The Vapid "Genius" of Satire

Okay, I know this post is an unpopular opinion, but what's a life where we don't oh-so naturally think against the grain every now and then? What is the likelihood that Rotten Tomatoes agrees with us every time? I myself have looked at plenty of think-pieces that critique something in a way that makes the writer seem as if they're simply trying too hard to stir up a ruckus or validate their "unique" ego. But you know what? Everyone has those few opinions here and there that really are not trying too hard. Sometimes, you simply just don't "get it" or more accurately, don't buy all the hype. And for that, I apologize to any writer that I have criticized for being a counter-culture edge lord. Hey, they might be, but I have no way to prove that. Because ultimately, that's just, like, your opinion man.

For me, the unpopular opinion that I hold is toward the movie Scream, which I believe resonates and has aged well with millennials because, let's be real, millennials love things layered in irony for purely irony's sake. I say this especially in a time where an unreasonable benefit of the doubt is given to directors with past success.

The draw with Scream as a satire is that it flips the concept of a slasher in a witty way, and its credibility is also bolstered by famous director Wes Craven. Now, of course Wes Craven deserves praise, but he isn't an omnipotent director. I think that the current generation in particular is guilty of obsessive "stanning" and being nostalgic, but that's an issue for another day.

Okay, enough of my fear towards people not understanding my opinion. Let's talk Scream. In 1996, horror was a bottom feeder as far as artistic credibility goes. The time period needed a Scream. It really did. In fact, it needed a Scream so badly that Scream itself didn't have to do anything besides point out the obvious. The obvious being that slashers and horror remakes were terrible at the time, and often still are. That's why we still need other satires such as The Cabin in the Woods to break us out of the genre's rut from time to time. Its just that, maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems like the things that Scream pokes fun at are too obvious to find witty. This could even be said for The Cabin in the Woods, but I prefer that movie because it was able to remain alien enough to still bewilder audience members.

Scream's tongue-in-cheek approach is understood right off the bat—We are going to make fun of final girls, virginity, and subvert expected moments of tension that horror always finds itself trapped in. In comparison, another horror satire like Jordan Peele's Get Out is able to simultaneously poke fun of something, make a good movie, and show a bigger problem at hand in such a clever way that it never even has to submit itself to "campy." I think making something campy is fun, but its never as good as something that says the same thing without camp.

Ironically, I believe that Scream's most redeeming quality is that it is a good slasher. It's a well-made mystery and a tense movie, so much so that it's satirical elements come off as trying to save itself from audience members believing it to be cliché. Although I doubt it was his intent, It comes off as Wes Craven wanting to make another good horror movie as he so often does, and almost being ashamed of the fact that he took this lane to do it in—covering it with satire.

Its impact can not be denied, as it made Hollywood more self-aware, but whose fault really was that? To me, it was past directors of shitty horror movies. Audiences weren't stupid. There's a reason horror movies were going straight to DVD as no one was willing to pay theater prices for those abominations.

While Scream was an awakening to the genre, I think its value was in wanting to respect the horror genre and its fans, which is, like, the bare minimum that you would expect from a director whose livelihood is to make good movies. Everything in the movie that's being poked fun at could be noticed by any audience member. As the credits rolled, there was no shock and awe to how the movie was able to expose a larger message through its satire. It just made fans happy to see that some director finally saw through the bullshit. A focus group of movie goers at the time could have wrote this plot. All they would have to do is notice "Yeah, that is cliché. You should make fun of it flip it on its head." There was no nuance being demonstrated, rather it was just a check-list of doing the opposite of what was done before. It was just kept it in a slasher format for, you know, the satire part.

It may have been Wes Craven's easiest job ever and props to the man for taking advantage of that space, but to me, it seems as if all it did was prove to Hollywood studios that audiences were not as stupid as they believed them to be.