"Unedited Footage of a Bear" vs John Waters
Based on this friendly exchange I had today with a (very nice!) person on Twitter and the wonderful Ryan Walsh, I kinda want to make a few quick points about why Adult Swim might owe a lot to John Waters at the end of the day, but acting like "Unedited Footage of a Bear" is a "hyperbolic takedown of suburban America in film" in the same way that Waters films are isn't exactly kosher.
1. John Waters films originate from a point of subjugation and I don't know that they're meant to be necessarily political. If they do "take down" suburbia, it's by celebrating the mold underneath its carpets, so to speak. Yes, in a way that is hyperbolic but also in a way that is fun and in a way that asserts a unique identity. John Waters' films are ultimately about selfhood in a really deeply intimate way, just because they're funny and disgusting and vile and loud doesn't mean they aren't intimate. The broad theme of suburban mayhem is possibly related, but. . .
2. "Unedited Footage of a Bear" is not intimate, it's a nasty, quick roller coaster ride, which is only arguably about that same broad theme. Coincidentally, Alan Resnick and Ben O’Brien, who created the film, are Baltimore-based. I'd argue there's more of a connection there. Still, the thing about "Unedited Footage of a Bear" is that while it's definitely touching on selfhood it's not asserting anything interesting about selfhood, except that something ugly might be lurking underneath the veneer of regular American life. It's weird that people keep stumbling upon this like it's a new and exciting theme, including the Sean T Collins of the New York Observer. You realize that a lot of people have known for a very long time that shit's fucked up underneath the surface and society is kind of in a perpetual spider-web fracture? It's a pretty pervasive theme in American narrative filmmaking. Perhaps the most pervasive theme. Perhaps the only theme, ever, if you want to take it all the way back to George Lukacs' Theory of the Novel. Inside vs. outside is no longer united (as it was in the classic epic, where characters aren't so much learning about themselves as they are learning about absolutes in morality).
3. Honestly, the lack of intimacy in "Unedited Footage of a Bear" makes it more like an epic than like a modern narrative story. It seems that this type of movie (which is rather like a long music video) is where the epic is preserved in our society. Maybe "Unedited Footage of a Bear" is more a "quickie" epic about selfhood (there's an evil me, and she's going to GET ME), but it definitely doesn't expand on the narrative of John Waters. Nor should John Waters be seen as the name on which all "takedowns of suburbia" rest. I can't really speak for John Waters, obviously, but to me Waters' films aren't really about taking shit down as they are about building it UP. They are excessive and celebratory. They're creations. Not debasements. And they have a really strong thread of singular, destructive, overwhelming characters running through them. They really aren't about duplicity, either. They're about aggressively being everything, not about being nothing or being something that you don't know that you are.
4. tl;dr I'm an asshole and I didn't really like "Unedited Footage of a Bear."
