Okay so 2000's films fuckin suck. except there is an equal proportionality of unsuckness the exsists in tandem to the degree to which they FUCKIN SUCK, the way in which they flatten reality and make it unreality. ungodly. everyone becomes whiter, lighter, and more objectable. so all this to say that i hate that i love that jonah hill and jutsin long movie accepted so much. i watched it with my girlfriend and i loved it. loved it! it made my brain wriggle with ideas about the contextuality of association, communalism, communism, communes, and how we make our institutions. i did not expect this from the movie with the line 'ask me about my weiner' in the trailer.
wait. no. quick aside. fuck highbrow/lowbrow. though... i still believe we can criticize our media. i suppose my theory is more like junkfood/nutritious food. wait yeah that axis works beautifully, in that i do believe there is a place for one to consume the things which they love to eat though might not be good fuel for the body, they should maybe just know that what their eating isn't gonna give them what they need in the end. and on the same token, i find people who peddle 'healthfood' solutions to problems with far broader causes tend to be full of a lot of shit. life, and art, is made more rich with a nuanced and caring understanding, that perfection isn't an achievable goal, that towering oneself off in an aesthetic of superiority is damaging. okay back to the matter at hand. accepted and hierarchy of art. this film, as i was getting to above, is an amazing example of that. packed with ideas and all the weighted male gaze and white washing of a film which lacks even the performitive gloss of wokeness of todays hollywood output.
quick rundown. a guy, justin longs character, can't get into college, and so photoshops himself a fake acceptance letter to a college that doesn't exist and it gets out of hand and so he has to make a fake college. and that's the movie in a nutshell. there in lies the beauty. it's a simple, deceptively linear story. sure it has the 'big center lie' but there isn't some massive run around. most of the movie is spent just yukking it up with everyone at south harmon istitute of technology. also the 'big lie' comes from Justin longs characters care for the people he saw before him who needed a place to belong, who need shelter from rejection. and of course that comes in the form of dudes staring at chicks at the pool and skinny women who are offered up for their sex appeal... and also their own unique desires. like the former stripper who gets into fashion design or the school freak who takes up meditation. everyone gets to make of their time what they will and the anarchist in me loves it. the 'what do you want to learn' white board is genuinely amazing and inspiring and lovely. truly. it makes me weepy. an institution dedicated to allocating the funds its participants give it to the interests of those participants. a community which comforts and values its members. a fucking dream, and one i do not see stoked in media all too often.
I also want to talk about the mailability of reality in this movie. how a lie, in earnest intention, became reality because of the collective intent of a group of people. goddamn that is energy i want to see more in the world. i don't think communalism would be easy, but i don't think it would be any harder than the world at large. life is painful and hard in society as it is. i annoy easy and get overwhelmed by a deeply paranoid and exhaustive brain. but one of the best decisions, one of the best things about my me, is that i decided a long time ago that i would always let my higher ideals guide me. that i would never let myself become one of those 'that's not how the world is' one of those 'if only' people. the world can be whatever the fuck we want it to be, and not in that bullshit rightwing libritarian way. fuckin free staters overrunning my fuckin home. fuck them. i mean it in a way that i think i read in the writing of alok vaid-menon, by engaging my radical imagination. we hold this world in our hands, and we have immense power just in that. and accepted was one of the most unlikely places i have learned this.
this 2000's raunch-comedy, illustrated perfectly a kind of ontological modality that i certainly do not think it was trying to. and that's why we need to destroy notions of high and low art. our art reflects to us the things we wish to see from it. consider your art a frame from with to put things in or to put things outside of. maybe my junkfood/ healthfood dichotomy wasn't so useful. we're onto ponds or mirrors or hearts. things which echo and flow. i do wonder if the team (it had to be a team) of people who wrote this were thinking about any of this. this was just a fun party flick. but hey it made me almost cry. and point my eyes toward the horizon and that supersedes any creator intention.
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