22 Oct 2023 | Vol 2 Issue 30
Admittedly this edition would be better timed had I published it the same week I saw Meg 2: The Trench, but given my thoughts are general, and perhaps not entirely serious, I think we can get away with some delayed topicality.
So. A while back I saw Meg 2, and it gave me thoughts. Actually it was more the circumstances in which I watched it that gave me thoughts — and trust me — there was plenty of spare time during it to have many thoughts.
I shall summarise some of these ruminations into what I am going to dub "The Statham Test".
Julian, is this akin to the Bechdel-Wallace test, you ask? Why, yes it is. But not as meaningful, more jokey, and perhaps just a little unkind to Jason Statham, who doesn't deserve to be thrown under the bus. Well, maybe a tiny bit. We shall see.
First, an explanation of The Bechdel-Wallace test, should you be unaware of it [1 ]. American cartoonist Alison Bechdel credits the concept to her friend Liz Wallace, and Virginia Woolf's 1929 essay A Room of One's Own.
The test, or rules were originally enshrined in Bechdel's 1985 comic Dykes to Watch Out For. Here they are:
1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something other than a man
Rather sadly it seems Meg 2: The Trench hasn't been entered into the splendid resource bechdeltest.com, a compendium of movies scored by the Bechdel test. Oppenheimer, I was pleased to note, fails. See related post on self criticism and showing a lot of skin.
Confession time. I really, really enjoyed the original Meg — note: this was not something I expected to happen. Similarly, I found myself thoroughly entertained by Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Another Statham vehicle. Yes, that was intentional.
Both viewings were a result of family situations. Meg, due to it being the only film showing in the seaside town where my mother resides, when no.1 son and I were weekending. Hobbs & Shaw, since grandson was too young to see the excellent finger-severing, flying-through-the-air-two-handed-shootout, violent Hong Kong gangster film the rest of the fam had tickets for.
Which brings us to Meg 2: The Trench. Once again on grandson duty, and knowing the little tyke retains a seriously small charge in his batteries, I thought a mindless film after a day's boogie (yes sir I can) boarding would be prudent.
We will ignore the fact that after a fraught, hurried, and expensive taxi journey from the down-the-coast best surfing beach to make the film on time, I discovered I had in fact, purchased tickets for a cinema in another town entirely. Fortuitously it seems the chain shows the same daily programme in all its cinemas. Without any mocking (all things considered), but not a little paperwork, the seats were transferred to our actual physically-present-in-at-this-moment multiplex.
We are coming to an important plot point.
I live on a Spanish-territory island off the coast of Morocco, where non dubbed films are few and far between. This may explain that while I constantly namecheck arthouse cinema, I seem to only watch bubblegum movies of the most common denominator. The Spanish as a whole want their films dubbed, not subtitled [2 ]. This single screening so perilously close to the high surfing tide was the only VOSE (Versión Original Subtitulada en Español) one of el día.
We made the start of the film in the nick of time. I was puzzled why the film was called Megalodón 2: La Fosa. But technology allows the credits being amended for the current territory, right? My puzzlement grew as Jason Statham started to wax lyrical en Español. OK, this is a joke, Jason Statham has obviously never waxed lyrical in any language. Further compounded when the Chinese members of the cast replied en Español. And Cliff Curtis of Māori descent pitched in, en Español. In fact the whole cast seemed to be talking, en Español.
I could only conclude that in fact we were watching the en Español version of the film and not, as my overwritten tickets proclaimed Versión Original Subtitulada en Español.
Tot is eleven and is doing French, year 1, at school. A quick conference. Abort, or stay for the ride. Although, it turns out it's not really much of a ride, more a trek, given the plot is mainly set in an underwater trench.
We stayed. Which you will have already gathered, or The Statham Test wouldn't cover a great deal of ground. Or trench.
Before finally revealing The Statham Test, why do I think I'm allowed to throw him under the bus, or boat, or undersea research centre. Well, on a more churlish note I was promised twice as much megalodón as Meg 1. There was, in reality, a pitiful lack of megalodon, an afterthought of megalodon. There were deep sea miner corporate pirate bandits — bear with me here, I'm watching this en Español remember, and prehistoric killer lizard dinosaur things that no-one noticed while building the luxury Chinese holiday resort on the remote island. Until Jason Statham turned up, when they suddenly developed an insane blood lust wanting to devour the cast and every extra in film. This perhaps is understandable, and the only part of the film that in hindsight seems realistic. A reasonable attitude if Jason Statham washed up on your remote island (or crash landed in a helicopter, or jet ski, or hybrid hover-heli jet ski thing).
The actual reason for the bus crushing is the crass and grossly obvious making-China-the-good-guy propaganda the film proffers. You may have noticed that there is a cultural war going on between China (bad communists, as opposed to Putin's Russia, good communists) and Uncle Sam. See attempted banning of TikTok. Post Trump and Ukraine this has got complicated, but China is still seen as the main threat to Western supremacy.
Hollywood, having no morals at all, will happily silence sports stars, actors or writers (when actually paying them) in deference to Chinese censorship in order to have the film released in The Middle Kingdom. As my friend Bryan recently pointed out to me, China has gone one better. It finances the productions, thus earning a seat at the script writing by committee table.
www.heritage.org/asia/heritage-explains/how-china-taking-control-hollywood
www.airuniversity.af.edu/AUPress/Display/Article/3267338/mapping-chinese-influence-in-hollywood
www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/how-hollywood-sold-out-to-china/620021
www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1081435029/china-hollywood-movies-censorship-erich-schwartzel
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/mar/1/hollywood-spreading-china-propaganda-report
I quote Jason Statham, "I think it's like anything in this day and age – if it makes money, there's obviously an appetite to make more money. And if it doesn't do well, they'll soon sweep it under the carpet - but that's the way Hollywood works.", is it too much to call him a shallow capitulator? [3 ] It seems he was quite happy to throw the art out with the bath(ing shark) water, and create something that makes China look benign. Also, I was a massive Ben Wheatley fan before this, just WTF, Ben Wheatley, what the actual fuck. A quick aside, I think America has just as much to answer for, possibly more, in destabilising global peace. But the hypocrisy in taking the money and wagging the tail is astounding, especially when it fights the writers union so hard, unions being, um, a communist ideal. So Messrs Statham and Wheatley, shame on you for making something that is so clearly nothing more than a money making venture, with no respect for your audience.
But can you prove the film is artistically void?
Aha, yes you can.
You guessed it.
The Statham Test.
The Bechdel Test is really rather useful, not just as a measure for feminist credentials. By the way, if you have issues with feminism, it simply means you haven't understood it clearly yet. Caitlin Moran makes the excellent point that feminism also fights for men's rights, since it is about equality.
The Bechdel Test also functions as an intelligence test. Rough and ready maybe, but since it involves a conversation not based on the attractiveness of men, there's hope for some subplot or character development, and opposed to bicep flexing.
Film is by its nature, mixed media. Fully capitalising Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. A somewhat terrifying word which translates benignly enough as "Total Art", a synthesis of music, drama, stage elements, and poetry (see on silence (diegetic music)).
I would like to distil this concept of Gesamtkunstwerk a little. It's not just using costume, scenery, dialogue, acting, camera angles, music, sound effects, to tell the same thread. It's using each of the elements to layer meaning. To add nuance, perhaps conflict to what we're seeing, or hearing. An example at its simplest would be a voice over, where the narrator might be describing secretly to us, what is visually onscreen, a happy occurrence, but is deeply traumatic to them, a discrepancy — and perhaps introducing the idea of two time periods occurring simultaneously.
This allows for intelligence in the audience, that we can come to our own conclusions, or perhaps that the situation is indeed ambiguous.
Here's a masterclass. Walter Murch, sound designer, and director Francis Ford Coppola's opening sequence to Apocalypse Now, where not only did they pull the post-structuralist trick of turning The Doors intended as a breakup song The End into an anti-war anthem, but the exemplary use of the helicopter blades morphing into the whirring of the ceiling fan, and back to an actual helicopter landing offscreen outside the window. Tying memory, alienation, and a jolting of the protagonist back into the present, all through one sound. Cavalry hats off to them.
So tot and I stayed for the duration of Meg 2: The Drench, en Español, and here's the denouement. We pretty much followed the whole thing. Except perhaps the deeper relationship between evil corporate overlords and the deep sea miner corporate pirate bandits, Anne's understanding of Spanish helped us out there. And how the fuck no-one noticed the island was teeming with blood thirsty prehistoric killer lizard dinosaur things, which wouldn't have made any sense no matter what language you watched it in.
So The Statham Test is this. The extent to which a film uses its mixture of different media: sound, visuals, music, to tell different aspects of the story. Or to turn it around — the extent to which the visuals match exactly the audio.
That every camera shot is a pictorial representation of what the character is currently saying. That the actor is describing in words exactly what we are currently viewing. Image and sound replicate each other. The soundtrack simply underlines these two aspects.
There was no ambiguity between watching the action unfold on screen, and not understanding a single word anyone said. Except maybe hola and megalodón.
A bit of doublethink here, if the film passes The Statham Test, then it fails. It ignores any usage of disparate audio and visual treatments, therefore eschewing the notion of possible intelligence in the audience.
Sorry Jason.
💬
This week featured:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Statham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wheatley
Hero image from the author’s collection.
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on pan con tomate
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I haven’t written for a few months. Life stuff. I’ve missed it, and now the batteries feel recharged enough to put finger tip to keyboard again.
I write for me predominantly, but it is nice knowing it’s read by someone other than my mum. I bought a microphone too, to try a podcast version.
shill
A person engaged in covert advertising. The shill attempts to spread buzz by personally endorsing the product in public forums with the pretense of sincerity, when in fact he is being paid for his services.
Who are you shilling for?
by strangedaze April 28, 2005 4
Could I ask, in a self shillin’ sorta way, that you forward this edition, or visit consumeandenjoy.substack.com and share a suitable post with a friend, an ex, a colleague, or even a frenemy — sending it to an actual enemy, is I think giving wrong vibes — who you think might consume, and indeed, enjoy it.
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