Actually, watching Can’t Stop the Music wasn’t as painful as I feared–it’s too ridiculously stupid to induce anything as honest as pain. I put it in that strange category of film that includes Showgirls and Shock Treatment: movies that are cognizant of their camp value but which ultimately aren’t campy. The directors are trying make the films do too much at once, leaving the viewer (i.e. me) irritated, not entertained.
I had a much different experience Friday evening while watching a TV documentary on the Beatles. The black-and-white footage was fine, non-descript, archival. But things crossed over into technicolor around the same time I was born. The clothes the band was wearing, even the quality of the film, pointed to a time I can just barely remember, before I’d even started elementary school. I get the same feeling when I visit my mom and flip through her stacks of Fox Photo pics. I can’t really remember specific events, but I remember the general feeling of being alive then: the color of our living room carpet, a few of my favorite shirts, the face of our babysitter (whom I secretly loved) and the feel of riding to Macdonald’s in her convertible. It’s an indefinable sensation; it’s like having a vague idea of something that happened, but never remembering specifics–always being right on the edge of recollection. If I could pin it down to a particular image or event, that would probably be fine–at least it’d be closure. But this kind of nebulousness makes me nauseous, like I’ve been punched in the gut.
sturtle [dot] com 