Osama bin Laden’s Death Oddly Fitting for Summer Movie Kick-Off.

Since its Friday opening, Fast Five has already shot past the $83 million mark, making it the biggest opening ever for Universal.

And Bin Laden is dead.


G.I. Joe Caricature


 Am I the only one who sees these two events as being strangely simpatico? After all, what could be more modern day American than Fast Five? This sexist, testosterone fueled, macho action movie with lots of car chases and explosions… with Vin Diesel and The Rock and the Southern Californian epitomized Paul Walker. The ape-like juvenility of Fast Five is damn near unprecedented. It’s like Donkey Kong with supped-up sports cars and hip-hop music, with exotic locales and half naked women. It’s male dominated, and said males either race, fight or stand around drinking beer and talking shit. Never before has a movie been is so blatantly, so shamelessly, catered to its target audience. It’s perfect. And next Friday we have Thor, and thus begins the playtime season of America’s filmgoing pop-culture; school is on its way out and the local multiplexes are opening their gates for the rhino stampede of big studio blockbusters, and with the oncoming warm summer nights and weekend barbecues someone will inevitably ask someone else what they thought of Transformers 3.

And Bin Laden is dead.

As always, there is the sobering reality: terrorism isn’t going away any time soon, nor is unemployment. And I doubt the city of Tuscaloosa and her neighboring southern states communities are in any mood for celebration. Yet there is no denying the rosy veneer that is one part Hollywood escapism and the other part 9/11 vindication. It’s times like these where, on a purely emotional level, our (American psyche) reality briefly merges with fictionality into a kind of vanishing point. We’ll clap hands and boast prideful all summer long over the demise of real life al-Qaeda supervillain and then, with residual good cheer, go watch Captain America do battle with the Red Skull. Maybe it’s all superficial. Of course it is. But that’s okay. I say, let’s consciously (therefore responsibly) disregard the lines separating real world from movie world and, instead, amass all the finer things in life into one great big ice cream cake. 

Bin Laden is dead, and Lord Voldemort is soon to follow.  

 




Oh, and today is Dwayne Johnson’s birthday. Happy, 39^th, Rock!