The Art of the Insult
I’ll come back to this after some reflection, but for a quick end-of-the-week read, here is a piece of brilliantly pointed writing from Slate.com’s review of Meet the Spartans:
Isn’t it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie? Perhaps, but it would’ve been unforgivable to make Meet the Spartans any longer than an hour. This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a “movie” and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization’s decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.
Feel free to weigh in with why you think this is (or is not) good (or funny) criticism. (I love the line about the bear.) I’ll come back to this theme later…
Technorati Tags: Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, Meet the Spartans, movies, movie reviews, writing, criticism
Ike wrote,
Link | January 31st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Jacob wrote,
Critical thought, by it’s nature, is defined and measured. It’s not “Me no likey.” That’s an opinion. And we all know about opinons- everyone has one and mine is the only one that doesn’t stink.
As a rant, opinion piece or insult, however, it works. He slid form relevant example to absurdity through a slow build, which makes each step more believeable. If he’d gone straight from Anderson to the bear, it’d be laughable, but the flow into outlandishness was gentle and reasoned.
It’s like talking politics with our cousin, actually.
(Now that’s a good insult ;P )
Link | January 31st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Jacob wrote,
Link | January 31st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Ike wrote,
And your last name isn’t much to brag about, bro…
Link | January 31st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Jacob Pigott wrote,
And I forget that someone reading might not get the name joke. I’m not famous enough
Link | February 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am