an individual that she wasn’t like anyone but herself; she didn’t reflect any archetypes. She was real enough to be interesting, but too real to be important. Kelly Kapowski was never real, so she ended up being a little like everybody (or at least like someone everybody used to know). The Tori Paradox was a lazy way for NBC to avoid thinking, but nobody watching at home blinked; it was openly ridiculous, but latently plausible. That’s why the Tori Paradox made sense, and why it illustrated a greater paradox that matters even more:
Saved by the Bell
wasn’t real, but neither is most of reality.
3 . In fact,
M*A*S*H
followed this template so consistently that these twists ultimately became completely predictable; whenever I watch
M*A*S*H
reruns, I immediately assume every guest star is a flawed hypocrite who fails to understand the horror of televised war. It should also be noted that there is one
Saved by the Bell
script that borrows this formula: When beloved pop singer Jonny Dakota comes to Bayside High to film an antidrug video, we quickly learn that he is actually a drug addict, although that realization is foreshadowed by the fact that Jonny is vaguely rude.
Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth
It’s become cool to like
Star Wars,
which actually means it’s totally uncool to like
Star Wars
. I think you know what I mean by this: There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interestin
g”
to be a
Star Wars
fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day, or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants.
Star Wars
was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized; I don’t recall anyone talking about
Star Wars
in 1990, except for that select class of
über
geeks who consciously embraced their sublime nerdiness four years before the advent of Weezer (you may recall that these were also the first people who told you about the Internet). But that era has passed; suddenly it seems like everyone born between 1963 and 1975 will gleefully tell you how mind-blowingly important the
Star Wars
trilogy was to their youth, and it’s slowly become acceptable to make Wookie jokes without the fear of alienation. This is probably Kevin Smith’s fault.
What’s interesting about this evolution is that the value of a movie like
Star Wars
was vastly underrated at the time of its release and is now vastly overrated in retrospect. In 1977, few people realized this film would completely change the culture of filmmaking, inasmuch as this was the genesis of all those blockbuster movies that everyone gets tricked into seeing summer after summer after summer.
Star Wars
changed the social perception of what a movie was supposed to be; George Lucas, along with Steven Spielberg, managed to kill the best era of American filmmaking in less than five years. Yet—over time—
Star Wars
has become one of the most overrated films of all time, inasmuch as it’s pretty fucking terrible when you actually try to watch it.
Star Wars
’s greatest asset is that it’s inevitably compared to 1983’s
Return of the Jedi,
quite possibly the leastwatchable major film of the last twenty-five years. I once knew a girl who claimed to have a recurring dream about a polar bear that mauled Ewoks; it made me love her.
However, the middle film in the
Star Wars
trilogy,
The Empire Strikes Back,
remains a legitimately great picture—but not for any cinematic reason. It’s great for thematic, social reasons. It’s now completely obvious that
The Empire Strikes Back
was the seminal foundation for what became “Generation X.” 1 In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam. While movies like
Easy Rider
and
Saturday Night Fever
painted living portraits for generations they represented in the present tense,
The Empire Strikes Back
might be the only example of a movie that set the social aesthetic for a generation coming in the future. The narrative extension to
The Empire Strikes
Saved by the Bell
wasn’t real, but neither is most of reality.
3 . In fact,
M*A*S*H
followed this template so consistently that these twists ultimately became completely predictable; whenever I watch
M*A*S*H
reruns, I immediately assume every guest star is a flawed hypocrite who fails to understand the horror of televised war. It should also be noted that there is one
Saved by the Bell
script that borrows this formula: When beloved pop singer Jonny Dakota comes to Bayside High to film an antidrug video, we quickly learn that he is actually a drug addict, although that realization is foreshadowed by the fact that Jonny is vaguely rude.
Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth
It’s become cool to like
Star Wars,
which actually means it’s totally uncool to like
Star Wars
. I think you know what I mean by this: There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interestin
g”
to be a
Star Wars
fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day, or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants.
Star Wars
was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized; I don’t recall anyone talking about
Star Wars
in 1990, except for that select class of
über
geeks who consciously embraced their sublime nerdiness four years before the advent of Weezer (you may recall that these were also the first people who told you about the Internet). But that era has passed; suddenly it seems like everyone born between 1963 and 1975 will gleefully tell you how mind-blowingly important the
Star Wars
trilogy was to their youth, and it’s slowly become acceptable to make Wookie jokes without the fear of alienation. This is probably Kevin Smith’s fault.
What’s interesting about this evolution is that the value of a movie like
Star Wars
was vastly underrated at the time of its release and is now vastly overrated in retrospect. In 1977, few people realized this film would completely change the culture of filmmaking, inasmuch as this was the genesis of all those blockbuster movies that everyone gets tricked into seeing summer after summer after summer.
Star Wars
changed the social perception of what a movie was supposed to be; George Lucas, along with Steven Spielberg, managed to kill the best era of American filmmaking in less than five years. Yet—over time—
Star Wars
has become one of the most overrated films of all time, inasmuch as it’s pretty fucking terrible when you actually try to watch it.
Star Wars
’s greatest asset is that it’s inevitably compared to 1983’s
Return of the Jedi,
quite possibly the leastwatchable major film of the last twenty-five years. I once knew a girl who claimed to have a recurring dream about a polar bear that mauled Ewoks; it made me love her.
However, the middle film in the
Star Wars
trilogy,
The Empire Strikes Back,
remains a legitimately great picture—but not for any cinematic reason. It’s great for thematic, social reasons. It’s now completely obvious that
The Empire Strikes Back
was the seminal foundation for what became “Generation X.” 1 In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam. While movies like
Easy Rider
and
Saturday Night Fever
painted living portraits for generations they represented in the present tense,
The Empire Strikes Back
might be the only example of a movie that set the social aesthetic for a generation coming in the future. The narrative extension to
The Empire Strikes
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