explanation of this more than once, M has yet to hear it. So as not to bother either of them with further harangues, here it is:

WHY SUPERBAD AND ADVENTURELAND SUFFER FROM THE SAME BASIC PROBLEM

Superbad and Adventureland both attempt to have their cake and eat it to. And they do neither very well. This is more pronounced in Superbad, where the film is simultaneously trying to be a slice-of-life teen comedy like Dazed and Confused or American Graffiti and a wacky hijinx teen comedy like Porky's or American Pie. It really doesn't do either all that well.

Superbad is too ridiculous to be a slice-of-life teen comedy. It's almost believable until the party they stumble into. Oh yes, and McLovin. You can't expect a sense of realism in a film where two cops take a teenager, give him a night on the town, get him drunk, and blow up their own patrol vehicle after shooting it repeatedly.

Superbad is too earnest to be a wacky hijinx comedy. We're supposed to sympathize with the fat kid at the end when he gets utterly shitfaced and confesses that he believes there's no way the cute girl would be willing to do anything with him unless she were wasted. Then he falls on the cute girl giving her a facial bruise in the process. Ha ha. Then there's this adorable little heart to heart with Michael Cera. Aww. Problem is, we just in the previous scene saw two patrol officers blowing up their car with McLovin before accidentally cockblocking him at the party.

The end result is this bizarre amalgamation of the two teen comedy subgenres, and the result is this:



What the hell is that thing? It looks kinda like a duck. It looks kinda like a rabbit. But it really isn't quite either. It looks weird. Likewise with Superbad. It's kind of like American Pie. It's kind of like Dazed and Confused. But it's really not quite either, kind of halfway between the two.

Adventureland suffers from the same basic problem. It's also kind of a slice-of-life movie. The life and times of a guy and his fellow carnies, the guy a recent college graduate down on his luck finding no better employment for the summer. It's also your classic nerd fantasy: the girl he likes is seeing an older, cooler musician-type. Oh no! But he wuvs her so so very much and is such a nice, sensitive guy that he doesn't do anything about it, no, he wuvs her so so very much he turns down advances from the MegaHottie who comes on to him, and at the end, whoah! turns out the musician type isn't as cool as everyone said he was!!! and they break up and he finally wins the girl YIPPEE!!!

So there. That, M, is my problem with Superbad and Adventureland.

Playboys Past and Present

If you read this title eager to hear obscure trivia about Hugh Hefner's well-known literary magazine, you're out of luck. The playboys I refer to are in reference to The Playboy of the Western World, a classic of Irish theater by J.M. Synge. Synge's is a fascinating life story, studied music, wasn't very good at it, and taking advice from Yeats decided to spend some time in the Aran Islands (1) to see how "real" people lived.

Coming back to Dublin he wrote among other things the play "Playboy of the Western World", to this day one of the best things an Irishman has ever written for the theater. It's about a young man who stumbles into the pub of a small village in Western Ireland (2) , on the run from the law for the murder of his father. He becomes the town hero, beloved by the old men, wooed by the eligible bachelorettes, and a big ol' celebrity. I won't spoil what happens next, suffice it to say it's funny. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, Playboy of the Western World is an extremely funny comedy.

Unfortunately, the premiere audience didn't really get it. The play was staged at Yeats' (3) theater, the Abbey, and during its premiere the Abbey saw its first ever riot.

What were people rioting over, you ask? In the third act the hero, Christy (naming your persecuted hero christ-y, how's that for subtlety) utters a dirty, filthy word that had not ever been heard on the stage of the Abbey. A word that threw the audience into such a grumpus the show had to be cancelled, in spite of Yeats' lecturing them on what savages and uncivilized brutes they were being. The word?

Shift.

Like the key on your keyboard.

Though, this being 1907, 'shift' referred to a ladies' undergarment.

Ireland was so conservative in 1907 that saying the word for a ladies' undergarment on stage was cause for rioting. This noble trend of comical overreaction to perceived obscenity continued well into the 60's, when the small Irish theater famous for being the site of the Irish premiere of Waiting for Godot was closed after staging a play in which an actor pantomimed holding a condom. There was no actual condom, but that didn't stop the authorities from permanently shutting down the theater.

Now, many believe (myself included)the Inutterable Word is not the real reason the audience rioted. According to firsthand accounts of the night the audience began to grow restless and uneasy as early as the first act, "shift" was just the spark the ignited them. The theory goes that this growing sense of discomfort was cause by Synge's portrayal of poor rural Irish. They were rough, they were crude, they spoke coarsely, and they celebrated an alleged murderer in their midst for his avowed lawlessness.

This portrayal went directly against the romanticized picture the urban, middle-class Irish audience had of its rural brethren. No, they may not have actually met any of these noble farm-creatures, but they knew their countrymen better than some playwright who had actually lived amongst them.

The now-revered classic recently underwent a wickedly funny revision in 2007 by two playwrights: Roddy Doyle and Bisi Adiun. Adigun does not sound like a very Irish name, probably because Bisi is from Nigeria. This version of the story takes place in present-day Dublin, with the hero being an African refugee and the "western world" being west Nigeria. It's very funny, and very closely follows the original.

Now, to my roommate in question, and the cause of this post, Roddy Doyle is the man who wrote that "Irish are the blacks of Europe" quote I mentioned. From Fandango:

"'The Irish are the blacks of Europe, Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the North Siders are the blacks of Dublin ... so say it loud -- I'm black and I'm proud!' Or so Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) tells his slightly puzzled friends as he tries to assemble a rhythm & blues show band in a working class community in Dublin in Alan Parker's film The Commitments."


(1) In 1907 this was the sticks of the sticks. Also painfully beautiful on a sunny day. After much discussion I've decided that if I am ever required to kill myself to restore family honor, I will throw myself from the cliffs of Inis Moir on some bright afternoon.

(2) Western Ireland in 1907 (and today come to think of it) is just the regular sticks.

(3) Okay, Yeats and Lady Gregory, but she was a woman and because she was a woman her contributions to Irish theatrical history don't count as much. I wish I were joking, a number of works she collaborated with Yeats on are to this day credited solely to Yeats ("On Baile's Strand" was awful before she helped him rework it).

Introduction

I love talking about things: Comparing and contrasting how The Simpsons/Family Guy/Robot Chicken/Venture Bros. recontextualize pop culture, bitching about the elaborate falsities we engage in as part of maintaining a coherent sense of self, and raving about how much Korean cinema kicks ass.

Unfortunately, my roommates get quite annoyed by it. Say, when we're watching a Zombieland and I've interrupted it for the fourth time in five minutes, the first to talk about how Superbad and Adventureland share the same basic weakness, the second to discuss the typecasting of comic actors in Hollywood movies, the third to bring up how Bill Murray's cameo is, like, the best thing ever, and fourthly how the film has an unbelievably bad third act, that characters behave like utter idiots in horror movies (cf. Paranormal Activity) is to be expected, but something as mindbendingly stupid as what the girls in Zombieland do is an annoying contrivance explicitly designed to set up the final action sequence, this annoying contrivance sticking out rudely in a movie that has so deftly played with the conventions of the zombie movie subgenre, comedy seems to have been a fairly longstanding approach to the zombie movie as early back as Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (Braindead overseas, not sure why they changed it I'm going to have to look that up maybe something in the U.S. had already been named Braindead and to avoid copyright issues they. . .)

. . .and you can see how this might be annoying. So I have asked my roommates to simply say "blog it" the next time they are annoyed at a particular tangent I've felt the need to go off on. I will write about it at length in this blog, where they (and all of you fine readers out there) can peruse my thoughts at their own leisure.