Jenn: well the video IS funny!
Jenn: it's so earnest and inept!
Jenn: it's also cute as a bug
Jenn: maybe it's worse to think things are cute rather than terrible
Jenn: but I don't know
Jenn: I've tried to explain that I'm an earnest fan of The Room, say
Jenn: it's just, it is not a derisive fandom at all
Colin: yeah
Jenn: it is so raw and childish
Colin: the room is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen
Jenn: the running themes of uh
Jenn: wish fulfilment and um
Jenn: the "you'll all be sorry someday!" aspect
Colin: but that doesn't mean I like it because I like tearing it apart (lisa)
Jenn: right it's actually like
Jenn: authentically one of the most watchable movies ever
Colin: a bunch of my college friends have room watching parties
Colin: where they bring a football to toss around
Jenn: YEEEAAAAHHHH
Colin: and cheesecake and bottled water
Jenn: YEAH!
Jenn: do you eat the cheesecake with spoons
Colin: hahahaha I don't remember
Colin: I've only been to one of them
Jenn: but um
Jenn: yeah I can read uh
Jenn: I have this thing where I can read interviews with Tommy Wiseau out loud
Jenn: and nail his accent and I shit you not I'm convinced this is exactly how he said words and what he meant
Jenn: like I feel like I know his brain
Jenn: and he is a god damn maniac
Jenn: he'll start to answer a question earnestly
Jenn: and then he'll get paranoid mid-sentence because his irony meter is busted
Jenn: and he'll be like "ha ha, are you kidding though?"
Jenn: and the interviewer will be like no no no
Jenn: and wiseau is literally like "ha ha what a thing to say!"
Colin: *nod*
Colin: yeah I worry that his mind kind of got run through the wringer after he made the room
Jenn: no way
Colin: because I don't think there's any way he intended it as ironically bad
Jenn: but he uh
Jenn: yes, he
Jenn: he has trouble being in on the joke anyway
Colin: and I think at least a little bit that he -- yeah
Jenn: the whole movie is actually ABOUT that
Jenn: like I can see why he felt betrayed or abandoned by people at whatever stage
Colin: it seems like he doesn't get that people still earnestly like the room despite it being awful
Jenn: yes exactly
Jenn: his statements that it's deliberately a black comedy are also missing the point
Jenn: the movie is a feat
Jenn: I have to explain this to people who haven't seen it
Jenn: "isn't it just a bad movie?"
Jenn: god damn it no!
Colin: it's a psychological thriller made with so much ineptness that it is one of the funniest films you will ever watch
Jenn: the man spent I forget how many of his own millions
Jenn: on his failed novel/play/whatever
Jenn: MOSTLY ON FUCKING CAMERAS
Jenn: well and that's the other thing
Jenn: like I'm trying so hard to not use words like "genius" or "brilliance"
Jenn: but it's brilliant in the way max fischer's movies in rushmore are brilliant
Jenn: it's just so bizarrely arrested -- if a child made it you'd call him a genius future screenwriter
Jenn: and there are moments of NOT technical mastery but
Jenn: it's just a hard one to even discuss because it isn't a "so bad it's good" movie and you don't enjoy it out of derision
Jenn: and it's the one movie I think a lot of people suffer this uh
Jenn: this complicated feeling I get a lot
Jenn: where I'm cackling and I'm like "god no I am not making fun of you, it's just"
Jenn: because something has so amused but also mystified me, and it's usually something very earnest
Jenn: and you could say "oh, well that is derision, though, that's how we react to precocious children"
Jenn: and, yes, but no
Jenn: it's such a frustratingly complicated feeling
Colin: mm
Jenn: looping back around to that brony video
Jenn: I watched it and laughed till I cried
Jenn: it is NOT a small room
Jenn: for a minor convention that is a very big and full room
Jenn: but the levels of ineptitude and kids just crashing around
Jenn: obviously having never been tasked with doing their own sound before
Jenn: it's just so endlessly charming and wonderful
Colin: yeah and they're obviously having a ball
Jenn: yeah!
Jenn: so again, a heartfelt childish earnestness is happening here
Colin: yeah
Jenn: if you have ever played the Room video game
Jenn: it does not mock the movie
Jenn: instead it has memorized the movie
Colin: I haven't, I probably should at some point
Jenn: and painstakingly expanded on it
Jenn: oh it's brilliant!
Colin: also
Jenn: and that's because it is not a satire, not a parody
Colin: the first time I saw the room
Colin: the thing that really got me was when someone said that someone else would "end up in a hospital down on Valencia Street"
Colin: because there are no hospitals on Valencia Street
Jenn: I mean
Jenn: the first time I watched it
Jenn: Robyn's DVD player was broken in such a way that subtitles were left on
Colin: haha
Jenn: during lovemaking scenes the songs ARE SUBTITLED
Jenn: the lyrics are -- !
Colin: er, wait, not Valencia Street, Guerrero Street
Colin: also no hospitals on that street
Colin: but that sounds amazing
Jenn: it's just so above and beyond
Colin: those lovemaking scenes were so weird
Colin: they lingered way too long
Jenn: well again
Jenn: "I'm gonna cast the hottest girl
Colin: the cinematography was just so bizarre
Jenn: "I'm gonna have sex with her on screen!"
Jenn: "YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON ALL THIS, LOVE OF MY LIFE" *lovemakes with increased gusto*
Jenn: like it's so puerile and childish and just the ultimate baring of insecurities laid out onscreen
Jenn: and -- I feel like I don't really get caustic or make fun of things, but I do get smirky, not snarky
Jenn: but in this case it's more like uh
Jenn: when you're glad and heartbroken for the creator and you just come out wistful
Colin: mm
Jenn: because something is a triumph of the human spirit but also just terrible
Jenn: and I don't want to be all "like fingerpainting!" because again, it is simply not derision at all
Jenn: I think a feeling of superiority is in PLAY, but
Colin: it's not technically unsophisticated
Colin: it's just artistically kind of unsophisticated
Jenn: right
Colin : like a perfectly-chiseled marble statue of a butt
Jenn: and it's just so laid bare you
Jenn: hahahaha
Jenn: I did not mean to type that after "butt"
Colin: oh I think we both know you did
Jenn: but yeah there's no shaming here, per se
Jenn: I'm a huge fan of movies and
Jenn: well okay
Jenn: one of my favorite museums is the Intuit Museum of Intuitive and Outsider Art
Jenn: now we can get into it and be like
Jenn: is it okay to display "folk art"
Jenn: is there something derisive about visiting a gallery that displays, like
Jenn: any artist who is unschooled
Jenn: and you know, you end up with art by people with various impairments or hell even just handpainted signs that are recast as "art" in the museum
Jenn: and then the back room is a reconstruction of henry darger's apartment
Jenn: and I don't know what you know about darger but
Jenn: a Chicago janitor who committed his lifetime to this illustrated epic about children in a war?
Jenn: and no one really "gets" darger which makes his work that much more brutally fascinating
Jenn: so is it okay to put a lens on that guy
Jenn: is it okay to have documentaries on netflix on him, to put him under a microscope
Jenn: at what point, as a hobbyist ethnographer, does your interest "shame" people
Jenn: people read about people who are involved with cults, or about people who believe in a new world order
Jenn: fascinating pockets of microculture
Jenn: and the brony phenomenon is interesting because my little pony is an actual good show for the most undervalued audience ever, which is little girls
Jenn: and I think the majority of bronies actually recognize that it's an artfully constructed show intended for this underrepresented group
Jenn: first of all, the fact the show is so good was a shock to me, since I detest 80s reboots, which are all cash-grabs
Jenn: so it's transgressive in this mega positive way
Jenn: like my little pony is already super subversive
Jenn: and for the medium and intended audience the cartoon is like shockingly sophisticated...!
Jenn: so here comes a group of near-adults who recognize that, and I think that's actually great
Jenn: and I genuinely believe that fandom is earnest and totally lacking in irony
Jenn: because the show really does have yo gabba gabba or spongebob-levels of mainstream appeal
Jenn: actually, okay
Jenn: so when you turn around and go "don't shame people for liking that"
Jenn: there are a few feelings in play
Jenn: and I think one is that same sense of superiority I alluded to earlier
Jenn: "don't make fun of the fingerpaintings"
Jenn: like I think warning people away from giggling at bronies is, um
Jenn: I think it might border on counterintuitive
Jenn: I think there's also self-recognition, like "hey, I'm also into some queer shit"
Colin: nod and I wonder how many of the bronies would identify less as bronies if not for the subversive value in being into some kid stuff that isn't age appropriate
Jenn: I mean the fandom makes huge sense to me
Jenn: (I'm a fan of the show, converted by a metafilter thread)
Jenn: but I think there is an aspect of superiority that you don't intend anytime you go "it's not my bag but more power to you"
Colin: mm
Colin: like the mere fact of mentioning that you see nothing wrong with it implies that you're some sort of arbiter of what culture is worth dignifying with a response
Jenn: RIGHT
Jenn: this is EXACTLY the thought I'm tangling with
Jenn: but you do the same thing when you call a piece of art "outsider" and then put it in an "outsider museum"
Colin: right
Jenn: you get in this weird tug-of-war where
Jenn: you're saying you see a whole lot of merit in a piece
Jenn: and that you're the cultural arbiter
Colin: you're saying that this piece is worth space but you're also saying that it's not worth considering on its own merits
Jenn: right
Colin: like the only way of attaining "outsiderness" that's really fair is if you try and shop a piece to everyone and nobody wants it
Colin: not by being declared an outsider
Jenn: well and again
Jenn: like a lot of pieces in that type of museum were produced like under the auspices of "art therapy" or whatever
Colin: calling it "outsider" art is an implicit statement that by the statements of insiders it doesn't cut the mustard
Colin: *nod*
Colin: yeah
Colin: that's another weird dimension to it
Jenn: yeah
Jenn: which circles back around to
Jenn: is it even okay to put a lens on this stuff
Colin: like there's this restaurant in SF called Boogaloo's
Jenn: like at what point do you just go "I'm not acknowledging this stuff exists anymore"
Colin : which is not-for-profit and associated with an art studio that helps mentally-handicapped people learn and grow through art
Jenn: right, and that's rad
Colin: and boogaloo's has walls full of artwork from that project
Colin: that they sell to help support the restaurant and studio
Jenn: right
Colin: and I find myself worrying about what other people think about that art and whether they think it's kitschy or ironic
Jenn: right, my favorite restaurant in Texas, uh, Floyd's Christian Restaurant
Jenn: if you come in and quietly tell them you can't pay, they just feed you
Jenn: I eat there because they win awards for their chicken fried steak every year
Jenn: everything is wallpapered in newspaper clippings about their samaritan work and their accolades
Jenn: at what point
Jenn: is just helping out inappropriate
Colin: mm
Jenn: there's a real moral, social, intellectual superiority at work
Jenn: like even the term "charity" is loaded